Texas Democrat James Talarico has been running around slamming Ken Paxton .
There’s just one problem with what Talarico is saying.
And what Talarico wasn’t telling voters hit like a freight train.
The Attack That Blew Up in Talarico’s Face
Talarico, a Texas state senator running as the Democrat nominee for US Senate, went after Paxton recently in an interview with MS NOW, saying, “He’s taken nearly half a million dollars from data center companies and then he turns around and protects those companies at our expense.”
He also called it outright corruption.
“This is corruption at its worst when you have these big industries that are buying politicians like Ken Paxton and then those puppets turn around and rig the system in favor of those special interests,” Talarico said.
Strong words.
But according to Federal Election Commission records cited by a NOTUS report, Paxton has received roughly $400,000 from data-center-connected donors.
Talarico, by contrast, has accepted more than $11 million from donors with ties to the same industry, according to FEC records.
That’s not a rounding error.
That’s roughly 27 times more Big Tech-adjacent money flowing into Talarico’s orbit than the amount he’s attacking Paxton for accepting.
And the Paxton campaign was happy to point it out.
“He claims that anyone taking money from data center interests is corrupt. Well, then he must be the most corrupt politician in America, because his campaign infrastructure has taken $12 million from donors with data center ties,” the Paxton campaign said, according to reporting from KTAL News.
Who’s Actually Funding Talarico
The biggest name bankrolling Talarico’s operation is Reid Hoffman, the LinkedIn co-founder and billionaire venture capitalist.
Hoffman has poured $11.5 million into Lone Star Rising, the super PAC supporting Talarico, according to FEC filings reported by the Dallas Morning News.
Hoffman is also a major AI investor, which puts him squarely in the ecosystem of the data center industry Talarico claims to be fighting.
Then there’s Stephen Mandel, founder and managing member of Lone Pine Capital, who has contributed roughly $500,000 to Talarico-affiliated groups, including LSR PAC, according to FEC filings.
Mandel’s investment portfolio includes companies tied directly to the data-center boom, including Talen Energy, which provides power for data centers, and Teradyne, which designs and manufactures advanced industrial robotics for the biggest tech companies, according to the Daily Caller’s reporting.
Tench Coxe, a director at Nvidia who serves on several of the company’s committees, also has ties to the AI and data-center industry.
Nvidia promotes the expansion of AI data centers and has been involved in projects in West Texas and Fort Worth.
And Coxe’s wife, Simone, donated $500,000 in two installments to Talarico’s LSR PAC, according to FEC filings cited by the Daily Caller.
Simone and Tench Coxe are also part-owners of Major League Soccer’s Austin FC.
Talarico has rolled out his own proposals for regulating data centers ahead of the 2026 Senate race, posting on social media that Texans should “start by cracking down on these data centers across the state, that are jacking up our utility bills, and using up all our water.”
But the men and women writing the biggest checks to put him in office have a financial stake in seeing those same data centers expand, not shrink.
That’s a tension Talarico has never adequately explained.
The Establishment Double Standard Playing Out in Real Time
The data center hypocrisy is damaging enough on its own, but it sits inside a larger story about how the Republican establishment has handled the Texas race since Paxton defeated incumbent US Senator John Cornyn in the primary.
Cornyn, who championed Joe Biden’s gun control legislation and supported amnesty measures, has publicly said he will not campaign or raise money for Paxton, whom he called a “con man” during the race, according to Axios reporting.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune was noncommittal when asked whether he would direct GOP campaign funds toward the Texas Senate race, according to the Houston Chronicle.
The Senate Leadership Fund, the main Senate Republican super PAC associated with Thune, had been aligned with Cornyn during the primary.
That group has already placed its fall ad reservations, buying up nearly $350 million of airtime across eight states that does not include Texas, according to the Texas Tribune.
Paxton has raised significantly less than Talarico, hauling in roughly $17 million between his main campaign account and the pro-Paxton super PAC Lone Star Liberty, compared to Talarico’s more than $70 million, according to reporting from multiple outlets.
That funding gap is not an accident.
It reflects the same institutional resistance from establishment Republicans who would rather see a Democrat hold the seat than watch a MAGA-aligned senator go to Washington and actually fight for the America First agenda.
Compare that to what happened in Michigan, where Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer had backed Representative Haley Stevens against progressive Abdul El-Sayed in the Democrat primary.
El-Sayed won anyway.
And Schumer, within a day of the result, endorsed El-Sayed and released a joint statement with Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chair Senator Kirsten Gillibrand praising El-Sayed for “an energetic campaign that inspired thousands of Michiganders,” according to CNN’s reporting.
Schumer folded fast and fell in line behind a candidate who had spent the primary arguing Schumer should no longer lead Senate Democrats.
That’s how the Democrat Party handles primary upsets from its ideological wing.
Republicans, at least the establishment variety, have chosen a different path in Texas, one that looks a lot like sabotage dressed up as strategic caution.
There’s another dimension to Talarico that deserves scrutiny beyond the donor hypocrisy.
Talarico has a long record of using the Bible to justify positions that stand in direct contradiction to traditional Christian teaching.
On an episode of *The Joe Rogan Experience*, Talarico said the story of Jesus Christ’s incarnation justifies his support for abortion, according to Fox News reporting.
He has also said from the Texas House floor that “God is non-binary,” and that “[t]rans children are God’s children, made in God’s own image,” according to Breitbart’s reporting on his 2021 floor speech.
And he has said, “Jesus never talks about abortion. The Bible is silent on abortion,” according to Fox News.
Democrats who compare their policy agenda to the teachings of Jesus selectively ignore clear biblical positions.
Scripture does not call for the destruction of unborn life.
It affirms life in the womb, presents marriage as the union of man and woman, and recognizes the created distinction between male and female.
Talarico’s use of Christian language to defend abortion and gender ideology is not a serious reading of Scripture.
It is political theater aimed at voters who might otherwise recoil from his actual record.
The data center story is the clearest version of that same pattern: say one thing loudly, do another quietly, and hope nobody checks the FEC filings.
Big Tech data centers are driving up electricity bills for ordinary Texas families, consuming massive amounts of water, and accelerating the AI systems that Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has warned could eliminate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs and drive unemployment to 10 to 20 percent within one to five years.
Those are real costs borne by real Texans.
And the same companies building those facilities previously throttled, demonetized, and banned conservative speech on COVID policy, the 2020 election, and January 6.
Talarico is not fighting that industry.
He is funded by it.
The man attacking Ken Paxton for taking roughly $400,000 from data-center-connected donors has himself accepted more than $11 million from the same ecosystem, bankrolled largely by a LinkedIn billionaire who has invested heavily in the AI expansion driving demand for those very facilities.
Texas voters can do that math.
And the Republican establishment figures who are sitting on their hands while Talarico outspends Paxton by a ratio of four to one might want to consider what it says about their priorities that they moved faster to unite behind a progressive who beat their hand-picked candidate in Michigan than they have to fully back a MAGA-aligned nominee in a state that should not even be competitive.
Sources: Daily Caller, “Talarico Rips Paxton’s Data Center Donors — But He’s In Bed With Them Too”; NOTUS, “Ken Paxton Rakes In Data Center Donations as Texans Turn Against Industry”; Dallas Morning News, “Who are James Talarico and Ken Paxton’s biggest donors in Senate race?”; Texas Tribune, “Senate Republicans trashed Paxton. They need each other to win.”; Axios Austin, “Cornyn donors largely stay away from Paxton”; Houston Chronicle, “GOP divided over who should foot the bill for Ken Paxton’s campaign”; CNN, “Progressive Abdul El-Sayed wins Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary”; Fox News, “‘God is non-binary’: Texas Dem nominee Talarico’s past remarks on abortion, race and gender draw scrutiny”; Breitbart, “Texas Democrat Senate Candidate James Talarico Says Bible ‘Silent on Abortion'”