James Talarico, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Texas, is drawing sharp fire from Republicans over a resurfaced 2020 social media post in which he described "white skin" as a contagion that spreads racism.
The post, dated May 8, 2020, surfaced just as Talarico triumphed over U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett in Tuesday's primary, and it has already handed the GOP a ready-made opposition file for November.
In the X post, Talarico wrote:
"White skin gives me and every white American immunity from the virus."
He continued:
"But we spread it wherever we go—through our words, our actions, and our systems. We don't have to be showing symptoms—like a white hood or a Confederate flag—to be contagious."
The message merged the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic with the murder of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia. It read, in other words, like a faithful recitation of the racial liturgy that dominated elite progressive circles in 2020. The difference is that most people who posted things like this were not running for statewide office in Texas.
Gov. Greg Abbott wasted no time. His response was blunt:
"If this is a real Talarico post, he is toast."
Abbott added that Talarico occupies "Tim Walz clone territory," someone who "could win in Minnesota, but not in Texas." Abbott, who is seeking a fourth term as governor later this year, clearly sees the post as a gift heading into a cycle where Democrats are trying to flip a Texas Senate seat for the first time since 1988.
Sen. Ted Cruz took a broader swing at the ideology behind the post:
"Left-wing zealots are very, very different from ordinary Americans. Among other things, they are open racists."
Iowa Solicitor General Eric Wessan dismantled the post's premise directly:
"Officials should not treat people differently based on skin color. There is nothing magic in Mr. Talarico's complexion. It's not infectious, evil, or bad."
Wessan also pointed out that "stereotyping whiteness as KKK or confederate is gross." Which, stripped of the academic veneer Talarico draped over it, is exactly what the post did. It assumed guilt by melanin and dressed the assumption in metaphor.
Fox News contributor Mary Katharine Ham offered what might be the sharpest observation of all:
"There's a rational desire from Dems to find a candidate who didn't say this stuff publicly in 2020-22, so they can pretend they didn't put us all through this nonsense."
But, Ham noted, it will be hard to find a non-Republican old enough to hold office who didn't post something like this, because during that era "silence was violence."
That is the trap the Democratic Party built for itself. For two years, progressive orthodoxy demanded public confessions of racial guilt from every white liberal with a social media account. The pressure was relentless. Post the black square. Declare your complicity. Treat your own existence as a moral disease. Anyone who declined was accused of enabling white supremacy.
Now those same posts are opposition research. The rhetoric that was mandatory in 2020 is radioactive in 2026. Democrats cannot disown the era without admitting it was performative nonsense, and they cannot defend it without alienating the voters they need.
Commentary editor John Podhoretz connected the post to another piece of Talarico's record: a 2021 video clip of the state legislator declaring "God is non-binary" on the legislature's floor. Podhoretz's assessment was succinct: "Add this to 'God is non-binary' and you have a Republican campaign against him." One pundit called the combination "comically woke."
Talarico's campaign spokesman, JT Ennis, fired back with boilerplate that carefully avoided addressing the substance of the post itself:
"While they lob stale attacks to mislead Texans, we are uniting the people of Texas to win in November."
Ennis accused Sen. John Cornyn, Attorney General Ken Paxton, Abbott, and "the billionaires who prop them up" of being "scared of James Talarico for good reason." He added that the campaign is "building a movement poised to change the politics of this state and take power back for working people."
Notice what's missing from that response. No apology. No retraction. No acknowledgment that comparing white skin to a virus might strike ordinary Texans as, at minimum, bizarre. The campaign's strategy appears to be charging forward and hoping voters forget.
Journalist Josh Barro offered unsolicited advice:
"Talarico should try something unusual that worked for Zohran Mamdani: He should apologize for bad past comments."
Barro noted that Mamdani "didn't win skeptics over just by being handsome and charming" but rather "announced that he had changed and said he was sorry." Whether Talarico takes that advice will say a lot about whether his campaign is serious or simply riding progressive energy into a wall.
Both Cornyn and Paxton advanced to a May 26 runoff after neither secured a majority in Tuesday's Republican primary. Whichever Republican emerges will face Talarico in the Nov. 3 general election for one of Texas' two U.S. Senate seats.
Democrats have not won a Senate seat in Texas since 1988. To break that drought, they need a candidate who can appeal beyond the progressive base in Austin and Houston. They chose a man who described his own skin color as a disease vector and told God's pronouns to a legislative chamber.
The Talarico campaign calls these "stale attacks." Republicans call them a candidate's own words. In Texas, that distinction will matter. The state is competitive enough to keep Democrats dreaming but conservative enough to punish exactly this kind of progressive theater. Abbott's assessment may prove prophetic. He is toast.