With millions of dollars being thrown around on both sides and Senate control at stake, the Lone Star state faces a choice between damaged goods. There’s Republican Ken Paxton, who has endured a nasty divorce and impeachment by the Texas House, and then there’s Democrat James Talarico, who recently walked back comments about there being at least six genders and whose views on religion are, shall we say, quite unconventional.
Despite Talarico’s weirdness, he’s maintained a narrow lead in the polls. However, the newest scandal threatens to throw a Thomas Eagleton into the race as Talarico disappeared from public sight for nearly two weeks. (For those who weren’t around in 1972, Eagleton was nominated to be George McGovern’s Democrat running mate until reports came out a few weeks later that he had sought electroshock treatments for recurring depression twice in the previous dozen years.)
In this case, Talarico blamed his long absence from the campaign trail on a nasty bout of the flu. According to the Washington Examiner, which cited an interview Talarico did with the Dallas Morning News, he was “sick in bed” and didn’t want to prolong the misery by campaigning.
But a juicier rumor surfaced over the weekend from freelance journalist Nick Sortor, bringing back memories of Eagleton as reports circulated about Talarico’s stay in an Ohio mental health facility. For some, that speculation just seemed too good to be true. “I waited for events to unfold before jumping to a written conclusion,” wrote Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey.
Sure enough, the facility denied that Talarico was a patient there, and The New York Times “reviewed time-stamped images from a security camera at Mr. Talarico’s home” to verify his whereabouts before gloating about Republicans promoting “a false rumor.”
“I’ve never even been to Ohio,” Talarico insisted after returning to the campaign trail on Friday. The theory is “the craziest thing I’ve ever heard,” said the man who thinks God is nonbinary and who can name his favorite drag queen.
It’s a relief to know that Leftmedia bastions like the Times are working thoroughly to stop a hoax. The Times did, after all, win a Pulitzer for spreading the one about Russia collusion. Wouldn’t want that to happen again.
While Sortor broke the story, the tale had been circulating for a while. PJ Media’s Matt Margolis revealed that both Republican strategist Caroline Wren and recent Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt had weighed in on the situation. “I’m hearing that he checked himself into a mental institution, that he had a full-blown mental breakdown sometime around, I guess, September 29th or September 30th,” said Wren. Pratt added, “My sources are telling me Talarico is in a mental health facility. His campaign has stopped actively planning events in the vital homestretch of the campaign.”
Wren also cited flight tracker information suggesting a private plane had left Ohio last Friday, returning to Texas just in time for Talarico to make his reappearance at an Austin music festival.
With stories spreading like an oil slick, the obvious question is how the Talarico tale will affect November’s elections. Paxton already gave Talarico the milk carton treatment during his campaign stops, but his reappearance ended that string. Could the rumors of mental distress simply be a play to shore up the Lindsay Clancy vote, an elaborate ruse to discredit the conservative pundits who had been succeeding with attacks on Talarico’s record?
If it’s bad news, it will be a “breaking exclusive” timed to come out once the election is over, should Talarico win.
It’s hard to trust the party that hid the effects of Senator John Fetterman’s stroke until after his primary election, then covered for him despite continuing health issues into his term. Then again, Senator Mitch McConnell had to provide proof of life during his lengthy absence after his fall back in June.
By all appearances, Talarico did indeed stay home with the flu, and the story about the Ohio mental health facility is not true. But perhaps the moral of the story is that the entire nation still bears the psychological trauma of seeing the country “run” for four long years by a clearly demented and nearly incapacitated Joe Biden.
