A resurfaced 2022 podcast interview shows Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico praising a transgender activist as a personal inspiration.
The clip, from the Go Behind the Ballot podcast, features Talarico discussing his work in the Texas Legislature. In it, he singles out Ash Hall, a policy and advocacy strategist for LGBTQIA+ rights at the ACLU of Texas, as someone who motivates him to keep going.
“One of the best organizers at the Capitol is an activist named Ash Hall,” Talarico said on the podcast. “Ash does a lot of the work for the trans community in Texas and is an outspoken advocate for trans kids in particular.”
He went further, describing Hall as a direct source of personal motivation during difficult moments in office.
“The Capitol is not a safe place for a lot of marginalized people,” Talarico said. “I look at people like Ash Hall and I’m like, if Ash can do this much harder thing than I’m doing, then I have to keep going.”
Hall, who uses they/them pronouns, has been active in legislative battles over transgender athletes, bathroom access, and medical treatments for transgender minors.
As originally reported, the old footage is resurfacing at a particularly uncomfortable moment for Talarico, as Republicans work to make his past statements on gender and cultural issues a defining feature of the Texas Senate race.
Talarico has served in the Texas House since 2018. He has acknowledged that certain past remarks have cost him politically, recently conceding that some comments “missed the mark.”
At the same time, he pushed back on how those comments are being used against him. He accused Republican opponent Ken Paxton of “intentionally clipping my cringey comments to distract from his career of corruption.
That framing puts Talarico in a delicate position. He is trying to distance himself from prior statements while simultaneously arguing that his opponent is weaponizing them unfairly. It is a balancing act that gets harder each time old footage resurfaces.
With the Texas Senate race drawing national attention, the video adds fresh ammunition for Republicans looking to tie Talarico to positions on transgender policy that remain deeply unpopular with many Texas voters. Whether he can move past the distraction may depend on how much more archival material is still out there waiting to surface.
