Within hours of winning the Republican nomination for the Texas Senate election, Attorney General Ken Paxton was attacking his Democratic opponent, James Talarico, as insufficiently masculine to represent their state in Washington. In his acceptance speech, Paxton rolled out the nicknames “Low-T Talarico,” “Tofu Talarico,” “Six-Gender Jimmy,” and “James Tala-freak-o,” reminiscent of the derogatory titles President Donald Trump gives his political enemies.This was hardly new. Paxton has been disparaging Talarico in gendered terms for months, casting the Democrat’s support for transgender individuals and a 2022 comment about reducing meat consumption as fundamental threats to Texan values. Calling Talarico “low-T” insinuates that he has lower testosterone levels, and thus is insufficiently manly. He has also repeatedly hammered Talarico for saying in 2021 that “God is nonbinary,” comments that Talarico has tried to walk back.While this tactic may more obviously appeal to Republican primary voters, this November’s contest will be a test of whether this kind of machismo-inflected rhetoric will be convincing to the larger electorate. If Paxton’s theory of the case is correct, fears about the collapse of traditional social norms, as well as the perception of masculinity as strength, could turn even Paxton’s own skeptics against Talarico.“The attacks resonate more broadly, potentially because they connect this political conflict to larger cultural fears about gender and authority and social change,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston.Incumbent Senator John Cornyn, whom Paxton defeated in the Republican primary, argued that the attorney general’s checkered history and firebrand nature could threaten Republicans’ ability to hold onto the seat by turning off some otherwise conservative-leaning voters. But emphasizing red-meat issues has worked for Republicans—not only on a national scale, but for Paxton himself. The attorney general, who is closely aligned with Trump and the MAGA movement, has repeatedly succeeded in statewide elections despite being mired in multiple scandals, even surviving an impeachment attempt in 2023.The modern “culture wars” are preoccupied with gender identity, specifically casting the transgender community—which accounts for less than 1 percent of the national population—as existential threats to American society. Meredith Conroy, a political science professor at California State University of San Bernardino, said that Paxton was engaging in “gender conflict framing,” a concept she developed for her book Masculinity, Media and the American Presidency. As competitions, elections naturally lend themselves to oppositional comparisons, and masculinity is one of the classic paradigms.“‘Low-T Talarico’ and ‘Tofu Talarico’ tap into two of the most culturally charged touchstones in the current gender culture wars—transgender identity and veganism—both of which carry enormous symbolic weight on the right right now,” said Conroy in an email. As such, these nicknames are “rallying signals” that activate voters “already primed to see plant-based eating and hormone discourse as proxies for a broader cultural battle over gender norms,” Conroy continued.Rottinghaus noted that Texas politicians have long been rewarded by performing an extreme version of masculinity and toughness, from President Lyndon B. Johnson’s overt machismo, to President George W. Bush’s “cowboy persona,” to current Governor Greg Abbott’s emphasis on border security. Even former Governor Ann Richards, the last prominent Democrat to serve in a statewide position before losing reelection in 1994, was known for her tough-on-crime policies. Manliness is thus often tied to Texans’ fundamental political and cultural identity.“It’s not just that they want to portray [Talarico] as being kind of insufficiently masculine. It’s also that they want to make a case that he’s insufficiently Texan,” said Rottinghaus. “The ‘he’s not Texas enough’ attack is shorthand for, ‘he’s trying to change the state culturally in a way that won’t benefit you.’”Paxton’s first ad of the general election further highlights this contrast in explicit terms. A narrator says “this is Texas” over an image of sliced brisket, then adds “this is not,” showing the 2022 footage of Talarico calling for a “non-meat campaign.” The final seconds of the ad include an image of Paxton shaking Trump’s hand with the comment “this is Texas.” It then shows a picture of Talarico superimposed with the words “radical” and “too low-T for Texas.”It’s a line of attack that has been echoed by Trump and his allies, who said in a post on Truth Social that Talarico “may be the worst TEXAS candidate I have ever seen.” Trump adviser Stephen Miller also made waves by falsely saying that Talarico himself is a transgender woman.
