NY Times: “James Talarico, a Texas Democratic lawmaker running for Senate, was supposed to hold the second rally of his nascent campaign on Sept. 10, the day Charlie Kirk was shot. The horror of the killing shook him deeply, and he thought about canceling. Instead, Talarico retooled his speech to make it all about Kirk’s murder and the algorithmically fueled rancor and contempt deforming American life….
“I disagree with Charlie Kirk on almost every political issue, but Charlie Kirk was a child of God,” he said. “There is something broken in this country. Our politics are broken. Our media are broken. Even our relationships with each other feel broken.”
Until he began his Senate campaign, Talarico was a part-time seminary student; he still plans, eventually, to become a minister. That evening in San Antonio, he told me, “I really wanted to show up not as the politician, but as the pastor.” In truth, he was a bit of both. People are hungry, he told the crowd, “for a different kind of politics. Not a politics of fear, not a politics of hate, not a politics of violence, but a politics of love.””