A Mexican ballad played across Spanish-language radio stations in Texas earlier this month. Accompanied by an upbeat guitar, a singer celebrated a young man raised by a single mother who instilled strong values:
He’s an ally of the people
He’ll stand with them
Paxton only looks at his ambition
The hero of this corrido, a traditional Mexican narrative ballad, was James Talarico, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Texas. The song was an ad commissioned by Lone Star Rising, a super PAC backing Mr. Talarico, and it was performed by Latin Grammy winner Salvador “Chava” Chavez.
In the race for Senate, Texas culture has become its own battleground.
From cowboy boots to a “Friday Night Lights”-inspired bus tour and an appearance at a Kacey Musgraves concert, Mr. Talarico has embraced familiar Texas touchstones on the campaign trail. His Republican opponent, Ken Paxton, has drawn on the oil industry, conservative values and cowboy mythology.
Mr. Paxton has leaned heavily on traditional imagery of Texas.
One advertisement celebrates the state’s oil and beef industries, accompanied by images of pump jacks and cowboys on horseback. Other ads have attacked Mr. Talarico over his past comments about reducing meat consumption and his positions on gender identity, presenting him as a candidate whose values are fundamentally at odds with those of Texas.
The cultural shorthand is clear. Mr. Paxton’s Texas is a place of oil fields, cattle ranches and traditional values, a state whose identity is something to be defended against change.
Both he and Mr. Talarico are making a case not just for how Texas should be governed, but for what it means to be Texan.
“James Talarico belongs in California, not Texas,” Mr. Paxton wrote on X earlier this month, echoing attacks on the campaign trail that have cast the eighth-generation Texan as out of step with his home state.
But it was Mr. Paxton who spent part of his childhood in California, where his father was stationed with the United States Air Force, a point that Mr. Talarico has seized upon.
“I believe anyone can be a Texan,” Mr. Talarico said at an October rally in Plano. “It doesn’t matter if you’re an eighth-generation Texan like me, or a California transplant like Ken Paxton.”
He added, “What makes a Texan is not in the boots or in the truck; it is deep in the heart.”
Nevertheless, Mr. Talarico has made a point of flexing his Texas bona fides: He is rarely seen without his Lucchese cowboy boots and drives a Chevrolet Colorado pickup with a bumper sticker that says “Less Honkin’ More Tonkin.’”
His campaign tour, “Clear Eyes, Full Hearts” is a reference to the beloved TV series “Friday Night Lights,” which immortalized small-town Texas football. And after a nearly 10-day absence last month that he attributed to the flu, he made his first public reappearance at Austin City Limits, the city’s signature music festival.
“Texas is a very proud state,” said Sharon Jarvis, a political communication researcher at the University of Texas at Austin. “You can see just how proud they are, how important these symbols are, and the rhetorical work that these symbols do.”
Earlier this year, during a surprise appearance with Barack Obama, Mr. Talarico’s seemingly innocuous taco order — potato, egg, and cheese — sent the internet into a tailspin. Mr. Talarico has also made appearances at a Whataburger, the state’s most loved fast-food chain.
Mr. Paxton’s supporters, meanwhile, have drawn upon a different set of cultural references, invoking the Alamo and the state’s frontier mythology to challenge Mr. Talarico’s Texas credentials.
At one October rally, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick recited lyrics from a Marty Robbins song about the Alamo, summoning one of the state’s most enduring symbols of sacrifice and independence. Mayes Middleton, a Republican state senator, took aim at Mr. Talarico’s cowboy boots, accused him of wearing a zip-up pair. They were not.
In Texas, where the distinctions between Wranglers and Levi’s jeans, or the amount of dirt on one’s boots (Mr. Paxton also wears Luccheses), function as subtle cues of cultural legitimacy, even the smallest decisions can become politically fraught.
Take “The Great Tamale Incident.”
In 1976, President Gerald Ford, campaigning for re-election, stopped at the Alamo in San Antonio, where he was offered a plate of tamales. He proceeded to bite into it without removing the corn husk, a culinary faux pas that would come to haunt him.
Mr. Talarico, by contrast, has sought to make room for a more expansive definition of Texas identity.
“We’re this big mash-up of all these different people, all these different cultures, all these different friends,” he said during his stump speech in Plano earlier this month. “Think about Tejano music. If you’re listening to a Selena song, you’re hearing Spanish vocal styles from Northern Mexico, but you’re also hearing polka dance rhythms from Czech and German immigrants.”
In a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate in nearly four decades, these cultural touchstones may serve yet another function: to make the prospect of Democratic representation feel a little more familiar.
Jesus Jiménez and Lauren McGaughy contributed reporting.
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