Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico got his biggest national stage of the 2026 race on Wednesday night — and one voter turned it into a moment he will not soon forget. The Talarico town hall, a CNN and Jubilee Media event broadcast live from Fort Worth, Texas, put the state representative and Christian seminarian in front of an audience of Texas voters with CNN anchor Erin Burnett moderating, just days before early voting begins in one of the most-watched Senate contests in America.
The defining exchange of the Talarico town hall came when a self-described “one-issue voter,” a Catholic woman named Jody Hunt, challenged Talarico over his claim that the Bible is silent on abortion — a confrontation the New York Post reported on within the hour. “I just want to add that the Bible is not silent on abortion,” Hunt told him. “There is the 10 Commandments: ‘Thou shall not kill.'”
The Talarico town hall arrives at a moment when the Texas Senate race could hardly be tighter. A brand-new Marist poll shows Talarico ahead of Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton by just two points — 47% to 45%, within the margin of error — and CNN has described the contest as one Democrats must win in their bid for the net gain of four seats needed to retake Senate control.
- What Happened at the Talarico Town Hall in Fort Worth
- “The Bible Is Not Silent”: The Night’s Defining Confrontation
- Talarico’s Faith Pitch Meets Its Skeptics
- Paxton Skips Again: The Empty Chair at the Table
- Texas Senate Polls: Deadlocked With Early Voting Days Away
- Half a Billion Dollars: The Fight for the Senate Runs Through Texas
- What’s Next
What Happened at the Talarico Town Hall in Fort Worth
The Talarico town hall aired at 8 p.m. ET (7 p.m. CT) on Wednesday, October 14, 2026, co-hosted by CNN and Jubilee Media, the digital media company known for conversation-driven programming. Burnett questioned Talarico alongside a live audience of Texas voters — Democrats, Republicans and independents who intend to vote in November — in Fort Worth. CNN said the broadcast would be available on demand for subscribers and later on Jubilee’s YouTube channel.
Talarico is running to become the first Democrat in a generation to win statewide in Texas, a state Republicans have held in the Senate for decades. He faces Paxton, who defeated incumbent Sen. John Cornyn in last May’s Republican primary runoff with President Trump’s backing.
“The Bible Is Not Silent”: The Night’s Defining Confrontation
Abortion has been the fault line of Talarico’s campaign from the start — the candidate built his national brand arguing that his pro-choice politics are compatible with his Christian faith. At the Talarico town hall, he repeated his position that “the Bible is silent on the issue of abortion” and argued that “certain policy levers” short of a ban can reduce the number of abortions nationwide.
Hunt, identifying herself as a one-issue voter, let him finish — then pushed back. “I just want to add that the Bible is not silent on abortion,” she said. “There is the 10 Commandments: ‘Thou shall not kill.'” She added, “And as Catholics, we take great insult, I guess sometimes, when it’s described that way.”
The exchange crystallized the tension at the heart of Talarico’s pitch to religious voters — and gave his opponents an instant clip.
Talarico’s Faith Pitch Meets Its Skeptics
Talarico has made Scripture central to his campaign, telling “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” earlier this year that abortion and gay marriage are “two issues that aren’t mentioned in the Bible,” the Christian Post reported. In May, he told podcaster Jamie Kern Lima: “I trust Texas women to make decisions about their own bodies, to shape their own destinies… that’s a belief I hold not despite my faith, but because of my faith.”
Pro-life activists were waiting outside. Students for Life Action said its activists would gather outside the Texas town hall as part of its ongoing campaign highlighting Democratic candidates’ abortion positions, calling Talarico’s use of Christianity to defend abortion “an interpretation sharply disputed” by Christian critics.
The Senate Leadership Fund, the leading Republican super PAC in Senate races, issued a statement after the Talarico town hall concluded. “Even with CNN by his side, James Talarico couldn’t defend his record of supporting the Far-Left’s extreme agenda at the expense of Texas working families,” communications director Chris Gustafson said, calling Talarico “simply too liberal and too dangerous for Texas.”
Paxton Skips Again: The Empty Chair at the Table
Notably absent from the Talarico town hall was his opponent. CNN extended a town hall invitation to Paxton, but his campaign was unavailable for comment, and Paxton has separately declined an invitation to debate Talarico on CNN, saying the network’s moderators would be biased, the San Antonio Current reported.
Talarico has been hammering Paxton over the no-debates stance for weeks. At the Texas Tribune Festival in September, he said: “I am proud of my record, and I’m not afraid of hard questions,” framing the Talarico town hall as proof. The town hall also landed one day after the Wall Street Journal reported that Paxton celebrated New Year’s with a federal fugitive in Dubai. Read StateLineDaily’s full breakdown of the WSJ’s Paxton Dubai revelations here.
Texas Senate Polls: Deadlocked With Early Voting Days Away
If the Talarico town hall moved any voters, it happened against a backdrop of polling that calls the race a coin flip. The brand-new Marist survey has Talarico up 47% to 45%. A Quantus Insights poll conducted October 9–11 among 839 likely voters (margin of error ±3.6 points) found Paxton at 47.2% and Talarico at 46.7% — a statistical tie. A University of Texas at Austin survey has Talarico up 50% to 47%, and the RealClearPolitics average sits at Talarico 48.1%, Paxton 45.1%.
Nearly every one of those surveys lands within or near the margin of error, which is why both parties are treating the Talarico town hall as a potential inflection point rather than a victory lap.
Half a Billion Dollars: The Fight for the Senate Runs Through Texas
The stakes explain the spending. Television ad spending in the race surpassed $500 million this week, according to AdImpact figures cited by CNN — staggering sums for a single Senate contest, driven by both parties’ belief that Texas could decide control of the chamber. Democrats need a net gain of four seats to win the majority, and a Talarico upset would make that path dramatically easier.
Trump himself is on a six-rally sprint through red and battleground states in the final stretch — Alaska, Arizona, Montana, Georgia and Kentucky — making what CNN described as his “pretend I’m on the ballot” pitch. See StateLineDaily’s coverage of Trump’s Tennessee rally for how the president is campaigning in the midterms.
With Election Day less than three weeks away, the Texas race is now the country’s most-watched Senate contest. See StateLineDaily’s guide to why the 2026 midterms matter more than ever for how races like this one will shape the next two years.
What’s Next
Will Paxton accept his own town hall or a debate? CNN’s invitation is still on the table, and Talarico has challenged him to debate for weeks. So far Paxton has neither confirmed a town hall nor agreed to face Talarico — a Texas A&M student group had hoped to host a debate Wednesday night, but neither campaign committed.
Does the Bible exchange hurt Talarico’s faith outreach? The clip gives opponents exactly the ammunition they want — a Catholic voter rejecting his theology on live television. But it also let Talarico restate his position calmly to a national audience, which is precisely what his campaign hoped the Talarico town hall would deliver.
What happens when early voting starts? Texas early voting begins within days, and nearly every poll shows the race inside the margin of error. Expect both campaigns to flood the airwaves — and expect the Talarico town hall clips, from both sides, to be part of that advertising.
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