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Talarico’s Skin Suit Campaign Ad

Fisking Talarico’s Latest Ad

A skin suit is what the spot is selling. It is not a senator.

Thirty seconds. A Texas flag. A Monday Night Football audience. James Talarico in a suit, telling the state he will put Texas before any party, that he called out Joe Biden, that he worked with Republicans to pass the largest property tax cut in Texas history, that he will fight for oil and gas jobs, that Ken Paxton will be a lapdog, and that he will bring checks and balances back.

In May I wrote that Talarico was inauthentic and Platner was chaotic, and that those simple truths were fatal in Texas and Maine. Platner is gone. The ad is why the Talarico half of that column is still the column. The over-under at nine was the coalition he had not earned. The two weeks off the trail are the coalition becoming a calendar. The ad is the attempt to buy a different one between plays. A skin suit is what the spot is selling. It is not a senator.

The fisk

Here is the ad, claim by claim. Thirty seconds, six assertions, and a record that does not survive contact with any of them.

“I’ll always put Texas before any political party.”

This is the costume. It is the sentence a candidate says when the primary is over and the general is in a state that has not elected a Democrat statewide since 1994. It is not a record. The record is the second room. A Christian who hates Christianity, in his own words to a progressive pastor. Capitalism an oppressive system that must be dismantled, per Jonathan Turley. Reparations. Prison is violence. An illegal alien as a fellow Texan. A church that funds abortions and the summer camps. Standing with the child drag performer. That is the party. Texas is the flag they hung behind him for the Cowboys game. A man who puts the state first does not need a reassignment surgery between the primary and Monday Night Football. He already was the thing he is now claiming to be.

“I called out Joe Biden.”

Newsweek has the fuller line from the companion spot. He called out Biden “for failing us on the border.” He has been making the argument since July, when he unveiled a border plan in Terrell County. Fox News Digital reported that the campaign could not point to a break with Biden while Biden was still in office. The citation they offer is a 2022 speech. That is not a call-out. That is a sentence recovered after the man was out of power and the nominee needed a clip. A Democrat who called out Biden on the border in 2022 would have a trail. He has a July 2026 event and an ad. The border plan is the same shape as the rest of the costume. It exists because the Valley and the Hispanic vote drifted, and he is trying to rent them back. It does not exist because he was the man in the room when the failure was happening.

“I worked with Republicans to pass the largest property tax cut in Texas history.”

This is the one that sounds like a fact and is a participation trophy. The largest property tax cut was the 2023 package, roughly $18 billion, signed by Abbott in August of that year. Senate Bill 2 and Senate Bill 3. Compression, the homestead exemption to $100,000, the franchise tax changes. It was an emergency item in a Republican legislature, driven by Patrick, Phelan, Bettencourt, and Meyer. It passed with overwhelming bipartisan support because a Democratic no would have been pointless and a Democratic yes was free. Voting for a bill that is going to pass is not working with Republicans to pass it. It is being in the chamber. Governor Abbott’s August 9, 2023 announcement records the package.

His own campaign site and his July 27 Substack give the narrower version, which is the honest one and which the ad inflates past recognition. He passed a constitutional amendment that cut property taxes for childcare facilities. He went desk to desk for that. That is a real, small, targeted exemption for providers. It is not the $18 billion package. The ad collapses the childcare carve-out into “the largest property tax cut in Texas history” and puts his name on a Republican surplus. Texans for Fiscal Responsibility has the other half of the ledger. He voted against SB 2 in 2019, the reform that dropped the voter-approval rate from 8 percent to 3.5 percent. He voted against the foreign-land restrictions. His session grades are Fs. The bills he filed are Medicaid expansion and the like. A man with that record can vote yes on an Abbott tax cut. He cannot claim he delivered it.

“I’ll fight for the good-paying oil and gas jobs that power our economy.”

This is the line that should not have survived a single opposition book. In 2020 he said he wished to dismantle climate change and capitalism, and that the oil and gas industry “is not gonna last.” He compared Texas leadership in nonrenewables to “being the leader in cassette tapes in the 1980s.” In 2022 he called for a transition off fossil fuels and said too many Texas politicians are bought by the industry. He authored 2021 legislation to cut greenhouse gases more than 90 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. He filed a bill for climate education in schools. In June 2024 he welcomed Third Act to Texas on video, thanked them for coming, and said he had been fighting climate change his entire career. He signed a 2022 pledge not to take a dime of fossil-fuel money. The group has since put him on its wall of shame. The Lever reported at least $28,000 from oil-and-gas-associated donors this cycle. Texas Scorecard documented the Third Act appearance on June 18.

The spokesman’s answer to Texas Scorecard is the costume in a sentence. He went to public schools funded by oil and gas, so he knows it is essential, so he supports LNG. That is not a conversion. That is a man who spent four years saying the industry should not exist, then took its money, then cut an ad promising to fight for its jobs because the ad is running during a football game in a state that produces the oil. The cassette-tape line and the Monday Night Football line cannot both be true. One of them was for a different room.

“Ken Paxton will be a lapdog.”

This is the attack that requires nothing of him. No vote to defend. No record to square. Lapdog for whom is left to the viewer. For Trump, for the donors, for the party. It is the checks-and-balances setup, and it is the line the replies already said would play with the Cornyn remainder. It is also a calendar error. Trump leaves office in two years. A Senate term is six. The restraint the ad is selling expires before the seat does. It is also the line that sits next to his own two-week absence. A lapdog shows up. The man calling him one spent the first half of October off the trail, with a thin flu sentence and a recycled Lubbock rally, while Paxton was on a stage in San Antonio with the president. The attack assumes the viewer has not noticed who has been campaigning in Texas.

“I’ll bring checks and balances back to our government.”

This is the closer, and it is the Cornyn voter’s sentence. A Democrat as the restraint on a Republican president and a Republican senator. It only works if the Democrat is the man in the ad and not the man in the other rooms. Checks and balances from a candidate whose church is a political operation, whose doctrine makes Jesus a public option, whose legislative file is an F on the taxpayer scorecard, and whose coalition was the one that would not nominate Crockett, is not a check. It is a hope that the football audience did not see the primary. The ad is thirty seconds because thirty seconds is all the costume can bear. Any longer and the second room walks in.

The production is competent. The flag is real. The claims are a skin suit cut for a Monday night. Every one of them is either a vote he took on a bill that was passing without him, a criticism he located after the target was gone, or a promise that contradicts the sentences he gave the rooms that made him the nominee. That is the fisk. The ad is not a record. It is the reassignment, aired where the people who would check it were watching the game.

The absence

The two weeks are the preview. September 30, the Valley appearance goes virtual from a Dallas hotel. His own words. Urgent care. Fever. Most contagious. October 2, the Lubbock post. Huge crowd. Deep-red county. Same clip, same caption, from February. He was not in Lubbock. October 5, the Central Texas African American Civic Engagement Symposium cancelled. The hosts apologized. The campaign did not explain. October 6, the final Austin grassroots fundraiser moved, no date. October 7, the spokesman. More than 100 events. The flu. Back this weekend. Then a shot at the donors.

The Texas Legislature is not an alibi. It meets 140 calendar days every two years. The pay is $7,200. There is no session in October. The absence is a campaign absence. A nominee who goes dark for two weeks in the home stretch of a Senate race that can decide the chamber is not managing a schedule. He is showing the state what constituent services look like when the senator is a skin suit. The mail does not get answered by a thirty-second flag. The phone does not get picked up by a man who needed a recycled rally to appear in Lubbock. A senator who is not on the trail in October will not be on the job in March.

The number

I set the over-under at nine because the coalition was never his. I wrote on December 2, under a poll that had both Paxton and Cornyn beating Crockett, that she could not beat him in the Democratic primary. A month earlier I had said it to his face. Janai Nelson had already put the underlying fact on the record at the Supreme Court. White Democrats were not voting for black candidates, party notwithstanding. Texas behaved like that finding. He won with an electorate that was not going to hand her the nomination. He did not collect the voters she would have brought. The ad is the attempt to rent a Cornyn remainder the primary did not include. Platner validated the method. The hole and the spot are the Talarico test, still open, still the same number.

The vote

Vote for Ken Paxton. He has been the attorney general through the terms that produced the work. He was on the stage in San Antonio while the other campaign was dark. Texas needs a senator who will be there, not a thirty-second flag. The May column said the simple truths were fatal. One of them already was. The other is on your television, in a suit, in front of a flag, selling a record he does not have. A skin suit is what you will get. Not a senator.

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James K. Bishop

James K. Bishop is a conservative writer and raconteur hailing from Texas, known for his incisive and often provocative takes on political and cultural issues. With a staunch commitment to originalist constitutional principles, he emphasizes limited government, individual liberties, and traditional American values. Active on X under the handle @James_K_Bishop, he frequently engages his audience with sharp critiques of progressive policies, media narratives, and overreaches by the federal government. His style is direct, often laced with humor and wit, which resonates strongly with his conservative followers.