Texas State Rep. James Talarico (D-50th District) had an easy way to shut down the rumors about his disappearance this week, and his campaign refused to take it.
As we previously reported, Talarico, the Democrat candidate for the Senate, vanished from public view a month before the election, and multiple people say sources are telling them that he checked himself into a mental institution following some kind of breakdown. Those claims remain unverified. The absence, however, is real, and the campaign is being quite aloof about it.
Talarico last appeared in Texas at a football game on Sept. 26. Invitations show New York City fundraisers with Robert De Niro on Sept. 28 and 29. Then, on Sept. 30, he appeared by video at a Hispanic business event he had committed to attending in person, blaming the flu and saying he had visited a Dallas clinic. GOP strategist Caroline Wren points out that this story places him in a Dallas clinic on the same night he was supposed to be working a room in Manhattan.
Nobody has seen him in public since.
“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,” Wren said. When Bannon suggested Talarico might just be off raising money in New York or Los Angeles, she countered that photos from those events would have surfaced by now.
“So, I heard this from someone in Texas,” Wren said, adding, “I have no idea what the truth is.” She called on investigative reporters to chase the story down, and she’s right to do so. A claim like this about any candidate of either party needs proof.
