The last time James Talarico held an in-person campaign event was on Sept. 29, at a fund-raiser in New York City, his second there in two days. A day later he appeared virtually before a Hispanic business group, conducting his talk from a hotel room. He had come down with a cold, he told the audience, which he had intended to speak to in person.
Since then, Mr. Talarico has not done any campaign events — a striking absence from the campaign trail at a time when polls show him in position to be the first Democrat in a generation to win statewide in Texas.
His opponent in the Senate race, Ken Paxton, has been hammering Mr. Talarico over his absence for days, suggesting that Mr. Talarico was hiding some underlying problem that he did not want to divulge. On Wednesday, at a rally with President Trump, Mr. Paxton led the crowd of thousands in a chant: “Where is James Talarico?”
Mr. Talarico’s campaign said that the candidate has been recovering from the flu, and that he would return to the campaign trail this weekend. A spokesman for the campaign, JT Ennis, said that Mr. Talarico had held “more than 100 public events” and shaken “tens of thousands of hands” before getting sick.
The Talarico campaign has maintained a steady presence on social media and in emails to supporters, masking the candidate’s absence from live events. Still, the lack of participation by Mr. Talarico himself in any public events — or even in any private fund-raisers via video — caused even some of his supporters to worry.
Mr. Paxton and his Republican supporters have reveled in the moment, creating “missing posters” and demanding that Mr. Talarico pose for a photo holding a newspaper with the date visible to prove he is OK.
“Still no proof of life,” Mr. Paxton’s campaign wrote in an email blast on Friday. “Texans are still asking one simple question: Where’s Jimmy?”
During his last public appearance, before the U.S. Hispanic Business Council, Mr. Talarico explained that he was concerned about spreading his illness.
“I was starting to feel under the weather a few days ago,” he told the audience. “Last night it got so bad that I went to the urgent care here in Dallas and I was diagnosed with the flu and so I’m running a fever and I’m at my most contagious right now. I guess I’ve been shaking too many hands on the campaign trail. And so I want to keep everybody safe and you know, if I was passing on this illness to somebody and got someone’s grandmother or someone’s baby sick, I couldn’t live with myself. So I thought the best thing to do was to put safety first and put everyone’s health first.”
Mr. Talarico has not spoken in public since. Early voting in Texas begins on Oct. 19.
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