She ran his office at the Texas Capitol and now lobbies for the Texas Medical Association. His campaign has given two versions of when the relationship began.
James Talarico’s girlfriend is Brianna Menard, a lobbyist for the Texas Medical Association. She spent several years on his staff in the Texas House and left in early 2023 as his chief of staff. His campaign says the couple have been together for about four years. Talarico, 37, has never been married.
Menard’s name became public in late May, and the relationship has followed Talarico through his race for the US Senate against the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, a Republican. The election is on 3 November.
| At a glance | |
|---|---|
| Name | Brianna Menard |
| Age | 30 when she was identified in May |
| Job | Director of TEXPAC and Political Education, Texas Medical Association |
| Link to Talarico | His legislative director, then his chief of staff |
| Together | About four years, according to his campaign |
| Married | No |
Table of Contents
How Talarico revealed the relationship
Talarico, a Democratic state representative from Austin and a former middle school teacher, said little about his private life for most of the campaign, even as some conservatives online questioned his sexuality, The New York Times reported.
He addressed it in mid-May on the show hosted by Jamie Kern Lima, the entrepreneur who sold her cosmetics company to L’Orรฉal. She told him the question her listeners had sent in most, by a wide margin, was whether he was single.
He said he had a girlfriend. She was his rock and his best friend, he said, and he was not sure he could have got through the previous six months of the race without her.
“We actually worked together, and then we became best friends, and then we fell in love.”
James Talarico, on The Jamie Kern Lima Show
He did not name her. She was proud of him and supportive, he said, but he did not think she wanted “any part” of the race, and he was trying to shield her and his family from it. The campaign asked newsrooms to keep her identity private, citing her safety, the San Antonio Current reported.
How her name came out
That request held for about two weeks. On 29 May the conservative Texas website Current Revolt published her name, and the New York Post ran a story the same day built around her veganism. The campaign confirmed her identity after Current Revolt’s report.
Campaign spokesman JT Ennis told the Post: “James is not and never has been a vegan, much to his girlfriend’s chagrin. As the saying goes, true love conquers all.”
Two days later a reporter asked Talarico how it felt to see his love life become internet fodder. “This is what people hate about politics,” he said. “I signed up to run for the U.S. Senate. My girlfriend did not. My family members did not.”
Pictures of the couple have since circulated online. In August the Times published one supplied by Talarico, showing the pair at the Austin City Limits music festival in 2024.
Brianna Menard’s career at the Capitol
House staff directories and state lobby records trace Menard’s work at the Capitol back to 2015. TEXPAC, where she now works, is the Texas Medical Association’s political action committee and endorses candidates on behalf of the doctors’ group. Its biography of Menard describes her as a native Texan who studied government at the University of Texas at Austin and has nearly a decade of experience in the Legislature.
| When | Role |
|---|---|
| 2015 | Legislative assistant to state representative Poncho Nevรกrez, according to a House resolution honouring a Brianna Menard of Cedar Park, then a University of Texas sophomore |
| By 2021 | Legislative director in Talarico’s office |
| 2022 to January 2023 | Talarico’s chief of staff |
| January 2023 | Chief of staff to state representative Salman Bhojani |
| August 2023 to November 2024 | Executive director of the Texas House Early Childhood Caucus |
| Now | Director of TEXPAC and Political Education, Texas Medical Association |
The caucus she ran is one Talarico helped found in 2021, when he served as its treasurer. Early childhood policy has been a focus for him as a lawmaker, and he calls his bill cutting property taxes for childcare centres one of his proudest achievements.
Outside work, Menard is secretary of the board at Wheatsville Food Co-op in Austin. In her profile as a candidate for that board, she described herself as a committed vegan.
Two accounts of when they started dating
On the podcast, Talarico said only that they had worked together. His campaign has since given two versions of how the relationship began.
| Date | What the campaign said |
|---|---|
| 1 June, to Texas Scorecard | They developed feelings while she was his chief of staff and started dating after she left his office |
| 6 August, to The New York Times | They developed feelings and started dating, and then she left the office |
The second version appeared in a Times story in which Paxton’s spokeswoman, Madison Cercy, accused Talarico of “abusing his office” by dating a former staff member. Ennis called the charge baseless and asked the public to respect Menard’s privacy as a private citizen. Texas House rules do not bar members from relationships with staff or lobbyists, the paper reported.
The New York Post also reported a remark Bhojani made at a panel in December 2022, when he said a fellow lawmaker had emailed him to say their chief of staff wanted a job. Menard joined his office as chief of staff the following month. Bhojani did not say which lawmaker sent the email.
Earlier relationships
Menard is not the only Capitol employee Talarico has dated. In early June, Irma Reyes, a former executive director of the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, posted a short statement confirming their past relationship, Texas Scorecard reported. “My private personal relationship with James Talarico ended five years ago,” she wrote, adding that she would not comment further.
In August the campaign told the Times that another legislative staff member had dated him. The paper said she had worked for a different lawmaker and never for Talarico, and did not name her.
The vegan jibes
The vegan label was attached to Talarico before his girlfriend’s name was public. Republicans circulated a 2022 video in which he called reducing meat consumption “existential”. After winning the Republican runoff in May, Paxton called him “Tofu Talarico”.
Talarico, who eats meat, replied on X on 28 May: “I’ve been eating BBQ since before Ken Paxton’s first indictment.” A day later the Post’s story gave the jibes a second target, describing Menard as his “tofu-loving” girlfriend.
Is Talarico married?
No. On the podcast, Kern Lima said she had seen his girlfriend playing with his young niece and asked whether he wanted children. He joked that she sounded like his mother asking for another grandchild, then said he definitely wants them.
Texas looks set to send an unmarried man to the Senate whoever wins. Paxton, 63, is divorcing his wife, the state senator Angela Paxton, who filed last summer and accused him of having an affair. The Times found that the last senator from Texas to win an election while unmarried appears to be Tom Connally, a widower who was re-elected in 1940.
Where things stand
Menard has not spoken publicly about the relationship or the attention it brought. Her monthly filings with the Texas Ethics Commission show she has kept working as a lobbyist, and the most recent went in on 10 September.
TEXPAC has not announced a general election endorsement in the Senate race. It backed John Cornyn in the Republican primary, which he lost to Paxton, and as of 21 September its endorsement page still showed that primary slate.
The page notes that TEXPAC’s federal endorsements are coordinated with the American Medical Association’s political action committee and follow different criteria. In 2018, the committee’s physician board chair announced its final general election endorsements on 1 October. Menard’s part in this year’s decision has not been made public.
Polls point to a close race. A survey for AARP by Fabrizio Ward and Impact Research, released this month, put Talarico on 48 per cent and Paxton on 44. Early voting runs from 19 to 30 October.
When the Dallas Express asked the campaign in August when the relationship began, it did not respond.
