DALLAS — Democratic U.S. Senate nominee James Talarico on Wednesday said he opposed transgender student-athletes competing in girls’ sports “if it endangers safety or fairness,” reversing course on previous positions he took while in the Texas House opposing restrictions on trans athletes.
“Every sport has to be safe and fair,” Talarico said on Fox News. “As a former public school teacher, I care a lot about our student athletes, I care a lot about our students. And so I will oppose trans athletes playing in girls’ sports if it risks safety or fairness.”
The remark echoes what his campaign spokesperson recently said in a written statement. But it appeared to be the first time Talarico himself has explicitly come out in favor of banning transgender athletes from competing in girls’ sports. The platform — Fox News, with its largely conservative audience — was also notable, as Talarico has sought to win over right-leaning voters in his bid to deliver Democrats’ first statewide win in Texas since 1994. Talarico gave the interview as Republicans from across the country gathered in Dallas for a midterm convention aimed at firing up the GOP’s base ahead of November.
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As a state representative, Talarico voted against GOP restrictions barring trans student-athletes from playing on sports teams that align with their gender identity. He said such proposals amounted to a push for the government to “police people’s private parts” and would harm “the least of these,” a reference to Jesus’ remarks in scripture. And he compared the justifications offered for the bans — that trans athletes had a genetic advantage and excluding them would promote safety — to rationales historically used to bar Black athletes from competing in professional sports.
“Some things are more important than perfectly fair competition in sports,” Talarico said in 2021.
In the Fox News interview, Talarico said he voted against Republican restrictions on trans student-athletes in the Legislature because the bills were “overly broad.” He added that he supported amendments at the time that would’ve narrowed the proposals, including by leaving eligibility decisions to local school boards, applying restrictions only to individual sports rather than team sports and limiting the prohibition to schools with professional licensed counselors.
“I supported amendments that would have given the power to make these decisions to local communities — like conservatives used to believe,” Talarico said. “I think that the people closest to these problems are best equipped to make decisions for themselves, not politicians in Austin, not politicians in Washington. I trust local officials and local communities to make these decisions, and that’s what I voted for.”
In the end, Talarico suggested, he voted against the bills because Republicans had refused his attempts to narrow them.
“As a lawmaker, my job is to try to kind of sift through everything the bill does,” he said Wednesday. “And sometimes there’s stuff that is really harmful, and I have no choice but to oppose the bill as a whole.”
Republicans have splashed the Austin Democrat’s previous opposition to trans sports restrictions across campaign ads and conservative media, along with his past remarks defending LGBTQ rights. Attorney General Ken Paxton, the Republican U.S. Senate nominee, has made the issue a centerpiece of his effort to cast Talarico as too progressive for Texas.
During the same Fox News interview Wednesday, Talarico also walked back his past statement that there are six genders, a comment he made in April 2021 during a House committee debate on a bill that would have required public school students to play on athletic teams that match the sex listed on their birth certificate. Asked by Fox News if he still believed there were six sexes, he said, “No.”
“I missed the mark on some of my past statements, I’ll be the first to admit it,” Talarico said. “What I meant is there are two sexes and there’s a small percentage of people with genetic abnormalities. Obviously I didn’t say it correctly. There are not six sexes, there are two.”
Republicans were quick to denounce Talarico’s comments Wednesday, calling them contrary to his legislative record and not to be trusted.
“James Talarico voted against TWO bills that would have prevented men from playing in women’s sports,” Paxton posted on X in response to Talarico’s new comments. “He also called it a ‘far-right conspiracy theory.’ This is just the latest episode in James Talarico’s long saga of lies and flip-flops.”
Talarico has previously said some of his old comments “missed the mark.”
“There are some statements that I’ve made that I certainly regret,” he said on CBS earlier this year. “But Ken Paxton is intentionally clipping my cringey comments to distract from his career of corruption.”
Earlier in his Senate run, Talarico said eligibility decisions related to trans athletes should be made by local school and sports officials.
“I’m here to have that conversation about how we maintain safety and fairness in sports when it comes to trans athletes,” Talarico said on The Ezra Klein Show in January during the primary. “There are going to be rules where sometimes it’s not allowed. That’s actually how you solve a public policy problem with love for trans folks but also for our athletes, who need a fair shot at competition.”
In August, JT Ennis, a Talarico campaign spokesperson, told Spectrum News that “as a former public school teacher, James cares about our student athletes — that’s why he opposes trans athletes playing girls’ sports when it jeopardizes safety or fairness. At the same time, he’ll always stand against discrimination, especially when the most powerful politicians in the country bully students to score political points, because his faith teaches him that every child is made in the image of God.”
Talarico has also accused Republicans of fixating on trans athletes and other minorities as a distraction to an economy corrupted by billionaire political influence and shaped by the GOP to benefit the ultrawealthy over everyday people. His campaign has been defined by a populist economic pitch wrapped in the language of his Christian faith and a slogan to “love thy neighbor.”
“The only minority destroying America is the billionaires,” Talarico said at his campaign kickoff a year ago Wednesday. “The culture wars are a smokescreen. So many of the divisions in this state and in this country are manufactured by billionaires who want us fighting each other instead of fighting them. They want us looking left and right at our neighbors instead of looking up at them.”
Brad Pritchett, CEO of the LGBTQ+ rights advocacy group Equality Texas, said in a statement that his organization “expect[s] better” of Talarico and his campaign after the representative’s comment Wednesday.
“When did people of moral standing decide to use Texas children as a political football?” Pritchett said. “Fairness in school sports must include trans kids. Trans kids deserve the opportunity to play sports as much as their peers.”
Pritchett’s statement also described Talarico’s prior voting record and actions in the Legislature as supportive of inclusive school environments, and contrasted it with that of Paxton, who he said had “gutted protections for LGBTQIA+ kids in unsafe homes.”
Ayden Runnels contributed to this report.
This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.
