One week out from early voting | Dallas News Live

And a lot of you have been talking about James Tallarico. We've gotten multiple calls into the dialed-in line about him being out with the flu and now back on the campaign trail. So are you going to report on Tallarico? How about we try to tell the truth about Tallarico's absence? Let's talk about some of the facts that we know right now. Tallarico was out for nearly two weeks. His campaign said he had the flu. He popped back on the scene Friday at Austin City Limits. That's the video that you're looking at. Then this weekend, some on social media spread a rumor that he was at a mental health facility in Ohio. Tallarico said that that was not true, but the speculation grew so much, the Linder Center of Hope posted this on Sunday, posting Representative James Tallarico has never received treatment from Linder Center of Hope. And then Tallarico quote tweeting that, saying, I've never even been to Ohio, with a laughing emoji. i want to bring in live um texas politics project executive director james henson james everyone has been talking about this of course it's red meat for republicans to keep stirring up things talrico back in the public what do you make of all of this well you know i i think it's the worst of social media and the truth of the matter is honestly Stephen I don't think everyone has been talking about this it lit up x twitter you know whatever you want to you know the for the platform formerly known as twitter um and other probably you know more niche social media outlets yesterday within a few hours uh as you posted there were two things happened one the institution in question completely debunked uh his presence and then the evidence that was supposed to illustrate that he had been there uh had been run through and seems to have been very plausibly uh produced by AI and we found out that the people that were promoting this had been turned down by legitimate media outlets because the evidence was so non-existent or or shaky so i think what we see is the worst of social media and the way that media channels work now You have these, you know, freelance social media activists or entrepreneurs start these rumors. The rumors themselves become the story, even though they are based on nothing other than, you know, the political objective of trying to somehow harm Tallarico's candidacy and help Ken Paxton. So it's, you know, it's a really great example of how broken things are right now. You have some well-known Republicans now pushing this, I mean, to the point where the Republican Party Twitter account is retweeting some of these things as well. From a voter standpoint, with distractions like this, how much truly gets through to the voter in changing their decision about a candidate? Well, I think that's a good example. I mean, I think as long as, you know, the more mainstream and legitimate media move on from this, it doesn't have very much impact. And the impact it winds up having, frankly, is to reinforce people that are probably already committed to voting for against James Tallarico. And I think, you know, the game here is that this is part of the broader campaign strategy that we've seen, which is to attempt to drive up what, by all accounts and all the polling that we and others have done, is a lack of Republican enthusiasm in this in this election in Texas. And so what this is supposed to do is gin up outrage among Republican voters who might not be that thrilled about voting for Ken Paxton, but are looking for ideas, looking for reasons to vote against James Tallarico. So it's just another play on trying to drive up Tallarico's negatives. With early voting starting in a week, a week from today, are both campaigns just grasping for straws at this point? Well, I mean, I don't know that I'd do an equivalency there. I think you can tell that the Paxton campaign is worried that a lot of the public polling shows them behind and shows a lack of Republican enthusiasm. So I think what you're going to see from both campaigns, and I don't know if it's grasping at straws, is an effort to execute their strategies in just the last couple of weeks of this campaign on both sides that is going to be doing what they can to identify their voters touch them reach them motivate them to vote and then make sure that they get out to vote um that's going to look different on the two sides depending on the position of the candidate um you know usually when we see candidates going exclusively with negative advertising, it's usually a sign that they're in trouble. And that's kind of what we're seeing right now from the Paxton campaign. Now, that's not to say that you can't find some negative ads run against Ken Paxton because you will. This is a very, very close election. But I think the kind of plays like we've seen in the last 24 hours trying to shore up Paxton's report and drives Tallarico's negatives up are another sign that there's a general perception that the Paxton campaign is running behind where we would expect a Republican campaign in Texas to be at this point. A lot of money being spent in this race, Paxton campaign getting a lot of late money today, James Teodrico with two new ads, one talking about data centers. Is data center still a big topic that you guys are hearing from voters about? Well, I mean, I think we're not hearing so much that, you know, voters are dropping what they're doing and wanting to talk about data centers. But I do think that the folks that are focused on data centers are very focused on and just the fact that data centers have become such a major topic in the way that it has. it's become a kind of lightning rod for the concerns that are front and center concerns like um the economy and and the cost of living much of our polling has shown that one of the concerns related to data centers that's widespread in Texas is that it will raise their utility bills and so to the extent that voters are thinking that when they see data centers it's very easy for them to turn to economic issues. There's also a lot of evidence that people are concerned about communities not having enough say in this and being squeezed out as a result of the relationship between business and government that they feel they are picking up the tab for. So it's not so much data centers themselves, it's the kind of conversations that the discussion of data centers are triggering. James Hansen with the Texas Politics Project, thank you for your time. Great to be with you, Stephen, as always.