The rainbow Pride pin James Talarico encouraged me to wear

The room was electric. It was April 2009, and dozens of people were packed into the basement of the Student Services Building at UT Austin — observers, partisans, true believers. When a 20-year-old Student Government Assembly member named Jimmy Talarico leaned into the microphone and said, “And if Littlefield Fountain needs to go dry for a few weeks every year so that tuition isn’t raised, I think we’ll be okay,” the crowd erupted.

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The subject of the debate was tuition deregulation, who gets to set rates at the University of Texas, the Board of Regents, or the Texas Legislature, but the substance hardly mattered in that moment. What mattered was the cinema of it: a 20-year-old absolutely dismantling his opponent, Brian Haley, a man eight years his senior who had just served as the National Finance Director for John McCain’s presidential campaign. A room Brian once ran like a clock was now loudly, unmistakably against him. The contrast was stark and unforgettable to me.

I was in my second of three terms in the Assembly and was also an executive board member for both my Latino fraternity, Sigma Lambda Beta, and our community’s Greek council, the Latino Pan-Hellenic Council. My student leadership and personal life were centered mostly on those three organizations.

Jimmy, on the other hand, was the newly elected President of University Democrats and already had years of experience working with political campaigns and progressive causes. He was an incredible speaker, but he wore these light blue jeans that I thought looked weird on him.

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I first met Jimmy through a mutual recent alum who got me involved in student government, and had worked with him on political campaigns before. We had only known each other in passing through work on a previous SG resolution opposing the Texas GOP’s 2009 Voter ID laws, and I didn’t really know him as a person.

By fall, the early jockeying for Student Government President had begun in earnest. Three camps had formed: one that was made up of two establishment proteges of the existing leadership, a second campaign made up of a non-traditional set of student leaders, and James Talarico. Our underdog campaign, an unlikely coalition of spirit and service organizations, the Queer Student Alliance, the Latino Leadership Council, and the African American Culture Committee, needed someone who could build a structure and carry a strategy.

Nathan Barrera-Bunch, alongside James Talarico and college Democrats.Courtesty Nathan Barrera-Bunch

The SG political institution was going to be more than difficult to topple, so our team ended up making Jimmy our executive campaign manager.

It was the fall of 2009. Barack Obama had won the presidency a year earlier, and the spirit of transformation was still alive in the air. Jimmy channeled it. He pushed a group of already-established student leaders to do things they didn’t think they could. He worked us to the bone. He also helped each of us discover strengths we hadn’t found in ourselves.

Five months later, our campaign won, and it was, without a doubt, due to the brilliant strategy and operational structure that Jimmy built.

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The summer of 2010: a sitting president was coming to campus. For the first time in nearly thirty years, the University of Texas at Austin would host a president of the United States, and a few of us were on the planning committee. It all came together in a matter of days.

Before I knew it, I was in our executive board office, changing into my suit.

James Talarico (left) pointing as Nathan Barrera-Bunch looks on. Courtesty Nathan Barrera-Bunch

I had just turned 22, so naturally, my suit didn’t fit the way it should, but I had also just celebrated nine years of coming out of the closet and was still outwardly quiet about it. I had just taken the leap from changing my Facebook profile from “Interested In: (blank)” to “Interested In: Men.” I was in a Latino fraternity, in a very public-facing student leadership role, and was…in Texas.

A few months prior, our then-communications director and former director of the Queer Student Alliance gave me a rainbow flag pin. They said, “Look, I know you might not be ready. But if you are, you should wear it when we’re in line to shake his hand.” Now at this point, I was pacing back and forth in our office, just completely unsure of what to do. Looking back at it now, it seems so obviously overblown, but at the time, it felt existential.

If Obama saw it, would he think I was trying to push him on same-sex marriage? Would that be wrong? But that’s not what I’m trying to do, am I? What if it ends up in a photo in The Daily Texan, the university newspaper? The questions in my head grew louder as I considered whether to display the small symbol of LGBTQ+ identity. Jimmy had just come back from a final coordinating meeting. He saw me and understood immediately.

“Are you freaking out about wearing the pin?” he asked.

“Yes, obviously,” I replied.

“I think you’ll be really proud of yourself if you wear it,” he responded. “The President of the United States is not going to be upset with you.”

I wore the pin. An hour later, I was shaking President Obama’s hand. He never noticed the pin. It’s somewhere in storage now. But I’ll always remember what it felt like to put it on.

Proverbs 27:17 says, “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.”

Courtesty Nathan Barrera-Bunch

Jimmy has spent his life doing exactly that, helping the people around him become a little braver, a little stronger, and a little more themselves.

That is when Jimmy is most himself. Not when he’s grandstanding with his command of legislative policy. Not when he’s speaking about his faith. Not even when he’s dismantling men a decade his senior in a crowded basement. It’s in the small, uncelebrated moments, when he sees a person clearly, holds the weight of who they are, and says exactly what they need to hear.

He’s been doing it his whole life. I expect he always will.

Nathan Barrera-Bunch is a former management analyst at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs who was laid off during the Trump administration’s 2025 purge of federal workers.

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