Texas Democrat James Talarico wanted voters to see a rugged, working-class Texan behind the wheel of a big pickup truck.
What they got instead was a sham.
And now Talarico’s campaign is scrambling to explain this damning video.
The Truck That Wasn’t His
A campaign ad selling Talarico as a working-class Texan features the Democrat behind the wheel of a Dodge Ram 1500 that traces back to an Enterprise rental lot, according to a report published recently.
The ad, titled “Waking Up,” opens on Texans rising before dawn and casts Talarico as one of them. He talks about being raised by a single mother “guided by faith,” his years as a teacher, and his work in the state House to lower drug costs and cut property taxes.
In the ad, Talarico says, “I’ll take on corruption and make this economy work for working people again.”
The ad essentially stars the Dodge Ram as Talarico drives through the Lone Star State, with shots of him behind the wheel intertwined with images of hardworking Texans.
Talarico can be seen driving a 2026 Ram 1500, which journalist David Weigel determined to be owned by Enterprise, in the campaign video. And it wasn’t exactly a hidden clue buried in the fine print.
He was driving a Dodge Ram 1500 instead of his own vehicle, and it wasn’t hard to spot — the plate is visible on screen, and it links back to an Enterprise rental.
Talarico has previously revealed that he owns a midsize Chevy Colorado, but in the campaign ad he is driving a full-sized Dodge Ram 1500.
Critics accused Talarico of trying to “look like a real Texan,” but his campaign said the switch was simply for production purposes. “James’ truck has tinted windows. We tried to shoot in his Chevy first, but it was too dark to film,” Talarico campaign spokesperson JT Ennis told Fox News Digital.
The Talarico campaign did not immediately respond when asked if the Dodge Ram was rented.
Production purposes. Right. The man running to represent Texas in the United States Senate couldn’t get his own truck camera-ready, so his team headed to the nearest Enterprise lot and picked up something with a little more horsepower and a lot more Texan credibility.
Some truck enthusiasts were not exactly sympathetic. “You can look at the RAM and see it looks tougher than the Colorado. Size matters. That RAM is taller, longer, wider. More like a truck,” conservative writer Caleb Howe wrote.
A Bad Week Gets Worse
But the rental truck wasn’t even the only problem Talarico ran into recently.
Tweets from Christmas Day 2021 resurfaced where he fangirled over Anthony Fauci after receiving a Fauci action doll from Santa Claus. “I got the coolest action figure for Christmas!” Talarico tweeted.
He went on to write, “Thank you to all the health care superheroes working today. Let’s help by getting vaxxed and boosted!”
Fauci, of course, was the face of COVID lockdowns and the government mandate regime that crushed small businesses, kept kids out of school, and stripped ordinary Americans of basic civil liberties. Talarico didn’t just go along with it — he apparently treasured a plastic likeness of the man responsible.
“It comes as no surprise that James Talarico has a Dr. Fauci action figure,” commentator Benny Johnson quipped on X.
The National Rifle Association cautioned its X followers to “Never trust a grown man that plays with dolls.”
Talarico’s opponent, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, branded Talarico as “too low-T for Texas.”
Talarico’s campaign took a shot at Paxton over his past legal troubles in its response to Fox News Digital, adding, “We look forward to seeing Ken Paxton’s favorite ride — we hear it’s the back of a police car.”
Cute line. But a snappy comeback doesn’t erase the image of a Senate candidate borrowing someone else’s truck to play cowboy for a camera crew.
What This Race Actually Looks Like
Democrats haven’t won a US Senate race in Texas since 1988. That’s nearly four decades of trying, and the closest they came was Beto O’Rourke in 2018 — a candidate who also leaned heavily on carefully crafted imagery of himself as an everyman.
Talarico beat Representative Jasmine Crockett in the March primary to win the Democrat nomination. He now leads Paxton in the Texas Senate race, with a Texas Public Opinion Research survey putting him ahead 45 percent to 40 percent, with a nine-point edge among non-college-educated voters.
That last number is the one worth watching. Non-college-educated voters — working men and women who actually drive full-size pickups because they need them, not because a campaign consultant said it polls well — are supposed to be Talarico’s inroad. And those are exactly the voters most likely to notice when someone rents a truck to pretend to be one of them.
Critics have flagged a gap between how Talarico presents himself and how he votes. The rental Ram episode puts a face on that gap in a way no opposition research memo ever could.
Texas voters have a finely tuned antenna for phoniness. They’ve watched Democrats roll through the state every few years with carefully staged authenticity — the sleeves rolled up, the boots that still have the price tag crease, the borrowed pickup. It never quite works, and it never quite stops.
Talarico is a former schoolteacher turned state legislator who spent Christmas 2021 posting about his Fauci doll and now wants Texas to send him to Washington, DC to fight for working people. The truck was supposed to close the credibility gap. Instead, it opened a new one.
And the campaign’s explanation — tinted windows, too dark to film — is the kind of answer that sounds reasonable for about four seconds before it starts to fall apart. If the candidate’s own truck can’t make it into the candidate’s own ad, that’s a choice someone made. Production teams rent trucks for ads when they want a specific image, not when they’re stuck with a lighting problem.
The ad is called “Waking Up.” Turns out a few Texas voters already did.
Sources: Fox News Digital; Breitbart; Daily Caller; Semafor (David Weigel reporting); Texas Public Opinion Research (TPOR) survey; PJ Media