Well, this certainly doesn’t look good and if you’re a Democrat, you gotta be concerned.
Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico of Texas has not been seen on the campaign trail since September 30. That was a Zoom call with the U.S. Hispanic Business Council, on which he explained he’d come down with something, had gone to an urgent care in Dallas the night before, and was putting his health first.
Twelve days later, nothing. No events, no rallies, no public appearances — in a toss-up Senate race, in a state of 31 million people, with early voting about to begin and 26 days left on the clock. The campaign of Talerico’s GOP rival, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, has started mockingly putting him on a milk carton, and the president weighed in from Truth Social this week to note that twelve days is a long bout of flu. Mockery, sure. It also happens to be the correct question.
LOST: James Talarico has been missing for 11 days.
If seen, please return to Robert De Niro. https://t.co/MrmiLVyZRJ
— Attorney General Ken Paxton (@KenPaxtonTX) October 7, 2026
The timeline is what doesn’t sit right. On September 28, Talarico was in New York at a glitzy celebrity fundraiser alongside Robert De Niro. Two nights later, per his own account, he was at an urgent care in Dallas. Then he vanished. The Paxton campaign has asked for three things that would settle it in about ten minutes: a short video of the candidate holding today’s newspaper, the flight record for the trip home from Manhattan, and the note from the Dallas clinic. President Trump, who has endorsed Paxton, has chimed in as well.
President Trump is not buying the "flu" explanation from Talarico’s campaign about his 12 day absence https://t.co/B4Sk06C6NU
— Brandon Waltens (@bwaltens) October 8, 2026
None of that is unreasonable. None of it requires disclosing a diagnosis. It’s the minimum verification that any employer would want from a candidate for a job this size.
The predictable response arrived on cue — that Republicans are being cruel to a sick man. Save it. Democrats forfeited standing on this subject roughly 2 years ago, when they spent an entire term insisting that a visibly declining president was sharp as a tack, that the footage everyone watched was deceptively edited, and that anyone asking was spreading disinformation. That ended with a debate stage, a collapse in front of fifty million people, and a cascade of books by the same people who’d been assuring us otherwise.
After that, nobody on that side gets to call it unseemly when voters ask where a candidate is.
And the stakes here are not abstract. Texas may determine control of the United States Senate. National Democrats have poured enormous money into the state on the theory that this seat is winnable. Trump campaigned for Paxton in suburban Dallas this week and is headed to San Antonio. Vance was in Brownsville. The Republican side is working the state daily.
The Democratic nominee has been unreachable for nearly two weeks. If he’s genuinely ill, say so plainly and produce the note — the sympathy would be real and the story would die by dinnertime. If something else is going on, Texans are entitled to know before they start casting ballots.
