The Trumpian Machismo Infecting the Texas Senate Race

Ken Paxton’s attacks on James Talarico are intended to make him appear more feminine in an effort to appeal to socially conservative voters.

Within hours of winning the Republican nomination for the Texas Senate election, Attorney General Ken Paxton was attacking his Democratic opponent, James Talarico, as insufficiently masculine to represent their state in Washington. In his acceptance speech, Paxton rolled out the nicknames “Low-T Talarico,” “Tofu Talarico,” “Six-Gender Jimmy,” and “James Tala-freak-o,” reminiscent of the derogatory titles President Donald Trump gives his political enemies.

This was hardly new. Paxton has been disparaging Talarico in gendered terms for months, casting the Democrat’s support for transgender individuals and a 2022 comment about reducing meat consumption as fundamental threats to Texan values. Calling Talarico “low-T” insinuates that he has lower testosterone levels, and thus is insufficiently manly. He has also repeatedly hammered Talarico for saying in 2021 that “God is nonbinary,” comments that Talarico has tried to walk back.

While this tactic may more obviously appeal to Republican primary voters, this November’s contest will be a test of whether this kind of machismo-inflected rhetoric will be convincing to the larger electorate. If Paxton’s theory of the case is correct, fears about the collapse of traditional social norms, as well as the perception of masculinity as strength, could turn even Paxton’s own skeptics against Talarico.

“The attacks resonate more broadly, potentially because they connect this political conflict to larger cultural fears about gender and authority and social change,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston.

Incumbent Senator John Cornyn, whom........

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