HOUSTON — James Talarico, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Texas, is directly confronting attacks on his masculinity being lobbed by his rival Ken Paxton and other Republicans as the general election campaign gets off to a personal start.

“In a time when there’s so much debate about what it means to be a man, my dad showed me every Saturday morning. He would mow our lawn, and then, without telling anyone, without anyone asking him, he would go next door and mow our neighbor’s lawn,” Talarico told the crowd at a campaign event this week. “Nowadays our culture tells young men that greatness is tearing other people down, trolling and owning and dominating, but my dad showed me what real greatness looks like.”

Moments after it became clear that Paxton would become the Republican nominee for Senate in Texas, a state that hasn’t elected a statewide Democrat in decades, his allies began raising questions about Talarico’s sexuality, masculinity, diet and other topics that they hope could cause general election voters to turn against him.

Stephen Miller, President Donald Trump’s deputy chief of staff, posted an inflammatory statement on X on Wednesday: “The Democrats made history in Texas by nominating their first transgender senate candidate.”

Republicans have also been bringing up Talarico’s past statements, including when he referred to God as “nonbinary.”

He told CBS News in an interview this week he “missed the mark” with some of his past comments.

The Democratic nominee is making affordability a central message of his campaign and talks about taking down billionaires. But he also added a new message: focusing more on his adoptive father, who he said taught him how to be a man.

“The fact that there’s all this debate about who’s a real man — I wanted to use [my father’s] example because he showed me what being a man is all about,” Talarico told NOTUS while speaking to reporters after Wednesday’s event. He later added, “I think that’s what this campaign is going to be a referendum on: selfishness versus service.”

Talarico is the underdog in a general election for Senate against Paxton, the state attorney general, who beat incumbent Sen. John Cornyn in a primary runoff Tuesday. The race has attracted national attention, with Democrats and Republicans alike watching whether Talarico, a 37-year-old state House member from the Austin area, could flip a seat that Cornyn held for more than two decades. The fact that the reliably red state is in play is upping the pressure on Talarico to demonstrate some independence from other national figures in his party.

Paxton, on the other hand, was endorsed by Trump last week. The president still has an iron grip on Republican voters in the state, who have supported him overwhelmingly in his elections.

The question will be which party can turn out more independent voters with Paxton, rather than the relatively more moderate Cornyn, on the ballot.

The Republican nominee has spent most of his decade-plus time in office dealing with controversy. He was indicted in 2015 on felony securities fraud charges, which were eventually resolved years later with no admission of guilt. He was impeached by the Texas House in 2023, though the state Senate acquitted him. He also faced scrutiny in his personal life after he admitted an affair and his wife’s 2025 divorce filing revealed details about the relationship. Through it all, Paxton has dismissed the accusations as politically motivated.

“Ken Paxton is a criminal. Ken Paxton is the most corrupt politician in America, and he belongs nowhere close to the United States Senate,” Talarico said. “Three years ago today, Ken Paxton was impeached by his own party for using his public office, his position of public trust to enrich himself and his donors at our expense. Ken Paxton is morally unfit for office.”

Even as Republicans have questioned everything from Talarico’s sexuality — he has said he has a longtime girlfriend who was a former staffer — to whether he might be a vegan, he has sought to turn the focus back to Paxton’s past.

“Those are fighting words in the state of Texas,” he said, mocking the charge that he doesn’t eat meat. “I’m an eighth-generation Texan. I’ve been eating barbecue since before Ken Paxton’s first indictment.”

He also addressed the “cringe” label that Republicans have attempted to give him about previous statements he’s made. Talarico said: “I resent any insinuation that I’m not Texan. And I will say that this is the playbook of puppet politicians like Ken Paxton: distraction and division.”

A reporter asked Talarico how he planned to succeed with the same kinds of attacks against Paxton that didn’t work for Cornyn. He maintained that “there’s a huge difference between a Republican primary when about a million Texans vote versus a general election.”

He added: “The reason that I’m leading in every public and private poll against Ken Paxton is because Texans are sick of corrupt politicians like him, and they’re looking for servant leaders. Eeven if they don’t agree with me on every issue, they’re looking for a senator who’s going to fight for them.”

Paxton defended his strategy of raising questions about Talarico’s personal life and diet in a statement to NOTUS: “Absolutely nothing has been taken out of context. Those are his words, and now he’s running from them. … Now that he’s in a general election, he wants to run from those statements and pretend they meant something different than what he clearly intended at the time. That’s simply not true, and we are going to hold him accountable for his own words.”