Almost from the moment James Talarico became the Democratic Senate nominee in Texas, the Republicans have circulated ads and attacks suggesting that he is not man enough, not Christian enough, not carnivorous enough — not Texan enough — to flip a conservative seat.
As the midterm elections approach and one of the most expensive races in history gets nastier by the day, the vice president has gone even further, joining the fray with a not-so-subtle joke criticized as homophobic.
During a visit to Tyler, Texas, on Wednesday, JD Vance opened a rally in support of the Republican nominee, Ken Paxton, by addressing a man in the crowd who expressed his admiration. “I love you too sir,” Mr. Vance said. “In a totally platonic way, to be clear. I’m the vice president, not James Talarico.”
He paused for effect, smiling as he waited for applause.
A common view of Mr. Vance is that he is a chameleon, capable of quickly toggling from sharp-edged attacks to common-sense statesmanship at a moment’s notice, depending on what he needs. His claim about the sexuality of Mr. Talarico, who Democrats believe represents their best hope of winning a Senate seat in Texas in decades, shows the kind of personal broadsides that Mr. Vance embraces in a tough campaign environment.
Mr. Vance, who just published a book about his conversion to Catholicism, has for weeks been road-testing unfounded, innuendo-based salvos against Mr. Talarico, a Presbyterian seminarian. At the Republicans’ midterm convention in Dallas last month, the vice president suggested that Mr. Talarico’s past support for transgender children was evidence of inappropriate behavior.
“A guy that age who is so obsessed and focused on transgender children, I don’t know about you, but I never want to see that guy’s web browser history,” Mr. Vance said. People in the crowd gasped and murmured. Some clapped. Mr. Vance has defended those comments. “I think typically people who say stuff like that tend to have some pretty unusual search histories,” he said a day later.
Mr. Talarico, who has said he has a longtime girlfriend, has largely ignored the vice president’s insinuations. Asked about Mr. Vance’s comments, JT Ennis, a spokesman for Mr. Talarico, said in a statement that Texan voters were concerned about other matters.
“While they play these childish games that do nothing to help Texans put gas in the tank or food on the table, James is focused on taking on this corrupt political system and lowering costs for working Texans,” Mr. Ennis said.
Mr. Vance’s remarks are part of a broader attempt by Republicans to keep a hold on a long-reliable seat that Mr. Trump put into play by refusing to support the incumbent, Senator John Cornyn, and backing his challenger, Mr. Paxton, the state attorney general. Advertising spending for midterm races topped $10 billion this week, with about a half-billion dollars scheduled to be spent in the Texas Senate races, more than for any other seat. Many G.O.P. ads have focused on Mr. Talarico’s past remarks supporting transgender children and drag queens, holding his comments up as proof of strangeness.
On the campaign trail, Mr. Trump has coined a nickname — “Talafreako” — and suggested that Mr. Talarico’s embrace of vegan food makes him the wrong choice to serve a cattle-ranching state. Allies of Mr. Paxton promoted a false rumor that suggested Mr. Talarico was seeking treatment at a mental health facility. He was recovering from the flu.
Even in that environment, Mr. Vance’s attacks on Mr. Talarico have been strikingly juvenile, critics said.
“Obviously it is bigoted and offensive, but it’s also so politically feeble and weak,” Senator Jon Ossoff, Democrat of Georgia, who is running for re-election against Representative Mike Collins, said during an MS NOW interview on Wednesday. “Forty percent of Americans are going without food or health care to afford gas, and they’re throwing around schoolyard insults and taunts, and it’s getting them nowhere with an American public that has decisively turned against this administration.”
Several people in Mr. Vance and Mr. Trump’s orbit dismissed the vice president’s latest comment as a joke likely meant to entertain Republican voters and spice up a political rally. One former adviser to Mr. Trump, who was granted anonymity to discuss internal strategy, said that Republicans might not be able to win on policy, the candidates they have selected, the economy or by explaining the U.S.-led war in Iran, but that they might be able to win by painting all Democrats as extreme and invoking cultural battles.
Mr. Vance’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the strategy behind the vice president’s remarks or about the criticism that his comments were homophobic.
Ron Bonjean, a G.O.P. strategist, said that the vice president understood that the news cycle moves fast and people forget political jabs. It has been five years since Mr. Vance said in a Fox News interview that the country was being run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made.” It was not the kind of remark that hurt his political career — at least, not yet. As vice president, now he is working to create policy that would direct federal money to support stay-at-home parents.
“He is thinking of a short-game strategy of keeping the United States Senate, which is a positive thing for Republicans,” Mr. Bonjean said. “His responsibility is more about ginning up the MAGA base and making sure they get out to vote than it is convincing independents to come over to the Republican side.”
The larger question, Mr. Bonjean said, is which version of Mr. Vance shows up after the midterms, when he becomes the presumptive Republican front-runner for the 2028 nomination: the very-online millennial who enjoys expletives and calling people fat on social media, the campaigner who road-tests insults that don’t get much applause, or the fraud-seeking missile who portrays Democrats as out of touch and suggests that Americans lean toward sanity.
“I think he’s calculated that this is likely going to be a big base election in 2028, with some independents coming our way,” Mr. Bonjean said. “He’s got to figure out on the long game how he’s pulling those folks in while generating enthusiasm.”
The post Vance’s Talarico Attacks Show His Penchant for Personal Broadsides appeared first on New York Times.
