After nine days of absence from the electoral campaign due to illness, the Democratic candidate for the United States Senate, James Talarico, reappeared Friday with an unexpected speech. appearance at the Austin City Limits music festival.
With early voting fast approaching, Talarico left the trail early last week after revealing he had been diagnosed with the flu. His presentation at ACL was his first public appearance since September 30, when he virtually convened an event with the US Hispanic Business Council. His last planned in-person event before that was a September 28 fundraiser in New York with Robert De Niro.
Talarico was seen walking onto the grounds of Austin’s Zilker Park, the site of the ACL, and greeting voters before an expected appearance on stage at the festival Friday afternoon.
“I hate to disappoint the conspiracy theorists, but James is still alive and meeting with ACL voters today,” Talarico spokesperson JT Ennis posted on X Friday afternoon, alongside a video of Talarico at the festival.
Republican Senate candidate Ken Paxton and President Donald Trump criticized the Austin Democrat for his absence from the trail. In recent days, Paxton’s campaign has demanded “proof of life,” launched a “Tala-Freak-Out tip line” for Talarico sightings in the state and promoted missing persons posters depicting him. Talarico campaign officials told reporters Thursday that he was still recovering and planned to return to the campaign trail this weekend.
Many right-wing commentators online promoted unverified theories about Talarico’s absence, suggesting without evidence that his campaign was falsely using the flu to cover up a more serious and politically damaging illness.
“Low-T Jimmy appears to be having a real mental Tala freakout on the national stage,” Paxton campaign spokeswoman Madison Cercy said in a statement Thursday. “If James Talarico is too fragile to face the Texans, he doesn’t have to ask for their vote.”
Talarico, 37, has Type I diabetes, a diagnosis he received during his 2018 campaign for the Texas House. During that race, he went into ketoacidosis and fell asleep for 36 hours after running through his entire neighborhood to pass a series of town halls. Earlier this year, Talarico’s campaign aired television ads promoting legislation he championed that caps monthly insulin costs.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, people with diabetes, an autoimmune disease, are at higher risk of “serious flu complications” and are more likely to get sick and stay sick longer.
“I guess I shook too many hands on the campaign trail, and so I want to keep everyone safe,” Talarico said Sept. 30, when he called into an event with the U.S. Hispanic Business Council while appearing sickly. “If I gave this disease to someone and made someone’s grandmother or baby sick, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.”
Talarico added at that event that his illness sent him to urgent care in Dallas the night before.
At a rally in San Antonio on Wednesday, his third trip to Texas in a month, Trump linked Talarico’s illness to a routine that has become a mainstay of his speeches here, in which he says Talarico is a vegan who gets sick after eating meat for the show. Talarico is not vegan.
In a Truth Social article after the rally, Trump wrote that Talarico was “missing in action,” adding, “Where is he? What’s wrong with him? Bad rumors are going around.”
Trump also said Talarico should “immediately show up at a debate stage against Ken Paxton, who is ready, willing and able.”
Talarico accepted four debate invitations and repeatedly challenged Paxton to face-offs, including on Fox News. Paxton has not accepted any invitations to debate, although his campaign said in July, “of course we’re going to debate.” Talarico is also expected to headline a CNN town hall next week.
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