Write a new simple attractive title based on the title from On border tour, Talarico pitched affordability. Are Latinos swayed? and dont use quote marks

SANDERSON – On a recent Monday morning in this dusty, little town on the eastern fringes of the Big Bend, I’m standing in the backyard of the picturesque Desert Air Motel. Around me are reporters from the Associated Press, ABC, Rolling Stone, the Big Bend Sentinel, Texas Tribune and elsewhere, as well as Big Bend-area residents. With a nameless in-town mountain as backdrop, we’re listening to a tall fellow in jeans and cowboy boots, a wide-brimmed hat pulled low over his sun-braised face and close-cut beard. Leaning over a portable lectern, he talks about the Big Bend and border security. He wears a pistol on his hip. 

Terrell County Sheriff Thaddeus Cleveland, a Sanderson native and a Border Patrol agent for 26 years before coming home and running for sheriff in 2022, is good at engaging the public. An outspoken Republican, he’s a Fox Network regular and a savvy social media communicator. His YouTube postings are often brief cinéma vérité accounts of his latest encounter with undocumented folks who, after wading the Rio Grande, were apprehended while trying to negotiate the steep canyons, rugged ravines and forbidding, cactus-choked terrain of this arid region. 

On this overcast morning, Cleveland is introducing a political candidate, a compact, youthful-looking fellow in his now-trademark blue blazer, white shirt and jeans. Two other Big Bend-area sheriffs stand with their fellow lawman, along with area business owners, a mayor, a congressman and a retired Big Bend National Park wildlife biologist.

James Talarico, the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, who’s running against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, is on the second day of a 750-mile “La Frontera Tour,” from El Paso to Edinburg in the Rio Grande Valley. In Sanderson he outlined what he calls a common-sense border security agenda. His plan includes hiring more Border Patrol agents to stop illegal crossings, taking advantage of modern surveillance technology, appointing more immigration judges to relieve backlogs while weeding out flimsy asylum applications and reining in an out-of-control U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He also calls for protecting both Big Bend parks, national and state, from the construction of a destructive and absurdly expensive border wall. It’s an issue that has the vast region in a maelstrom of anger and concern.

“A border wall through Big Bend would be a monument to corruption,” Talarico said. 

In a subsequent email, Sheriff Cleveland reminded me that he’s not endorsing Talarico’s candidacy — “I think my days of endorsements are over” — but he is endorsing the Democrat’s border-security plan. 

About the wall, Cleveland wrote on Facebook: “Not a single Republican elected official or member of Republican leadership has come to Sanderson or the Big Bend to hear from the people who will be impacted. I believe too many are unwilling to publicly question this plan.”

Rubbing shoulders with a Democrat has suddenly made the sheriff, an Air Force veteran, the target of incoming vitriol from his Facebook followers. They were particularly enraged by Cleveland’s comments, such as the following at the Sanderson event: “People that we catch crossing the border are no different than the majority of us. Yes, we may see some criminals, but the vast majority that I deal with are no different than us.”

“You’re done Cleveland,” was one of the milder Facebook responses.  

The sheriff professes to be unconcerned about the angry comments. “There have been good and bad!” he wrote in his email to me. “I knew the risk/reward before I accepted his invitation and before I posted the photo. I’m glad he came out!” He said he’d even stand next to President Donald Trump and tell him the border wall is a bad idea to his face. “That’s why Republicans won’t come out. They are afraid of Trump,” he continued.

I’ve written previous Chronicle articles about the devastation a wall through the parks and adjacent areas will cause — devastation to the small towns that rely on tourism; to the fragile ecology of the region; to ancient rock art, Native American pictographs and other rare archaeological sites in the path of the proposed wall; to black bear, deer, elk and other species that rely on the river for sustenance. 

The wall is such an affront to common sense that it has attracted opposition more diverse and widespread than any issue I’ve ever covered in my decades as a reporter. “I’m 71,” retired teacher Susan Spriggs told me while she waited for the Talarico event in Marfa. “I thought I was going to retire and read books. And then the wall popped up.”

People who have never been politically active, Republicans and Democrats, locals and Big Bend visitors, small-town business owners and large-scale ranchers shake their heads in dismay at the idea of gouging a 30-foot-high steel wall encased in concrete through a national park. Especially one that already features what Cleveland calls “a God-made barrier, both the mountains in Mexico and here in the United States.”

That broad coalition, of course, is exactly who Talarico is hoping to attract. On the stump, Talarico comes across as knowledgeable and articulate. He’s impassioned but somewhat reserved, particularly compared to former Democratic darling Beto O’Rourke. To become the first Texas Democrat to win statewide office in more than three decades, he needs to win over voters as diverse as the Big Bend border wall opponents, particularly Hispanics disillusioned by Democrats.

Maverick County, more than 95% Hispanic, is a good example of the challenge he faces. The county, especially Eagle Pass, the county seat, has borne the brunt of Operation Lone Star, Gov. Greg Abbott’s border boondoggle: a popular riverside park at Eagle Pass confiscated, residents locked out; floating buoys, concertina wire and unsightly shipping containers impeding access to the river from the Texas side; a near-occupation of Eagle Pass by state troopers and National Guard members. Despite that experience, the county shocked Democrats in 2024 by choosing Trump over Kamala Harris by a margin of nearly 19%. Maverick was one of several border counties that swung to Trump. 

State Rep. Eddie Morales, Jr., a Democrat whose district encompasses more than 700 border miles with Mexico, including Maverick County, is pretty sure he knows why. “When you have 10 to 12,000 people coming across the border right here at Eagle Pass, people don’t like that,” the Eagle Pass resident told me after introducing Talarico to a packed and lively crowd. “They feel like [Joe] Biden wasn’t paying attention. I know. My sister’s one of them.” (Eagle Pass was encountering as many as 4,000 migrants a day in the fall of 2023, the city’s fire chief told CBS News in December of that year.)

At each of his border stops, Talarico emphasized that he supports strong border security. He notes that both parties have failed border residents. 

He also reminded his audiences that the Trump administration has failed them even more directly. White House adviser Stephen Miller’s cruel anti-immigrant crusade and ICE’s brutal incursions into cities large and small have left brown-skinned border residents – with legal status and otherwise – afraid to venture out of their houses. Local economies have been disrupted, with restaurants cutting back on the hours they’re open and construction projects on hold. 

Talarico addressed those “border concerns” at every stop – the border wall, the fatal shootings by ICE agents – but the questions he took after his prepared remarks invariably reflected persistent economic anxieties.

In Eagle Pass, 21-year-old Rogelio D. Espinoza told Talarico he struggled to find a job despite all the “Help Wanted” signs he saw in storefronts all over town. When he finally landed a job, his meager paycheck still forced a choice between making his car payment or paying rent. 

Also in Eagle Pass, 80-year-old Vietnam War veteran Javier Mancha asked Talarico how he would lower everyday living expenses, as well as how he would end Trump’s war with Iran. 

Talarico, 37, told Mancha he still remembers the billions spent on the Iraq War and promised he would work to rein in the federal government. He also mentioned his support for suspending federal gas and diesel taxes.

“We have an affordability crisis, because we have a corruption crisis,” the four-term state representative told audiences at each stop. “I have a legislative record. Ken Paxton has a criminal record.” He called Paxton “the most corrupt politician in America.”

Are Texans listening? In recent polls, Talarico is either tied or occasionally ahead of his opponent. He has raised an impressive sum of money and is attracting national media attention. His audiences are large and enthusiastic. The political zeitgeist is swinging his way. 

An old friend of mine, a longtime Democratic political consultant, attended a couple of Talarico’s Big Bend events. We talked over coffee the morning after the Sanderson event, and I was taking notes as he praised the candidate’s smooth-running campaign apparatus. And then, in the middle of a sentence, he stopped talking. 

I glanced up from my notebook and realized why: In the eyes of this tough, no-nonsense sort of guy, I saw a glint of tears. Tears of joy at the possibility that a young, talented candidate might at last end his party’s almost biblical-length wilderness exile? Or tears of anticipatory grief that the Democrat will come close, tantalizingly close? 

I didn’t ask, but I’m guessing the venerable Democrat sitting across the table from me would be hard-pressed to explain the welter of emotions he was experiencing at that moment. His fellow Democrats, perhaps identifying with an ever-hopeful Charlie Brown invariably falling for Lucy’s cruel football tease, would know exactly what he was feeling.

Joe Holley is a Pulitzer-winning editorial writer and was the “Native Texan” columnist for the Houston Chronicle.