James Talarico Returns to Senate Campaign Trail in Texas After 10-Day Absence
New York Times · LC · trust 53/100
Mr. Talarico, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Texas, showed up at a music festival, saying he had been at home with “a nasty case of the flu.”
Listen · 5:05 min Share full article James Talarico, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Texas, had not appeared in public before Friday since Sept. 29. Credit... Desiree Rios for The New York Times By Sasha von Oldershausen and J. David Goodman
Sasha von Oldershausen reported from the Austin City Limits festival in Austin, Texas, and J. David Goodman from Houston.
In a short interview with The New York Times, Mr. Talarico said that he had been sick with “a nasty case of the flu” and had been “home sick in bed.”
“Everybody should get the flu shot,” Mr. Talarico said before heading off to greet festivalgoers at Austin City Limits in Zilker Park, as music swirled from a nearby stage.
He said he had more events planned over the weekend in Dallas.
Mr. Talarico last held an in-person campaign event 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.
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 for days 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.
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