James Talarico

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.

So as our final question, what are three books you'd recommend to the audience?

So I chose a fiction book, a political book, and a religious book just to make sure we cover all our bases.

For the fiction book, my favorite book is Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry, maybe the most famous and beloved Texas classic.

Texas has gotten a bad rap recently around the world for the extremism and corruption coming out of our government.

But if you want to see what's beautiful about our state, that spirit of friendship that I mentioned earlier, read Lonesome Dove.

It captures the spirit of Texas better than a lot of other works of art.

And it's such a great book.

You'll have a blast reading it.