Apr 16th, 2024 – What to make of the “Contract with Texas”

[00:00:00] Intro: 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. So I 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.

[00:00:33] Jim: And welcome back to the Second Reading Podcast. I’m Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. Joined again today by Josh Blank, research director for the same Texas Politics Projects.

Happy spring post tax day morning

[00:00:49] Josh: to

[00:00:49] Jim: you.

[00:00:49] Josh: Yeah, that’s all right.

[00:00:51] Jim: Um, it’s, yeah, it’s mostly over. Um,

[00:00:52] Josh: there’s a way in a couple of things here and there, but you know, it’s all right.

[00:00:57] Jim: So, you know, today we want to talk a little bit about some internal, you know, something at the intersection of campaign politics and internal politics in, in the Texas legislature, but.

Um, you know, on brand a little bit. I thought we’d start with some news from the world of Texas polling. You know, woke up this morning, heard on our local NPR station reporting that the Texas Hispanic Public Policy Foundation released a poll this morning. That among other things, uh, provides a new stop, a new snapshot of some of these big top of the ballot races that we’ve been following in Texas.

Um, you know, the poll conducted what they called a, you know, per their executive summary, a representative survey of 1600 likely voters between April 5th and 10th of this year. Uh, so the poll has, uh, they, Uh, margin of error plus or minus 2.45%. Um, and, you know, no, no big surprises to me here. I mean, most of these seemed on track with what we’ve been seeing, right?

I mean, we had the presidential race. Um, it was interesting that not unlike what we got, I guess, um, you know, Donald Trump led Biden by 12 percentage points. Mm-hmm, 46 to 34, um, in the five candidate matchup. And then same margin, slightly different percentages. Not surprised, you know, is it, you would expect, um, a 12 percent lead where Trump’s share goes up to 48 Biden’s to 36 in Texas, if you just do a head to head.

[00:02:42] Josh: Right. I mean, interestingly, I think in that is in the Senate race, Cruz only held a five point advantage over Colin Allred in the same polling, which is also kind of just. Interesting in and of itself, right?

[00:02:53] Jim: Yes. Um, you know, there, I mean, there, you know, a lot of interesting things going on, you know, and again, they’re facing some of the same things we do.

Like I wonder, you know, off the look and I don’t think they included a top line document or at least I haven’t seen one so far. I haven’t dug through every bit of documentation on this because it came out this morning and

[00:03:13] Josh: they tend to break their stuff up a little bit and sort of, I think, kind of individual reports as opposed to releasing the whole, the whole top line document.

I mean, you know, I think for anyone looking at this and, and I mean, you know, I like the work they’re doing and I’m happy that they’re oversampling Hispanics as much as they are and focusing on that at the same time. You know, one thing about this poll that kind of Comes up a lot, you know, at least, you know, from our perspective is it’s hard to find a definition of what a likely voter is, you know, at least in the documents I poured through it this morning to see if I could, could find it.

And if it’s obvious somewhere, please, you know, feel free to send an email, let me know. We’ll put it in the podcast and the, in the, in the blog post what it says, but this is one of those things where, you know, and I think people who listen to this a lot, you know, we’re going to be having this conversation more and more, but you do have to ask yourself, what is a likely voter in, you know, April?

Of the election year, and that sort of is a little bit, you know, it makes wanting to see a definition so important. When

[00:04:06] Jim: I look at how Similar, this is to what we’ve seen in most of the RV samples that have been released so far, you know, my suspicion is not suspicion, but you know, my, my impression is that the likely voter screen is there to find is probably pretty permissive given

[00:04:23] Josh: how

[00:04:23] Jim: similar these results look to a lot of what we, what we’re seeing, you know, a bit closer race I think among Cruz and Alred than we’ve been seeing but you know some other polls have had that race closer, so.

And you know and again, underlines the point about when you move to a likely voter screen. At this point I think the attention to the Cruz Alred race is still pretty minimal among most voters.

[00:04:47] Josh: I think that’s right and I think you can even see that in the poll when you look at attitudes towards Alred which are still largely under, underdeveloped at this point in the race.

[00:04:54] Jim: Right. And, and, uh, also, you know, paid some attention to what their kind of, you know, the mission of the, uh, uh, of this group is, um, you know, they did that Hispanic oversample as you saw and, and found more evidence for the fact that there seems to be a closer divide, at least at this point, or a closer split between Trump and Biden among Hispanic voters.

And I would point people to that. To the, to the report, which you can find just by Googling their, their title. And, and we’ll also attach it to this blog post. I’ll attach a link to it, but, um, you know, also sort of melds with what we’ve been seeing in terms of a closer, a little more churn among Hispanics.

[00:05:35] Josh: And it’s tricky because, you know, I mean, here’s the thing, right? I think on the one hand, this, this points out something that’s important here, right? So when they look at their Hispanic sample, they find Trump actually leading Biden by four points, which might lead some people to. To sort of question the, you know, the ferocity may be at the same time, the margin of error among that Hispanic samples, 4.

88 points, which basically means they’re about even when we look, you know, we’re working on something right now is something of a table setter for 2024, which kind of shows where we are a little bit further, you know, a little bit more in the setup phase. And we look at favorability numbers among Hispanics for Biden and Trump.

They don’t look. Terribly different now. It doesn’t mean that it’s the same Hispanics hold positive views towards each. There’s all that kind of stuff But the idea of a close race here among Hispanics at this point is not surprising But this is where the whole likely voter thing comes back in which is to say Who is going to show up?

What is the turnout rate going to be among Hispanics? What’s the what are the demographics within the hispanic group going to look like and that’s just something that honestly at this point We can’t we just can’t know You know, I mean, ultimately, the role that immigration is going to play during, uh, the presidential race and this idea of, you know, what happens if we’re talking about a mass deportation, you know, scheme on the one hand, on the other hand, we talk a lot about, you know, very serious and real efforts by Republicans in South Texas to mobilize more Hispanic voters, you know, what is the impact?

And all this is just to say, just for my money, yeah. It’s a little bit early. It’s a little bit early to be making. I mean, I guess what I

[00:06:56] Jim: would say is, you know, without, you know, I mean, I, I guess the way that I sort of am taking this in at this point is, you know, I’m less focused on the specific numbers in some ways because of that ambiguity.

But, you know, when they find Trump running stronger against among male Hispanics, Hispanics without a college degree, you know, that all seems to be relatively consistent with what we’ve been seeing. Right. Um, so, uh, you know, we’re worth flagging. Sure. Um, as I said, we’ll, and we’ve taken those numbers and and we’ve plugged them into our newly relaunched poll trackers on our website.

So we have a presidential, a Texas presidential race poll tracker and a U. S. Senate race Texas poll tracker. Um, you’ll find those in the same section where you can find this, the blog section at texaspolitics. utexas. edu. So, um, as we move on then, um, last week while we were on a little hiatus, a group of, a small group of current and a larger group of prospective Republican legislators, uh, released a document that they are calling a contract with Texas, um, channeling, presumably, the new Gingrich created contract with America that was promulgated 30 years ago in 1994 and presaged the kind of Republican taking of the House in the election that year, the rise of, to channel our friend, uh, uh, or to paraphrase our friends, uh, uh, Sean Theriault, you know, the Gingrich, the Gingrich Republicans.

Right. Who, you know, were then the, the, the inspiration for Sean’s book about the Gingrich Senators. But, you know, I, I think the similarities on this really, yeah. Kind of stop at the title. Yeah. For the most part. Immediately. I mean, not entirely. I mean, it was an interesting exercise. I went back and yeah.

Kind of looked at the contract with America again, which I was, you know, I was around for That’s pretty good for you. Yeah. And you know, there, there were procedural reforms. Okay. There were a handful of procedural reforms. You know, called for in that document, which like the ones in this document were meant to appeal internally right to the two members of the U.

S. House at the time. But it also had some that that document also more famously had something that this document has none of. And that is a list of public policy priorities and and um, You know, somewhere, you know, at the intersection of public policy and ideology, but they were policy, you know, they were pointed in a policy direction.

And those were, you know, at the time kind of famously poll tested for both their content and their language. Um, you know, I would say that The contract with Texas looks a lot different and, and frankly shows a little less work on the back end in the assembly of these, um, if you compare the two, so the contract with Texas has made up mostly proposals for internal changes in the house.

rather than a mixture of policy and procedural change that was the case with the original contract. Now, you know, who are we talking about here? And I think that’s pretty important really because this is a pretty limited universe.

[00:10:14] Jim: Um, the announcement was signed initially by five, you know, Republican incumbents, state reps, Harrison, Lozano, Schatzlein, Tenderholt, and Toth.

[00:10:26] Josh: Right.

[00:10:27] Jim: For those that listen to this podcast, these, you know, four of the five of these, are a fairly familiar bunch, shall we say, in terms of, you know, being members of the same clique in the house. I was curious to see how you’d describe the group. Yeah, they, well, they are, you know, they are, you know, we talk a lot about ins and outs in this podcast, or occasionally they’re outs.

Yeah. In that they are Republicans, they are in the majority. Um, but of the four, if you, you know, we’ll set aside, we just mentioned, we’re going to set aside J. M. Lozano for a minute, come back to him. Um, These members are people that are not part of the speaker’s leadership team, or not, have not been part of the leadership team of, you know, any of the speakers that any of them have served under.

Um, you know, Lozano is something of an odd man out here in some ways. He’s currently a committee chair named by, you know, by definition, by the current speaker, and, and does, if you kind of look, you know, by various indications, I think it’s fair to say he has a somewhat more mainline conservative voting record than the I’m not saying he’s got a liberal voting record, but

[00:11:28] Josh: I also point out he gave one of the nominating speeches for Phelan.

Yeah, that’s a good point. I actually don’t remember that.

[00:11:34] Jim: So, you know, and then initially there are other signatory, you know, when the, when this letter was first released, um, there were also 12 more GOP non incumbent candidates that were signed onto this, that were candidates in runoffs. Right. So, you know, this is, um, you know, this is all sort of, uh, You know, a mixture.

You know that the core of this is a kind of, you know, dissident members of

[00:12:00] Josh: the

[00:12:00] Jim: Republican, the governing coalition among the members and then people that are, you know, angling. And so this is why I or, you know, shouldn’t just leave that angling dangling.

[00:12:08] Josh: Yeah.

[00:12:09] Jim: Um, you know, these are people that are involved in a runoff in runoff races in which, you know, your Republican bona fides and in particular your demonstration of your conservative Dedication is a big factor, right?

So as we look at the, the, the number of items in here and there’s what, 12, 12, I believe, yeah, there are 12, there are 12 agenda items and I, you know, some of these overlap, but I think you can break them into a few little groups. So they give you a sense of what the themes of the document are. So, you know, let’s start with, you know, one major theme is to, you know, end practices that are associated with bipartisan cooperation between the majority and Democrats, right?

[00:12:50] Josh: Yeah. Okay. It’s a fair, fair, fair, fair characterization. I

[00:12:53] Jim: pulled, you know, again, some of these could double count or could be put different ways, but you know, about five, about five items here that are not the first five.

[00:13:01] Josh: And these are things we’ve heard about before when they’re just being put in one place in some ways, right?

So only solicit support for the speakership from Republican members. So don’t make it basically a vote of the entire house or at least have them selected before a vote before the whole house, ending the practice of awarding a committee chairmanship to you. It’s to Democrats, uh, we’ll come back to this, I think, but ensuring that all GOP quote unquote legislative priorities receive a floor vote before any democratic bills.

And then assuring that there are no longer any democratic majority committees, which I’m not sure. Again, we sort of talked. We have to go back and look. I’m not sure if there were any democratic majority committees, but we’d have to go check and then basically tempore recently. This has been usually moody was until he was part of the quorum break.

I think. Right. And then, and

[00:13:45] Jim: then, you know, in the last. Uh, in the last session, uh, he was replaced, in fact, by a Republican, Charlie Guerin. So, so what do we make of all these? I mean, you know, when you look, you know, there’s a certain amount of, you know, and I, I kind of alluded to this. There’s a certain amount of half baked nature to some of these.

I’m just going to put it that way. And in the sense of, How much did you really think about implementation? Was thinking about implementation really, it makes you, it then provokes the question, was thinking about implementation really, you know, go into this, right? Because, you know, I mean, right from the beginning, you could only support, only solicit support for the speakership from Republican members.

So are we going to write that into the rules? How, you know, is that going to be enforced in some way? Is that,

[00:14:30] Josh: Yeah,

[00:14:30] Jim: like after the past, you know, it’s some basic sense you that’s, you know, how, you know, what do that seems to have some rhetorical value. Right? Implementation seems a little bit shaky to me.

[00:14:42] Josh: Yeah. I mean, it’s funny that you went there because I mean, you know, ’cause there’s two ways you can look at this and one you can look at like, you know, again, the implementation piece of, and the other side is sort of the implications piece of this, which is like, how does this like play out over time, over the course?

Yeah. You know, and all that. But yeah, I mean, you’re right. There is sort of a, this does sound a little bit more like the campaign rhetoric that we’ve been hearing than it does. sound like a set of like, I don’t say clearly defined rules for how this would operate. Right. And that comes up a little bit more as we go along.

Right.

[00:15:07] Jim: Right. And, and, you know, I mean, you know, the other thing that’s actually probably the most familiar of all of these in a public sense, and even that, you know, as our polling has shown, yeah, not very familiar is, you know, there’s this notion of ending the practice of giving Democrats. making Democrats committee chairs.

[00:15:23] Josh: Yeah.

[00:15:24] Jim: You know, that’s a practice we’ve talked about a lot in the, it’s been talked about a lot in Republican circles, particularly conservative circles or the most conservative circles. Right. Um, in some

[00:15:34] Josh: ways that’s probably going to be the least difficult of a lot of these. I mean, yeah, I mean, I think of the consequential ones, I should say.

[00:15:42] Jim: Yeah. I mean, you know, the ending, you know, I mean, You know, this has already been, this is already on a downward slope. Yes. Right. In which I think the, the number of feeling democratic chairs went down from 15 to 8. 8. 13 to 8. Yeah. You know, in between previous, uh, the recession before last and then in the current session, we’re still technically in.

[00:16:04] Josh: Right.

[00:16:05] Jim: You know, I mean, I think you, you know, I mean, you should talk about, I mean, you’ve been pretty bullish on thinking like this thing is over. Oh yeah. It’s just a matter of time, right?

[00:16:11] Josh: Yeah, because look, I think there’s two, there’s two things that are going on right now that both sort of push to the end of democratic committee chairs.

One, I can, I think it’s fair to say at the current moment we have a speaker’s race and that we have a current speaker who is still holds office and might still hold office who says he is running again and intends to be the speaker. We have someone else who has announced for speaker so we can say that we have a speaker’s race and ultimately, you know, the currency of the realm as far as I can tell when you’re running for speaker for the most part internally is like what, What are you giving out?

Who gets what committee chairs? Who gets what committee assignments? How can you, you know, essentially garner support? And I think, you know, those eight chairmanships are valuable, right? Especially if we’re going to have potentially multiple people angling for. Uh, the speakership, you know, the idea that you would leave that on the table at this point when you need to garner support, especially within the Republican caucus seems to me just from a basic sort of transactional standpoint to be a non starter at the same time.

Whether or not Democratic committee chairs fundamentally alters the output of the House writ large in a legislative session, I think, is something that’s pretty debatable given, you know, the output of the House over the last few sessions. But I think, you know, the, the messiness and, and, and, The messiness, both the messiness and the success of challengers in this last election cycle means that I think it’s very hard to imagine someone becoming speaker at this point, and then pointing Democratic committee chairs, knowing that they’re creating space for someone to say, see, it’s another closet Democrat, even if it’s not feeling someone else.

And so I just think there’s just not a lot of, there’s not a lot of benefit at this point.

[00:17:43] Jim: Well, I mean, I guess, you know, it’s going to depend on what the, what the dynamics of that speaker race look like. I mean, as I was saying before, I mean, I think, you know, the overall thing, you can parse this beyond it, there being much value.

I mean, I,

[00:17:54] Josh: um,

[00:17:54] Jim: I mean, you know, I think that, you know, if you’ve moved from 13 to nine and you know,

[00:18:00] Josh: yeah,

[00:18:01] Jim: it’s really going to depend on what the contours of the, you know, when, when the actual. You know, lobbying and rallying goes on after we know what the electorate is going to look like after the, in the house, after the election.

You know, could you get away with some members, you know, saying, yeah, over time we will be phasing this out. I will commit, you know, I’ll appoint fewer chairs than I did last time. Or if it’s somebody else, I’ll appoint fewer chairs than Phelan did last time. I mean, I think there’s some negotiating rules room in there.

If in fact, they do. A candidate does seem to feel like they need some or some democratic votes.

[00:18:42] Josh: Well, that’s the thing, right? So there’s, there’s just no way to know. So there’s two things. There’s one is sort of the edge case. You know, I say the Whitmire case, right? You’ve got some Democrat whose knowledge within a particular area is so valuable that it seems worthwhile keeping one or two democratic committee chairs.

That’s easy enough to say, Hey, we’re on the way to Phasing this out just as the lieutenant governor did. Yeah, right. And it seems that, you know, the speaker could do the same thing and be, you know, again, pointed lieutenant governor is, is the North star on that. At the same time, if the speaker candidate ultimately does need democratic support in order to, you know, get the speakership.

And if that becomes We’re talking about a completely different situation than what we’re expecting right now, I think, and then that’s fine. I’m willing to say, hey, the situation changed. This is different. But I’d also say at that point, my prediction shifts and say, okay, before I said there aren’t gonna be more democratic majors, if there are democratic majors, my guess is, is that speaker, assuming it’s a Republican, which I would, is going to face a significant primary challenge in 2020.

26, like just right off the bat. And so that’s the one thing about it is it’s just not an attractive proposition, I think, for any potential future speaker candidates, because all you’re doing is sort of inviting the same kind of, you know, just quick word crap that, you know, feeling got over something that every speaker has done before.

Yeah.

[00:19:54] Jim: I mean, you know, it’s just increasing your costs and your inconvenience. Right. Um,

[00:19:59] Josh: you know, transaction costs matter, right? You know, it’s all, you know, these guys are aware. So that’s why it just seems unlikely.

[00:20:04] Jim: Yeah. So we’ll see. Um, So, you know, there’s that cluster of things, you know, we could get too far into the weeds on this, but I want to get to our general sense, because if we don’t get to our general sense, then we over interpret what’s here.

Yeah, sure. We are always cautioning against over interpretation. We don’t want to over interpret,

[00:20:20] Jim: So I think, you know, the other, you know, kind of group of things are aimed at, weakening the office of the, and position of the speaker, and, and otherwise hamstringing the position of the speaker of the house.

Right. So, you know, they call for limiting the speaker to two terms to reduce their power, you know, and this is their language to reduce their power over individual members, which I thought was interesting. Interesting, interesting phrasing, but I get it. And, you know, decentral, then this is another interesting one, decentralized power by prohibiting the distribution of political funds from the speaker.

[00:20:53] Josh: We’ll come back to that.

[00:20:54] Jim: We’ll come back to the one. I mean, look, we just flag right now. I mean, there are some interesting legal and even constitutional questions about that.

[00:20:59] Josh: Right.

[00:21:00] Jim: So, you know, those are the main, you know, also

[00:21:02] Josh: not clear to me that the term decentralized power really works there when you get the implications of what this would do.

[00:21:09] Jim: Well, I mean, I think, um, right. I mean, I, you know, what I would say is that, you know, there’s the unconscious bursting out there and that what these are about is decentralizing power, you know, to some degree now, you know,

[00:21:24] Josh: for some

[00:21:24] Jim: people, could any, you know, uh, a speaker promise going in and promising to serve only two terms, like a lot of people promise.

You know, we’ll not remember this, but this has been a tactic, you know, people have promised in the past to only serve one term or to not run for reelection. Uh, example that comes to mind for me, the most prominent recent one is Price Price, Daniel Jr. In the early seventies, who promised he would not run for reelection and by all contemporary accounts was immediately rendered much less powerful in the position of speaker than he otherwise would have been.

It’s the usual kind of issue with talking about term limits and lame ducks. So

[00:22:08] Josh: I also think it’s important to bring up a point here about, uh, you know, the difference between. Rules versus sort of constitutional limitations. Right. And I mean, you know, people talk about like, let’s make the tax cuts permanent.

There’s no such thing. Right. I mean, there are no such things permanently. Uh, you can say that this is what’s going to happen. And if this is a rules based or, I mean, let alone not even a promise, but it becomes something in the rules, well, the rules can change at the beginning of a session.

[00:22:31] Jim: Yeah. And so I, you know, yeah.

And that’s where, you know, a lot of this will. You know, I mean, to get to where we’re going, but that’s where a lot of this will wind up, right, is a fight over the rules, you know, that’ll be intertwined in all likelihood with the fight over the speakership, right? So, and then there’s another kind of set of proposals that speak to, you know, to some degree speak to the, uh, grievance, recent grievances or carping.

Yeah, you know, ranging from carping to grievances expressed by some house members, you know, mostly in, you know, the general sort of ideological neighborhood of the people that of the five members that were the spark plug for this. And one or two of these though, you know, in some of these things, I mean, this is the interesting bunch for me to some degree, because I think some of this might have a little bit of resonance beyond the people that are driving this.

So, you know, there’s a claim and this is a direct quote from the document. There’s a, there’s a, there’s a call to replace the current liberal parliamentarians with staff committed to only offering advice on adherence to house rules, not to advancing their personal ideology. Now that’s basically, you know, an accusation about the current parliamentarians in the house.

Um, both their own personal. You know, political history, right? And it’s no secret. Um, one of them in particular has worked for or Democrats for Hugh Brady, but also, you know, this gen, you know, it really does overlap with the, you know, underlying, you know, kind of burn this under the saddle here that the speaker, the speaker’s office has been too powerful.

And, you know, look, this is powerful and to capricious and driven by personal agenda rather than Now you’ve got the rather than what the caucus wants or what’s good for Texas or whatever the rhetoric around that is going to be. Um, and then, you know, related to that, the next thing is going to stop parliamentary abuse again, verbatim, by requiring only substantial adherence to house rules.

to keep hypertechnical points of order from killing good legislation. So

[00:24:46] Josh: I love that phrase. I know how, you know, how you, how

[00:24:49] Jim: you write in, what is a hypertechnical point of order? How do you write into the rules? What is good legislation?

[00:24:55] Josh: Substantial adherence, hypertechnical points of order. Good legislation.

Okay.

[00:25:01] Jim: You know, so in terms of art, which is fine. This is like,

[00:25:04] Josh: this is, this is as much a campaign document as, as well. It’s a rich

[00:25:08] Jim: text in that way. It’s how I, you know, as I said, you know, it kind of gives you some, some things to really look at and give you some insight into what, you know, what people are saying and thinking in this.

I

[00:25:17] Josh: really appreciate that description.

[00:25:19] Jim: And then, you know, the other, you know, the other, you know, two things I would put in this bucket, allow audio video recording of all house proceedings, including point of order debates. Now, what they mean by that,

[00:25:30] Josh: what do you think they mean? But I

[00:25:31] Jim: believe,

[00:25:32] Josh: yeah.

[00:25:33] Jim: is not the exchanges between the front and the back mic, which are part of the record, but what we see when everybody goes to the front of the dais and discusses points of order with the parliamentarians and whoever’s at the dais.

Now, point of order debates is probably, again, a terminological mistake.

[00:25:51] Josh: Yeah.

[00:25:53] Jim: Because one would come back and say those debates are part of the record. I mean,

[00:25:56] Josh: Yeah.

[00:25:57] Jim: You know, you want to go look at it. So then, you know, now that’s just, they didn’t really say what they meant here.

[00:26:02] Josh: Yeah,

[00:26:03] Jim: I think. Um, but it’s also again, uh, practically, you know, wanting to have a mic at the front desk for all those discussions and a recording of all that I think is, is not likely to be an entirely popular position, but they’re making the point, you know, the point they’re making is this really is part of this whole, you know, push back to, in my mind, against the idea that the parliamentarians are making decisions on points of order and procedure that are, that put more priority, they give too much priority to the goals of the leadership.

[00:26:39] Josh: Yeah, and I think the idea with a,

[00:26:40] Jim: with a side shot of, and they’re willing to do this because they’re closeted or barely closeted liberals or something.

[00:26:46] Josh: And I think the idea is, you know, I think the parliamentarians, I’m not, not these parliamentarians, but parliamentarians in general, I don’t want to speak for anybody specifically.

I think we generally say, look, we’re not there to enforce any kind of outcome. We’re there to enforce the rules. Right. And in that sense, we’re neutral arbiters. And what this document is clearly saying is, No, you’re not. You’re not. And given that you’re not, not only, you know, do we want to, you know, sort of change the way that, you know, you’re, you’re appointed and what your, your goal is, but we also want to make you objects of observation in the process.

Exactly.

[00:27:15] Jim: Right. And so, you know, this is a way of calling attention to the role of the parliamentarians and these particular part. I’ll tell you,

[00:27:23] Josh: nothing gets voters. Ginned up

[00:27:26] Jim: like talk of the parliamentarians and proceed first.

[00:27:28] Josh: First. They say first thing first They look at that word if you’re doing online poll, and they think what is that?

Yeah, exactly How do I say it

[00:27:36] Jim: and then the other thing that yeah, we put in this bucket is you know And again verbatim start substantive work as soon as session begins to end delays that kill priority legislation now Who’s priorities? Um, in fact, depending on, you know, one answer to who’s priorities, who sets the priorities, the governor’s office would likely say, well, you know, when we have priorities, we declare them emergency items.

So get going. Yeah. You know, otherwise, I, you know, this runs into the Texas constitution, um, which creates, you know, the broad deadlines for what can be considered when now. The rules do create, you know, the constitution and the rules create the conditions where the, you know, you can bypass, you know, you can suspend constitutional rules, takes a two thirds vote, as I recall.

Well, um, so there’s a, you know, there is a procedure for this to happen.

[00:28:31] Josh: Now is the two thirds, uh, is that two thirds provision in the constitution or the rules?

[00:28:36] Jim: I believe it’s in the constitution. Okay.

[00:28:39] Josh: Okay.

[00:28:39] Jim: Um, I could be wrong about that. I should look at it. Just thinking

[00:28:42] Josh: about whether there’s another way You know, skin the cat, but I

[00:28:45] Jim: believe that the two thirds rules in the constitution and we’ll, we’ll check that.

So what do we, you know, I mean, a lot of our straight thoughts have already kind of leaked out into this. We just can’t help ourselves, but you know, what, what to make of this? I mean, look, initially the other signatories were candidates who’d already secured the nominations for their seats in addition to the five sitting members, you know, and then after the original, the initial rollout 12 more.

uh, Republican non incumbent candidates in runoffs also signed on.

[00:29:16] Josh: Right.

[00:29:17] Jim: So, you know, when we started, I said, you know, this is at the intersection really of a looming process about a looming and continuing fight over how the House is a bronze and how the House operates, most notably the power of the speaker.

Um, but it’s also, you know, in the moment, a campaign document, as you said, and, you know, I think, I think you have to consider it first and foremost, that. First and foremost, that in this context and that it’s. You know, it’s position in the jockeying for the speakership and and the writing of the rules. How that unfolds as we were talking about earlier is yet to be seen.

[00:29:55] Josh: Well, it’s important to note, I think, as you have that the majority of the signatories on this do not hold office, have not operated in the House yet and yet are making these sort of Pretty, pretty committed, broad statements about how the house should be operated when they get there. And so, and I’m not to say, I’m not saying that with disdain or anything else, but I’m just saying, when you’re saying like, is this like, like how much of this is a campaign document and how much of it is this other thing?

It can be both, but at the current moment, it’s very much part of the campaign piece. Yeah.

[00:30:23] Jim: And, and look, you know, I mean, if, you know, somebody listening might be right to sense attention where you’re saying the public doesn’t pay attention to this. Well, why, why would this be a campaign document? But, you know, the audience for.

The primary runoff in a Republican district is a much narrower audience, right? And there is another audience related to that at, at this juncture, and that is the donor community that is funding a lot of these channels is playing a major role in funding a lot of these challenges, right? So this incumbents,

[00:30:52] Josh: so really, I mean, what this is in a lot of ways is, is, you know, I think to a lesser extent, though, still to an extent, it’s a signal to those voters.

Again, there’s very committed, small groups of voters who are, Eligible to vote in these runoffs in most cases. And to a larger extent, it’s a signal to, you know, the donor class that we’ve talked a lot about a lot in here and in a particular, you know, sort of the West Texas oil, you know, donor class about where your commitments lie when the next, you know, speaker’s election comes up, how you want the house to be operating.

You’re making a commitment to sort of that vision of, of Texas government.

[00:31:24] Jim: Yeah. And that, you know, I mean, and, and that vision, you know, I mean, it emerges pretty clearly, I mean, from. You know, the list of demands, you know, as I think was coming up as we were talking about them, that we can put it all in one place.

You know, they all express a kind of narrative about what’s been going on in the house that’s been painted, you know, fairly consistently for the last few years, really going back to the Joyce Strauss period. Yeah.

[00:31:50] Josh: Yeah, it formalizes these criticisms, right? And it formalizes the criticisms that were being made by dissident Republicans during Joe Strauss up until today.

And these criticisms are mostly, you know, again, like, these are not general election issues. This is, this is, you know, this is really, you know, something for GOP primary audience, but the criticisms are, right? You know, the House is run by Democrats, whether that be, you know, in the formation of committees or, you know, the parliamentarians, you know, putting their fingers on the scale that the house bottles up GOP priorities, uh, you know, either by leadership directly or through the misapplication or hyper application of rules or the

[00:32:24] Jim: use of democratic surrogates as committee chairs.

[00:32:26] Josh: Right. Uh, and this idea that it, you know, the house is controlled by the speaker with, you know, unlimited power who needs to be restrained or and or forced to comply to how you look at it, right? Right. A

[00:32:36] Jim: speaker who’s, you know, owes his speakership to the Democrats, et cetera, et cetera, is the narrative.

[00:32:41] Josh: And so when I look at it that way, that’s sort of the, you know, this is, you know, the, this is the, The, you know, the motivation in a lot of ways for a lot of these changes. If I sort of look at this over sort of a longer. Yeah,

[00:32:51] Jim: no, I mean, I think that’s pretty clearly what’s going on in terms of, you know, how you, you know, again, how you assemble a, a portrait of the house based on the changes that people are, are, are allegedly calling for.

So, yeah, you know, and, and, you know, again, and it reflects You know, as ever, the ongoing, you know, to some extent, the kind of ongoing agenda struggle within the party and the way that that agenda stuff, you know, kind of overlap. Yes. All of these conflicts we’ve been talking about that came to a head in the last session.

And in this primary, that is, you know, who’s gonna who’s gonna define what the Republican what Republican priorities are. And, you know, it’s some more, you know, Abstract, but I also think meaningful level, what is it to be a conservative right now? And what is it to be a Republican? Who are who are we list?

You know, where do we look for this? Is it the party platform? Is it the Senate de facto mean the lieutenant governor? Um, you know, How much say does the House have in that and who, who is going to, you know, who is going to define who, who enters into that? Is it going to be the Speaker? Is it going to be the Caucus?

Is it going to be, you know, a more broad based sort of will of the House? Or is the will of the House going to be pretty tightly adjudicated by the Speaker? And look, you know, Speakers and Lieutenant Governors are always. Managing that question, right?

[00:34:15] Josh: Yeah. And I mean, I think the

[00:34:16] Jim: governor is at Donald Trump.

I mean, you know, there’s a lot of different candidates here.

[00:34:19] Josh: Well, I think that’s, but that’s ultimately the point, right? I mean, what’s interesting about this, you know, in some ways is that it sort of glosses over one of the, one of the biggest sort of axes of conflict that we’ve been witnessing in the, in the GOP, which is, you know, disagreement amongst themselves about either a, what the priorities are or what the legislative vehicles are going to look like that are going to accomplish those priorities.

But the document itself basically, you know, Talks about priority GOP legislative priorities. Ensure all GOP legislative priorities receive a floor bone. Who’s priorities, right? You know, making sure that all GOP priorities receive a vote before any democratic bills. Oh, you know, right. I mean, all these things.

It’s like, well, okay, but if that’s the I mean, there’s a lot of serves, you know, practical implication to this. What if there’s a disagreement between the House and the Senate? Over, you know, what the priority legislation should look like, not to say that that’s a hard, you know, a hard example to envision right at this point.

Um, but that’s, you know, this sort of papers over, I think, kind of some, you know, some of the basic, I say papers are, it’s interesting to me that it’s sort of sort of saying, look over here, because in some ways, you know, it’s sort of like, Most of the dysfunction that Republicans have experienced in the last year of legislating was not because of Democrats.

It was not because of floor procedures or chubbing or the calendar. It was because of conflicts between themselves, between the legislative leaders, between the lieutenant governor, you know? And I mean, the other thing is like, I think, you know, I’m going to go back to that. I’m just going to throw this out there.

I’m sorry. We’ll give the

[00:35:46] Jim: Democrats some credit. I mean, there were Democrats that were good at making mischief within this situation, which is what you’re supposed to do if you’re, you know, A minority party, at least one of the things you’re supposed to

[00:35:55] Josh: write. I think that’s right. I’d also say, you know, if the speaker, uh, really did have all the power that he’s sort of envisioned as happening, having according to this document, you think he would have just forced everyone to vote through a voucher bill and be done with it.

[00:36:10] Jim: Right. Yeah. I mean, that’s, you know, yeah. Just, it’s just a kind of, I suppose. Well,

[00:36:14] Josh: I just, I mean, you know, in the sense that I don’t think that he was necessarily opposed to vouchers. It was just that he didn’t have the votes on the floor. Now, if he really did have all this power and the governor was saying, I’m going to do this, I’m going to go after your members, I’m going to go after you, you know, et cetera, et cetera.

Seems like that would have been pretty easy to solve with a speaker as powerful as this document envisions.

[00:36:31] Jim: Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, the, the problem here is that the speaker, you know, look at the end of the day, the speaker is not on the same page as they are completely. Right. And, but, you know, the other thing, you know, like.

sort of stepping back from this is, you know, it’s, it’s one of two things. I think it’s either, you know, underestimates or, you know, doesn’t acknowledge the reason you have presiding officers in a legislative body. And I’m not a legislative theorist or philosopher, but you can pretend, I think you’re pretty good.

Well, I mean, I think it’s clear enough, you know, you have to, you know, presiding officer because the presiding officer is required, you know, to maintain process. Yeah. And, you know, to the extent that, you know, they are representative of the majority to manage both the politics of the majority and the politics of the body as a whole.

And we hear that, you know, all the time in different areas. And this just seems, you know, to be saying, you know what we need? We need the Speaker of the House to be like a weak prime minister.

[00:37:36] Josh: You know, it’s funny. And I don’t know

[00:37:37] Jim: why any, you know, I, And I think what, and look, this does then get you back to what some of the complaints about this speaker and the last speaker and, you know, and, and the stakes of a speakership always are, which is, you know, to do the preponderance of members, particularly of the majority party, but also, you know, and I think this is obviously undersold here.

The minority party, do they feel like the speaker is to what extent is the speaker protecting their interests? And that’s such a cliche and we hear it all the time, right? You know how much is the speaker protecting the members? And so you can look at this and say The, the, the underlying narrative in this and the spirit of the proposals on a win and say, yes, there is a tyrannical speaker and we want to, you know, change the institutional practice and change, you know, reduce the power of the speaker.

But, you know, I think seasoned members are going to say, you know, so I want a speaker that’s not going to be able to protect me and look out for my interests and I’m going to be more on my own. Uh, you know, that might appeal to some people, but I, it might not to others.

[00:38:47] Josh: Yeah. I mean, I think at some point in a prior podcast, a ways back, I said something to the effect of I’m pretty sure that most Republican members are happy for Dade Phelan to be their shield right now.

And I think they’re still happy that Dade Phelan was their shield through a lot of this because it’s a lot easier to say, yeah, I guess this is, you know, or not even to say it to say nothing and let other people blame the speaker while, you know, you’re not forced to take a vote that you don’t really want to take.

Right. You know, I mean, that’s, that’s ultimately, you know, kind of what, you know, in a basic sense, what this has been about. I mean, I think back over the last, you know, whatever, five sessions and sort of, you know, you go back about 10 years and you have some Republicans who want to push for, you know, total abortion bans.

And the idea was, well, you know, I don’t know if we really want to take a vote on a total abortion ban in the state, or we want to do constitutional carry. So, well, you know, I don’t know if that’s really where we’re at right now. Now, look, ultimately, and this is sort of what I think the criticisms of, of, you know, Feelings, leadership, et cetera.

Sort of interesting from conservatives. All that stuff is past, right? It’s all happened, but I think this dynamic is one of those things. It’s sort of coming up again, where I think the most dissident members and sort of the most extreme members of the party here. I’m talking even into the donor class, et cetera.

Essentially, I think what they want is they want every one of these pieces of legislation to come up for an up or down vote on the House floor in a timely manner and force these members to take these votes now. It’s easy for Democrats because they’ll just vote against it for a lot of Republicans in these sort of suburban districts and sort of, you know, slightly more competitive districts, slightly less ideologically homogenous and extremely conservative districts.

Those are tough votes, you know, and I think that’s what the speaker protects him from. But that’s also what I think the dissidents are criticizing here, right?

[00:40:24] Jim: Well, that’s exactly right. And that’s, you know, that’s what I was getting at, right? Which is that. If you, you know, I think this reflects, you know, the narrow, you know, interest of members in certain kinds of districts and really discounts, you know, what a speaker, you know, can really do for you as a member.

And you know, they want to reduce that because I think they’ve not, you know, they’ve, they’ve again, in this sense, it’s a very, it’s a broad based. It’s not broad based, you know, it’s a broad side against the way things are run now, but from a relatively narrow perspective.

[00:41:00] Josh: Well, yeah, it’s a broad side against the way, the way things are run now from the same people who always criticize the way things are run.

And so ultimately this isn’t really a contract with Texas because as we know, like voters don’t pay attention to the inner operations of the house. Like there’s multiple data points we could point to that speak to that. But it’s essentially a proposal to change the operation of a house in a way that would allow for.

more extreme legislation to make its way through the process by changing the power dynamics here.

[00:41:26] Jim: Right. So, you know, in the end, I mean, this looks both to the end game of the primary runoff. So, I mean, it is a document in some ways of the moment. Right. In that sense, given its narrow, you know, the narrow audience for it.

[00:41:41] Josh: Right.

[00:41:41] Jim: Right. You know, so, you know, it becomes another exercise in signaling the ideological commitment. of these members and the lack of will to compromise, right? That that is, that’s, you know, and again, that’s a very dirty word. It’s a different, you know, that’s envisioning a different kind of body to my mind.

Um, you know, and, and again, this has a very narrow public audience and internally, you know, this will give an, you know, we were talking about this before we came on, you know, this list of dozen things. does provide something of an agenda and almost a kind of menu. If we see a speaker’s race in which the votes, there are enough votes in this faction of the house, um, that can hang together and affect the outcome.

[00:42:30] Josh: Yeah, I think that’s right. You know, in a

[00:42:31] Jim: very, in a very kind of, you know, in addition, I mean, I, you know, I mean, your, your point earlier, you know, members, and we know this. From history from social, you know, you know, members are first and foremost self interested and they’re looking about what is going to help them in all this.

[00:42:45] Josh: Yeah.

[00:42:47] Jim: You know, but when it comes down to bargaining, you know, this will be a list of things that a speaker candidate may be able to sit down with some people and say, you know, look, I, you know, and then, you know, What these conversations are going to look like, I would not, you know, try to get too close to reproducing, but in general terms, like, look, there are some things we can give you and some things we can’t, or we’re willing to give you some things we’re not willing to give you, like the unconstitutional things we’ll probably pass on.

Right. But, you know, a few of these things are pretty easy and, and in some ways, like, as you kind of pointed out about the Democratic majorities and committees, or even the Democratic committee chairs, are already on their way to being delivered or already a thing. You know, I mean, sure, you know, we can, from now on, the, uh, the, the pro temp appointment, the pro temporary appointment will be a Republican.

Fine. Right. Um, but you know, I, I’m also just really struck by, you know, the timing of this is, is, is interesting as much as we talk about the nationalization of politics, you know, A play not dissimilar to this was made by ideologically similar faction in the U. S. House of Representatives, first in electing, you know, as the price of Kevin McCarthy’s election.

[00:44:10] Josh: Right.

[00:44:11] Jim: Which was aimed at distributing power a little more broadly. Making sure that some of that distribution of power benefited quote unquote, you know, movement or dissident conservatives in terms of, you know, membership on the, you know, who got appointed to the rules committee and, you know, what did that get McCarthy?

It got him deposed.

[00:44:33] Josh: Well, ultimately they went, they gave him too much, right? Well,

[00:44:36] Jim: that’s what I mean. And, you know, that’s what all of the, you know, and the kinds of things they gave them are the kinds of things that you’re seeing. These house members in the Texas house call for,

[00:44:45] Josh: well, it’s interesting. I mean, you know, hearing you talk about, I mean, what I think about, you know, to this idea of self interest, we say self interest just to be clear here, we say that members are self interested.

We mean, we’re self interested in whatever’s going to keep them in office. We don’t mean like they’re trying to line their pockets or whatever. We’re just saying they’re single minded seekers of reelection as the term of art and political science. But it is interesting. It does sort of lay, I mean, what I’m thinking about here now is like, you know, how, you know, you can be in a situation where individually, some of these changes could be seen as good for you as a member, but collectively as a.

Body might lead to some, some, you know, pretty perverse circumstances. I mean, for example, you know, if the concern here is that, well, you know, Democrats have too much power through these sort of ways that I think are totally fanciful just to, just to say it out loud, like, you know, this sort of fantasy of this democratic power.

It’s like, no, I mean, they’re not, they’re not powerful in the way they say to the extent that Democrats have some power. They have the power usually to, to try to delay, to obstruct, to slow down. Now, if you basically say to Democrat, but. You know, we often call it talk about shoving and things like that.

And if you think about a democratic member with a good bill who wants to move it forward, you know, and you’re just kind of waiting for your turn in line. Well, your turn in line just went way, way, way to the end. Yeah. So one of the things that I think it brings up is it does really creates the incentive for Democrats to be, you know, as obstructionist as they can possibly be and kind of work the clock from the beginning.

I mean, there’s no reason to sort of sit around and say, Hey, we’ve all got bills to pass. Let’s make sure we represent each other’s like, no, because we’re only dealing with your priority legislation for however long we may never even get to this bill on, you know, nurse regulations or whatever, all this sort of regular stuff.

The legislature does. Um, I don’t think, you know, this idea of decentralizing power is really interesting because, you know, and I just going to point this out, you know, you’ve got a governor who just spent over 6 million of out of state money against Republican incumbents, but the proposal is actually to prohibit the spread Beaker from Distributing Funds to Republican incumbents.

So it does. So when we say, you know, this idea of, you know, decentralizing power, we’re not decentralizing power. Actually, we are centralizing power, or at least I’ll say this, we’re taking away one of the counterweights.

[00:46:47] Jim: Well, that, yeah, certainly that aspect of it. It’s sort of, you know, that seems self defeating to the chamber overall.

I mean, I think, you know, the decentralizing impulses present here is, you know, is in other things. Yeah. I mean, it’s in, you know, limiting the speakers, you know, the number of terms, uh, that somebody can serve as speaker. Right. Right. You know, diddling with committee assignments and, you know, this idea of who gets to, you know, how fast you’re going to deal with, with legislation.

And I think, you know, again, I, you know, what is your theory of how the house should operate and what the house should do? And I think, you know, the underlying. To the extent that there is an underlying theory here, you know, it’s, it’s kind of a, what I would say, historically naive, historically and institutionally naive one.

[00:47:37] Josh: Yeah. You know,

[00:47:38] Jim: unless, unless, you know, if, if you take it in its own terms, You know, and that just points you to something I think is kind of implied in, in the points you’re making, which is that, well, this is less about the house and more about the broader ideological definition of the party and who is driving that agenda.

And at this point, you know, a group of members who are by and large more aligned with, you know, the wing of the party that. is represented most directly by the Lieutenant Governor and, you know, and winds up playing into the hands, ultimately, of a thing we’ve talked about a lot in here, you know, were you to see this implementation, I think you’re right.

It would strengthen the Senate vis a vis the House, but it would strengthen the Governor probably vis a vis both.

[00:48:25] Josh: Yeah, I think that’s right, you know,

[00:48:27] Jim: on the continuing trajectory that we’ve already been on. So, you know, I think the close out, you know, I think we’ll see this, you know, on one hand, I was reluctant to want to talk about it because it is such a niche move.

And it’s, uh, you know, the promulgation of it was designed to get some press, I think. Yeah. And to help you know, these candidates that are in these runoff races right now while setting the stage for what’s going to happen,

[00:48:53] Josh: laying some markers in the sand,

[00:48:54] Jim: laying some markers. And, and I keep saying, you know, putting a, putting a man, you know, establishing a bargaining menu, you know, when we get to whatever is going to happen with the speakers race.

But I mean, I think where we’ve wound up is what’s interesting about this and that it, it does, you know, provide us a little more indication. I like it. It crystallizes by crystallizing these complaints in the way that we were talking about and helping us kind of go, Oh, here’s this fixed thing. We can see what the underlying narrative and understanding of what’s going on is here and how, you know, this faction kind of sees what’s going on.

It’s, you know, it’s a, it’s a, it’s an interesting historical document. And I, you know, I will be interested to see what kind of longevity it has.

[00:49:39] Josh: Yeah. I think it’s an interesting escalation in, in their tactics, right? This is not new in some ways, but this is a much more defined version to your point. You know, this is going to have some sort of short, short term impact, you know, on the primaries, maybe, maybe indirectly, you know, maybe directly we’ll see, you know, what I’m thinking about, you know, with this is, I’m curious about this documents longevity, right?

Both past the primaries and then. And then for me, you know, I think this is obviously it could play, as you’ve already said into the speaker’s race. But then the other piece also to me is, you know, depending on how this all shakes out is does this become, you know, yet again, a new axis, you know, axis of conflict for the next round of Republican primaries.

And

[00:50:17] Jim: is there anybody in this, so, you know, I, I think after the, after we, the runoffs and then the general election is over, you know, how, you know, we were talking about this before too. How big will the fight be? You know, the quote unquote contract with Texas faction be

[00:50:32] Josh: right

[00:50:33] Jim: in the legislature that, you know, is seated in January,

[00:50:38] Josh: right?

Right.

[00:50:39] Jim: And you know, then attendant to that, how much solidarity is there, who will emerge as the leader and how competent will that leader be as a broker for this, you know, At this point, we have to call kind of a proto faction,

[00:50:54] Josh: you

[00:50:55] Jim: know, because as you know, we’re saying before, I mean, look, it’s one thing to sign on to this contract with Texas when you’re in the middle of a runoff, a primary runoff.

It’s another, once you get on the ground and the bargaining starts to actually stick with that conviction. And again, this is fungible. Yeah, that’s what I mean by the menu. It’s a fungible list. So we’ll see, you know, what has legs and what has doesn’t when when what doesn’t when the race really comes on.

[00:51:23] Josh: Yeah, I just want to say one more thing about this. I mean, you know, I agree with everything you’re saying. And I think what’s what’s interesting is, you know, if this were five or six years ago, I mean, if you look at the size right now, the group as it seems to be constructed before anyone else has jumped on bandwagon seems to be about the same size of the dissident wing usually is, give or take, you know, maybe four Five members or so depending on which area you look at historically It’s been pretty common for kind of the majority of the republican caucus to just sort of swat this aside I do think that the the emergence of oliverson challenging feeling while he’s still in office The emergence of this document shows a certain amount of muscularity in the dissident side of the party that feels like they’re in a position right now to really try to, you know, I think leverage what they’ve done already in terms of going after incumbents and sort of in their sort of temporary alignment with some of the other statewide leaders on this.

And to try to get sort of the biggest gains they can now, does it just get swatted away? Do we just see, you know, most of the Republican legislators and all the Democrats elect a speaker and these 20 guys set, you know, kind of voting for somebody else or does it start to bleed and spill over because some of these members are looking at sort of what happened in this last primary cycle and say, you know, I don’t need that kind of trouble,

[00:52:37] Jim: right?

Well, yeah. And I, you know, I think that in, in terms of that, I mean, it’s a good moment for them to release it,

[00:52:43] Josh: yeah.

[00:52:44] Jim: You know, and to try to, Get people to sign on the dotted line Because then they can go back and try to hold people to account At the time that this may or may not be relevant in a speaker’s race But they will try to make I mean look they will try to make it relevant for sure I mean, there’s no two ways that that’s not about the fact that that’s That’s partially what this is about, particularly for the members that are already incumbents or that are expecting, you know, to have a, you know, resistance free election.

And there’s a, you know, not a decent faction. And in that sense, if you count absolutely everybody, you know, it probably is a little bigger than the disinfection in them.

[00:53:25] Jim: Yes, probably it has to be a little more numerous. Yeah. But that’s why I think the question of, well, you know, what you, Signed on to in a Republican primary runoff and what you’re sort of committing to once you’re seated.

Historically, there can be some daylight between those two things. So with that, uh, we’ll keep an eye on this. Thanks to Josh for being here. Uh, thanks again to our excellent production team in the dev studio in the College of Liberal Arts at UT Austin. Uh, some of the polling results we’ve talked about, some of the links we’ve mentioned, you’ll find in a post accompanying this podcast at texaspolitics.

utexas. edu. You’ll also find those poll trackers I mentioned earlier. Um, so thanks again to those of you for, who are listening, and we’ll be back soon with another Second Reading podcast.

The Second Reading podcast. is a production of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.