June 20th, 2020 – Second Reading Podcast

[0:00:00] Welcome to the second reading podcast from the University of Texas at Austin. The  Republicans were in the Democratic Party because there was only one party chart. Tell people on a regular basis there is still a land of opportunity in America. It’s called Texas. The problem is these departures from the Constitution. They have become the norm. At what point must a female senator raise her hand or her voice to be recognized over the male colleagues in the room?

[0:00:34 Jim] And welcome to the second reading podcast for the week of June 20th. I’m Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas, and I’m joined by my colleague Josh Blank. And at the moment, I’m trying really hard Josh to just I’m realizing that whenever we do this introduction, I want to start by Impersonating one of the people in the intro.

[0:00:55 Josh] Oh, yeah,

[0:00:56 Jim] I don’t think it’s a good idea, and I haven’t done it, but I just felt like I needed to share that.

[0:00:59 Josh] I do a mean Pete Laney.

[0:01:02 Jim] Well, it’s kind of de rigueur. You have to do a Pete Laney if you’re if you follow Texas politics for a while

[0:01:07 Josh] Go look at Pete Laney.

[0:01:08 Jim] So today we’ll talk about two contrasting sets of political events that took place in Texas recently, the state convention of the Texas Democratic Party in San Antonio and the visit of the presumptive Republican nominee, Mr Donald Trump, to Texas last week. So let’s start with with state convention of the frankly beleaguered Texas Democratic Party first sentence, and we’re already picking on him. It’s almost too easy to start by mentioning that if you blinked, you missed it, You know what I mean?

[0:01:37 Josh] Yeah, I mean, I sort of I mean, again, I’m we follow politics relatively closely, and I knew this was coming up and I, you know, attuned to these things. And even so, it was just It was so fast there and it was gone.

[0:01:51 Jim] Yes. So let’s let’s talk, guys. We should backtrack a little bit and talk about, and we’ve done this a little bit when we talked about the Republican convention. But talk a little bit about what these conventions air about, what they’re supposed to be doing

[0:02:02 Josh] right and basic and short, you know, they decide on the platform for the state party they might determine you know what rules the part party’s gonna operate buying, whether they want to change. And there’s a lot of meetings.

[0:02:13 Jim] Yeah, I mean, it’s It’s the one time when people, especially in a place like Texas, it’s not like the meeting of the Rhode Island Democratic Party, where you know everybody can can just get together and then drive 20 minutes home,

[0:02:25 Josh] right? I mean, presumably with telephones and the Internet. They could just talk and meet and those kinds of things. But that’s where the other piece of this comes into play. Which is it? Informally. There’s just a lot of networking that goes on these things is where democrats in San Antonio get to meet the people in Houston and Dallas and, to a lesser extent, Midland

[0:02:43 Jim] and and what we call politicking. I mean, they’re talking about the direction of the party. People are talking about the candidates they like, and there is a lot of inner internal kind of team play that goes on between different factions, groups, cliques of you will in the party.

[0:03:01 Josh] But for people not in the party, it’s primarily Sina’s is a media event,

[0:03:05 Jim] right, and that’s anymore. That’s Rx for better for worse. I think that’s our expectation. So we started off by being kind of mean about, you know, it came and it went, and part of that was that it really didn’t last very long.

[0:03:18 Josh] It was only like a day and

[0:03:19 Jim] a couple of days being generous. I think, um,

[0:03:23 Josh] it is a long evening.

[0:03:25 Jim] Well, one, a zit turned out. One of them was a particularly long evening. And we’ll get to that. There were two things really front and center to the extent that this was potentially Ah, positive. So we say, media event for the Democrats, right? So the first thing was, all this talk about Donald Trump and whether Donald Trump is gonna hurt Republicans even in Republican states like Texas did seem to prevent something of an opportunity for Texas Democrats to grab at least local media coverage in various markets in Texas and say, You know, we’re here to take on Donald Trump. There’s blood in the water. Here’s why Republicans or independents or the world should take a second look at us, even though we haven’t won an election in decades here in statewide election,

[0:04:13 Josh] if nothing else, a strong, unified, well delivered message as to why Texas Democrats are a viable alternative to the politics that Trump is espousing, even if it’s not super well received in Texas because of Texas’s are generally Republican and conservative leanings would still be a win for the Texas Democrats. They don’t get a lot of opportunities where they don’t have the governorship. They don’t have lieutenant governorship. They can’t go out and send a statewide Democrat out and get a bunch of media coverage. This is a chance for them. Toe. Actually, you know, take this on and maybe get a small win,

[0:04:45 Jim] and they actually had a little bit of a hook for this. We talked last week or the week before about, uh, Hillary Clinton having done an interview in New York magazine and letting loose with this trial balloon. And in fairness, as we said, I think at the time it wasn’t too much more than that. But nonetheless, the national Democratic presidential candidate did make news by saying that, you know, she was gonna fight for Texas and you’d have thought they would. They would have. They would have been a little more queued up on that?

[0:05:11 Josh] Yeah, it’s added that real quick. I mean, historically, the media does want to hook onto a competitive taxes. You got that? They’re looking for it.

[0:05:18 Jim] And I love all our friends in the media, but you got to give him a hook. Yeah, You gotta get it now, do some work.

[0:05:24 Josh] So that was worth So that was one of the two things going on from the media event percent. What was the second?

[0:05:28 Jim] And so the other thing then was Julian Castro, former former mayor of San Antonio, now the secretary of housing and Urban Development for the Obama administration. One of twin brothers, his twin brother is a congressman from from San Antonio. Julio Castro was the keynote speaker at the convention, and one of the reasons he got that job other than the buzz around him is a national political figure. Somebody’s graduated from city level politics and state politics to the national level, but there’s been a lot of speculation for really years now. Right? That he would be a viable presidential or vice presidential candidate for Hillary Clinton

[0:06:08 Josh] is a young rising star Hispanic from a state that the Democrats would like to make competitive and just the math adds up really any any. As

[0:06:16 Jim] you know, you know, there’s a lot of things that are positive. He’s got a great story. He’s got this twin brother and they they’re very good at telling stories of twin brother hijinks. Their mom was a kind of early generation Mexican American activist in San Antonio. They have a little bit of, ah, of a rags to riches story. Went to Harvard, etcetera, etcetera,

[0:06:38 Josh] everything. Didn’t think differently. Would go to Harvard, will go to Yale, or so there were gonna harm. I’m gonna stand for It’s something amazing.

[0:06:43 Jim] Yeah, You know, I think you’re I think one went to Harvard And one when Stanford and I honestly can’t remember which one went to which they’re twins. Google it. Yeah, they’re twins, and they probably switch places where they were doing it anyway, that so, um so all that said, How did this turn out for the Democrats? Well, I think this is where I feel like I feel like we need with those little horns or something in post. So let’s talk about these things and really, what happened? We really should start with second thing that we were expecting. So you know, overall, what we would say is that the Democratic Party demonstrated really poor media ability and really poor organisational ability in the way that they pulled this off. And it kind of went south almost from the beginning before

[0:07:27 Josh] it even started

[0:07:27 Jim] Really the debt. So about the day of Castro’s big speech Ah, he’s doing an interview with a state reporting doing, I think I think the first place this came out was an interview with Peggy Fee Kac from the San Antonio Express News. Um, and he’s being asked about the vice presidential potential. And he’s He begins the response by being just kind of demure in the way that we expect people to say. Oh, shocks, Yeah, but then, Peggy, we know we’ve worked with his very good reporter. Kind of says, Well, do you know that you’re being vetted? And he basically has to say no and she follows up. Would you know, if you were being vetted and he’s a Well, yeah, So basically, he announced that he wasn’t being vetted for the vice presidential spot. So one of the big points of buildup for him being the keynote speaker was deflated before he even got to the stage.

[0:08:17 Josh] Right and worse and worse yet you know most of the news coming out of the convention, if you will, was that Castro was not a VP was not likely VP pick anymore instead of anything about the Democrats. That’s a Democratic party. It was about this big deflation of democratic hopes which they didn’t need

[0:08:33 Jim] and so on. Top of that, the the organization of the convention itself was apparently pretty poorly executed. Even the night that Castro was going to speak, Everybody ran late. He was scared. He was gonna be way lay.

[0:08:46 Josh] It was the overbooked to begin with.

[0:08:49 Jim] People were leaving, They ran long, they changed it. And so in the end, he spoke to about ah, half full convention hall, by most accounts, and he spoke with somebody who’s upward. Mobility had been thwarted in newspapers across the country, right? A priority, his appearing.

[0:09:08 Josh] It was so it was so badly organized that basically they had to move him up 10 speaking spot because they were first while running so late. But But the delegates were leaving. They were they were just leaving in Mass, and they were like, We need to get this guy out here now. And of course, that didn’t stop them from leaving, because what was the reason at this point

[0:09:24 Jim] and another reporter that we work with a lot? And we like Jonathan Tie Love of the Austin American Statesman did a nice blow by blow in his usual multimedia manner with tweets and videos and stuff of this. So, you know, if you’re interested in this, go go have a look. A Jonathan’s piece. I think it was. I think it was Saturday or Sunday. Um, doesn’t really matter when it was because it’s on the Internet. So the story coming out of the convention was not the Democrats air here toe todo to take advantage of Donald Trump, and and there might be a leading Texas Democrat on the ballot. It was that will definitely not be a Texas Democrat on the ballot, at least not this one. And the Texas Democratic Party is as as is often the case, it seems to be lately kind of in disarray.

[0:10:09 Josh] Yeah, I mean, on the one hand, it’s a little unfair, you know, I think you know there’s a tendency to want to read into these conventions, you know, And the platforms and the goings on is being somehow really meaningful. Ah, you know, And there’s a lot of reasons that it’s not super meaningful, you know, in any real sense.

[0:10:26 Josh] But there is sort of an aspect of, you know, you look at this and you think, you know, the Democrat parties described often as beleaguered, you know, in many other

[0:10:33 Jim] three, in fact, just

[0:10:34 Josh] which we just did. Yeah, um, but, you know, the thing is, you do say, like, here you’ve got this is this few days where you know you’ve got media coverage, you have control over the message. You have the ability to try to actually shape what the coverage of your party and your and your Ah, and you know in your convention is in this state is one of the rare chance is actually get in front of this audience. And it’s just such a wild swing and a miss. It makes you it does make you say, Well, how are they supposed to organize credible statewide campaigns that they can’t organize a one day meeting?

[0:11:07 Jim] Yeah, I went to I went to look for a video of Castro’s speech just to give him some love and play an audio excerpt. And in Googling it, I couldn’t find the speech. But I did find in part because I’m I’m convinced that must be there somewhere himself, somebody’s cell phone on YouTube. But every time you go to search it, it’s just all buried in the fact that you know Castro lead on that. He wasn’t gonna be that he wasn’t being vetted to be the VP. So Okay, this is just get sad. Um, but it But it does. You know, for those of you that that are studying politics, shall we say, um, this does give you a sense of what we mean when we’re talking about the party as organization, you know, parties have capacities to do things and to do them well or do not do them well. And it’s hard not to look at this and see. It is an indication of just how week did the Democratic Party organization is now given that the other thing we want to talk about today pointed to some interesting aspects of the other major party, the Republican Party in Texas, and that came with Donald Trump’s visit to Texas roughly on the same days as the Democratic convention. They kind of took place at the same time.

[0:12:17 Jim] So a lot of people, I think early on asked the question. You know, why would Trump visit Texas To begin with? It’s a Republican state. Ah, there’s a you know, as we’re seeing, the opposition is pretty weak. We haven’t seen a competitive presidential candidate a long time. And yet here’s Donald Trump spending a couple of days here doing 45 events, including big public events in a couple of big cities. Why do this?

[0:12:43 Josh] Well, I mean so that the first and kind of most crass but true an obvious one is that Texas is like the campaign a t m for National Politician, both parts for both parties, Exactly. I mean, we mentioned Hillary Clinton mentioned discussing Texas is a battleground state in an interview New York magazine a few weeks ago and, you know, why would she do that? Well, she’s

[0:13:02 Josh] Well she’s certainly not going to spend a bunch of her Resource is in Houston because it’s super expensive or San Antonio, is it or Dallas this is a state that super big, super expensive, but they’re a lot. There are Democratic donors in Texas, too, and they have a lot of money to spend. And you know, if nothing else, you do want to wave your hand and sort of be respectful to the state before you go and ask these guys for money.

[0:13:23 Jim] And there. And there is a lot of Republican money here, a

[0:13:25 Josh] huge amount of Republican money here. And the fact is, Donald Trump is gonna you know, is one of the big stories from last week was how Donald Trump had raised so little money in comparison to Hillary Clinton and how he had to get his campaign finance organization going. This may be a first step in that direction and fixing that a little bit. So one reason is just Texas is just, you know, the national a T m for large political campaign.

[0:13:46 Jim] I guess we should pause and just note that even though people are saying and even Donald Trump sometimes is saying, you know, I’m independently wealthy, I can fund my own campaign. These things were enormously expensive, and frankly, Trump is in a less public way not showing a whole lot of willingness to spend every last dime he has to run for president,

[0:14:07 Josh] right? I mean, you should expect that a campaign is gonna cost about, you know, about a $1,000,000,000. You know, he’s not going to spend a $1,000,000,000

[0:14:14 Jim] right? So So he does. He does need to raise money. Despite the fact that his argument is I’m independent. I don’t I’m not. I’m not beholden to the donors, right? So another thing I think that that was driving this is a little more subtle, and that is and I’m not utterly convinced by this, but a secondary reason that definitely contributed to this. So we have to remember that Donald Trump’s last real contender for the nomination and somebody who is still held out his endorsement of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. Um, so it does make sense for Trump now that he is the presumptive nominee and all we mean when we say that is that he’s not been formally nominated by the convention. But despite continuing chatter about challenging him at the convention, he is the person that everybody presumes will be the candidate. And so it does make sense to come to Texas and speak to Texas Republicans and and, in a sense, almost kind of present himself. I think now, if he wasn’t coming to raise money, he probably wouldn’t be quite is worried about that. But if you’re gonna be here to raise money, you might as well do some public events. And I think the you know, the third reason he comes is that, you know, he does this the same reason he’d he goes anywhere and the same reasons that he does the’s big public rallies that have become his trademark. It’s still earning him what we call free media. That is the cave. You know, the cable televisions stations still often cover these speeches live. I mean, I was Now that you know, they’ve been criticized for this, it’s happening a little bit less now. It’s a little less newsworthy now that it’s been pushed out by some other things. And I think that you know that the primaries a little more settled nonetheless. I was flipping around the news channels looking for something that over the weekend, and there was Donald Trump live on, you know, one of the kind of off brand networks, The One America News Network. If you like it, it’s fine. But it’s it’s not CNN or NBC, MSNBC or the Fox News Channel. It’s a little bit more about it’s a little

[0:16:14 Jim] racier, a little. It’s a little racier. We’ve talked about that. It’s Yeah, it’s kind of Fox. Fox squared in a way, um, and you know, for Fox with a lower neckline.

[0:16:25 Josh] Yeah, let’s get off that tangents.

[0:16:27 Jim] So, you know, he you know, when he goes and gives these big speeches in a way, it almost doesn’t matter where he is.

[0:16:33 Josh] And in some ways there’s an advantage. Actually, being in Texas, I mean, part of this is just asking the question. Why is he in Texas? And then he gets the clips and we’re talking about the diminishing. They’re serving, diminishing marginal return to these things for most politicians. Maybe not Donald Trump. But you know, as the campaign wears on and he starts to focus more on more on the battleground states, presumably

[0:16:52 Jim] and by battleground states, we mean those those states in the general election we know from the last, you know, several presidential elections are more competitive, unlike Texas, which we don’t expect to be very competitive. You know, these these air races there there decided typically by a few points

[0:17:08 Josh] right and really or what The outcome of the election usually end up in Jing on. So when Trump gets to the point where maybe he’s, you know, spending, you know most of his time in places like Colorado and Ohio and Pennsylvania and Missouri and Florida right after a while, once you’ve done your six or seventh or eighth event in a two week span in Missouri, it’s not news anymore. And so for Trump, you know, I mean the ability to now, of course, with Trump, anything could be made news. But you know, part of this is by him kind of continuing to move around some things. The fact of you again even asking the question, Why is he in Texas? Puts it on television, and then we watch it when we talk about it more

[0:17:44 Jim] time there. There’s a funny you know, I think there’s a funny little logical thing about that. If you look at these two thes two points about Trump, the fact that you know Texas is an A T M and he gets the free media. Those two things are a little bit linked in the sense that he’s become fairly dependent, perhaps on this free meat media model until he raises more money and can actually launch more Orthodox campaign and pay for more and pay for more media that he needs, Right? So, like what? So then this leads to what is interesting about this whole affair from the perspective of Texas politics. Because, frankly, I went and sat through most of I mean it watched and enjoyed most of those to Trump’s speeches that were that I found on on the Internet and saw a little bit of that one live, and they were pretty standard Trump fair by now, he didn’t do anything crazy out of the ordinary. But, you know, just the usual mixture of, you know, counter counter heckling the hecklers and, you know, talk about heroes. There was a lot of the same campaign. At one

[0:18:45 Josh] point, it seemed like he might have thought he was in Indiana.

[0:18:47 Jim] He talked a lot about about the Lou Holtz in and some of his other Indiana sports endorsements. Bobby Knight. So it was, you know, it was that it was. It was the usual kind of odd experience of watching Donald Trump. It’s on and still can be. Mesmerising is the wrong word, but it could be, you know, it can be hard to turn away in some ways. Um, but the Texas, the elements that were really sort of interesting had less than you with what Trump said, and more to do the with some of the things that were said by one of the people that introduced them. That was one of interest was doing the introducing the lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick. Um, and what Patrick had to say shows us some interesting things about the intersection in this moment between national and state politics. So let’s ah, let’s let’s hear some audio from Dan Patrick.

[0:19:41 Josh] We have worked so hard, everyone in this room to elect Republicans in Texas in almost every office today, out of our 254 counties, 141 do not have one Democrat elected because of you way do not want them to get a foothold. Donald Trump’s going toe win taxes, but not by two points, not by five points, not by 10 points. We would have sent the Democrats packing forever. Donald Trump will be the change agent that you’ve been praying for and hoping for and wishing for and working for your entire life. This is the election. If you have anyone who’s a friend, a family member, a coworker that says, You know, I don’t know. Here’s what you tell them you’re voting straight Republican ticket and taxes and sending Donald Trump to the White House.

[0:20:51 Jim] That is, Ah, Dan Patrick at his at his rabble, but rousing best. I think, and there are lots of other things in there were, he said. Lots of really brewed things about Hillary Clinton, and he was only spoke for three or four minutes. You actually got a lot in there. So even in that clip, there’s a lot that’s interesting. What strikes you?

[0:21:07 Josh] Yeah I mean, it’s it’s really interesting watching him sort of navigate this task of attaching to this controversial national candidate, Donald Trump, to the state party ticket, which you know, for all accounts, has been pretty successful,

[0:21:22 Jim] Fitzpatrick himself says. We’re kind of were cranking here.

[0:21:25 Josh] Yeah I mean, it’s it’s really interesting and, you know, it’s hard. I mean, I think it’s really interesting, and it and I’m still kind of working out how toe to say some of this. But I mean, on the one hand, you’re sort of saying, you know, we need to make sure that we don’t give the Democrats a foothold. But we’ve been so successful in this guy, so great. It’s like, Well, then why are we worried about giving the Democrats a foothold? Yeah,

[0:21:45 Jim] Why are we even talking about this

[0:21:47 Josh] exactly? And it’s sort of like, you know, make sure you vote a straight, you know, when I ask, you know, what are you doing in November? It’s not the first thing wasn’t voting for Donald Trump. It was vote a straight Republican ticket and was put in parentheses. And that includes Donald Trump, you know, So it’s very

[0:22:02 Josh] it was. It was. I mean, date.

[0:22:04 Josh] Patrick is very good, you know, as a very good politician, and but I mean, there’s sort of slipping back and forth between you know, kind of what he’s saying, what he’s not saying and kind of. The comparison of these things was very interesting.

[0:22:14 Jim] It’s almost I mean, he’s doing He’s doing what a good surrogate does at the state level. On that, he’s he’s doing the work on that. He’s working on the problems from both ends without, actually, while what kind of concealing what the real problem is. On one hand, he’s reminding Trump supporters who may be there simply because they’re attracted to Trump. And they may be Republicans. But they may be disaffected Republicans that are attracted to trump, reminding them Trump’s a Republican vote straight ticket so that, you know, and that’s speaking to this subterranean or barely subterranean concern that Trump at the top of the ticket could hurt state legislative candidates, judicial que no other candidates on other parts of the ballot that our Republican. But

[0:22:57 Josh] he’s also saying right to other people. So the people kind of not in the room in some ways, you know? Hey, make sure you still show up Russia. You still show up and you vote straight Republican ticket, right?

[0:23:07 Jim] We are. You know where Republicans were successful in this? This can’t This can’t get in the way of that, right? Donald Trump has change Agent out there. We don’t want to be a change agent here in Texas,

[0:23:21 Josh] right? I think, you know, and then sort of another sort of interesting kind of thing about that is, you know, Patrick is, you know, the real bona fide conservative. Really second only to maybe Ted Cruz. I would say probably Greg Abbott, but only because more people know who. Greg Abbott ISS?

[0:23:37 Jim] Yeah. I mean, I I tend to think, Yeah, I think we probably think a little bit differently about that. I mean, I think you’re right that if we look at the numbers, the proportions are probably pretty close. It’s just that Greg Abbott being governor, he benefits from the symbolic stature of the office. And so he’s naturally just more well known than the lieutenant Governor is. But you’re right. I mean, but I do think the way I think about that is, if you’re the Donald Trump campaign and you could say, Okay, I wanna I wanna prove my, uh, you know, I wanna have stroke with conservative voters in Texas. Who do I want more than you know who are the top three people I want in order. Well, Ted Cruz, you want Ted Cruz?

[0:24:18 Josh] That’s not happening. Your

[0:24:19 Jim] that’s not happening. You probably want Greg Abbott and then you’ll settle for Dan Patrick. But it’s a pretty good settle.

[0:24:24 Jim] Definitely, right. I mean, you know, Dan Patrick is very popular and was the candidate of, you know, both evangelicals and tea party and tea party Republicans when he ran for lieutenant

[0:24:38 Josh] guts and speaking to your to your point earlier about, you know, Trump coming to Texas and kind of shoring up his support in the land of Ted Cruz. You know, if you can’t get Ted Cruz, why not get the guy who just won statewide with much of the same coalition, right? Exactly. I make that case for you.

[0:24:55 Jim] Um, you know. So I think it’s to finally kind of talk about this in Texas terms. You know, we you know, we and lots of other insider people have talked about Ah, the question of what is It’s kind of it’s almost sinister. What is Dan Patrick want? There are lots of talk about Dan Patrick wanting to run for another office, either to run for governor to challenge Abbott or maybe even challenging corn corn into for U. S Senate.

[0:25:23 Josh] He’s unequivocally denied that he’s gonna, you know, challenge Abbott run multiple occasions now again, things change. I hear Marco Rubio is running for the Senate again.

[0:25:31 Jim] He changed his mind,

[0:25:32 Josh] changed mind. It’s OK. People change their mind.

[0:25:34 Jim] We’re all human beings here.

[0:25:35 Josh] Um but this is sort of a question. I mean, it’s interesting. Washington and Patrick proceed through this electoral cycle where, you know, he was quick to endorse Cruz. It was hard not to see a cruise event without, like, kind of and you just kind of look around somewhere there’s a Patrick. He’d be served there. There is in the background. And

[0:25:50 Jim] yeah, that was definitely as an often in the foreground. Often, Yeah, he was often standing right, and he had a spot right at Ted. It on Ted Cruz is right, right shoulder. I think he moved back a little bit after he wore that ugly plaid shirt. It seems like you got relegated, but then they brought him back in.

[0:26:07 Josh] But then, you know, once cruises out of the race. He was pretty quick to endorse Trump, and he was the first of the state wise to go and endorse Trump. Ah, you know, I mean, in addition to that, he’s been sort of one of the most outspoken critics of sort of transgender bathroom rights in the country. I mean, he’s really been out there a lot, and it does sort of re energizes question of. So what we’re doing Is this for another political officers or something else?

[0:26:32 Jim] Well, I think you know, I think when you see him with Trump, there’s a There’s a couple of different things going on that you have to notice, and we were talking about this earlier. I mean, one of them is that there’s a really affinity here, Um, between stylistically as Muchas substantively between Trump and Dan Patrick, they both come out. They’re both invoking this kind of conservative form of populism that resonates pretty well in Texas. Obviously, for Trump, it’s resonating lots of other parts of the country, but that that strain of it’s an interesting circa 2015 16 version of populism that we see throughout the history of Texas. Sometimes it’s on the left. Sometimes it’s on the right. This is definitely a bit more on the right, and then it resonates, and they really resonate when it comes to things like immigration and cultural identity. those you kind of imply there’s other ways in which Trump and and Patrick are very different. And that is why Patrick helps Trump. I mean, Trump is Syria is definitely a much more secular candidate, shall we say, then, Dan Patrick, who we here in the interest of the podcast, you know, talking about Christianity and is

[0:27:47 Josh] famous line is that he’s a Christian first conservative, second and a Republican third, and that’s he’s made that his hallmark,

[0:27:55 Jim] and that’s really pretty good for Dan Patrick.

[0:27:57 Josh] But they’re also similar stylistically, right? I mean, in a sense, at least historically, right there both. I mean, Dan Patrick’s ah sort of was was talk radio host before he moved on to the Texas Senate. He understands how to transition is a media personality into a political personality in a way that Trump has obviously done you. No one could say very successfully up until this point.

[0:28:16 Jim] In some ways, that’s what makes it this very contemporary form of populism that’s rooted in non political celebrity. If you will, you know, And I think we have to. We can’t really leave without saying that there is something else that could be a little more limited, but still interesting in terms of Dan Patrick’s profile. And that is Dan Patrick becomes lieutenant governor at a time when that office, which had traditionally been known historically anyway as a very influential and powerful office in Texas politics, had been something somewhat in a clip. So we don’t want to go too much into this. And there’s some of this, and there’s lots of have been written has been written about this, but ah, lot has been written about this. But during the last decade and 1/2 as Rick Perry became a very unprecedented long term governors in the office for 14 years, which nobody ever really imagined anybody would be governor that long. The officers occupied by Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst, who was not particularly politically, he was sometimes politically aggressive, but he wasn’t politically skilled in the way that the historical figures we think of as influential lieutenant governors. More recently, Bob Bullock if you live in Austin, that big museum that’s named after him is a testament to how effective Bob Bullock was as lieutenant governor before him. Bill hottie, Um, and so there is a piece of this that I think we saw going in that when both Abbott and Dan Patrick seemed the governorship and the lieutenant governorship, respectively. It’s been an interesting question to see how much of a reset there was gonna be. And I think we have seen Dan Patrick unambiguously. Whether he wants to do something else or not, is very interested in infusing more power and influence into the lieutenant governor’s chair.

[0:30:04 Josh] Yeah, that’s definitely that definitely seems right. I mean, I think one of the things that’s almost been surprising for if you’re focusing on this particular question about the power dynamic between the governor and the lieutenant governor, um, you know, again and sort of this historical reset has been the degree to which I think Patrick to a large degree is, you know, outmaneuvered Abbott. I mean, I think Abbott is still very strong is doing he’s doing fine, but I mean, it really is the case that Patrick’s personality is being sort of a powerful figure with a microphone and sort of his sort of natural political gifts. He has really served, made himself or and is working on making himself, you know, the primary player in Texas politics in a way that, you know, I think it is not surprising. But it’s amazing how quickly I think it’s happened.

[0:30:49 Jim] Yeah, and I think that Abbott is still Do you know, I don’t want No, I would. I wouldn’t overplay that too much to the extent that I think Greg Abbott is that a good job of defending the position of governor? But, I mean, when you see Dan Patrick, I think your point is hard to deny. When you see Dan Patrick on the stage introducing Donald Trump like that, he seems very much in the moment right now in a way that, you know, Even if Trump loses, its hard for me to imagine that that’s going to hurt him.

[0:31:18 Josh] I wouldn’t even cross my mind that it would on a sleigh. His brand is that strong,

[0:31:23 Jim] so that that’s what that’s what we make of Donald Trump coming to Texas. We wind up talking about Don’t Dan Patrick and lieutenant governor without too much of a reach, so thanks all you for listening and have a good week and we’ll see you next week. Second reading podcast is a production of Texas Politics Project and the Project 2021 Development studio at the University of Texas at Austin.