Allred, Talarico and the future of Democrats in Texas
Here & Now Anytime
NPR
4.1 • 953 Ratings
🗓️ 19 September 2025
⏱️ 20 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
And, one of Talarico’s Democratic challengers is former congressman, civil rights attorney and former NFL linebacker Colin Allred. Allred shares more about why he’s running and what he sees for the future of his party.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Support for here and now anytime comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink software for technical computing and model-based design. |
| 0:09.2 | MathWorks accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at MathWorks.com. |
| 0:17.5 | WBUR Podcasts, Boston. |
| 0:21.6 | I already have a religion and I already have a sports team. |
| 0:25.1 | The reason that I'm a Democrat is because I believe our party can be a vehicle for winning |
| 0:32.5 | elections, gaining political power, and making people's lives better. |
| 0:37.8 | Democrats running to flip a Senate seat in Texas think they can make political history. |
| 0:43.6 | But they have different ideas about how to pull it off. |
| 1:01.9 | It's Friday, September 19th, and this is here and now anytime from NPR and WBUR Boston. |
| 1:03.0 | I'm Chris Bentley. |
| 1:16.3 | Today on the show, the midterm elections are more than a year away, and we're going to be hearing a lot more in that time about the direction of the country and the two major political parties. |
| 1:27.2 | Democrats need to flip four seats to win control of the Senate, and one of the states they're targeting is Texas, where Republican Senator John Cornyn is up for re-election. A Texas Democrat has not won a statewide |
| 1:31.1 | office in more than 30 years, despite some expensive campaigns with a lot of national attention |
| 1:38.4 | in recent cycles. So what makes these candidates think they can change things? We wanted to find out and get an early temperature check on the party's direction. |
| 1:48.2 | So today we're hearing from two of the Democratic primary candidates. |
| 1:52.0 | We've reached out to Republican Senator John Cornyn. |
| 1:54.7 | His office declined our request for an interview, citing his schedule. |
| 1:59.1 | He is also facing primary challengers on the right, |
| 2:01.8 | including from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, and that's one reason that Democrats say the |
| 2:06.9 | GOP is divided enough to give them an opening. Later in the show, we'll hear from Colin |
| 2:11.8 | Allred, a former Dallas area congressman who's looking to unseat Cornyn. But first, |
| 2:18.9 | state representative James Talarico. Talariko is 36 years old. He's a former public school teacher and |
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