The Other McCain

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Rumors Swirl: Where Is James Talarico?

Posted on | October 9, 2026 | No Comments

Have you seen this guy lately? James Talarico is a Democrat, a previously obscure state legislator who is running for a U.S. Senate seat in Texas against the current state attorney general, Ken Paxton. Or rather, I should say, Talarico was running for the Senate until Sept. 26, which was the last time he was seen at a campaign event. He showed up in New York City for a fundraiser with Robert De Niro on Sept. 28, and made a virtual appearance on a teleconference Sept. 30, but no one in Texas has seen him in public for nearly two weeks, and wild rumors are now circulating as to the reason for Talarico’s mysterious disappearance.

The official explanation from the Talarico campaign is that the candidate came down with the flu, but nobody believes that because (a) everything the Talarico campaign says is a lie and (b) who ever heard of a two-week case of the flu? Yet the truth about Talarico’s whereabouts is unknown, and speculation has given way to wild rumors.

The most widely believed explanation is that Talarico has suffered some kind of nervous breakdown — the stress of the campaign was too much for him, and his mind snapped under the pressure. If this is true, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate might be locked up in a psych ward, dosed with heavy tranquilizers, doing the “Haldol shuffle” while his campaign aides try to figure out how to keep Talarico’s mental disorder secret until Election Day in November. Tom Eagleton 2.0, basically.

A similar rumor is that Talarico is in drug rehab after suffering a relapse. Although his Wikipedia page doesn’t mention anything about Talarico ever having a drug habit, maybe this is just one of those politically convenient omissions. So I suppose it’s possible that, while he was partying with rich liberals in New York City at that fundraiser last month, Talarico scored some powerful drugs, possibly laced with fentanyl. He could have nearly died from an overdose, requiring him to be revived with a shot of Narcan and, for all we know, is recovering in some out-of-the-way clinic owned by one of his wealthy campaign contributors.

Another possibility that’s being talked about is that Talarico is in jail, locked up for some kind of sex crime involving minors. I’m inclined to doubt that rumor, because surely there would be an arrest record, or an online listing of jail inmates, that would reveal the nature of Talarico’s perverse crimes. It would be difficult to keep something like that secret, even for a couple of weeks, and therefore we can categorize this rumor as unlikely, although perhaps not entirely impossible.

Drug-resistant sexually transmitted diarrhea is a real thing, and public health officials are worried about it. Shigella is the name of the bacteria responsible for this disease, and shigella is “endemic” among gay men, for reasons I’d rather not explain in detail. We know that Talarico is very supportive of the LGBTQ community, and we also know that Talarico was in New York City last month, so if you add 2+2, the possibility of four seems obvious enough. Is there any specific information about Talarico (perhaps under the influence of drugs) getting involved in a wild gay orgy while he was in New York? No, we do not have any such information, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. We must “follow the science”!

What we have now is a mysterious disappearance by a political candidate, a two-week absence from the campaign trail that can’t be explained as a mere flu. The Talarico campaign is lying, and we don’t know what the truth is, so we are free to speculate and share rumors.



 

Category: Election, Senate, Texas

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