Drag Race alum Alyssa Edwards has publicly answered Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton after he used old footage of her teaching children to dance as ammunition against his Senate rival, closing her response with a simple line: Texas is big enough for all of us.
An Attack Built From Old TV Clips
The fight started small. Earlier this month, a clip of Talarico naming Edwards as his favorite Texas drag queen at a Houston campaign stop went viral after the Republican National Committee's research account posted it. Paxton reposted it on September 14, asking "What normal person can name their favorite drag queen this quickly?" and calling Talarico "too weird and too radical for Texas."
He escalated on September 22, posting a new video that spliced the Talarico clip with footage pulled from Edwards' 2018 Netflix docuseries about her Mesquite-based studio, Beyond Belief Dance Company, including scenes of her working with young students. Paxton labeled the post with a "VIEWER WARNING" and called Edwards "James Talarico's favorite sick and twisted drag queen."
Edwards' publicist, Waylon Tate, responded first, in a video posted to Instagram calling Paxton "obsessed" with his client.
Something that began with James Talarico simply saying he appreciated Alyssa's art has now evolved into a full-blown political dog and pony show.
Waylon Tate
Tate went further, calling Paxton's repeated use of Edwards' name a bid for attention that he described in one word: desperate.
Edwards Answers With Her Résumé
A day later, Edwards posted her own open letter on X. Rather than trade insults, she introduced herself: a 30-year career as an educator, choreographer, entrepreneur and mentor, alongside her drag career on RuPaul's Drag Race, All Stars and Global All Stars, which she won. She founded Beyond Belief Dance Company in 2004, and said watching her students go on to conservatories and professional dance careers has been her greatest reward.
My life may look different from yours, but difference does not diminish character, faith, service, or a person's ability to positively contribute to their community.
Alyssa Edwards
She closed by urging Paxton to keep his focus on policy for "ALL Texans," signing off with her birth name, Justin Johnson, and the line that's since become her rallying cry: Texas is big enough for all of us.
Why Drag Is Suddenly a Senate Issue
The timing isn't incidental. Paxton has trailed Talarico in multiple polls this cycle, and a Talarico win would mark the first Republican Senate loss in Texas since 1988. Paxton used a similar "weird" attack line against Talarico back in May over trans youth issues, and has separately sued the NCAA twice over transgender athletes and investigated a Dallas school district over trans girls in sports. He also sued the city of Denton this year over a Pride event, and the state rolled out a bathroom tip-line tied to its Women's Privacy Act in December.
Talarico's campaign hasn't addressed the Edwards saga directly, but a spokesperson told Fox News that Talarico's actual favorite performer is "Ken Paxton, who dresses up as attorney general while giving sweetheart deals to child sex predators," a reference to a controversial plea deal Paxton's office offered a Texas lawyer charged with sexually abusing an 8-year-old, resulting in just 60 days in jail.
MQ's Take
There's something particularly ugly about mining footage of a woman mentoring kids in a dance studio to paint her as a danger to children. It's the same playbook used against Drag Queen Story Hour and any number of queer performers: take the most ordinary parts of someone's life, an educator running her studio, and recast them as menace for a viral clip. Edwards didn't take the bait with outrage. She answered with her résumé, her students, her thirty years of work, and let that stand against a campaign ad. That's a harder thing to argue with than any insult, which may be exactly why it landed.
Sources: LGBTQ Nation, Pride, them., PinkNews, Out, The Advocate
Cover photo: https://www.flickr.com/photos/dvsross/, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
