In case you missed it,
Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Joe Gruters called out Texas
Senate candidate James Talarico's fake "Republicans for Talarico" movement
that is actually filled with lifelong Democrat activists, donors, and losers.
While Talarico's fraudulent attempt to hide his true radical agenda is failing spectacularly, Attorney General Ken Paxton is bringing together a winning coalition of longtime supporters and new backers, including former impeachment managers and state Representatives Jeff Leach and Briscoe Cain.
You can read the full story here
or see highlights below.
RNC chair
says Talarico's GOP crossover hopes are a 'pipe dream': 'Nobody is going to
follow him'
Fox News
August 9, 2026
"Any chance that
Talarico is building any type of Republican coalition is a pipe dream for
him," Republican National Committee Chairman Joe Gruters told Fox News
Digital in an interview. "Nobody is going to follow him. He’s completely
out of touch with Texans."
Gruters' rebuke came after
women voters interviewed on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" claimed to be
Republican crossover supporters, only to have longstanding ties to Democrats
and anti-President Donald Trump groups – not exactly people that would be
voting for Republican Senate nominee Ken Paxton in one of the Senate's biggest
ticket races in the battle for the majority.
"The people that he had
come out and say that they were on his team have been proven to be basically
Democrat, liberal activists that have been supporting Democrat candidates for
10-plus years," Gruters continued.
[...]
One of women presented as a
Republican mother supporting Talarico has identified in subsequent reporting as
Mindy McClure. She has Federal Election Commission filings associated with her
showing repeated ActBlue contributions benefiting Democratic candidates and
political groups dating back to 2018, including Kamala Harris and The Lincoln
Project – an anti-Trump political activist group.
"When you have policies
like mutilating children, saying that God has six different genders and is
non-binary and all this other stuff, you can't expect that Republicans are
going to hop on and think that they're going to be a on board to this liberal
clown show that he's operating down there in Texas," Gruters said.
[...]
"Tala-freako has
no chance, because people aren't buying into the stuff that he's
peddling."
Texas is famously a state
that Trump says votes on "God, guns and oil," so the RNC chair says
those not on board with Trump or those staples are "not the right
candidate for Texas" and "not the right candidates for the U.S.
Senate" in the state.
"We don't need a weak
members," Gruters said. "We need strong MAGA warriors. And that's
exactly what Ken Paxton will provide is he will bring: Strength to the U.S.
Senate on behalf of Texas and will represent them well."
[...]
Despite long-running
Democrat hopes and tens of millions of campaign spending to flip Cruz's seat,
Gruters predicted this Paxton-Talarico race would not be the biggest dollar one
of this cycle – that will wind up being North Carolina, he said.
"People want this race
to be the biggest race in the country, but it really won't be because at the
end of the day, Paxton has proven time and time again that he's a winner – he's
a winner in this state," Gruters said amid slow-moving funding for
Paxton's campaign against the big Talarico Democrat dollars.
"Texas is ruby red.
It's not going to go left and vote for somebody who wants to mutilate children,
put boys in girls locker rooms and who, you know, says he has faith on Sunday
then goes woke on Monday. It just not going happen. Texas is a hardcore
Republican state.
[...]
