Talarico Reappears on Campaign Trail After 9-Day Absence

Talarico’s campaign claimed he had a long battle with the flu, but there has been speculation that he checked into a mental health facility in Ohio.

A call — which has not been verified — to the Lindner Center of Hope in Ohio was released in which a receptionist is heard saying Talarico had already checked out of the facility. Here is the audio of the call as published by conservative X influencer Nick Sorter:

According to Tony Ortiz at the conservative news platform called Current Revolt, the Talarico mental hospital story is a case of bad sourcing. He obtained the full 6-minute audio of a call of which Sorter posted only a 47-second clip that raises questions about the validity of the mental facility claim.  "The first three times the worker at Linder was asked about Talarico, she claimed he wasn't there," Ortiz said. In addition, Ortiz learned that the audio was shopped around to major news outlets unsuccessfully, including conservative outlets like Glenn Beck's The Blaze TV. No major outlet wanted to deal with the legal liabilities of a poorly-sourced audio tape. Then, the Linder Center issued an official statement stating that Talarico was never a patient there:

Whatever the reason, the lengthy absence occurred at a curious time with Election Day just weeks away on Nov. 3. The Talarico campaign told us the absence was for a total of 9 days.

On Friday, Oct. 9, Talarico was seen walking the grounds of Austin’s Zilker Park, the site of ACL, and greeting voters. Notable, the audio tape with the Linder center was said to have been made on Oct. 10, a day after Talarico's in-person reappearance. Ortiz said the timeline doesn't make sense.

“Hate to disappoint the conspiracy theorists, but James is still alive and meeting with voters at ACL today,” Talarico spokesperson JT Ennis posted on X on Friday afternoon, alongside a video of Talarico at the festival.

Republican Senate nominee Ken Paxton and President Donald Trump ripped the Austin Democrat for his absence from the trail. Over the past few days, Paxton’s campaign demanded “proof of life,” which was never provided.

“If James Talarico is too fragile to face Texans, he has no business asking for their vote, Paxton campaign spokesperson Madison Cercy said in a statement Thursday.

Talarico, 37, has Type I diabetes, a diagnosis he received during his 2018 campaign for the Texas House. During that race, he reportedly went into a state of ketoacidosis and fell asleep for 36 hours. 

Flu complications can be more severe for people with diabetes, though a nine-day stretch with no public appearances — not even on Zoom — fueled speculation that something else was at play. It is notable also that the rumors of the Linder hospital visit occurred during a contentious political battle where hundreds of millions of dollars are invested and that the rumors are sourced to various conservative, anti-Talarico X accounts like Sorter's.

“I guess I’ve been shaking too many hands on the campaign trail, and so I want to keep everybody safe,” Talarico said Sept. 30, when he called into an event with the U.S. Hispanic Business Council. “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.”

Talarico added during that event that his sickness sent him to urgent care in Dallas the night before.