Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico blamed Republican extremism for his past claims that God is nonbinary and there are six sexes, a defense critics call a familiar left-wing bait and switch.
Fox News reported that Talarico, now running statewide in Texas against Republican Ken Paxton, told The New York Times’ “The Daily” podcast he felt forced into culture-war fights he never sought.
In the interview with host Michael Barbaro, the former Texas lawmaker said he ran to talk about public education. He argued Republican lawmakers at the Capitol kept pushing bills on gender and sports that put him in a defensive crouch.
Those old comments have become a liability in a high-stakes Texas contest already drawing heavy outside money, including major super PAC spending behind Paxton.
Talarico did not deny the record. He tried to reframe it.
He told Barbaro he had to “fight back against that extremism” and insisted the focus on transgender issues came from the other side of the aisle.
"It's kind of ironic that they're clipping these things to make it sound like I'm the one who was talking about this when, in reality, it was the Republican extremists at the Capitol who were obsessed with talking about trans issues, obsessed with talking about people's private parts. That wasn't me. That was them that changed."
The problem for Talarico is what he actually said on the record in 2021.
While opposing a Texas bill to keep men out of women’s sports, Talarico claimed on the Austin House floor that “God is non-binary.”
At a Texas House Committee on Public Education hearing that same year, he went further on biology.
"Modern science obviously recognizes that there are many more than two biological sexes; in fact, there are six."
Those lines were not vague musings. They came in the middle of live legislative fights over sex-based categories in sports and schools.
Talarico now says the sports bill that passed was a “blanket ban” that treated tee-ball the same as varsity baseball. He claims the real goal was scoring political points “off the backs of a very small, vulnerable group of people.”
He also says he regrets “not articulating my position more clearly” and will keep trying to improve how he talks about these subjects.
That cleanup effort has become a recurring theme as the Senate race tightens and Republicans press their fight for Senate control in multiple states.
In a separate Jubilee-style town hall, small business owner Sarah Gardner pressed him directly as a fellow Christian from Texas.
"You've said some concerning things in the past kind of related to faith and social issues. Things such as God is nonbinary, questions about how many genders there really are and your justifications using the Bible for abortion."
Talarico answered that the God comment was meant to be provocative. He said the underlying idea, that human categories cannot fully define God, is not theologically controversial, and he linked the thought to the late Charlie Kirk and the late Pope Benedict.
Just the News reported that Talarico walked the remark back under pressure from Paxton’s attacks and accused the Republican of clipping “cringey comments” to distract from what Talarico called a career of corruption.
In another appearance covered by Breitbart, he repeated the same line: he was being provocative, God is bigger than human categories, and the point was not meant as a large claim about the Democratic Party.
He still defended his vote against the sports measure as overly broad while saying he would support a narrower policy discussion about when a transgender athlete should compete.
Inez Stepman, a senior policy and legal analyst at Independent Women, told Fox News Digital the pattern is familiar.
"The left is always pulling a bait and switch with cultural issues. They advanced policies that placed males on girls sports teams, in locker rooms, in women’s prisons, and tried to push anyone who objected to that insanity out of public life. Now, they say none of this ever existed or isn’t important. But they don’t change their policy or votes."
Stepman added that not a single Democrat at the federal level voted for a bill to keep men out of women’s sports. If Democrats truly wanted the issue gone, she said, they could stop writing rules that force men into women’s spaces.
National Review framed Talarico’s recent comments as a cleanup job on statements that have become vulnerabilities against Paxton, noting the former Presbyterian seminarian once tried to lean on Scripture while pushing progressive gender claims in the 2021 sports debate.
Paxton’s campaign did not immediately return a request for comment.
The episode lands as Democrats elsewhere face their own credibility problems, from fabricated polling that boosted progressive candidates to other Senate races dogged by scandal.
Talarico wants credit for caring about public education and for defending constituents he says were targeted by broad bills. He also wants voters to treat the nonbinary God line and the six-sexes claim as clumsy wording forced by opponents.
The record shows he chose those words on the House floor and in a committee hearing while fighting sex-based sports limits. He is now a statewide candidate asking Texans to accept a softer translation of the same ideology.
That tension is not abstract. Parents, female athletes, and churches across Texas still live with the policies those 2021 fights produced. Talarico’s latest interview does not repeal the votes or erase the tape.
In a race already watched for every absence and every clip, including scrutiny that followed Talarico’s return after a flu absence, the candidate’s own words remain the clearest evidence of what he believed when the cameras were rolling the first time.
Voters can hear the regret. They can also hear the original claims, and decide which version matches the record.