James Talarico is no friend of election integrity. The Texas Democrat candidate for Senate has shown his distaste for tighter election security time and time again.
In 2021, Talarico told then-Fox News host Pete Hegseth — now Trump’s Secretary of War, “I oppose voter ID.” He’s in the minority. The vast majority of American voters (80%-plus) support laws requiring identification to vote.
The state representative has defended the Texas House Democrats’ political temper tantrum in 2021 when they fled to Washington, D.C. to temporarily deny majority Republicans a quorum to pass an election law reform package. It was an empty act of political theater; the legislature ultimately passed the Texas Election Integrity Act, which included ID requirements for mail-in ballots, among a host of other election security provisions. Talarico called the law “immoral,” “anti-American,” and “anti-democratic.”
His Republican opponent, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, has vehemently defended the law from a multi-front barrage of leftist lawsuits.
‘Voter Fraud is Nonexistent’
Like his comrades in the ever left-lurching Democratic Party, Talarico is an election integrity denier.
“Voter fraud is nonexistent in Texas,” the Senate hopeful said in an exclusively unearthed video from his June 2021 appearance on the Austin Chamber of Commerce’s 87th Texas Legislative Session Webinar Recap.
“Based on all of the data, based on all of the evidence, everything that you look at, Texans don’t commit voter fraud,” he asserted, adding that “you are likely to get struck by lightning than to commit voter fraud in the state of Texas.”
He was lying, of course.
Photo Credit: Austin Chamber of Commerce
Talarico likely knew about Monica Mendez, a southeast Texas woman convicted of 26 felony counts of election fraud. The charges stemmed from a “vote-harvesting operation she orchestrated on behalf of a subsidized housing corporation to sway the outcome of a 2018 utility board election in Victoria County,” the Dallas Express reported.
Or how about that Gregg County illegal ballot harvesting scheme during the 2018 Democratic primary for Longview City Council? That was a widely covered voter fraud case.
There have been many other incidents before and since in the Lone Star State, according to the Heritage Foundation’s Election Fraud Map, including the 2024 conviction of Zul Mirza Mohamed. He was charged with 106 felonies after forging absentee ballot request applications for registered voters, Heritage’s database notes. Mohamed was a candidate for mayor in Carrolton.
‘Violated State Voting Laws’
But Talarico may need look no further for examples of election fraud than his mirror.
As The Federalist first reported, records show Talarico used his mother’s Austin address to register to vote in order to launch a campaign for a Texas House seat in a Dem-friendly district— an apparent violation of Texas election law.
In early December 2021 (eight days before the candidate filing deadline), the Democrat registered to vote at his mother’s home address in Austin, according to Texas voter registration files. The House district he had represented had been redrawn, making the seat much harder to hold for a Democrat. There’s no evidence, sources say, that Talarico lived at his mother’s home during the period. Even if he did, the candidate would have to have resided there for at least a year before launching his House campaign.
The Texas Constitution is clear: Candidates running for Texas House seats must have resided in the state for two years prior to the election, and at least one year in the districts they’re running to represent.
In 2022, after running in the party primary and listing his mother’s address on his election forms, Talarico purchased a home in Austin’s Windsor Hills neighborhood, according to documents reviewed by The Federalist. Situated between I-35, Braker Lane, Dessau Road, and Rundberg Lane, this property is within the boundaries of Texas’ 50th House District. The three-bedroom property, built in 1972, boasts an assessed value of $407,500.
Houston Public Media earlier this month reported that the Senate candidate “voted in five elections using his parents’ address after purchasing a home for himself nearby, a practice that may have violated state voting laws.”
Talarico has accused Paxton of illegally voting in elections from the “wrong address,” an accusation the Republican denies.
‘Far-Left Extremist’
Talarico, who has claimed that God is nonbinary and that there are six genders, compared voter fraud to men in women’s sports, “a solution in search of a problem.” In the same Chamber of Commerce video, Talarico said Republicans in the 2021 session were engaged in “silly” debates about two issues that didn’t matter.
They matter a great deal to the Texans he hopes to represent in the U.S. Senate.
Polls show most Americans don’t want males competing in female sports. On Thursday, Riley Gaines, former NCAA swimmer and prominent advocate for women in athletics, endorsed Paxton, describing Talarico as a “far-left extremist who has refused to accept biological reality.”
He’s had trouble with the reality of voter fraud, too.
That’s to be expected from an election integrity denier.
