At a 1984 debate, former Vice President Walter Mondale took aim at the lack of depth of one of his Democratic rivals’ campaign platforms by quoting a popular Wendy’s commercial: “Where’s the beef?”
Republicans are now using the same line, but they mean it literally.
In recent days, Texas Senate candidate Ken Paxton, other state Republicans and conservative media have attacked Democratic nominee James Talarico for having a vegan girlfriend and possibly even being vegan himself.
The latest beef began when the New York Post revealed the identity of Talarico’s girlfriend, Brianna Menard, in a story that was downright obsessed with her diet, referring to her as his “tofu-loving girlfriend,” “a vegan political lobbyist” and “a committed vegan” in a story whose very headline included the fact that she’s vegan. Even vegans don’t talk this much about being vegan.
Talarico hit back, calling the claim that he’s a vegan a lie and adding snarkily that he’s “been eating barbecue since before Ken Paxton’s first indictment.”
But this wasn’t the first time Republicans threw red meat to their base over Talarico’s supposed diet. After he ordered potato, egg and cheese breakfast tacos during a visit to a taco restaurant in May, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott argued that he is “not beating the vegetarian allegations.” (Notably, eggs and cheese are not vegan.) President Donald Trump then chimed in, again claiming that Talarico is a vegan and saying “you can’t get elected as a vegan in Texas.” In his victory speech after the Republican primary runoff, Paxton tagged him with the nickname “Tofu Talarico” and accused him of being vegan, while Texas Sen. Ted Cruz claimed that Talarico “wants to BAN BBQ” because of remarks he’s made about reducing meat consumption to fight climate change.
Beef is big business in Texas, worth about $15.5 billion each year, so it was perhaps inevitable that it would become a line of attack against Talarico, regardless of whether it’s true. Cruz lobbed similar criticisms at Whataburger-loving Democratic candidate Beto O’Rourke in 2018.
But there’s something more going on here than just dietary concerns. Paxton has also run ads questioning Talarico’s testosterone levels, arguing that he’s “too low-T for Texas.” White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller even went on TV to claim, bizarrely, that Talarico is transgender, while Jesse Watters of Fox News went after Talarico by suggesting that the Texas Democrat might be gay and questioning whether his girlfriend was real.
For conservatives convinced that America is having some kind of masculinity crisis, eating meat has become a central part of their identity. For years, the right has used “soy boy” as an insult against typically liberal men they don’t consider manly enough and claimed, falsely, that liberals and environmentalists want to ban hamburgers. Jordan Peterson, a key early figure in the online manosphere, has long stuck to an all-meat diet, claiming it has cured him of all kinds of diseases. (Nutritionists disagree.) Podcast host Joe Rogan has similarly argued for eating nothing but meat for a month.
Critics have spent days discussing his girlfriend’s diet and his breakfast taco order.
All of this makes the attacks on Talarico revealing. Here is a Democrat who talks openly about faith, who is comfortable in his own skin and who does not fit the stereotype conservatives have spent years constructing about liberal men. Yet rather than debate his ideas or campaign promises, critics have spent days discussing his girlfriend’s diet and his breakfast taco order.
The political movement that talks most about strength often seems the most preoccupied with proving it. It does not need to panic over tofu. And it certainly does not need to turn a vegan girlfriend into a statewide political controversy.
Talarico has been a vocal advocate of LGBTQ+ equality and has opposed efforts to target transgender Americans. But the obsession with his girlfriend, his diet and his personal life says more about his critics than it does about him. What really seems to unsettle them is that Talarico has emerged as one of the most compelling Democratic voices in Texas and a rare candidate with the potential to put a statewide race in play.
The beef, in other words, is not about the brisket. It’s about a political movement so consumed by anxieties over masculinity that it sees threats where everyone else just sees lunch.
Kai Ma
Kai Ma is a writer and producer for “The Weeknight.”