Twelve Days, a Fever, and a Rumor

Leave a CommentTwelve Days, a Fever, and a RumorCommentary

James Talarico has not stood in front of a Texas crowd since September 26. Early voting starts October 19. His campaign says he has the flu and will be back this weekend, with a televised town hall on the books for October 14. His opponent has put up missing posters. The president has called him missing in action. On Friday a man with a following and no documents said unnamed sources put the candidate in a mental health facility. The facility claim is not proved. The absence is.

What the calendar shows

The last in-person event in the state was a September 26 press conference in Carrollton, on the federal gas tax and the war with Iran. After that he went to New York for a private fundraiser, on or about September 29. On September 30 he was supposed to be in Edinburg with a Hispanic business group. He appeared by video instead, coughing, and said he had felt poorly for a few days, that it got bad the night before, and that he had gone to an urgent care in Dallas and been told he had the flu. He said he was running a fever and was at his most contagious, and that he did not want to hand it to somebody’s grandmother.

That video is the last time the public has seen him speak. The campaign canceled events after it. A spokesman, JT Ennis, said Thursday and again Friday that Talarico looks forward to being back out this weekend after recovering from the flu, and noted that it has been more than eighty days since he challenged Ken Paxton to a debate. He is booked for a town hall on October 14. He has Type 1 diabetes, which raises the odds that a flu turns into something that keeps a man down. That is a medical fact about the candidate. It is not a hospital chart.

What the other side is demanding

Paxton led a San Antonio crowd in a chant of where is he, and his campaign asked for proof of life: a video with today’s newspaper, a doctor’s note, a flight record home from New York. The president, at a rally in the state and again in a post, said twelve days is a long time to be rid of a flu, mocked the diet, and called him missing in action. Volunteers on Talarico’s own side have told reporters they are worried. A campaign that spent the early months shaking hands, more than a hundred events by its own count, went quiet in the three weeks when voters start paying attention. That is a fair thing to ask about. A rival is entitled to ask it.

The facility claim, and what holds it up

On October 9 Spencer Pratt wrote that his sources say Talarico is in a mental health facility, and that the campaign has stopped actively planning events in the home stretch. He offered no name, no place, and no paper. Sara Gonzales said a day earlier that she had received unverified information about the whereabouts, and that if it were true it would end the campaign. She asked the public to send her proof and promised anonymity. No hospital record has surfaced. No staffer has said it on the record. No news desk with a lawyer has confirmed a check-in. The campaign has not answered the facility claim. It has repeated the flu.

A rumor of that kind can be true and still be unpublished. Psychiatric admissions are not press releases, and a campaign that wanted a story buried would say flu and wait. It can also be the thing that fills a silence when a candidate is simply in a bedroom in Dallas with a fever and a race he is trying not to lose. Twelve days is long for an ordinary flu and ordinary for a bad one, especially in a diabetic. It is also long enough for a rumor to harden into a fact in the mouths of people who have not seen the building.

What can be said, and what cannot

What can be said is that the candidate told a video audience on September 30 that an urgent care in Dallas had diagnosed the flu, that he has not been seen in person since the Carrollton press conference twelve days before that video, and that his campaign promises him back this weekend and on a stage on October 14. What cannot be said is that he is in a facility. The only people asserting it will not name the source. The only people who would know are saying flu.

The test is the weekend. A man who walks into a room in Texas and takes questions has the flu story, or a recovery from it. A man who misses the town hall on the 14th, with early voting five days behind it, will have a harder time asking the state to take the spokesman’s word. Until one of those things happens, the mental-health claim is a sentence on the internet with no address on it. The absence has an address. It is every event he has not made since September 26.