James Talarico’s Campaign Is a Messaging Machine

Mother Jones: “Talarico for Texas, in other words, is a messaging machine. His ability to efficiently frame an argument and deliver it to an audience is why he is leading the scandal-plagued Republican attorney general Ken Paxton in the polls (the plague of scandals has also helped), and why he raised a record $64 million last quarter.”

“But the content the machine refines and spits out—the thoughtful pauses, the perfect answers, the well-timed punches—has to originate somewhere. It is grown on manicured fields under stadium lights. And sometimes, if you stick around when the crowd begins to thin, you catch a glimpse of what it looks like before the filters are applied and the product is refined, when it’s just a man and a crowd, racing against a stopwatch. It’s kind of fun.”