Election 2026 · Public beta

Independent, source-first accountability

TheStatedRecordFind a race
Back to the race record

Candidate record

James Talarico

Texas state representative for District 50; in the Texas House since November 19, 2018. Campaign affiliation: Democratic.

Voter guide

Background, stated goals, record, and money

Background comes from official records, and from the campaign's own biography where the bullet says so; goals are summarized from the campaign's own platform and stay attributed; the record lines are official actions with the government source attached; money is shown as filed, with the filing window and the reconciliation in the note under the table, and is not evidence of why any position was taken.

James Talarico

Background

  • Texas state representative since November 19, 2018, when he was sworn in after the special election of November 6, 2018 for the unexpired term of Larry Gonzales; the Legislative Reference Library records him in District 52 for the 85th to 87th Legislatures and in District 50, in Travis County, for the 88th and 89th. Legislative Reference Library of Texas
  • His campaign describes him as an eighth-generation Texan, a former middle-school teacher on the west side of San Antonio and a Presbyterian seminarian; he sat on the House Public Education Committee in each of the four full terms the library records, and is vice chair of two subcommittees in the 89th. Talarico for Texas, Talarico for Texas, Legislative Reference Library of Texas

What they say they want to do

  • Make an anti-corruption package the first legislation he pursues, banning super PACs and corporate PACs, banning partisan gerrymandering, and banning members of Congress from trading individual stocks. Talarico for Texas
  • Let every American buy into Medicare at any age, cap out-of-pocket drug costs and regulate pharmacy benefit managers. Talarico for Texas
  • Pass comprehensive immigration reform that secures the border and widens legal entry, and bar immigration agents from wearing masks or refusing to identify themselves. Talarico for Texas
  • Reject federal private-school voucher programmes and establish universal pre-kindergarten for three- and four-year-olds. Talarico for Texas

What the official record shows

  • First-named author of HB 25 of the 88th Legislature, the wholesale prescription drug importation act, with 117 coauthors and Senator Kolkhorst as its Senate sponsor; it took effect September 1, 2023. Texas Legislature Online
  • One of the two House sponsors of SB 827 of the 87th Legislature, authored by Senator Kolkhorst, which bars a health plan from charging an enrollee more than $25 per prescription for a 30-day supply of insulin; it took effect September 1, 2021. Texas Legislature Online, Texas Legislature Online
  • First-named House sponsor of SB 1145 of the 88th Legislature, the local-option property-tax exemption for child-care facilities, and author of its identical House companion HB 3621; the act took effect January 1, 2024 once the voters approved SJR 64. Texas Legislature Online
  • Across the 86th to 89th Legislatures and their called sessions Texas Legislature Online records 299 measures he authored or joint-authored, 29 of which took effect and 10 of those with him as the first-named author, and 17 he sponsored or joint-sponsored as the House sponsor of a Senate bill, 9 of which took effect and 5 of those with him named first. A further 169 measures list him as a coauthor. Texas Legislature Online

Campaign money from other committees, by type

Leadership PACs 29 committees$147,000
Labor organization PACs 19 committees$83,000
Hybrid PACs 13 committees$58,500
Other PACs (no organization type recorded) 6 committees$25,308
Committees listed without an FEC id in the filing 16 committees$17,350
Other candidates' committees 6 committees$9,500
Membership organization PACs 3 committees$7,750

Source: Federal Election Commission

Itemized receipts from political committees in the 2025-2026 cycle filings through June 30, 2026, grouped by the FEC's recorded organization type or designation of the contributing committee. The rows sum to $348,408.24, equal to the FEC summary's other-committee contributions; the summary records no party contributions at all. There is no corporation-connected row and no trade-association row because the filing itemizes no contribution from a committee the FEC records under either type. The unclassified rows are where that check is weakest: six committees the FEC carries without an organization type, and sixteen state or local committees the filing lists without an FEC id. Not in the table: $2,594,220.00 of transfers from other authorized committees on the FEC summary, which are not itemized receipts from political committees, and four memo entries totalling $13,500.00 recording contributions earmarked through a conduit, which the report already counts elsewhere.

Words and record

Where statements meet the record

Each card is labeled narrowly, by rule, and states its own limit.

James Talarico

Health care: insulin costs and importing drugs from Canada

Matches stated record claim

What they say

His campaign's health-care page says he passed two measures on drug costs in the Texas Legislature, one capping insulin copayments at $25 a month and one letting Texas import prescription drugs from Canada.

“So when I got elected, I passed bills that capped insulin copays at $25 a month and allowed Texas to import cheaper prescription drugs from Canada at a fraction of what they cost in the U.S. due to price gouging by Big Pharma.”

Source: Talarico for Texas

What the record shows ·

Both measures are law and the figures are exact. HB 25 of the 88th Legislature, the wholesale prescription drug importation act, lists him as the first of five authors, with 117 coauthors and Senator Kolkhorst as its Senate sponsor; it took effect September 1, 2023, and Texas Legislature Online indexes it under CANADA. On insulin, SB 827 of the 87th Legislature took effect September 1, 2021, and its enrolled text bars a health plan from imposing a cost-sharing requirement where "the total amount the enrollee is required to pay exceeds $25 per prescription for a 30-day supply", which is the cap he describes. On that bill the Author field names Senator Kolkhorst and fourteen joint authors, and the House Sponsor field names two members, Lucio III and Talarico, in that order.

Sources: Texas Legislature Online, Texas Legislature Online, Texas Legislature Online

Limit: The word doing the work is "passed", and it holds differently on the two bills. On the importation act he is the first-named author of a House bill that became law. On the insulin cap he is the second of the two House sponsors of a Senate bill someone else authored; unlike the single-name Sponsor field on a federal bill, the Texas record can and does name more than one sponsor, so it is able to record a co-lead and here it records him second. Neither bill is his alone, and both carry large bipartisan coauthor lists. Whether the importation programme has begun operating, and what either law has done to prices, are questions this card does not assess.

James Talarico

Costs: property taxes on child-care centres

Matches stated record claim

What they say

His own account says he passed a bill cutting property taxes for child-care centres.

“Childcare is now more expensive than college. In the Legislature, I passed a bill to cut property taxes for childcare centers, allowing small businesses like Green Space Nature Preschool to cut costs for working families. In the Senate, I’ll keep fighting for our tiny Texans. 🌱”

Source: X

What the record shows ·

SB 1145 of the 88th Legislature created a local-option exemption from property taxation, by a county or a municipality, of all or part of the appraised value of real property used to operate a child-care facility. Senator West authored it; the House Sponsor field names five members and he is the first of them. Its identical House companion, HB 3621, is his own bill. Its last action, on May 29, 2023, reads "E See remarks for effective date", and the remarks record that the act takes effect January 1, 2024 but only if the voters approve SJR 64; whether they did is not established by any source this desk cites.

Sources: Texas Legislature Online

Limit: He is the first-named House sponsor of the act and the author of the identical House companion, which did not itself pass, so "I passed a bill" is borne out on the record's own fields. Two bounds. The exemption is local option: it cuts no tax by itself, and each county or city decides whether to adopt it, which this card does not check for any jurisdiction. And the act depended on a constitutional amendment the voters approved separately. The post carries no link and no video and nothing outside its text was read.

James Talarico

Government accountability: corporate PAC money

Matches stated record claim

What they say

His campaign's corruption page makes a claim about his own funding and dates it to his first race.

“That’s why I’ve never taken a dime of corporate PAC money”

Source: Talarico for Texas

What the record shows ·

His Senate committee's filings through June 30, 2026 itemize $348,408.24 of receipts from political committees, and not one of those committees is recorded by the FEC under the organization type Corporation or the type Trade Association. What the money is instead, on the FEC's own classification, is $147,000.00 from 29 leadership PACs, $83,000.00 from 19 labor-organization PACs, $58,500.00 from 13 hybrid PACs, $9,500.00 from 6 other candidates' committees, $7,750.00 from 3 membership-organization PACs, $25,308.24 from 6 committees the FEC carries without an organization type, and $17,350.00 from 16 committees the filing lists without an FEC id at all. The FEC summary records no party-committee contribution to the committee.

Sources: Federal Election Commission, Federal Election Commission

What the filings show

No itemized contribution from a corporation-connected or trade-association PAC, against $43,500.00 from nine such committees itemized by the Republican candidate's committee over the same cycle.

Source: Federal Election Commission, Federal Election Commission

Amounts are what the filings record, grouped by the FEC's own committee types. They are not a measure of a candidate's independence, and no contribution here is placed beside any position as its cause.

Limit: On the FEC's own classification the filing bears the claim out for this committee and this cycle: no itemized contribution from a committee the FEC records as connected to a corporation. The check is only as fine as that classification, and two rows are where it is weakest. Six committees, holding $25,308.24, are carried by the FEC with no organization type, and sixteen, holding $17,350.00, are state or local committees the filing lists without an FEC id, so the FEC classifies them not at all. The claim is dated to his first Texas House race in 2017 and this check covers only his federal committee's 2025-2026 filings; his Texas state filings are a separate jurisdiction and were not read. Unitemized receipts are not in this check at all.

James Talarico

Government accountability: what his impeachment vote did

Matches stated record claim

What they say

His campaign's corruption page republishes his post of the day of the vote, which states what the vote was and what it did.

“This may be the most consequential vote I’ll cast as a member of the Texas Legislature. I—along with a bipartisan majority of my colleagues—just voted to impeach our corrupt Attorney General. Ken Paxton is hereby removed from office.”

Source: Talarico for Texas

What the record shows ·

The first two sentences are exact. The House adopted H.R. 2377 on May 27, 2023 by 121 yeas to 23 nays with 2 present and not voting (Record 2191), he is recorded among the yeas, and the majority was bipartisan on the record's own arithmetic: of the 121 yeas 61 were Democrats and 60 were Republicans, and all 23 nays were Republicans, in a chamber the Journal accounts for as 85 Republicans and 64 Democrats. The third sentence is not borne out. Impeachment by the House did not remove him; it suspended him pending trial, and the office's own record says so in the only words it uses for it: the attorney general's opinion index records John Scott as provisional attorney general from May 31 to July 14, 2023 and Angela Colmenero from July 14 to September 16, 2023, in each case "Pursuant to article 15, section 5 of the Texas Constitution", the provision the Senate's judgment also cites. Removal required conviction by the Senate. The presiding officer stated on the record that conviction on one article removes him and that 21 votes were needed; on September 16, 2023 the Senate acquitted on all 16 articles it tried, no article drawing more than 14 yeas, dismissed the four held in abeyance, and the judgment reinstated him. He has held the office since. That Senate was Republican-held too: 31 members, 19 Republicans and 12 Democrats, with Senator Angela Paxton not among the thirty whose votes the record carries, and on every article that drew 14 yeas those yeas were the chamber's 12 Democrats and 2 Republicans while all 16 nays were Republicans.

Sources: Texas Legislature Online, Texas House of Representatives, Legislative Reference Library of Texas, Office of the Attorney General of Texas, Office of the Attorney General of Texas, Texas Senate, Legislative Reference Library of Texas

Limit: The claim he makes about his own record is borne out exactly: he voted to impeach, and the majority was bipartisan by the roll call's own count. One clause of the post, "Ken Paxton is hereby removed from office", is not a claim about his record at all but about the respondent's status, and it is worth setting beside what the record shows. The vote suspended rather than removed: the attorney general was out of the office for 108 days while two other people held it, and removal is the penalty a conviction imposes, which the Senate declined. He posted this on the day of the House vote, months before that acquittal. What the record shows the vote did is suspend, not remove. The check read the source the campaign itself cites, which is the post as the campaign republishes it today on its own issues page, the House Journal for that day, the Senate's record of proceedings and judgment, and the attorney general's own opinion index, which is where the office states who held it and under what authority. What the check cannot see is what he understood at the moment he posted, and the Senate had not yet voted; this desk takes no view on that, and the point of carrying the card is that the sentence is still published on the campaign's own site three years after the acquittal. The Texas Constitution's own text was read only as the official records quote it, because the state's statutes site would not serve the article to an automated reader. Both chambers here were Republican-held and both party splits are given above.

Issues in this record

Follow the evidence by issue.

Costs and the economyHealth careImmigration and the borderGovernment accountabilityEnergy and the environmentEducation

Evidence timeline

Dated records, with sources attached.

  1. race event

    Final ballot certification

    The Texas Secretary of State's final ballot certification for the November 3, 2026 general election, signed by the Deputy Secretary of State on August 28, 2026, lists three candidates for United States Senator: Ken Paxton (Republican), James Talarico (Democratic) and Ted Brown (Libertarian), in that order, which is the ballot order this desk follows.

    Texas Secretary of State

  2. finance

    FEC filing snapshot

    July Quarterly 2026, principal campaign committee TALARICO FOR TEXAS.

    Federal Election Commission

  3. race event

    Talarico sworn in to the Texas House

    The Legislative Reference Library records James Talarico winning the special election of November 6, 2018 for the unexpired District 52 term of Larry Gonzales, who resigned on June 7, 2018, and being sworn in on November 19, 2018.

    Legislative Reference Library of Texas

See something wrong or incomplete? Report it for review.