Willie Nelson has thrown his support behind Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico, who is running against Republican Ken Paxton in Texas. The 93-year-old country music icon appears in a video released by the Talarico campaign, offering a direct message to voters.
"Hi, this is Wille Nelson," Nelson says in the video. "I've gotten to know James Talarico. He's a good man who will be a good senator for the state of Texas. Please vote, and vote for James Talarico."
The endorsement follows an earlier public connection between the two men. Talarico appeared with Nelson backstage at the singer's annual July 4th concert earlier this summer, and a photo from the event showed Nelson wearing a Talarico hat.
Talarico is seeking to become the first Democrat to win a statewide election in Texas in more than 30 years. Current polling shows the race tighter than past Democratic bids, with Talarico holding narrow leads in most surveys.
This is not the first time Nelson has inserted himself into a major Texas race. In 2018, he endorsed Beto O'Rourke's Senate campaign against Ted Cruz, performed at an O'Rourke rally, and released a song titled "Vote 'Em Out." O'Rourke ultimately lost that race to Cruz by less than three percentage points. Four years later, Nelson again backed O'Rourke in his 2022 gubernatorial bid against Greg Abbott, a contest that was not nearly as close.
Cruz responded to Nelson's latest endorsement with a pointed jab at the singer's track record in statewide politics. "Willie's music is great," Cruz said, "but historically, [a Nelson endorsement] has been the beginning of the end for Democrat campaigns in Texas."
Photo: Billy Hathorn, CC BY 3.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
