The suburban Houston Republican and fierce conservative is mounting a long-shot challenge from the right against Senate minority whip John Cornyn but has made virtually no public appearances in Texas as questions mount about his campaign finances. Now, he's stopped showing up for his day job, too. Stockman has missed 17 straight House votes since Jan. 9— including one on the $1.1 trillion omnibus federal spending package he promised on Twitter to vote against. [...] Stockman's staff won't say where he is. They have ignored more than six weeks of emails, telephone messages and social media posts from The Associated Press and other news outlets.

Stockman was last seen in Egypt on a House Foreign Affairs committee field trip, and has made only one Texas appearance in his bid for Cornyn's senate seat since announcing his candidacy for the race. (Note that he's also withdrawn his House re-election bid.)

To say that Stockman's campaign has undergone turmoil of late would be an understatement; deeply in debt, the campaign has suffered from severe accounting errors, including apparently illegal contributions and other contributions that the campaign denies or cannot account for. His grimy, filthy Texas campaign office was shut down by local officials.

Nobody is putting Stockman on a missing persons list quite yet, but missing a half-month of votes and having your staff not be able to tell reporters where you are is not normal behavior, not even for a Texas Republican. Something's up.