Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico blamed Republican extremism for prompting some of his past controversial remarks during a new interview, including assertions that God is “nonbinary” and that there are six biological sexes, arguing that those weren’t issues he ran for office to discuss.
Talarico said that culture war issues became more prominent in the 2021 Texas state legislature and suggested Republicans were responsible for the increased attention to those topics. Talarico, in 2021, opposed a bill to ban men from womens sports and claimed while on the Austin, Texas, House floor.Â
Additionally, at a Texas House Committee on Public Education hearing in 2021, he stated, “Modern science obviously recognizes that there are many more than two biological sexes; in fact, there are six.”
Talarico, who is running against Republican Ken Paxton in the state’s closely watched U.S. Senate race, spoke to The New York Times’ Michael Barbaro on the paper’s “The Daily” podcast Tuesday. He said he felt compelled to fight what he described as Republican extremism at the time when asked about the comments.
“I was put in a position where I had to fight back against that extremism. So, you mentioned some of my comments on gender or on issues affecting trans people. It’s not like I ran for the legislature to talk about these things. Again, if you go back to my first session, I wanted to talk about public education, which is why I ran in the first place,” he said, pointing to other issues on which he ran.
“It’s kind of ironic that they’re clipping these things to make it sound like I’m the one who was talking about this when, in reality, it was the Republican extremists at the Capitol who were obsessed with talking about trans issues, obsessed with talking about people’s private parts. That wasn’t me. That was them that changed.”
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Talarico was asked whether some Democratic positions on cultural issues around 2020 had gone too far.
The Democratic Senate candidate said that, at the national level, the party may have gone too far. But at the state level, specifically in Texas, he believed certain bills were targeting and harming his constituents.
He pointed to Texas’ abortion ban and legislation affecting the LGBTQ community.
“These bills targeting LGBTQ people have real ramifications in our state, especially when they’re written to be overly broad,” he said. “I’m all for if we want to figure out when it’s appropriate for a trans athlete to play in a sport. That’s a policy discussion that we should have and an issue we should solve.
“But the bill that they were trying to pass, the bill they ultimately did pass, was a blanket ban in all cases,” he continued. “It treated tee-ball the same as varsity baseball.Â
“And it’s because their goal was to score political points off of the backs of a very small, vulnerable group of people in our state. And, so, you know, my values haven’t changed, but I was put in a position because of the rise in Rep
