The big stone tablet at the hotel entrance bearing the Ten Commandments is proof enough that they take religion solemnly in Lubbock, Texas. And on an otherwise sleepy Sunday lunchtime, a crowd is snaking around the block of the nearby Watson Building, a 1920s meeting house, to see in the flesh James Talarico, the seminarian who is campaigning for a US Senate seat with a message of radical, Christian love – and a third way for Texas politics.
Inside the Watson Building, the overhead fans are whirring and the crowd of about 1,500 people are in high humour. It is standing room only. This is a promising time for the Democrats in Texas – although rumours of the Lone Star State turning blue again are nothing new.
Still, the Democrats feel spoiled for choice ahead of next Monday’s Senate primary election, when either Talarico or Jasmine Crockett will earn the right to go on and contest the seat that Republican John Cornyn has held since 2002 in the November midterms.
A big, black old-fashioned campaign bus is parked outside as though to advertise Talarico’s message that his is a grassroots campaign, free from political action committee (Pac) or corporate donations. Technically, this is true, although Talarico’s campaign has outspent Crockett’s by $11 million to $2.7 million, while Crockett’s team is at pains to point out that a pro-Talarico super Pac (which can raise and spend unlimited funds for a campaign but cannot contribute to a candidate directly) has thrown $5 million into a recent advertising campaign designed to bring her down.
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The polls have Crockett – who visits Lubbock on Monday – holding a slender advantage. But the recent cancellation of Talarico’s guest appearance on the Stephen Colbert show generated international coverage and his profile went stratospheric.
It’s difficult to specify the precise political magnetism that draws people to Talarico but the secret might be that he looks like the kind of pleasant, good-mannered young American to be found in a thousand schools or coffee shops or pulpits. He does not look like a typical politician on the rise. His experience as a teacher and his oratorial skill as a Presbyterian seminarian shine through a message that is, plainly, coming from a sincere and heartfelt place.
“You know why our politics sucks right now?” he asks.
“It is not any one politician, it is the system itself. Think about who was sitting behind president Trump on inauguration day. Think about who owns the 24-hours corporate media that treats news as entertainment. Think about who owns the social media algorithms that keep us all angry and divided. A handful of billionaires have redesigned our politics for their own pockets. They want us to keep scrolling. They want us to keep watching. They want us to keep fighting so they can keep being rich. They are dividing us by party, by race, by gender, by religion. They have literally changed the way we talk to each other. They are the reason why you and your Maga uncle who used to get on just fine now live in completely different realities.”
He speaks for a mere 20 minutes. Not a word is lost to the crowd. He builds his homily around the personal story he told to Colbert on an interview that aired on the host’s YouTube channel: that his grandfather, also a preacher, told him that the Bible gives two elemental instructions. Love Jesus. And love your neighbour.
“Fight the system. Not your neighbour,” he continues.
“There is something broken in this country. Our economy is broken. Our political system is broken. Even our relationships with each other feel broken. And that’s because the most powerful people in the world want it to be. I’m tired of being told to hate my neighbour. It has been more than 10 years of this kind of politics. Politics as blood sport. Politics as turf war. It tears families apart. It ends friendships. And it leaves us all feeling terrible all the time. As I travel across the state I get the feeling there is a deep hunger for a different kind of politics.”
That’s the Democratic hope. Texas has been steadfastly Red for 30 years. That two young Democratic candidates are even showing up in Hub City, a commercial and education centre that is a gateway between the oil-rich Permian Basin to the south and the high plains of the Panhandle above, is a sign that they sense a shift in the public mood.
“You have to understand we are in Lubbock, Texas,” Gracie Gomez explains after the applause dies down. “This place has been identified as the second-most evangelical conservative city in the country. It is extremely Red. So, when I see this, it gives me a lot of hope. This is a movement. His message was so positive in a time of division.”
Melinda and Vicki are lifelong friends who grew up in the nearby towns of Floydada and Earth. “Well, I cried,” Melinda says of Talarico’s speech. “That was about as eloquent as you can be.”
Vicki was struck by how Talarico framed the pernicious influence of the television news networks ownership profiting from 24/7 divisive propaganda. She has sworn off all television news several times, but the torrent of events throughout Donald Trump’s second term has made it impossible to completely tune out.
“There’s an anxiety now that I feel coming from ... everybody. And he [Talarico] talked about that. That trauma will be passed down. Your body wields that trauma.”
“And that wasn’t here in this country before,” adds Melinda.
“Not before he [Trump] was elected. It is just staggering to know that’s what he has done.”
After he had finished speaking, Talarico stood in a small room at the front of the building for people who wanted to pose for photographs and meet him. Again, the line of people curled around the auditorium. People were prepared to wait for this sincere, progressive theologian who has rare stardust as a communicator, making him either a breakout Democrat star or what one Republican legislator described to Texas Monthly as “the most dangerous person in Texas, if not American, politics right now”.
Lubbock is a city of 250,000 people and if its name resonates across the airwaves, its because Lubbock is the town that gave America Buddy Holly. But apart from the energy contained within the Watson Building, the streets were Sunday silent. Those who made the effort to turn out are convinced they are witnessing the beginning of a movement.
“More than you know,” Carter Burkholder says when asks if he feels moderate Republicans might be persuaded by Talarico’s message.
“I got a friend of mine who is Republican as hell. Last month he came up to me and he goes: ‘f**k Trump’. I said: ‘what’s gotten into you?’ First of all, he’s in the wind energy business. That turned him. But now he sees and he hears Trump in a different light. He is starting to look at him going: this is a grift. This is a con. It is evil.”
