EAGLE PASS, Texas — A black campaign bus bearing the name “Talarico for Texas” rolled to a stop outside Memo’s Restaurant near the U.S.-Mexico border, drawing an enthusiastic greeting from local resident Bibi Valdez, who rushed over in heels with her phone camera ready, already talking about the political shifts she’d witnessed in her community.
“A lot of people, for some reason, especially the Hispanics, changed to Republican,” she said as security personnel made room for Democratic U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico. “I just don’t see what the logic was.”
Talarico is chasing history — he wants to become the first Democrat to win a Texas statewide race since 1994. The stop at Memo’s Restaurant was part of a longer journey along the border this month, where he sought support from heavily Hispanic counties that grabbed national attention following the 2024 election.
These communities, once reliably Democratic, largely cast their votes for Republican President Donald Trump — some by wide margins — as Hispanic voters moved rightward across the country. Residents and local leaders in the area tend to cite two main factors: a surge in border crossings and rising prices. One of those problems has eased significantly since 2024, and it wasn’t the grocery bill.
While Trump has sharply reduced illegal border crossings — a vulnerability that once plagued Democrats — the cost of living remains elevated, giving Talarico a recurring theme in his campaign against Republican Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general.
Whether Talarico can persuade Hispanic voters who moved toward the GOP to come back to the Democratic side will be a key factor in the Senate contest — and could even influence which party ends up in control of the Senate.
Outside Memo’s Restaurant, which was packed beyond capacity with people eager to see him, Talarico — a former middle school teacher and state lawmaker — worked the crowd with handshakes and photos. Valdez, waiting her turn, reflected aloud on why people she knew had voted Republican.
“They thought a better economy, but obviously it didn’t,” she said, before smiling for a picture with the candidate.
Inside the restaurant, the crowd was energized and packed tightly together beneath spinning fans as Talarico took the stage.
“So many politicians show up at the border to demonize and weaponize,” Talarico told the crowd. “We are doing the opposite. We are showing the beauty of our border communities.”
It was one of the few direct references Talarico made to the border during his visit. He spent much of his speech focused on an economy he described as rigged in favor of “mega donors” and took aim at Paxton, calling him a “puppet politician” for the wealthy.
“We can’t get ahead no matter how hard we work, no matter how much we save, because the system is rigged against us,” he said.
Talarico isn’t the first Democrat to generate excitement and spark hope of a Texas breakthrough in recent years. Beto O’Rourke launched a similar campaign in 2018 and came up short.
Republicans remain confident they’ll hold Texas, though Democrats point to some encouraging signs. Trump made gains with Hispanic voters in 2024, but approval of the president among Hispanics has declined since he took office, according to AP-NORC polling. A June AP-NORC survey found only 29% of Hispanic adults nationally approved of his job performance — an apparent drop from 41% at the beginning of his second term.
In communities along the Rio Grande, which forms the Texas-Mexico border, the movement of migrants is anything but an abstract political debate. Locals still remember — often with compassion — the sight of hundreds of people huddled under a bridge wrapped in emergency blankets, and the toll that took on local businesses and town budgets.
Many said little help came from President Joe Biden’s administration during that period.
“It was a nightmare because of him. Now, you don’t see no immigrants,” said Hector Flores, 72, seated with two friends at a McDonald’s in Maverick County, roughly an hour’s drive south of Memo’s Restaurant.
Maverick County recorded one of the most dramatic political swings in the entire country in 2024, flipping from supporting Biden by 10 percentage points in 2020 to backing Trump by 19 points.
The three men, who hold different political views, said they weren’t following the Senate race closely. But the topics on their minds — high costs, immigration enforcement, and social issues — mirrored the debate between Talarico and Paxton.
Eduardo “Lalo” Riojas, 73, who sat beside Flores, said that under previous presidents, prices were manageable. Now, he said, when you go to the grocery store — he paused, searching for the right English word.
“Expensive,” Flores offered.
“Yeah,” Riojas agreed. He said he supports Talarico. “Mr. Trump is crazy.”
For Flores, who works with orphanages across the border in Mexico, rising prices aren’t shaking his Republican support. He’s also not troubled by Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations in the country’s interior, which have drawn criticism from some Trump backers.
“I love ICE,” Flores said.
Mike Garcia, 76, who sat across from the two men and said he had voted for Trump three consecutive times, expressed more uncertainty.
“The ones they’re killing, some of them, been here in the United States for years and years and got children,” Garcia said.
Garcia said Paxton — who was impeached, then acquitted, and has faced allegations of corruption and extramarital affairs — has a “horrible reputation.” But he’s also bothered by remarks Talarico made about God’s gender, a statement Paxton has used repeatedly on the campaign trail to appeal to conservative Texas voters.
Garcia said he still hadn’t decided who he’ll vote for in November.
Paxton has leaned heavily into immigration enforcement as a campaign issue, including during his own visit to the Rio Grande Valley. Speaking to a group of supporters in McAllen, he highlighted lawsuits he filed against the Biden administration over immigration policy and touted his endorsement from the National Border Patrol Council.
He also returned to one of his main lines of attack against Talarico — repeating the Democrat’s statement that “God is nonbinary,” which Talarico, a seminary student, made on the Texas House floor several years ago while citing Scripture.
Paxton’s campaign director of Hispanic outreach argued that Paxton has delivered on what Hispanic voters care about, including fighting crime and taking on companies that overcharge consumers, while dismissing Talarico as “wimpy.”
“Hispanics know Ken Paxton is a strong man who shares our values, and we see in James Talarico a wimpy liberal,” said Alex Alarcon. “No one looks at him and thinks, now there’s a guy who’ll protect us from the cartels.”
Talarico didn’t sidestep immigration enforcement entirely during his border swing. At a news conference in Sanderson, Texas, he stood alongside local sheriffs and pledged to invest in surveillance technology to detect illegal crossings, and to bring on more border patrol agents and immigration judges.
Later, following a town hall where residents voiced frustration over rent, property taxes, and healthcare costs, Talarico spoke with The Associated Press about the political landscape in these communities.
“The Biden administration failed border communities like this, and so people were feeling disillusioned. They were open to an alternative and Republicans came down here with some big promises,” he said.
Now, he added, “they’re seeing a lot of those promises weren’t kept.”
