James Talarico

I don't think they should vote for me because of my faith, but hopefully the faith we share can open a door.

Then we can have conversations about other things.

And I don't want people to overthink this,

You don't have to be a political scientist.

Think about how you build relationships in your own life.

That's what you're going to do in politics.

The relationship between a candidate and a voter or a voter and a voter is just like any other relationship.

It requires honesty.

It requires respect.

It requires humility.

It requires listening.

And sometimes it requires sacrifice.

It sometimes requires that you buck the orthodoxy in your party or buck the position in your party.

to do what you think is right based on the arguments that the person has made.

So I would just advocate for our party to think about how to actually build real relationships at scale with people who aren't with us yet.

Not only will that, I think, lead to winning, which we have a moral imperative to win in a democracy, because if you don't win, you don't get power, and if you don't get power, you can't make people's lives better.

And I say that as a party.

But I also think it will lead to a more fruitful, productive, beautiful kind of politics that this country deserves.

And I've seen it work at a small scale in the district that I won, in the house in Texas, but I also think it could work at scale statewide and maybe even nationwide.

I think it's a nice place to end.