Senate in Texas, has kept his girlfriend, Brianna Menard, largely out of the public eye. Menard is a political director at the Texas Medical Association and once worked as his chief of staff. Menard, 30, has been linked online to Michel Branamour Menard, the Canadian-born fur trader who founded the city of Galveston and signed the Texas Declaration of Independence in 1836.
Interest in Talarico's private life has grown as the race between the Austin state representative and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton enters its final weeks. The outcome could help determine which party controls the U.S. Democrats have not won a Senate race in Texas since 1988.
A native Texan, Menard studied government at the University of Texas at Austin and has spent nearly a decade working in the Texas legislature. Before joining the Texas Medical Association, she served as executive director of the Texas House's Early Childhood Caucus, a bipartisan group focused on early learning, child care access, workforce development and health care affordability. She is now director of TEXPAC and Political Education at the Texas Medical Association, according to her biography on the PAC's website.
Founded in 1962, TEXPAC is a bipartisan political committee that supports candidates it considers friendly to medicine at the state and federal levels. The organization says it has more than 5,000 member physicians. The New York Post first identified Menard in May, shortly after Ken Paxton defeated Senator John Cornyn in the Republican runoff.
The report focused on her description of herself as a committed vegan, which Republicans quickly folded into their "Tofu Talarico" attacks. Talarico's campaign has said he is not a vegan. "James is not and never has been a vegan, much to his girlfriend's chagrin," campaign spokesman JT Ennis said in May.
Newsweek reached out to Talarico's campaign for comment Wednesday. Menard was Talarico's chief of staff at the Texas House when they met in 2022, according to the Post. The two did not begin dating until 2023, the outlet reported.
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