James Talarico, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Texas, faces Republican Ken Paxton on Tuesday, Nov. 3. His first race, for a Texas House seat in 2018, got a lift from Glen Maxey, the first openly gay member of the Texas Legislature.
Maxey, now 74, had the Texas Democratic Party’s data team flag Democrats who’d moved into swing House districts but never updated their voter registration, Texas Monthly reported Oct. 31. About 7,000 of those voters lived in Talarico’s district in Williamson County. Maxey sent each one a prefilled registration form, and about 4,500 returned it. Those returns measure registration activity, not how many people ultimately voted for Talarico.
Talarico calls Maxey the “organizer-in-chief.” Recalling their first meeting, at an Austin coffee shop in 2017, he told the magazine, “I brought numbers, because Glen Maxey is a numbers person.”
Talarico beat Republican Cynthia Flores 36,798 to 34,340 in House District 52, Texas Secretary of State results show. That’s a 2,458-vote margin. He also won a same-day special election for the rest of retiring Rep. Larry Gonzales’ term, by 1,122 votes. So he took the oath early, on Nov. 20, 2018, as the Legislature’s youngest member, The Daily Texan reported.
“I usually tell people that teaching middle school is the best preparation for Texas politics you could have,” Talarico, then 29, told the student paper.
Maxey ran the program in 18 districts, and 12 of them flipped, according to Texas Monthly. Democrats picked up 12 Texas House seats that November, KVUE reported.
Talarico First Saw Maxey at a Hate-Crimes Rally as a Fourth Grader
Talarico was in fourth grade when he went with members of his church to a demonstration for hate-crimes legislation outside the Governor’s Mansion in Austin.
“It was the first political thing I’d ever done in my life, and Glen was out front,” he told Texas Monthly in a Labor Day interview. He called Maxey “a history maker.”
Maxey Went From AIDS Activist to Austin’s House District 51 Seat in 1991
Maxey won the Austin seat in a March 1991 special election runoff by 458 votes, the magazine reported. He’d taught fifth grade and led the Lesbian/Gay Rights Lobby of Texas before that, according to his biography from the Texas State Cemetery, which maintains an archival biography of his public service. He also co-founded AIDS Services of Austin and the Texas AIDS Network.
Ann Richards, who’d just been elected governor, warned him when he ran. “They’ll never let you do anything but fight losing battles on gay and AIDS issues,” she told him, Maxey recalled as he announced his retirement in December 2001, the Austin Chronicle reported.
Seven years in, he was still the only openly gay lawmaker. “I’m sorry, but I’m the only openly gay person up there [in the Legislature] in a right-wing, homophobic state,” he told the Chronicle in 1998.
Maxey’s 1999 CHIP Fight With Gov. George W. Bush
In 1999, Maxey wanted the new Children’s Health Insurance Program open to families earning up to 200% of the federal poverty level. That would have covered about 500,000 uninsured kids, the Chronicle reported. Bush’s staff pushed for 150%.
After the bill cleared committee, Bush walked up to Maxey on the House floor. “You shoved it down our throat,” the governor said, according to Texas Monthly. Bush had told reporters he’d sign a bill barring gay men and lesbians from adopting or fostering kids, the magazine reported. Maxey brought it up.
“Governor, when you say a gay person isn’t fit to be a parent, you’re talking about me,” he told Bush.
The CHIP legislation passed. When Bush later took credit for the program on the campaign trail, Maxey told the Chronicle in 2000, “It’s shameless to take credit for something he wasn’t supporting.”
The 2026 Senate Race Brings Maxey Back to Voter Registration
The Senate race is close. A Quantus Insights poll of 1,221 likely voters, conducted Oct. 26 to 28, put Paxton at 48.7% and Talarico at 47.6%, FOX 7 Austin reported. That 1.1-point gap is within the poll’s reported 3.2-point margin of error.
At an Oct. 24 rally in Georgetown, Paxton said, “Talarico believes that God is non-binary. I’m still looking for that in the Bible,” FOX 7 Austin reported. In San Antonio that day, Talarico said, “Ken Paxton represents everything that’s wrong with our politics. He doesn’t serve us, he serves himself.”
Maxey’s newest project, built with Civitech CEO Jeremy Smith, aimed 2.6 million voter registration applications at 1.3 million Texas doors this fall, Texas Monthly reported. “It ain’t going to be rocket science to do this project,” he told volunteers on a statewide Zoom call.
He ended the call with, “Let’s go kick some Republican ass.”
