James Talarico

I'll just tell you one quick story.

My colleague James Frank represents Wichita Falls in North Texas.

He's a Freedom Caucus member, the most conservative members of the House.

James and I started a stupid friendship based on that we share the same first name.

And, you know, we joked about it and talked about how we were the James caucus and he was chair, I was vice chair, you know, whatever.

But then that led to us having some more real conversations.

And we started to figure out that he and I are both really dissatisfied with this two-party system.

We are both frustrated by how hard it is to challenge orthodoxies in your own party and the pressure to conform within a political party.

And so I convinced James to co-author my bill, a Bernie Sanders idea actually, in the Texas legislature to import cheaper prescription drugs from Canada into Texas.

James risked a lot to work on that bill.

We got it passed to the House and the Senate and signed by the governor.

It is now law.

We are working on our application as a state to the FDA to start importing those cheaper prescription drugs.

So that's an example of how love changed someone else.

But then James had a bill

that would have allowed homeschool kids to participate in something called UIL, which in Texas is basically our sports league, our extracurriculars, the arts, and you know how serious Texans take our high school football, Friday Night Lights.

Every Democrat was opposed to it.

And I was opposed to it because I'm like, public education is not a buffet table.

You can't come in and take the sports or take the music, the band, and leave behind everything else and not participate in the community.

James sat down with me because we had a relationship.