EDITORS' CORNER
OPINION: Oh no — not that! As if the Democratic U.S. Senate candidate doesn’t have dopier things in his past.
A pair of academics don’t appear pleased that Republicans are attacking Democratic Texas U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico for allegedly being a vegan … or at the least against meat consumption.
GOP critics Ken Paxton (Talarico’s Senate opponent), Texas Governor Greg Abbott, Senator Ted Cruz, and President Trump all have jibed Talarico as being “Tofu Talarico,” a “soy latte that speaks,” and an unelectable Lone Star State “vegan.”
Various Republicans pounced (as the mainstream media would say) on a 2022 clip of Talarico saying it is “existential” that Americans reduce their meat consumption not only due to the (alleged) threat of climate change, but because it is the “moral” and “right” thing to do.
“So, I am proud to say that our campaign has officially become a non-meat campaign,” Talarico said. “[W]e are only buying vegan products from our local vegan businesses […] the point is, I think all of us—not just policymakers, but everyone — has to take personal responsibility in this effort.”
In 2022, James Talarico said it’s “existential” to reduce meat consumption to fight climate change.
— Bobby LaValley (@Bobby_LaVallley) March 17, 2026
“I am proud to say that our campaign has officially become a non-meat campaign… We are only buying vegan products from our local vegan businesses.” pic.twitter.com/tz6K1aGYsy
Professors S Marek Muller (Texas State U.) and David Rooney (U. Wyoming), “communication scholars who study the symbolic roles of meat and meat-eating in political communication,” point out that Talarico denies being vegan or vegetarian, and note he’s said his Senate campaign actually “runs on barbecue.”
But if that’s true, why did he make those above remarks? Why did he order a potato, egg, and cheese taco at a restaurant earlier this year? That arguably is a bigger gaffe than John Kerry asking for Swiss cheese on his Philly cheesesteak during the 2004 presidential campaign.
Muller (pictured) and Rooney say “accusations of meat avoidance […] can be a potent rhetorical weapon.”
In Talarico’s case, it’s being utilized to show he’s weak … and possibly gay. After all as the authors admit, vegans “overwhelmingly” are female, young, and progressive. (Talarico claims his girlfriend is vegan.)
MORE: Eating meat ‘worse than the Holocaust,’ lecturer tells students
And then we’re treated to the critical/oppressive history:
Historically, Western norms during the 19th and 20th centuries held that to not eat meat is odd at best, and suspicious at worst.
In the late 1800s, colonialism in Asia was partially justified on the grounds that Asian men were but “effeminate rice eaters” who, according to 19th-century neurologist James Leonard Corning, lacked “the intellectual vigor of flesh-eating men.”
Negative appeals to veganism again flourished in 2019 after Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s “Green New Deal,” a resolution proposing to combat climate change. Conservative senators like Joni Ernst and Marsha Blackburn attacked the environmentally progressive initiative as a “war on meat,” posing an existential threat to meat eaters and cattle farmers.
There certainly are more controversial issues on which to challenge Talarico; he’s claimed God is “non-binary,” that if Jesus “were here today, they would ‘disappear’ him into an unmarked vehicle” (“they” apparently being ICE), that “modern science” says there are six genders, and that Jesus “was a feminist.”
Wearing a transgender pride flag, James talarico opposes voter ID and claims "there is no voter fraud in the state of Texas." #TXsen pic.twitter.com/LIgtvbOSjW
— Lone Star Liberty PAC (@LoneStar_PAC) July 17, 2026
So ribbing him about (allegedly) being vegan/vegetarian really is small potatoes when it comes to political campaigning. And let’s be real — it’s not as if he’s being called a Nazi … or worse.
According to “their” faculty page, Muller (who uses plural pronouns) notes that “by examining the intersections of animalization, dehumanization, speciesism, and other oppressive -isms, [‘they’] use prescriptive rhetorical methods to suggest ethics, policies, and linguistic shifts conducive to total liberation and multispecies justice.”
Rooney researches “environmental communication, nonhuman, mechanic and animal rhetorics, political communication, and critical/cultural studies” and has written on the topics of “far-right communities, environmental conspiracies,” and “the cultural and symbolic politics of meat production and consumption.”
