Within hours of securing the Republican nomination for Texas Senate, Attorney General Ken Paxton was already workshopping nicknames for his Democratic opponent. “Low-T Talarico.” “Tofu Talarico.” “Six-Gender Jimmy.” “James Tala-freak-o.” The acceptance speech sounded less like a victory lap and more like a focus group for insults Donald Trump might have rejected as too on-the-nose.
Paxton has spent months casting James Talarico’s support for transgender individuals and a 2022 comment about reducing meat consumption as existential threats to Texan values. The “low-T” label insinuates that Talarico has lower testosterone levels and is therefore insufficiently manly. Paxton has also hammered Talarico for saying in 2021 that “God is nonbinary,” comments Talarico has since tried to walk back.
The tactic is not subtle. It is also not accidental.
The strategy behind the playground insults
Paxton’s first general election ad makes the framing explicit. A narrator says, “This is Texas,” over an image of sliced brisket. Then: “This is not,” showing 2022 footage of Talarico calling for a “non-meat campaign.” The ad closes with Paxton shaking Trump’s hand, labeled “This is Texas,” followed by Talarico’s image superimposed with the words “radical” and “too low-T for Texas.”
Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston, said the attacks “resonate more broadly, potentially because they connect this political conflict to larger cultural fears about gender and authority and social change.”
Meredith Conroy, a political science professor at California State University of San Bernardino, described Paxton’s approach as “gender conflict framing.” According to Conroy, “‘Low-T Talarico’ and ‘Tofu Talarico’ tap into two of the most culturally charged touchstones in the current gender culture wars: transgender identity and veganism, both of which carry enormous symbolic weight on the right right now.”
The nicknames function as rallying signals, activating voters “already primed to see plant-based eating and hormone discourse as proxies for a broader cultural battle over gender norms.”
Why this works in Texas
Texas politicians have long been rewarded for performing an extreme version of masculinity and toughness. Lyndon B. Johnson’s overt machismo. George W. Bush’s cowboy persona. Governor Greg Abbott’s emphasis on border security. Even Ann Richards, the last prominent Democrat to serve in a statewide position before losing reelection in 1994, was known for her tough-on-crime policies.
Rottinghaus noted that the framing is about more than gender. “It’s not just that they want to portray [Talarico] as being kind of insufficiently masculine. It’s also that they want to make a case that he’s insufficiently Texan. The ‘He’s not Texas enough’ attack is shorthand for ‘He’s trying to change the state culturally in a way that won’t benefit you.'”
Trump and his allies have joined the effort. Trump posted on Truth Social that Talarico “may be the worst TEXAS candidate I have ever seen.” Trump adviser Stephen Miller falsely claimed that Talarico himself is a transgender woman.
Caroline Heldman, a political science professor at Occidental College, argued that the attempt to feminize Talarico is rooted in sexism. “The attempt to make Talarico a woman plays into the idea that there is nothing worse for a man than to be feminized. It’s not about making Talarico trans, it’s about making Talarico feminine.”
The gamble Paxton is making
Incumbent Senator John Cornyn, whom Paxton defeated in the Republican primary, argued that the attorney general’s checkered history and firebrand nature could threaten Republicans’ ability to hold onto the seat by turning off otherwise conservative-leaning voters. Paxton is currently mired in multiple scandals and survived an impeachment attempt in 2023. His wife filed for divorce on “biblical grounds” last year.
But emphasizing red-meat issues has worked for Republicans on a national scale and for Paxton himself. He has repeatedly succeeded in statewide elections despite the controversies. Heldman noted that Paxton’s alleged history of affairs may even work in his favor, serving as “masculine bona fides.”
Rottinghaus said there are roughly three electorates in Texas: the hardcore partisans on either side and the low-turnout voters toward the middle who might be compelled to vote in the midterms “if the circumstances are right.” By distracting from his own scandals and casting Talarico as overly feminine and therefore insufficiently Texan, Paxton’s rhetoric may motivate those independents to cast a ballot in order to avoid a challenge to their idea of what a politician should be.
“On the Paxton side, this race won’t be about Ken Paxton. It’ll be about James Talarico.”
Conroy put it more directly: “Candidates engage in this because it works. Even in 2026, gender norms remain powerful, and men who are perceived as violating them get penalized.”
The question November will answer
The November contest will be a test of whether machismo-inflected rhetoric convinces the larger electorate or whether Paxton’s theory of the case overestimates the reach of these cultural anxieties. If Paxton is correct, fears about the collapse of traditional social norms, as well as the perception of masculinity as strength, could turn even his own skeptics against Talarico.
Will Texas voters reward the performance of extreme masculinity one more time, or has the spectacle finally outlasted the strategy that built it?
Sources:
