WASHINGTON — A super PAC that backs Ted Cruz is beginning a seven-figure statewide Spanish-language ad buy on streaming platforms Friday targeting James Talarico in Texas’ U.S. Senate race.
Truth and Courage PAC’s new spot, aimed at Hispanic Christians, attacks Talarico over past comments he made on gender and sexuality. The ad’s narration is in Spanish, and includes translations onscreen when using short clips of Talarico speaking.
The ad includes Talarico saying “God is nonbinary” and that there are “six biological sexes” — clips that Republicans have circulated for months — and warns voters that Talarico is a “lobo disfrazado de oveja”, or a “wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
The Austin Democrat has called some of his past comments on social issues “cringey” and said they missed the mark. During his CNN town hall Wednesday, Talarico said he was making the point that God defies human categories like gender, and acknowledged that he was being intentionally provocative in the way he said it, and that, as a seminary student, he was still learning how to do so “in a responsible way.”
The Truth and Courage PAC ad argues that Talarico is out of step with Christians.
“Talarico is spending millions of dollars to convince you he’s a moderate politician,” the ad’s narrator says in Spanish. “But his own words unmask him. We pray ‘Our Father.’ Talarico says God is non-binary.”
The ad’s language echoes how Texas’ soon-to-be senior U.S. senator speaks about Talarico.
“This Democrat, James Talarico, I think is dangerous,” Cruz said on the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show over the summer. “He’s very smooth, he’s very slick, he’s charming, he sounds like a preacher. The guy is a hard left-wing zealot, but he doesn’t sound like it. And I prefer my wolves to come in wolves’ clothing.”
Hispanic Texans will likely play a decisive role in the Senate race, as well as in downballot U.S. House races. Republicans including Cruz made significant gains among Latinos in recent cycles, culminating in the high water mark of 2024, when President Donald Trump won 11 of 13 of the heavily Hispanic border counties and Cruz carried eight.
But polling from this cycle expects Hispanic Texans to swing back toward Democrats, who have historically won large majorities of the Hispanic vote. How large the swing is — and whether it varies by region — will be critically determinative of Paxton’s and other Republicans’ chances.
Cruz invested heavily in the Hispanic vote in his successful 2024 Senate campaign. He launched a mostly Spanish-language media blitz in July, aired Spanish ads in all 20 of the state’s media markets and launched a bilingual calling and texting operation in the Rio Grande Valley.
While Republicans have rained advertising dollars on Texas in support of Paxton, very little of it has gone to Spanish ads. Of the nearly $240 million Republicans have spent on television, radio and digital advertising in the Senate race, just $3.5 million, or 1.5 percent, of the GOP’s ad spending has been in Spanish, according to ad tracking firm AdImpact. Democrats, by comparison, have bought $5.3 million worth of Spanish-language ads, equivalent to about 5.4% percent of their overall spend.
Paxton’s campaign put six figures behind an ad in South Texas markets that contained a few Spanish words, playing on the “rico” in Talarico’s name to attack his economic policies, but has otherwise stuck to English in its spots.
Prior to the new ad, Truth and Courage PAC had already spent $2 million boosting Ken Paxton on the airwaves in late August. The first ad, in English, bashed Talarico over Chinese land holdings in Texas.
