Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico needs to flip some Republican voters this November to win in the largest red state in the U.S., but his opponents are calling out claims of Republicans backing him as inauthentic, if not fraudulent.
"Any chance that Talarico has 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 MS NOW'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.
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"I just don't believe it," Gruters said. "This is Kamala Harris' 'White Dudes for Kamala.' It just doesn't exist. It's a wannabe or an attempt at them to try to build some crossover support."
Talarico has emphasized building a broad coalition in his campaign, which says it intends to "go everywhere and talk to everyone" ahead of the November election.
But Republicans have seized on the political histories of some of Talarico's backers as evidence the outreach is less bipartisan than advertised.
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One of the women presented as a Republican mother supporting Talarico was 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 on board to this liberal clown show that he's operating down there in Texas," Gruters said.
The primary-voting history of another woman featured in the campaign’s outreach was exposed by a record showing more participation in Democratic than Republican primaries.
When reached for comment Sunday, the Talarico campaign said the women have no official ties to the campaign, but the spokesperson pointed to the MSNBC interview, noting they had previously voted for Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott – one of which vowed to never do again.
Talarico has also showcased the support of former Tarrant County Judge Glen Whitley, a longtime Republican who endorsed the Democrat at a recent campaign event.
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Whitley ran as a Republican judge, but his recent endorsements are on the left. The former county judge endorsed Democrat Mike Collier against Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick in 2022 before backing Harris for president and Democrat Colin Allred for U.S. Senate in 2024. All those Democrats lost to Republicans, as did Beto O'Rourke to Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, by less than three points in 2018.
That history has given Republicans an opening to argue that Talarico is largely attracting voters who had already broken with GOP nominees before the current Senate contest.
"He's not Beto: Beto was actually a decent candidate, as liberal as he was," Gruters said, delivering his oft-used moniker to Talarico for his "freakish" policy positions in a campaign for Senate in the deeply conservative state. "This guy makes Beto look like a conservative.
"Tala-freako has no chance, because people aren't buying into the stuff that he's peddling."
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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 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."
Paxton survived a potential Texas state impeachment effort just about three years ago. Two of those Republican Texas State House impeachment managers that voted to impeach Paxton in an attempt that died in the state Senate are now campaigning for Paxton.
Republican State Rep. Jeff Leach introduced Paxton at an Allen, Texas, campaign rally last week, and state Rep. Briscoe Cain introduced Paxton at a Houston rally. Both are backing Paxton over Talarico.
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There had been some concern Paxton – endorsed by Trump – was not an ideal GOP nominee, having ousted sitting Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who was a four-term senator and won by nearly double digits in 2020. Cornyn was "a great U.S. senator for a long time," Gruters admitted, stopping short of saying whether Cornyn will stump for Paxton like those impeachment managers that have come home for him.
Fox News Digital reached out to Cornyn's office for comment.
"I think he is raising money right now for all the Republicans in the Senate, still hosting events, and so I don't know personally if he's come out and endorsed Ken Paxton yet, but I'm sure that he is still on board with making sure that we have the MAGA warriors in place to support the president's agenda moving forward," Gruters said.
The Trump endorsement is not undefeated in marquee Senate races, as Herschel Walker (Georgia) and Dr. Mehmet Oz (Pennsylvania) lost in 2022 despite Trump's backing, but those key losses were by non-politicians that do not have Paxton's state-wide campaign infrastructure.
"You got to remember Ken Paxton won this state a couple of times in the general," Gruters added. "He won a primary against a strong incumbent [Cornyn] that's been there for a long time by a couple hundred thousand votes."
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Paxton told Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures" on Sunday that he has "outraised every Republican in the country," but he urged the Senate Leadership Fund – which has long-running ties to Senate incumbents like Cornyn – now-conservative billionaire Elon Musk and Trump's $800 million MAGA Inc. coffers need to help him keep the Senate seat.
"I'm trying to raise money during the summer in Texas, which is challenging, so we're hoping the Senate Leadership Fund, Elon Musk, President Trump come in now because we're trying to accumulate," Paxton told host Maria Bartiromo. "We're raising money for October right now and September, not now.
"We don't have the money for now. So that's allowed [Talarico] to just keep advertising that he's a moderate Democrat when he's, in reality, a socialist."
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's just not going to happen. Texas is a hardcore Republican state.
"And so, yes, listen, a lot of money, Texas is a massive state, a lot of resources from California are pouring in because these California liberals like Tala-freako. But I don't think it's going to help him at the end of the day. Paxton is going to win this race."
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