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The Texas Democrat trying to reclaim Christianity from the right

Democrats want fighters. A Texas Senate candidate is focused on faith.

Tuesday night will deliver much more than the conclusion of the first round of voting in the feisty Texas Democratic Senate primary. It brings with it the first major opportunity to take stock of lessons ahead of the 2026 midterms, about what kind of fighter Democratic voters are looking for and what kind of message will motivate them to turn out.

The Texas Senate Democratic primary features two candidates employing very different appeals to primary voters.

One of those candidates, James Talarico, has made appeals to faith and religion a core part of that pitch: a message of healing and radical love.

There may be limits to just how much Democratic primary voters want to hear about this when they’re also calling for more “fight” from their candidates.

Still, the race may have lessons about how Democrats can make inroads with religious voters, and how their candidates can talk about faith to be more competitive in the future.

But perhaps more interestingly, the primary race has elevated another question: What the role of religion should be, and that of candidates talking about their faith, in the political landscape of 2026.

Both Senate candidates, state Rep. James Talarico and US Rep. Jasmine Crockett, have relied on religion, churches, and faith-based messaging to make their pitch to Democratic primary voters. But Talarico’s brand of compassionate progressive Christianity, wedded to a populist economic message, has attracted the most attention in and out of the state as a core feature of his campaign. His pitch is a message of radical love, of healing political divisions, and of welcoming Americans who might not be traditional Democrats into a big-tent political coalition.

“In my faith, love is the strongest force in the universe,” the Presbyterian pastor-in-training would say on the campaign trail. He’d tell reporters that “politics is just another word for how we treat our neighbors” and that his campaign platform would synthesize faith, love and politics: “You can’t stand for faith and then warp and weaponize religion to hurt our neighbors.”

Talarico’s case, that “a campaign based on love is more durable than one based on fear,” sounds novel — it was captivating enough to win plaudits from Joe Rogan, Stephen Colbert, and Ezra Klein.

But it faces a strong headwind in today’s political environment. Democratic primary voters in Texas and across the country also desire more fire, confrontation, and righteous anger from their candidates. Many have been drawn to candidates — like Crockett in Texas, and California Gov. Gavin Newsom in early presidential polling — with a message that’s often ruder, cruder, and adapted to meet the far less pious Donald Trump on his own terms, without any mercy, Christian or otherwise.

“Politics has changed. And one thing that the Democrats have struggled with is that they continue to be viewed as the doormat for the Republicans,” Crockett told my colleague Astead Herndon last month. “[Voters] continue to say, ‘Where’s the opposition? Where’s the fight?’”

That’s the kind of “fighter” spirit that has been simmering among Democrats for the last year. And it’s revealing a tension for Democrats who might want to take lessons from Talarico, might want to replicate his message of hope and faith,........

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