Nearly Two Dozen Texas Sheriffs Join Paxton In Denouncing Talarico’s Attacks On Law Enforcement

Although the current socialist uprising in the Democrat Party has attracted significant attention, there has been an ongoing leftward lurch among Democrats for years, including the defund-the-police movement of the early 2020s.

And some aspiring politicians are finding those comments coming back to bite them as they try to woo voters outside of deep-blue states.

One example is James Talarico, who has attempted to portray himself as a rational U.S. Senate candidate running against Ken Paxton in Texas.

But Paxton, currently the state’s attorney general, isn’t letting his rival whitewash his earlier remarks.

As the Daily Caller reported:

In a press conference at the annual gathering of the Texas Sheriffs Association in Fort Worth, Paxton said that Talarico’s voting record and public statements about law enforcement reveal that his recent pivot to the political center appears to be just an act.

“My opponent had been trying to reinvent himself during this campaign. He’s going to tell audiences different stories depending on where he’s at. He’s trying to distance himself from positions he has previously embraced,” Paxton, who currently serves as Texas’ attorney general, told the cowboy hat-clad sheriffs. “He’s going to say he’s for law enforcement. But what he wont tell you is the rest of the story.”

Talarico is seeking to become the first Texas Democrat elected to the Senate in 38 years. Paxton and Talarico are in a statistical dead heat, according to recent polling.

The presser follows Talarico’s headline-grabbing Monday night town hall in DeSoto, Texas, a majority-black suburb of Dallas, during which Talarico endorsed reparations for slavery and a federal bill to “protect all Americans from police violence, including our black communities.”

This racial justice rhetoric appears to clash with his previous campaign image as a moderate focused on affordability. However, Talarico is simultaneously seeking to mend fences with some black Democrats following a bruising March primary win against Rep. Jasmine Crockett, who had the support of many majority black areas in the state. During the Tuesday press conference, Paxton hit Talarico for backing a 2021 Texas bill called the George Floyd Act in the state House of Representatives. This legislation sought to end qualified immunity for police officers, among other sweeping policing reforms.

During the same legislative session, Talarico introduced a bill that would ban contracts between police and reality television shows such as “Live PD.”

He named this bill Javier Ambler’s Law after a black man who died of heart failure while in police custody in 2019.

Talarico’s votes on law enforcement legislation in the Texas House include opposing a bill to tighten bail requirements for violent criminals, voting against mandatory minimum sentences for human traffickers and voting against designating drug cartels terrorist organizations.

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The remarks attracted some attention on social media:

More on X:

Yes, we do! We deserve Ken Paxton!

— Patricia (@PSF_MAGA) July 22, 2026

Meanwhile, Talarico is also getting flak from his own side of the aisle, as The Hill reported earlier this week:

Texas Senate candidate James Talarico (D) received a harsh reception from an attendee at his town hall in Houston on Sunday.

Video from the event, during which Talarico took questions for more than 90 minutes, captured by the Austin American-Statesman’s Faith Bugenhagen, shows a Black woman yelling, “So you stay here, you answer our questions or you suffer the consequences.”

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Other attendees clapped in support of the woman’s remarks, while one man said, “Say it with your chest.”

When Talarico told the woman he appreciated her for traveling to attend the town hall, she replied, “I did it for my people, not for you.” The Democratic candidate said that was “wonderful,” while attendees murmured about her comment.

Here’s some additional coverage of that exchange: