James Talarico Tells Rachel Maddow How Bigoted, Anti-Trans Politics Distract from GOP Corruption

This story originally appeared on The Advocate.Texas state Rep. James Talarico rejected the argument Monday that Democrats must abandon transgender people to win competitive elections, offering one of his clearest responses yet to the Republican campaign against his support for the community.“I don’t think we win by selling people out,” Talarico told Rachel Maddow during an appearance on MS NOW’s The Rachel Maddow Show. “And we’re refusing to do that in this campaign.”Talarico, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Texas, is running against Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton in a contest that could test whether a Democrat can combine unapologetic support for LGBTQ+ people with an appeal to voters exhausted by partisan warfare. Maddow asked Talarico about critics who contend that his support for transgender people makes him unelectable in a state where Republicans have spent years turning the community into a political target. Talarico said politicians were exploiting complicated policy questions, including the participation of transgender athletes in sports, not to find workable answers but to generate fear and division.“There are difficult issues, trying to figure out trans athletes in sports,” he said. “That’s an issue where we could actually come to a policy solution. But instead, politicians like Ken Paxton, they use those difficult issues to rile people up, to divide us, to distract us in order to win power for themselves.”“It’s divide and conquer,” he added. “It’s the oldest strategy in the world. I think people are really tired of these culture war fights that are designed to tear us apart, designed to get us angry.”Related: The rainbow Pride pin James Talarico encouraged me to wearRepublicans have made Talarico’s trans support a campaign issueTalarico’s response came after months of attacks from Republicans seeking to portray his defense of transgender Texans as evidence that he is culturally out of step with t