Texas Democratic Senate hopeful James Talarico presents himself as a crusader against political corruption, yet his rise in the primary race is being powered by the very super PAC machinery he publicly condemns.
In a recent profile, New Yorker reporter Tad Friend recounted a revealing exchange over red wine, asking Talarico whether he would accept help from a super PAC if "the Devil tempted you with a super PAC to handle the political dirty work for you." According to The Washington Free Beacon, Talarico invoked Scripture in response, citing Christs resistance to Satan in the wilderness and insisting he would refuse such aid, declaring, "The central belief in my faith is that the means are the ends," and promising to ban super PACs in an "anti-corruption" package if elected to the Senate.
Talarico went further, telling the magazine that even electoral defeat would be acceptable if it meant preserving his moral purity. "If we lose, it would feel not great. Butbut!it's the belief in the Resurrection, right? The belief that something beautiful would come out of this loss." Yet while he was waxing theological about the evils of big-money politics, a close friend was quietly orchestrating a multimillion-dollar super PAC offensive on his behalf.
As Talarico publicly decried super PACs, the Lone Star Rising PACrun by his longtime associatewas saturating Texas airwaves with negative advertising against his primary rival, Rep. Jasmine Crockett. The group has been bankrolled by dark money networks and Democratic billionaires, precisely the kind of entrenched interests Talarico claims to oppose as he touts a people-powered "campaign based on love."
Talarico, who styles himself as a devout Christian and reform-minded outsider, is seeking to become the first Democrat in three decades to win statewide office in Texas. Before he can test that proposition in November, however, he must first defeat Crockett in next Tuesdays primary, a contest that has been dramatically reshaped by the super PACs intervention.
The financial and personal ties behind that intervention are striking. Alexander Clark, a Texas political operative who described himself in now-deleted Facebook posts as a 15-year friend of Talarico, created the Lone Star Rising PAC on Sept. 2, 2025, just days before the Senate hopeful officially entered the race.
Talarico launched his campaign on Sept. 9, one week after Clarks super PAC was formed, and had previously thanked Clark for his "friendship" in a Facebook post four years earlier. When The Washington Free Beacon reviewed Clarks social media activity on a Friday, the posts were still visible, but by Monday morning they had vanished, and the Lone Star Rising PAC declined to respond to a request for comment.
Federal Election Commission records show that since early February, Clarks super PAC has poured nearly $3.7 million into negative ads targeting Crockett, coinciding with Talaricos steady erosion of her once-commanding lead in the polls. Just before this ad blitz, in late January, the group received a $500,000 infusion from billionaire Reid Hoffman, a Democratic megadonor who maintained a close relationship with Jeffrey Epstein in the years leading up to Epsteins 2019 arrest for sex trafficking dozens of girls.
Despite his lofty assertion that "the central belief in my faith is that the means are the ends," Talarico has not publicly condemned the super PAC or its attack ads, even as he campaigns on a promise to outlaw such entities. His campaign told the Dallas Morning News in early February that it could not have had any involvement with Lone Star Risings activities because federal law bars coordination between campaigns and super PACs.
That legal firewall, however, applies only after a campaign and a super PAC are formally in existence, leaving a wide gray area for pre-launch strategizing. Nothing in federal law would have prevented Talarico and Clark from discussing political tactics before the candidate announced his run and before Clark registered his super PAC last September, and Talaricos campaign did not respond to a request for further comment on that point.
The donor list behind Lone Star Rising underscores how deeply embedded it is in the Democratic donor class Talarico claims to challenge. According to its latest FEC report, contributors include hedge fund manager Stephen Mandel, Hyatt Hotel heir Adam Pritzker, Eagles drummer Don Henley, former Biden White House official Cristobal Alex, and private equity billionaire Mark Heising.
Clark himself acknowledged the awkward optics in a now-deleted Facebook post from January, in which he boasted that he was proud to lead a super PAC working to elect Talarico "so we can root out corruption by banning super PACs." He then attempted to justify the contradiction, writing that he would "make no apologies for not unilaterally disarming until we can all play by the same set of rules."
That rationale mirrors a familiar progressive pattern: denounce the system in public while exploiting every available advantage in private. In keeping with that approach, Lone Star Rising is heavily financed by the same dark money infrastructure that Democrats routinely condemn when it benefits Republicans, with the Government that Works PAC providing $3.75 million to Clarks operation in January alone, according to FEC filings.
The Government that Works PAC is itself fueled by opaque liberal funding vehicles. It received $4 million in January from the Sixteen Thirty Fund, a massive dark money hub on the left, and in 2025 it took in another $2.9 million from Contours Inc., a Delaware-based 501(c)(4) that reported raising less than $50,000 in 2024, according to IRS records, raising obvious questions about how such a modest nonprofit suddenly became a multimillion-dollar political player.
For a candidate who invokes Christs temptation in the wilderness and speaks of "the belief in the Resurrection" to justify his political ethic, the reliance on a shadowy, billionaire-backed super PAC network is more than a minor inconsistency. It highlights a broader tension within the modern Democratic Party, where rhetoric about "rooting out corruption" and dismantling super PACs often collides with a relentless drive to harness dark money and elite donors, so long as the cause is progressive and the target is a fellow Democrat standing in the way.
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