What James Talarico Did Before Running for Office

Before he was a Texas state representative running for U.S. Senate, James Talarico was a sixth-grade teacher. That job, more than any campaign strategy, is what he points to when explaining why he got into public service at all.

James Talarico Before Politics: A Teacher First

After graduating from the University of Texas at Austin in 2010 with a government degree, Talarico wasn't sure what came next. It was two friends, teaching in their own classrooms, who changed his mind — one had him read stories to first-graders in Houston, the other put him in front of third-graders in Dallas. In 2011, he joined Teach For America and began teaching sixth-grade English at Rhodes Middle School, on San Antonio's Westside, one of the poorest parts of the state. He was 22.

Over two years in that classroom, Talarico watched what happens when public systems fail the kids who need them most: a counselor cut here, a family losing health coverage there, a student finally turning a corner only to lose the support that got him there. He's pointed to one student in particular, a sixth grader he calls Justin, whose struggles outside the classroom convinced Talarico that teaching alone wouldn't be enough to change the odds stacked against kids like him. He has said those two years "changed everything" about how he saw his own future.

The Job That Sent Him to the Texas House

Talarico left the classroom for a master's in education policy at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, then returned to Texas as the Central Texas executive director for Reasoning Mind, a nonprofit that brought technology to low-income classrooms across the state. It was work that kept him close to the same schools and the same kids he'd taught, just from a different seat.

When his own state representative stepped down in 2017, Talarico ran,and became the youngest member of the Texas House in 2018. He carried the classroom with him into the Capitol — his first term helped write the biggest overhaul of Texas school finance in twenty years, directing more money to underfunded districts and raising teacher pay. It's a résumé built in classrooms and nonprofits, not law firms or PACs, and it's the one he now points to on the Senate campaign trail as proof of who he'll fight for in Washington.