With five recent independent polls showing Democrat James Talarico is locked in a dead heat with Republican Ken Paxton for the U.S. Senate seat in Texas, the state representative said his focus on lowering costs will help him win in November.
After visiting a food pantry in Dallas on Monday afternoon, Talarico said he was told that the community's need is higher now than during the pandemic.
"All of us are struggling to afford the basics," Talarico said. "I'm talking about groceries. I'm talking about gas. I'm talking about insurance, and utilities, and housing, and childcare, prescription drugs. So, how we win is focusing on the things actually impacting Texans."
"I think if we do that, and if we bring people together around some common-sense solutions to lower our costs, to raise our pay, to get this economy back on track, I think we're going to be successful in November," he said.
Talarico has said he wants to create a federal public health insurance option and have it compete with private insurance, raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 dollars an hour and increase taxes on the wealthy and corporations.
His campaign stop comes one week after President Trump announced that in September, Republicans will hold a first-ever midterm convention at the American Airlines Center in Dallas to rev up excitement about their candidates, including Paxton, and talk about their policies, including the Working Families Tax Cuts, which prevented people from seeing their federal income taxes go up.
Republicans believe their policies are helping Americans and criticize Talarico for opposing the bill.
The Paxton campaign pointed out that Talarico opposed banning a state income tax and death taxes in Texas, along with requiring voter approval before local governments could raise certain property taxes. In a statement, the Paxton campaign said, "Talarico claiming to care about affordability is laughable."
But Talarico said the Republicans' tax bill is unpopular in Texas, which made big reductions in the growth of the Medicaid program by cutting eligibility and adding work requirements.
"I think our national leaders are seeing that," he said. "They're concerned what it could mean in November this year. That's why they're choosing Texas. They could be in North Carolina, they could be in Georgia, they could be in Ohio. They are choosing Texas because they know there is a bipartisan backlash growing to their extremism and to their corruption."
Talarico said he will be campaigning in North Texas frequently over the next four months until Election Day. He said he can't win the Senate seat without winning this region, which has the state's largest population.
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