Ken Paxton's campaign for U.S. Senate in Texas has spent the past week running a TV ad that tells Texans his opponent, Democrat James Talarico, wants to raise their taxes. The ad's centerpiece is a clip of Talarico on stage saying, "If you are OK with getting taxed more, you are welcome to join this movement."
FactCheck.org looked at what Talarico actually said. The ad, it found, took his comments "out of context."
What the ad cut out
The clip comes from an interview Talarico did alongside businessman Mark Cuban. Here is the full sentence, as FactCheck.org quotes it:
"I've told every, you know, wealthy person I come across in this race, if you are OK with getting taxed more, if you're OK with me limiting your influence in politics, you are welcome to join this movement that we are building."
He was talking to wealthy people. He was telling wealthy people that if they joined him, they should expect higher taxes and less influence over politics. Earlier in the same answer, he'd been talking about Franklin D. Roosevelt and Bobby Kennedy as wealthy men who changed the system to help working people.
Paxton's ad kept the part about taxes and dropped the part about who would pay them. It also cut the middle of the sentence, about limiting rich people's influence in politics, so the two halves run together. It turned a message aimed at millionaires into a threat aimed at every Texas family watching TV.
The other claims don't hold up either
The ad makes more charges. FactCheck.org went through them:
- "Voted for an income tax." Texas doesn't have a personal income tax. What Talarico voted against in 2019 was a resolution to put an income-tax ban into the state constitution. Voting against a constitutional ban is not voting for a tax.
- "Pushing higher property taxes." The ad points to a 2019 vote against a bill capping local property tax increases. It leaves out that in 2023, Talarico voted for the two bills news reports described as the largest property tax cut in the state's history. Only a handful of House members voted against them.
- "I don't care what taxes you have to raise." That line comes from an August 2020 virtual town hall, in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, about a possible state budget shortfall. FactCheck.org says the comment was hypothetical: he was arguing against cutting health care and schools. His next sentence was, "We are not going to balance our budget off of the most vulnerable people in this state."
- "Supports taxing tips, overtime and Social Security." This comes from Talarico's opposition to Trump's 2025 budget bill. His campaign says he supports that law's middle-class tax changes.
This is how Paxton runs against Talarico
It is not the first time. In September, Paxton released an AI-generated video of Talarico giving a speech he never gave, built from fragments of real remarks with the context removed. In October he called Talarico "mentally fragile" while his senior adviser spread a false claim that Talarico had been committed to a mental institution.
The tax ad uses the same method with a real clip: keep the words that sound bad, drop the words that explain them.
What the record shows
Ken Paxton's Senate ad shows James Talarico saying "If you are OK with getting taxed more, you are welcome to join this movement," but leaves out that he was speaking to wealthy people about taxing the wealthy. FactCheck.org found the ad took his comments out of context. Its claim that Talarico "voted for an income tax" refers to a vote against a constitutional ban on one, and its property-tax charge leaves out his 2023 vote for what news reports called the largest property tax cut in Texas history.
Source
Paxton Ad Takes Talarico Taxes Comments Out of Context — Lori Robertson, FactCheck.org, October 23, 2026
