Fifteen years ago, in May 2011, dozens of newly inducted Teach for America (TFA) corps members gathered at Trinity University in San Antonio to prepare for a five-week summer training institute, which would be hosted at Rice University in Houston. It was the first time I had ever been selected for anything exclusive—TFA’s acceptance rate was around 15 percent at the time—and I had all the attendant feelings of imposter syndrome. You can briefly see this much thinner, less-hot version of me teaching summer school at Madison High School in Houston in this promotional video that TFA San Antonio still has on their YouTube page.

By my account, everyone here dressed well, maintained straight posture, and had impeccable hair. It appeared more like a casting call than teachers’ professional development. I was one of a few born, raised, and educated San Antonians present in a group that represented every corner of the country, many recently credentialed from the nation’s most prestigious institutions.

In meeting my new colleagues, I felt compelled to be my city’s ambassador, but as a functional shut-in during leisure hours I was an imperfect one at best. I was a few years older than most of the new recruits who were predominantly fresh out of undergrad, and as a boring married person I didn’t do much socializing outside of work. On the other hand, many of my fellow corps members lived together in large, rented houses, forming lifelong bonds with one another. This facet of being a TFA corps member underscores how the organization is more than a job opportunity; it is a network that fosters career advancement beyond the classroom for its members, a network whose intimacy is forged in the crucible of early-career experiences as classroom teachers. 

One of those new colleagues I met that week was a University of Texas grad who, like me, studied government and would be teaching on San Antonio’s West Side. His name was James Talarico.

My impression of him from the TFA training sessions was that he was serious but not humorless, carrying himself with a firm, gentle confidence uncommon for a 22-year-old. For the next two years of our corps member commitment, these TFA professional development sessions would be the extent of our acquaintanceship as he and most others would eventually leave San Antonio for greener pastures. It came as little surprise to me that, five years after the conclusion of our time in TFA, we’d see one of our own reach the Texas Legislature.

TFA’s recruitment, with its many rounds of interviews and an ostensible audition, promises to field an annual crop of future leaders in education. For most participants, their plans involve this short stint in the classroom before heading off to work in law, campus administration, policymaking, business, or the sprawling tentacles of the nonprofit industrial complex. TFA is less a teacher preparation program than it is a finishing school for future decision-makers in the multilayered technocracy of education policy, one dominated by elites who have historically boosted charter-school expansion. I am a rarity in that I still teach in the city and campus where I did my TFA stint.

TFA’s mission is to ensure that its members are among that elite. That includes those in the upper echelons of elected office.

In this way, it’s impossible to understand Talarico’s meteoric political rise without understanding the network that incubated him. Most writeups on the 36-year-old state legislator tend to gloss over his Teach for America tenure (though Talarico’s campaign bio has leaned heavily on his two years of teaching at San Antonio’s Rhodes Middle School). But TFA and its spinoff organization Leadership for Educational Equity (LEE) are significant nodes of access that helped make possible both his career as a Texas state representative and his unlikely rise to both political celebrity and a primary victory to become Texas Democrats’ U.S. Senate candidate.

LEE started in 2007 as a way to channel TFA alumni and other affiliated partners toward careers in politics and policy, offering workshops, leadership coaching, and fellowships, among other things, to its members. Its website boasts that over 1,100 LEE members are current or former elected officials and that two-thirds of LEE members win in general elections.

TFA CEO Elisa Villanueva Beard serves on the LEE board alongside Emma Bloomberg, daughter of former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The two also serve on the board of the LEE Foundation with hedge fund manager and TFA board member Stephen Mandel. 

Given my academic background as a political science and economics double major in undergrad and my professed interest in politics and policy, I was encouraged by TFA to join LEE when I was a corps member. I still got emails as recently as a year ago asking if I’d be interested in running for local school board, but after my child was born in 2013, my answer has always been “No thanks.” My desire for a quiet, private family life has always triumphed over the allure of holding any levers of institutional power beyond the high-stakes thrill of being an after-school club sponsor.

LEE’s theory of change is top-down, meritocratic, and technocratic, and it openly embraces the aims and generous funding of oligarchs to further its ambitions. This means a cozy relationship with funders who are deeply committed to charter school expansion. In Texas, the now-dissolved Educational Equity PAC was financed almost entirely from a nearly $2 million check from Netflix cofounder and education reformer Reed Hastings. Most of those funds were in turn funneled into the Charter Schools Now PAC and Legacy 44, both of which have directed tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to Talarico’s state House campaigns. Charter Schools Now and Legacy 44’s major donors also include Hastings as well as pro-charter Walmart heirs Jim and Alice Walton, along with ex-Mayor Bloomberg.

Talarico’s first electoral victory came with his initial run for the Texas House in 2018, when he successfully flipped a red seat that included his native Round Rock. His largest donor was plaintiffs attorney-backed Texans for Insurance Reform. But in second place was the LEE Texas PAC, which contributed $50,000. 

This PAC has contributed primarily to local school board races, to candidates on both sides of the aisle, but their donation to Talarico’s race was one of their few efforts at backing a state legislative candidate. Over the course of his four terms in the Lege, LEE Texas PAC has remained one of his largest donors—giving a total of $77,000, mostly concentrated in his competitive 2018 and 2020 campaigns.

LEE Texas PAC’s largest total donor, at over $800,000, is billionaire Silicon Valley investor Arthur Rock, whose deep pockets have funded a host of educational causes nationwide for decades, promoting charter schools and the candidates who support them. He’s a TFA “lifetime director” after years of serving on their board.

Following the 2021 Texas legislative session, Talarico’s District 52 was gerrymandered from a three-point squeaker to a packed-and-cracked deep red seat, pushing him to run in the solid-blue District 50 in Austin, which he easily won in 2022 (and won again unopposed in 2024).

LEE and other networked PACs, including Legacy 44 and Charter Schools Now PAC, have since contributed heavily to Texas State Board of Education member Staci Childs in her campaign for a heavily Democratic open state House seat. Childs is a former TFA Houston corps member whose other campaign contributors include Talarico himself, who gave $2,000 in December.

During his tenure in the Legislature, he has voted in favor of some pro-charter school legislation while also supporting measures to increase transparency for charters. 

In recent years, Talarico has become something of a viral sensation in Texas and among many of my former students, with clips of his impressive dressing-down of opposition lawmakers generating tens of millions of views and reposts on TikTok and Instagram since 2023 when his social media presence skyrocketed. His liberal theology-forward approach has resonated with disaffected Christians who bristle at the rise of Christian nationalism, and his defense of public schools and social progressive causes has made him the latest Southern Democratic wunderkind, upon whom the hopes of interrupting decades of single-party rule rest.

He appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience in July 2025, with the host remarking that Talarico should run for president. Rogan would get closer to his wish two months later when Talarico hard-launched his campaign for U.S. Senate. With this rise in visibility and the prospect of a blue wave in November, Talarico’s opportunity for higher office has once again been buoyed by his TFA network.

We can see this with the pro-Talarico Super PAC Lone Star Rising PAC which raised over $6.5 million in the primary race alone. Lone Star Rising’s treasurer is Alexander Clark, who reportedly met Talarico through TFA in San Antonio. Lone Star Rising PAC has raised six-figure donations from Big Tech and finance figures including LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman. Notably, there was also a half-million-dollar donation from the aforementioned Stephen Mandel. (As a super PAC, Lone Star Rising cannot legally coordinate with the Talarico campaign, which has raised over $20 million on its own.) 

I don’t lay this out with the intent of proving some sinister ulterior motive—that Talarico is somehow insincere in his efforts to curtail corporate influence or deliver on a progressive platform. “I am in this broken system like everybody else is,” he has said, while promising not to “unilaterally disarm while Republicans play by their own rules.” The post-Citizens United reality is that super PACs are going to put their heavy thumbs on the scale as long as it is legal to do so. Any chance to undo this likely requires sympathetic politicians winning power using the very tools they inveigh against.

But it is worth exploring the networks of money and influence that have laid down the infrastructure to make his candidacy viable, and what favors they may expect should he fulfill his potential, despite his record in the Texas Legislature being far from the pro-charter, anti-teacher union archetype they may prefer.

In the meantime, veteran classroom teachers like me will watch this midterm clash with anticipation, as a former schoolteacher tries to do what hasn’t been done by a Texas Democrat since the era of a certain Lyndon Baines Johnson: go from the classroom to the U.S. Senate. 

In response to a request for comment, James Talarico’s campaign spokesperson JT Ennis issued the following statement: “The most common occupation among James’ over 500,000 grassroots contributors has been teachers. James is proud of his record fighting for public education, both during his time as a public school teacher and in the state legislature, where he passed legislation to raise teacher pay, made record investments in our public schools, and led the fight against the billionaire mega-donors who are defunding our public school classrooms with their private school voucher scam. He’ll continue this fight in the U.S. Senate.”

In a statement, Teach for America said it “is a nonpartisan organization and does not endorse or oppose candidates for public office. Teach For America does not recruit any of our alumni to run for office. … The 70,000 people who make up the TFA network pursue many different roles in their commitment to expanding educational opportunities and TFA does not have any policy requirements or expectations for our participants—their many different perspectives and leadership paths attest to this.” 

TFA added: “LEE is a nonprofit nonpartisan organization that is separate from Teach For America. Participation in LEE is optional for interested TFA corps members and alumni, as well as the participants from more than 25 other nonprofit partners.”

The post How Teach for America Helped Set Up James Talarico’s Political Rise  appeared first on The Texas Observer.

What would’ve been school-choice proponents’ triumphant publicity tour after the application period closed on Texas’ shiny new voucher program, in mid-March, was instead consumed by catty finger-pointing between two top state officials over who’s to blame for the state seemingly botching its attempt to religiously discriminate against some program participants.

It’s the sort of comedic tragedy that has become all too common in the red empire of Texas: Pass a harmful new policy while prevaricating as to its actual intent, create a pretext to carry out the policy in a clearly discriminatory fashion, invite a costly lawsuit that will ultimately end with the state being forced to comply, muddy the waters over who’s to blame. 

While pushing the private-school voucher bill through the state House and Senate last year, Republican legislative hands repeatedly insisted, when presented with various theoretical scenarios, that this near-universal “Texas Education Freedom Accounts” program would be open to any and all types of private schools—of all creeds and persuasions. Religious freedom was to reign supreme. How dare thee even question the universality of this venerable program, Republican legislators inveighed. 

In predictable fashion, the Texas GOP—lately in the throes of another virulent anti-Muslim bender—hasn’t quite lived up to that promise. In the lead-up to the official voucher rollout, acting Texas Comptroller Kelly Hancock—who is currently in charge of administering the program and was, at the time, trying to win a primary election to hold onto his appointed post—used the administrative process to effectively block certain Islamic schools from participating by alleging such potential applicants were affiliated with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a national civil rights group akin to the NAACP or LULAC, and the Egypt-based transnational organization the Muslim Brotherhood, each of which the state has deemed a “foreign terrorist organization.” (The rule also sought to block schools affiliated with the darned Chinese Communist Party.) The conflation of CAIR with the Muslim Brotherhood and Palestine’s Hamas is a theory that’s long brewed in the right’s more feverish swamps. (CAIR is suing the State of Texas over this designation.) 

In response, a group of Islamic schools and Muslim families went to court over the discriminatory exclusion from the program: “The exclusion is not based on individualized findings of unlawful conduct by any specific school, but rather on categorical presumptions that Islamic schools are suspect and potentially linked to terrorism by virtue of their religious identity and community associations,” the lawsuit read. A federal judge ordered the state to extend its application deadline to allow for these schools to go through the process. 

The comptroller’s office has since said that it has accepted all eligible Islamic schools that applied to participate in the program—including Houston’s Quran Academy—but not before Hancock sent a letter critiquing Attorney General Ken Paxton’s handling of the court case and urging Paxton to strip Quran Academy, which the state unsubstantially claims has links to the Muslim Brotherhood, of its ability to operate in the state. In the letter, Hancock—fresh off being blown out in his primary bid to be the duly elected comptroller by ex-state Senator Don Huffines—effectively accused Paxton of being soft on terrorism. “Texas cannot be asleep at the wheel as radical Islam spreads,” Hancock wrote. 

Paxton, in the midst of a heated runoff battle with John Cornyn after coming in second in his own primary bid to ascend to the U.S. Senate, took exception to being scolded by the likes of a RINO such as Hancock (i.e., one of the two GOP senators who voted to convict Paxton in his impeachment proceedings in 2023). The still-AG issued a scorched-earth retort, calling the interim comptroller an incompetent never-Trump hack nursing a deep political grudge—and demanding Hancock be fired. (It’s not clear who, if anyone, would have the authority to fire him.) 

Paxton then said his office, whose duties include serving as legal counsel for state agencies, would no longer be defending the comptroller in the federal vouchers lawsuit, claiming Hancock’s letter undermined the state’s case and introduced “incendiary” accusations against Quran Academy that had not been entered into evidence in court. 

“Never before have I witnessed such a fundamentally unserious person be both an unbelievable embarrassment to the State and put his own interests above Texans,” Paxton wrote. “It would be easy to disregard Kelly Hancock’s letter as nothing more than hotheaded, politically-motivated behavior from someone desperately clinging to relevancy, but it’s far worse than that: His actions hurt my office’s ability to defend the Comptroller’s office in these critical cases.”

For vouchers, there have been some other PR snags as well. For instance, one religious school—Cypress Christian in the Houston area—that hosted a pro-voucher event during Governor Greg Abbott’s promotional tour last year, has itself opted not to participate in the program. 

Per the Houston Chronicle, the school’s leader told parents that the institution is “governed exclusively by biblical doctrine and scripture” and that enrolling in the voucher program would inherently result in “ongoing government entanglement.” Many other high-end private schools—where the annual tuition typically far exceeds the standard $10,000 voucher allotment—in the Houston area have also opted against participation. 

All the while, Abbott—who claims political ownership of both the school voucher program, having succeeded in ramming it through a humbled Texas House, and Kelly Hancock’s comptrollership, an ally whom he plucked from the state Senate to take over the statewide office and launch of the program—was radio silent. The governor, in late March, spent his allotted time at CPAC in Dallas, while Paxton and Hancock traded potshots, droning on about the urgent need to stop the “Talarico takeover of Texas,” referencing the Democrats’ Senate candidate. 

Meanwhile, how does the voucher program—which was sold as a tool to allow low-income families to get their kids out of the state’s failing woke indoctrination facilities, known as public schools, and into predominantly Christian private schools—appear to be sizing up with its mission? 

It’s certainly succeeded in getting more applications than the $1 billion that the state has initially appropriated can cover, which is about 90,000 spots. Applications had been submitted for about 275,000 students as of late March. But just 25 percent of those—about 60,000—were for students currently enrolled in public schools, according to state comptroller data. (That, per the Texas Center for Voucher Transparency, amounts to about 1 percent of the state’s 5.5 million public school students.)

To be clear, that means the vast majority of the students who are applying for vouchers are already enrolled in private schools, being homeschooled, or entering school for the first time. There were roughly 2,300 schools enrolled in the program so far—though those schools have full discretion in whether or not to accept a voucher recipient. Many of the enrolled schools are parochial Catholic schools or Christian academies. As the Texas Observer has previously reported, dozens of these enrolled schools have policies that restrict admission based on religion and even sexual identity. 

The application period closed on March 31, then the process moved on to the next phase in which the state—through its privately contracted voucher vendor—will determine who receives the limited number of vouchers, based on a convoluted, multistep process accounting for family income and other variables. 

By that point, it seems assured, some new brouhaha will be consuming the program. 

The post Who Accounts for Freedom? appeared first on The Texas Observer.