Cuban, Mark
1958–

Cuban — Dallas-based Mavericks owner, Shark Tank investor, Cost Plus Drugs founder — has built a distinctive public-values identity around healthcare-pricing transparency, pro-business pragmatism, and rich-people-should-pay-more-taxes honesty. Cost Plus Drugs, launched in 2022, is essentially Talarico's PBM regulation in private-sector form — both center on healthcare-pricing transparency and breaking the PBM stranglehold. Paxton has been on the wrong side of the kind of regulatory transparency Cuban built his post-NBA reputation on (the Tylenol lawsuit, the 'request to examine' statute use, the Tribune/ProPublica forum-shopping investigation), and Cuban has been publicly critical of Trump and the GOP populist turn that Paxton embodies. Talarico would land well with Cuban on healthcare pricing, anti-corruption, small business support, and Texas-Democratic-with-national-appeal framing; Cuban would push back on the $15 federal minimum wage and on aggressive antitrust expansion that he sees as harmful to startup ecosystems. The Texas-business-leader edge here is meaningful — this is the most relevant business-grader for a Texas race.