When a young, untested former school teacher stood up to address a modest gathering of local donors in Austin, the state capital of Texas, Wendy Davis felt sorry for him. “Poor kid,” she remembers thinking.

Then James Talarico began speaking. “He was like five or six sentences in and I knew that something was different about him,” recalls Davis, a former Democratic state senator. “He was as articulate and unique then as he is now. From that day, I started calling him ‘Baby Obama’.”

Eight years after that first fundraising event, “Baby Obama” is no longer a precocious candidate for the state house with paper slogans that read “A future as bright as Texas”. Now 37, Talarico will aim to redraw the political map next week by becoming the first Democrat to win a Senate seat in the Lone Star state since 1988.

The threat that he poses to Republicans’ grip on power has become clear in the final stretch of a fraught campaign. Over the past month Donald Trump rallied in Texas and branded him “James Talafreako”; JD Vance implied that Talarico is gay; and rightwing influencers spread a baseless lie that he checked into a mental health clinic in Ohio (in fact, he was ill with flu).

Despite the desperate attacks, most opinion polls give Talarico a narrow edge. On Tuesday the voters will have their say on whether the four-term state representative, a Presbyterian seminarian preaching a gospel of hope, can overcome Republican Ken Paxton, a scandal-haunted state attorney general and Trump ally who has financial backing from tech billionaire Elon Musk.

Facing a barrage of culture war attack ads funded the world’s wealthiest man, Talarico has responded with an unorthodox blend of economic populism, progressive politics and an unapologetically Christian message that challenges the religious right on its own turf. His campaign raised a record $64m in the third quarter, including donations from a vast number of small-dollar contributors.

Last week Talarico told a crowd of young voters and local activists gathered at his alma mater, the University of Texas at Austin, that Republicans’ billionaire donors were starting to fret.“They are terrified because they see what we see: we are about to win this election,” he said.

An eighth-generation Texan, he was born James Dell Causey in Round Rock, a small town north of Austin, in 1989. His mother, Tamara Causey, was a preacher’s daughter who left home at 19 and met his biological father, whom she has described as an alcoholic prone to violence.

One night the abuse became too much. Tamara drove James and all her belongings in a small Ford Escort to the hotel where she worked as a sales assistant. They lived in an empty room at the hotel until they found an apartment in Austin. Tamara subsequently married a sales manager named Mark Talarico, who adopted James and gave him his surname.

At school, Talarico was a keen debater and actor, with roles including Danny Zuko in the musical Grease. Allegra Hobbs, author of a profile in Texas Monthly magazine, reported: “His high school theater director, Aaron Johnson, joked to me that the young Talarico did not so much inhabit the character as play a version of himself. When the theater department handed out superlatives, ‘Jimmy’ was voted most likely to be president – a running joke among his friends that he would laugh off.”

Talarico studied at the University of Texas at Austin, where Mike Garcia, a 38-year-old lawyer and former legislative staffer, first encountered his political ambitions. In 2009, Garcia presided over the College Republicans while Talarico led the University Democrats. Despite their ideological differences, the pair initially found common ground in nonpartisan voter drives and a campaign for tuition relief.

Speaking from Fort Worth, Garcia recalls: “It was a little strange but I was glad that we were putting our differences aside and doing something that would help everybody.”

The goodwill did not last. During student government elections, Talarico’s organisation endorsed establishment candidates who opposed tuition re-regulation, according to Garcia. The move provoked outrage among Democrats who had supported the campaign, some of whom turned up at a College Republicans meeting to protest.

Garcia suspected Talarico had calculated that the endorsement would win him favour with university administrators ahead of a possible run for student body president. “That sounds like exactly something Jimmy would do,” he says.

Years later, when the two crossed paths again at the Texas capitol – Garcia working for Republican legislators and Talarico now an elected representative – Garcia felt he saw a similar gap between political rhetoric and personal charm. Talarico would “routinely just rail against all these people I work for, calling us the worst names ever”, he recalls, before greeting him warmly in the corridor minutes later.

Garcia remains unconvinced by Talarico’s current presentation as a moderate. “He is probably one of the types that is willing to tell you exactly what you want to hear, especially if it helps him politically. Right now he’s running as a moderate and he’s doing a very good job of it,” Garcia says.

But others dispute Garcia’s account. In a statement provided by Talarico’s campaign, Muneezeh Kabir, who was at the University of Texas with him and involved in student government, said: “James has always raised his hand to serve others. Throughout his time in student government at UT, James worked with everyone, even those he disagreed with, to make life on campus better for all of us. He delivered for his classmates at UT, then his community in Austin, and now, he’s ready to step up and serve Texans from every corner of the state.”

After college, and before the state house, Talarico went into education. His first job was teaching sixth-grade language arts at the Rhodes middle school on the west side of San Antonio, a predominantly Latino neighbourhood.

Edward Garcia, 56, who was principal of Rhodes at the time, remembers hiring Talarico during the summer of 2011. In a high-poverty school district where teacher turnover was relentless, Garcia was struck by the young applicant’s poise and purpose. “He knew what his mission statement was in terms of working with students that are in high poverty and high need. He was ready to start the next day,” he says.

Even before the academic year began, Talarico turned up at the school accompanied by his sister, hauling enlarged prints of Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr and Gandhi to create a classroom display devoted to human freedom.

“Teachers are supposed to be universal,” Garcia explains. “There wasn’t an approach in terms of partisan politics. It was just the concept of freedom and what it means for students to truly acquire freedom and leadership in their lives.”

Talarico’s connection with his middle schoolers was immediate. In a profession where novice teachers frequently struggle with classroom management and rely on administrative referrals, Talarico never wrote up a single student or sent one to the principal’s office. “He was an exemplary teacher. Kids were enthralled with his presentation and took a shine to him,” Garcia says. “What you see is what you get: smart, articulate and guided by his heart.”

When Garcia walked into Talarico’s room during his second-year formal observation, he discovered that the young teacher had physically removed his official administrative desk from the room.

“I went in to do his evaluation,” Garcia recalls with a laugh. “I looked around and said, ‘Where’s your desk?’ He goes, ‘Oh, I took it out and turned it into a reading space.’ He put a carpet down right where his desk should be.”

After two years in San Antonio, Talarico returned to the Austin area to lead an education non-profit before making his leap into elective politics in 2018. Winning a state house of representatives seat in a suburban swing district, he quickly established a reputation in the Texas capitol as an authority on public school finance and an exceptionally persuasive orator.

His Republican colleagues in the house began calling him “Baby Gov”, recognising that his ambitions might extend well beyond the state legislature. Talarico focused heavily on public education, prescription drug pricing and property tax relief.

During bitter legislative battles over voting rights and school vouchers – proposals to restrict access to the ballot and use public funds to help families pay for private education – Talarico emerged as a prominent opponent of Republican priorities.

In 2021, he joined fellow Democrats in leaving Texas to block a vote on Republican-backed voting restrictions by denying the state house the minimum number of members needed to conduct business. He later returned to the chamber before the standoff had ended, drawing criticism from some of his own party.

He also repeatedly clashed with conservative committee chairs over LGBTQ+ rights. Talarico used the phrase “God is non-binary” while opposing a bill concerning transgender children in school sports. Republicans have sought to weaponise it against him. Talarico has defended the underlying theological argument while acknowledging that he was being provocative.

While serving in the state legislature, Talarico enrolled at the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, which has a picturesque downtown campus of neat lawns, light-filled buildings and functional classrooms with blackboards and rows of desks. He pursued a master of arts in theological studies, diving into church history, ethics, systematic theology and ancient biblical languages.

The seminary’s president, José Irizarry, says: “We are not an assembly line for dogma. We are a place of faith formation which requires people to think deeply and thoughtfully about their faith practices. What does it mean to take your belief system and actually do the work of justice in the world?”

Irizarry recalls working in his office across from the classroom building during Talarico’s first year. “I had no door when I arrived here – an actual open-door policy. He was studying Hebrew across the hall. I could hear the whole Hebrew class because it was with a rabbi and he started the class singing in Hebrew. I would go out during the breaks and see him interacting with all the students. He was a student like everybody else around here, engaged in ministry.”

When Talarico called Wendy Davis in late 2023 to disclose his intention to surrender his safe house seat and launch a long-shot bid for the US Senate, she tried to stop him. Davis, now executive director of the the Blueprint Texas political action committee, admits: “I tried hard to talk him out of it. I told him that my fear was he’d been so impactful in the legislature and I thought it would be a big loss for him. I told him he was probably going to lose and he was going to regret leaving his office. And now look at him.”

Talarico went on to defeat Jasmine Crockett, another rising star of the party, in a bruising Senate primary election. He has since been working hard to unify the Democratic coalition, including Black voters who supported Crockett.

His theological training has proven not merely a personal spiritual exercise but the construction of a political armour. In a state where conservative evangelicals have long dominated public discourse on religion, Talarico’s fluid command of scripture has allowed him to carry out a counteroffensive.

He attacks Christian nationalism, opposes state-mandated displays of the Ten Commandments in public schools and argues that Jesus’s core commandment – to love one’s neighbour – demands support for healthcare, public education and marginalised communities.

Cal Jillson, a professor of political science at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, says by phone: “Usually the vote that takes religion seriously in Texas is an evangelical conservative Republican vote. There’s a possibility that he has a little more purchase beyond the Democratic base into moderates and independent voters in the middle. With Talarico, there’s more of a Sermon on the Mount vibe as opposed to this ‘I’m an angry God’.”

Talarico demonstrated that approach during a legislative committee hearing on a bill requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in Texas classrooms. Rather than offering a standard secular objection, Talarico quizzed the author on the text of the Commandments themselves – showing on camera that the politician could not recite them.

For Democrats, there have been plenty of false dawns in Texas. In 2018 Beto O’Rourke’s charismatic campaign for Senate against Republican Ted Cruz attracted national attention and record-breaking fundraising, but he ultimately lost by 2.6 percentage points.

Bill Minutaglio, a prominent Texas author and political historian whose books include A Single Star and Bloody Knuckles, argues that Talarico’s campaign represents a far more calculated and controlled evolution of Texas Democratic strategy.

“Beto was deemed to be the chosen one who would break the spell and obviously it didn’t happen,” Minutaglio observes. “He was a victim of inflated expectations. He seemed too ambitious and too coated with endorsements that didn’t resonate well outside the borders of Texas. People here don’t take kindly to the sense that a candidate is being shaped and endorsed by places like California or New York.”

Talarico, Minutaglio contends, studied O’Rourke’s missteps to avoid repeating them. “O’Rourke appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair magazine. Talarico has learned his lessons. I don’t mistake his quietude and his seminarian step for him not being a truly shrewd politician. He is that and then some. The ability to walk that fine line is rather amazing to me. I find it almost Obama-like. There’s a calmness about him and a thoughtfulness in public. He’s playing right now five-dimensional chess in Texas,” he says.

Part of that strategy involved building a political identity of his personal narrative and Christian faith. “It’s become that sense of armour – holding up the Bible – and people can’t get around it,” Minutaglio says. “Paxton, of course, is the greatest foil that anybody could pray to have. Talarico has found the cheat code in Texas.”

The contrast between the two candidates could hardly be starker. In 2023, the Republican-controlled Texas House voted overwhelmingly to impeach Paxton on 20 articles alleging misconduct, including bribery, abuse of office and obstruction of justice. The state senate later acquitted him.

A long-running state securities fraud case ended in 2024 with an agreement requiring Paxton to perform community service, pay restitution and complete legal ethics courses in exchange for prosecutors dropping the charges. Paxton has remained bogged down by public revelations regarding his personal life, including an alleged extramarital affair and a high-profile divorce.

Paxton, 63, has also been lethargic on the campaign trail with even Trump poking fun at his dress sense and speaking style. Jon Taylor, a professor of political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio, says: “Paxton is afraid to meet people. He tries to stay in this shell and avoid voters.

“Everywhere Talarico goes, he attracts a substantial crowd. He’s got rock star status. Talarico is charismatic, personable and tells stories that resonate. Meanwhile, his opponent is basically screaming that Talarico believes God is non-binary and that he’s ‘far left’. The message is viewed by voters as shrill and ineffective.”

As the race entered its final lap, national Republicans realised that Paxton’s vulnerability risked forfeiting a seat crucial to maintaining their narrow Senate majority. In response, conservative Super Pacs launched an unprecedented financial bombardment.

Musk, who moved Tesla, SpaceX and his personal residence to Texas, gave $158m to the Senate Leadership Fund in September. The Republican Super Pac subsequently transferred the money to the Texas Pac, which has blanketed the state’s 22 media markets with anti-Talarico advertising. The blitz focused almost entirely on trans culture-war themes, falsely claiming Talarico supported taxpayer-funded gender reassignment surgeries for minors.

At the same time, cracks have emerged in the conservative coalition along the Texas-Mexico border. While Trump made significant inroads among Latino voters in 2024, recent aggressive immigration raids and agricultural disruptions appear to have produced widespread buyer’s remorse.

Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, a political consultant and former Democratic US Senate candidate, says: “I always say that the portion of Latino voters up for grabs are neither Republicans nor Democrats – they’re poor, and they need candidates who speak to their poverty, their pain and their power.

“Talarico leans more on a moral calling than a political persuasion, and that vision connects to people across a much larger swath of political persuasions than Democrats historically have reached. People are sick of the brazen political corruption and the system not working for ordinary working people.”

Democrats are taking nothing for granted in a state that Trump won by 14 percentage points against Kamala Harris in 2024. Talarico is still careful to characterise himself and his movement as the people-powered underdog against the oligarchy, the David taking on a Goliath that includes the world’s most powerful man and the world’s richest man. For supporters who have spent decades enduring Democratic defeats in Texas, the prospect of a Talarico victory feels less like an ordinary midterm result than a profound turning point.

Minutaglio comments: “If Talarico wins, it will be huge – a sea change in modern Texas history. The reverberation will rocket from the Fortune 500 companies in Dallas to the oil barons in Houston and the high-tech moguls around Austin. For decades, Texas has been addicted to deregulation and unfettered capitalism. Here’s a quiet seminarian who says, ‘Pump the brakes. Let’s think about oversight.’ It will challenge every perception of what Texas is.”