Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico has stepped off the campaign trail after a flu diagnosis, even as Republican Ken Paxton rolls out attack ads calling the Democrat missing.
The Hill reported that Talarico disclosed the illness while joining a U.S. Hispanic Business Council forum virtually on Sept. 30, saying he had gone to urgent care in Dallas the night before.
The Democrat told the forum he had started feeling under the weather a few days earlier and was at his “most contagious” during that virtual stop. His last cited in-person public appearance was a Sept. 28 fundraising event in New York with actor Robert de Niro. Republican opponent and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton answered the gap with fresh attack ads that frame the absence as a vanishing act.
With the November general election approaching, the pause has landed in a race already tighter than many expected in a red state. Decision Desk HQ averages on Wednesday afternoon showed Paxton trailing Talarico by 3 percentage points.
Talarico described the slide into illness in plain terms at the virtual forum.
"I was ready to eat my favorite quesadilla tacos, but I was starting to feel kind of under the weather a few days ago, and last night it got so bad that I went to the urgent care here in Dallas."
He said doctors diagnosed the flu. He also said he wanted to keep others safe after shaking too many hands on the trail.
"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, so I thought the best thing to do was to put safety first and put everyone’s health first."
Campaign spokesperson J.T. Ennis cast the break as temporary after a heavy public schedule. Ennis said Talarico had already held more than 100 public events and met tens of thousands of supporters, came down with the flu, and “will be back on the trail soon.”
Talarico is still slated to appear at a CNN and Jubilee Media town hall in Texas on Oct. 14. That date now sits as the next public marker voters can watch.
Paxton’s campaign did not wait. New attack ads lean hard into the empty calendar.
"Have you seen this man? His name is James Talarico," a voice reads. "James Talarico has been missing for 11 days."
The ads treat the stretch since the New York fundraiser as political absence, not medical caution. Ennis fired back that Paxton has ignored Texans all cycle and answers to “billionaire megadonors and special interests” rather than the people of the state.
Health pauses on the trail always invite second-guessing. Voters remember how parties handle fitness questions when the other side is the one sidelined, a tension that has also surfaced when Jill Biden claims the press held her husband to different standards on stamina and scrutiny.
Paxton enters the general after beating incumbent Sen. John Cornyn in the Republican primary. He also survived an unsuccessful 2023 impeachment on corruption charges. Those fights left him battle-tested and still the GOP standard-bearer in Texas.
Even so, the Attorney General has faced pushback over leaked audio from a closed-door fundraiser. Axios shared the tape in which Paxton told donors and lobbyists what he believed was dragging on the campaign.
"It’s not tariffs.... It’s the war, it’s gas prices, it’s diesel."
Price pressure and foreign conflict are the burdens he named. That frank talk lands with voters who feel costs at the pump and grocery aisle more than they feel campaign spin. It also lands inside a party still sorting how to define itself for November, the same anxiety Democratic strategists voice when Donna Brazile warns Democrats to set their own terms or lose control of the message.
Decision Desk HQ’s Wednesday averages put Talarico ahead by 3 points. In Texas that margin is thin enough to flip with turnout, energy prices, or a single bad stretch of news. A candidate off the trail for days hands the other side free airtime to define the silence.
Democrats nationally are banking on midterm momentum, yet races like this one show how fast a health break and a sharp ad buy can revise the week. That same uncertainty shadows larger blue-wave hopes, including the forces that could still stop the plans Schumer banks on a midterm blue wave to deliver.
Paxton’s team is using the absence to raise a basic question: who is present when voters are watching? Talarico’s team answers with the flu diagnosis, the urgent-care visit, and a promise to return. Both sides now own the record they are writing in public.
Party machinery under strain only sharpens the stakes. Financial stress and internal friction have already spilled into the open at the national level, including the episode in which DNC chairman Ken Martin threw a phone amid deepening money trouble. Local candidates still have to close their own deals with voters regardless of the chaos above them.
Talarico says safety came first. Paxton says the Democrat has been missing. Texas voters will decide which explanation holds when they mark their ballots in November.
Campaigns reveal character under pressure. Showing up still matters more than any excuse filed after the fact.
