New Yorker reporter Tad Friend posed a question for Texas Democratic Senate hopeful James Talarico as the two sipped red wine together for a recent magazine profile: If the Devil tempted you with a super PAC to handle the political dirty work for you, would you accept?
Citing the story of Jesus Christ resisting the Devil's temptation as he fasted for 40 days in the wilderness as his inspiration, Talarico said he'd reject the alluring offer. "The central belief in my faith is that the means are the ends," answered Talarico, who says he will ban super PACs in an "anti-corruption" package if he's elected to the Senate. "If we lose, it would feel not great. But—but!—it's the belief in the Resurrection, right? The belief that something beautiful would come out of this loss."
Yet, as Talarico mused about the moral evils of super PACs with the New Yorker reporter, the Texas Democrat's close friend was hard at work running the Lone Star Rising PAC, a super PAC funded by dark money groups and Democratic billionaires that has blanketed the Texas airwaves with millions of dollars' worth of negative ads against his primary opponent, Rep. Jasmine Crockett.
All the while, Talarico, a self-proclaimed devout Christian, maintains he's doing politics differently by running a people-funded "campaign based on love." Talarico seeks to be the first Democrat to win a state-wide election in Texas in 30 years, but first, he needs to get past Crockett in their primary next Tuesday.
Alexander Clark, a Texas political operative who identified himself as a 15-year friend of Talarico in now-deleted Facebook posts, formed the Lone Star Rising PAC on Sept. 2, 2025. Talarico, who thanked Clark for his "friendship" in a Facebook post four years ago, launched his Senate campaign one week later, on Sept. 9.
The Washington Free Beacon reviewed Clark's Facebook posts on Friday, but by Monday morning, the posts had been taken offline. The Lone Star Rising PAC did not return a request for comment.
Clark's super PAC has deployed nearly $3.7 million in negative ads against Crockett since the start of February as Talarico chipped away at Crockett's once-commanding polling lead, Federal Election Commission records show. Just before the ad blitz, in late January, the super PAC received $500,000 from billionaire Reid Hoffman, a Democratic megadonor who maintained a close relationship with Jeffrey Epstein in the years leading up to Epstein's 2019 arrest for sex trafficking dozens of girls.
Despite his declaration to the New Yorker that "the central belief in my faith is that the means are the ends," Talarico has not denounced the super PAC or its negative ads even as he campaigns on a policy of banning super PACs. Talarico's campaign told the Dallas Morning News in early February it couldn't have had anything to do with the Lone Star Rising PAC's ads because federal law prohibits his campaign from coordinating with super PACs.
But the law would not have prohibited Talarico and Clark from discussing campaign tactics before he launched his campaign and before Clark launched his super PAC in September. Talarico's campaign did not return a request for comment.
Other prominent known donors to the pro-Talarico super PAC include hedge fund manager Stephen Mandel, Hyatt Hotel heir Adam Pritzker, Eagles drummer Don Henley, former Biden White House official Cristobal Alex, and private equity billionaire Mark Heising, according to its latest FEC report.
Clark said in a now-deleted Facebook post in January that he was proud to lead a super PAC working to elect Talarico "so we can root out corruption by banning … super PACs."
Addressing the inherent hypocrisy in his statement, Clark said he will "make no apologies for not unilaterally disarming until we can all play by the same set of rules."
In that spirit, the Lone Star Rising PAC is primarily funded by the same sort of dark money interests that Talarico claims to oppose. The Government that Works PAC, a dark money-funded super PAC, gave $3.75 million to Clark's super PAC in January, according to its latest FEC report.
The Government that Works PAC, in turn, received $4 million from the dark money behemoth Sixteen Thirty Fund in January and, in 2025, it raked in another $2.9 million from Contours Inc., a shadowy Delaware-based 501(c)4 group that raised less than $50,000 in 2024, according to the IRS.
