Pastor Talarico, 3 Billion Views, and $56 Million on Broadcast: How James Talarico's Team Flipped Texas

James Talarico was a state representative from Pflugerville, Texas when his committee-room clips started pulling tens of millions of views on TikTok. On Tuesday, he became the first Democrat to win the U.S. Senate race in Texas since 1988, defeating Ken Paxton. The masterminds behind his campaign told ADWEEK that its social media videos drew over 3 billion organic views since launch in September 2025. Meanwhile, the campaign put most of its ad dollars into broadcast, at $56.5 million, followed by CTV with $8.3 million and YouTube at $8 million, while radio got just $210,000, according to figures shared by the Talarico campaign. Antonio Esparza, Talarcio’s creative director and speechwriter for five years, runs speechwriting and social media as one department. Brad Elkins, partner at Democratic media firm Thematic Campaigns, handled the paid strategy that leaned on cheaper broadcast rates and left most digital spend to outside groups. ADWEEK spoke with both about how they reached a state Democrats had written off. These interviews have been edited for length and clarity. There must have been a strategy to reach Texas at scale because it's so enormous and its media markets are fragmented. Which platforms, creators, or languages did most the most work? Esparza: Ultimately, it comes down to storytelling. We were able to generate over 3 billion organic views since Sept. 9, 2025. James understands that human beings are storytelling creatures. We were grounding this fight in some of the oldest stories in human history: Jesus flipping over tables, David vs. Goliath in ways that are accessible to people today. And so, an Instagram reel or a TikTok is just the newest way to tell a story. It was in 2023 when, in the State House, I started to pitch us getting on these vertical video platforms and making a major adjustment to that social media approach. Before then it had been Twitter and a lot of text-based platforms. We ended up developing this very interesting approach, which combines speechwriting and social media. Being a state representative from Pflugerville, who no one had ever heard of a year ago, to now being the next senator from Texas—a lot of that was due to understanding virality, understanding the media landscape, and just combining these two typically. In speaking to a state that has historically been red, what were some of the challenges, and how did you address them through social media posts? Esparza: The most difficult challenge is trying to combat 40 years of cynicism and doubt and disillusionment and disappointment in Texas. The reason that James broke through to people, specifically online, is because after 10 years of shallow politics, people are looking for connection. And so, we spoke to the bigger, deeper thing that people are feeling in a way that no other politician does. https://twitter.com/jamestalarico/status/1965389339644625187?a=MSoZqcWX73HlxYbjJOE&s=20 On launch day, our opening video was shot physically with film, but was also shot vertically. On that day he said, "There's something broken in America. Our economy is broken. Our political system is broken. And even our relationships with each other feel broken.” I think that really, really resonated. We're out here competing on the For You page with everybody, and so to break through to get people's attention, you have to be a little different and stop people in their tracks. James is a Presbyterian seminarian who talks about scripture online, which Democrats usually avoid. Was there an internal debate about leaning into it? Esparza: His faith is deeply personal to him, and it's a core part of his identity. We really did not know if it would hurt or help. There was not a political calculation there. After a decade of division, we thought that America was in need of healing and in need of much more Pastor Talarico than Politician Talarico. We have been able to reach an audience that many politicians are not able to: non-political Christian or faithful Texans. They keep seeing this guy who is preaching about universal health care through a biblical lens. I was looking at some stats from the actual results of the election, and men 18 to 44 swung nearly 50 points to us. I think a big part of that is because of places like TikTok and YouTube. CBS pulled his Late Show With Stephen Colbert interview over equal time concerns. Did getting blocked by the FCC end up helping you? Esparza: We carried on like normal. I don't think the FCC not wanting to air our interviews with Colbert and [Jimmy] Kimmel on TV affected our social strategy. When the Colbert interview was put on YouTube, it ended up going mega viral. I believe that the Kimmel interview, which is sitting at about 14 or so million views, is the most viewed interview of Jimmy Kimmel's for the full year, if not ever. https://twitter.com/kylewilsontharp/status/2105668822497960080?a=pKlg7uVZCXfnKT4N1so&s=20 Do you think the campaign possibly lost out on some audiences because Talarico didn't get on TV? Esparza: It's hard to tell. But I think with the amount of attention both got, I think everyone can see it got exponentially bigger than if it had been a normal interview. In Q3 we ranked No. 6 of all political channels in terms like fastest growing. We were right behind the White House in engagement. Back to YouTube, Talarico also appeared on Jubilee Media. Advisors usually warn candidates of such formats. How did you decide to do that, and what did you see in terms of data afterward? Esparza: Much like [Joe] Rogan, they came to us. We were the first political candidate to go on Jubilee. It was a very natural fit because we're speaking to particularly young people as the audience. Us being at the tip of the spear of trying these new formats is something we're proud of because we also did partner with Jubilee for the CNN Town Hall. That was also a new format: You sit in the middle and there's 25 people around you—that’s just talking to voters. You can't be scared of voters. Jubilee is designed for conflict and designed for clicks, and that usually results. People disagreed with James. People pushed back on him, and he acknowledges different points of view. It ultimately brought people in. Democrats did not spend as much on ads this year compared to Republicans. What was your paid media strategy? Elkins: Traditionally, campaigns are focused on broadcast television, and then you layer on streaming, YouTube, and other social platforms. The media landscape has changed tremendously, and we can't be overly reliant on broadcast as a way to reach people. We use a tactic called redboxing or signaling: a public communication on our website that hopefully directs outside groups on how they should spend their money. For a big chunk throughout the summer, we only broadcast, and we had asked or signaled to outside groups to handle digital spend mirroring our message but on CTV, YouTube, and other platforms. Campaigns are entitled to the lowest unit rate on broadcast mediums, so we get a cheaper deal than an independent expenditure when buying broadcasts. When looking at trying to make efficiencies, it was best that we took advantage of the broad, cheaper rate on broadcast and asked outside groups to handle the digital spend. And in the fall, we started to run versions of our ads on digital platforms as well. There's been discourse about Republicans spending on ads that are not really tasteful in nature... Elkins: That's a good way to put it. How do respond to their attack ads without having to match them dollar-for-dollar? Elkins: What we would pay, let's say $1,000 to run an ad on the Evening News in Houston, they were spending $5,000 to $8,000 to run an ad in the same slot. They were outspending us significantly, but they weren't necessarily actually communicating significantly more than we were. But more to your point about Paxton and his allies spending hundreds of millions of dollars to tell [people] to be afraid of James because of his stance with trans children missed the point entirely. The costs and affordability were an afterthought in this race, coupled with the fact that the message is completely off and they're running, frankly, odd AI-generated ads. It just left a bad taste in people's mouths. Did you lean into using AI anywhere, maybe in production or targeting? Elkins: Nowhere.

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Pastor Talarico, 3 Billion Views, and $56 Million on Broadcast: How James Talarico's Team Flipped Texas

The U.S. senator-elect's creative director and paid media strategist explain how a Pflugerville state rep turned viral clips into a historic win

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