In late August, Democrat James Talarico said that he had told “every … wealthy person” that “if you are OK with getting taxed more, if you’re OK with me limiting your influence in politics, you are welcome to join this movement that we are building.” But an ad from his Republican opponent, Ken Paxton, skips the part about wealthy people and influencing politics to brand Talarico as a proponent of raising all kinds of taxes.
Polling shows Talarico, a former Texas state representative, and Paxton, the state’s attorney general, locked in a tight battle for the open Texas Senate seat.
The Paxton ad, which has primarily aired on broadcast television over the past week, according to the ad tracking service AdImpact, takes other quotes from Talarico out of context and claims he “voted for an income tax” in the state and is “pushing higher property taxes.” It ends by saying, “Texans can’t afford Talarico’s radical agenda.”
An ad from Talarico counters that he “brought both parties together” in the statehouse “passing the largest property tax cut in Texas history,” among other legislative efforts. He voted for the tax cut, which passed with very little opposition. It’s unclear what role he played in shepherding the legislation through the statehouse.
We’ll go through the quotes the Paxton ad uses and the various claims about taxes.
‘Join This Movement’ Quote
The Paxton ad begins by showing Talarico saying, “If you are OK with getting taxed more, you are welcome to join this movement.” But that misrepresents Talarico’s remark.
On Aug. 29, during an interview alongside businessman Mark Cuban, Talarico said that he had told that to “every wealthy person I come across in this race.” He wasn’t talking about taxing everyone more.
Talarico began by referring to Franklin D. Roosevelt and Bobby Kennedy, saying they were “billionaires of their day” and “they used their wealth to help working people and not just through charity but by changing the systems that make charity necessary.” He then praised Cuban’s work in healthcare policy. Cuban founded Cost Plus Drugs to offer medicines at lower prices. Then, Talarico made his comment about wealthy people paying more in taxes.
“I’ve told every, you know, wealthy person I come across in this race, if you are OK with getting taxed more, if you’re OK with me limiting your influence in politics, you are welcome to join this movement that we are building,” Talarico said. “And we’re thankful to have Mark Cuban as part of this.”
Income Tax and Tips, Overtime, Social Security
The ad goes on to say that Talarico “voted for an income tax and supports taxing tips, overtime and Social Security.”
Talarico didn’t vote for an income tax. Rather, he opposed a 2019 joint resolution in the Texas Legislature calling for a constitutional amendment to prohibit an individual income tax. Texas doesn’t have such a tax.
Before 2019, the constitution prohibited an individual income tax without voter approval, and stipulated that if a tax were to be approved, the revenue would go to education and reducing schools’ local taxes. The 2019 proposal made implementing an income tax more difficult, and dropped the specification about where any potential revenue could be directed.
Voters approved the 2019 amendment, which now can only be changed with a two-thirds vote in the Legislature and approval by voters. Before, only a majority vote in the Legislature could have sent an income tax referendum to voters.
At the time of the votes in the Legislature, some Democrats expressed concern that the wording in the measure could lead to a legal challenge of existing business franchise taxes that fund public schools.
Asked about his vote against the joint resolution in a CBS News Texas interview that aired Sept. 5, Talarico said the state income tax was “already banned.” Reporter Jack Fink replied, “But this would have banned it permanently. It was, there’s already a high bar.”
“We need to bring bills to the floor that that are actually solving problems,” Talarico said. “Putting in a ban on an already existing ban is just duplicate government overreach at its worst, and it’s why we need legislators who are focused on solving real problems, not just trying to grandstand on an issue.”
He added that the measure “did nothing,” saying that “I’m against an income tax in Texas, always have been.”
As for the claim that Talarico “supports taxing tips, overtime and Social Security,” that’s a misleading reference to his opposition to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which Trump signed into law in July 2025. This has been a common Republican attack line in midterm campaigns.
As we’ve written before, Talarico’s campaign said that he supports the law’s tax cuts for the “middle class,” including changes to taxes on tips, overtime pay and for seniors. Talarico has called for repealing the law’s “tax breaks for the top 1%.”
In its support for the ad, the Paxton campaign also cited a September news interview that indicated Talarico opposed the cuts to Medicaid in the OBBBA.
More Context Needed
The Paxton ad uses two other quotes from Talarico that need context. The first is: “Well, I don’t care where you get the revenue. I don’t care what taxes you have to raise.” Talarico said that in 2020 about Republicans potentially wanting to cut education and health funding when facing a budget shortfall and Democrats taking a stand against that.
His comments were theoretical. On Aug. 2, 2020, Talarico spoke during the COVID-19 pandemic in a virtual townhall organized by Texas Rising, a liberal group supporting young voters. He mentioned cuts in Texas to education funding in 2011, after the Great Recession, and then said the state could be facing a budget shortfall in the coming year “unless there is overwhelming federal aid, which I don’t know if we can count on.”
He said budget cuts could be “a lot greater” than in 2011 and went on to talk about opposing funding cuts to education and healthcare.
Talarico, Aug. 2, 2020: In my experience in politics, the folks who win the argument are the ones who talk first and say their message the most consistently and the loudest. And so, I’ve been trying to talk to as many education advocates as I can about how do we start now by drawing a line in the sand and saying we’re not going to accept cuts to health or education in the next session, no matter what the budget shortfall looks like. And that’s sometimes you get the reaction in the Capitol and the 10 blocks around the Capitol that that’s an unreasonable position to take.
But the other side of the aisle has already taken revenue increases off the table. They’ve done a good job of making certain options taboo. So I think our coalition, not just Democrats but progressives and anybody with a functioning heart, should be able to make cuts to health and education taboo. Take them off the table. I don’t care where you get the revenue. I don’t care what taxes you have to raise, but you’re not going to make our students and our teachers, you’re not going to make the sick and the elderly pay for this pandemic. We are not going to balance our budget off of the most vulnerable people in this state. And that kind of line in the sand needs to be drawn now, not in January, not in February, not when the first drafts of the budget come out. We need to be pressuring lawmakers today to commit to pledging that they will not sacrifice our students and our teachers and our nurses in the next budget cycle.
Another Talarico quote in the ad is simply: “Raise local taxes.” He said those words in January 2019 when speaking about Julián Castro at Castro’s presidential campaign launch event. Castro, when he was mayor of San Antonio, had called for a tax increase to pay for a citywide prekindergarten program.
Talarico told the crowd that he used to teach middle school and he displayed photos in his classroom of “leaders who were never afraid to stand up and speak out,” one of whom was Castro.
“And I told my students that the mayor is an example, not because he’s successful or because he’s famous, but because he always has the courage to do what is right,” Talarico said. “In my first year of teaching, Mayor Castro staked his entire political career on a proposal to raise local taxes in order to fund full-day pre-K across the city of San Antonio. A proposal to raise local taxes — they teach you that that’s a no-no on your first day of politician school, but the mayor did it anyway. He did it anyway, and that’s why I told my students to be like the mayor and to let their own light shine, no matter the consequences.”
San Antonio voters approved the pre-K program, and the small sales tax increase to fund it, in 2012. The sales tax went up by 1/8th of a cent per dollar. Voters reauthorized the program in 2020 for another eight years.
Property Taxes
The Paxton ad says that Talarico is “even pushing higher property taxes,” while Talarico says in an ad of his own that he helped pass “the largest property tax cut in Texas history.” So which is it?
The Paxton campaign cited Talarico’s vote against a 2019 bill to limit any increase in local property taxes to 3.5% in a year. An increase higher than that by cities or counties would have to be approved by voters. The bill passed and became law that year.
The Texas Tribune reported that this was a “controversial provision,” saying that “[m]unicipal officials have repeatedly said the 3.5% election trigger will hamstring their budgets and hamper their ability to provide public safety and other local services.” Prior to this law, localities were limited to an 8% increase in property taxes, and if voters wanted to stop it, they had to petition to get the matter on the ballot.
In his ad, Talarico says he “brought both parties together to make life more affordable” by, among other things, “passing the largest property tax cut in Texas history.” He did vote for two bills in 2023, companion legislation that was described in news reports as the largest property tax cut in the state’s history. In the final House vote, only four or five lawmakers opposed the bills, which were introduced in the Senate by a Republican. Talarico wasn’t a co-sponsor on the similar bills introduced in the House.
We asked the Talarico campaign how he “brought both parties together” to pass the tax cut, but we didn’t get a response to that question.
The campaign pointed to other tax cut measures Talarico supported. He sponsored a 2023 bill to create a property tax exemption for childcare facilities. The identical Senate version was signed into law by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott. In 2025, he voted for three bills that provided more property tax relief, including for elderly and disabled homeowners, and Abbott also enacted those.
On his campaign website, Talarico calls for cutting taxes on the “middle class” and paying for that by raising taxes on billionaires and corporations. Paxton’s campaign website says he will “fight to cut taxes” and that he supports “Trump’s legislative priorities,” including on taxes.
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