August 15th, 2024 – Quorum Report’s Harvey Kronberg on the implications of the rebooted presidential race in Texas politics

[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. Very happy to be joined today by a longtime colleague and friend, Harvey Kronberg, publisher of the Quorum Report.

Properly. Harvey Kronberg’s quorum report, not to confuse the branding here. You know, one of the longest running and most widely read insider news services in Texas politics. Harvey, thanks for journeying to campus on a hot day.

[00:01:01] Harvey: Always my pleasure. It’s a return to the University of Texas. I graduated in 72.

[00:01:06] Jim: Scene of the

[00:01:07] Harvey: crime.

[00:01:07] Jim: Yep. So to speak. Roughly speaking, most statute of limitations on that stuff. You

[00:01:12] Harvey: just anticipated what I was about to say.

[00:01:14] Jim: That’d be over, yeah, we checked with legal. So look, let’s just jump into it. I, you know, I thought we’d start with the ripples of the presidential race and the politics of the presidential election in Texas.

You know, we were talking about this a little bit beforehand. I, you know, amidst the overall trend of, you know, what is often referred to, I think with a little bit of little bit of overstatement, the nationalization of, of politics in Texas. I mean, I think it’s largely true, but we can run a little too far with that, but we’ll unpack that some.

You know, it’s been a, uh, Been a pretty, pretty active six weeks or so, you know, I was out of the country for a couple, a couple of those key weeks and it was interesting how much can go on. We don’t have any data in Texas yet, but it does seem logical to think that the same Tied that is lifting Democratic boats seemingly across the country in the week in the, in the wake of Biden deciding to drop out of the race, Kamala Harris sort of sliding fairly friction free into the top spot.

You know that that same tide is giving Democrats a boost nationally. We’ll help Democrats here. So to him, you know, so the question then is how much, you know, as you flag, we’ll probably disagree about the extent of this a little bit, and we know from knowing each other a long time. Yeah. Thanks. Bye bye.

Bye bye. But I think it’s a fair question, and I’m wondering how you’re sorting that out.

[00:02:40] Harvey: Especially at

[00:02:40] Jim: this moment where we’re waiting, you know, we’re still waiting on data.

[00:02:43] Harvey: Let me start by saying if Democrats succeed in Texas or have a good cycle in Texas, it’ll be despite the Democratic Party, the Texas Democratic Party, which is essentially useless and non functional.

I’m glad you got that out of the way. Yes. Now, having said that, county organizations, county democratic organizations are showing signs of life that we haven’t seen in a long time. And I will point out that Beto O’Rourke, who was a deeply flawed candidate two years ago, won 11 of the 13 largest counties.

The only reason he lost, uh, Um, was because of rural Texas turning out in the order of magnitude that it did. This is a presidential year and, uh, rural Texas will have dramatically less impact. Um, so let’s start with the predicate of, of the, the 11 largest, 11 of the 13 largest counties have already established their democratic bona fides and, um, uh, Having said that, I, um, I would also point out that, uh, again, after the 2022 gubernatorial election, national media contacted me and asked, was Texas ever going to be investable for Democrats?

And I said, we don’t know because we haven’t had one that you could invest in. Beto O’Rourke, um, had Dobbs and never ran a single commercial on, on women’s health. Uh, there was a group called Mothers Against Greg Abbott. You’re thinking

[00:04:00] Jim: of 2022 now.

[00:04:01] Harvey: 2022, correct. But this is obviously lays the ground. Sure, sure, sure.

For where we’re going. In 2022 Mothers Against Greg Abbott, a little grassroots, uh, women around the kitchen table, uh, organization, raised enough money to one week of, of. Commercials. And in that one week of commercials attacking Abbott on the issue of abortion, uh, Abbott’s internal polls as reported to me, uh, went from a 12 point spread to about a five point spread in a, in a single week, which tells you the latent, uh, if somebody makes the argument, the latent, um, uh, power of that argument.

So my, my suspicion is that obviously it’s going to be a pretty good year for, Oh, I should also add that, um, in, in, uh, 2000. 16, uh, Trump won with 56 percent of about 8. 5 million votes in, uh, 2020. Trump won with only 52 percent of 11 million votes, and I don’t think he’s going to hit those numbers this time.

I feel no sense of groundswell. Your, your polling may prove me wrong, but I, there’s there, anecdotally, there’s no sense of enthusiasm behind Trump. Um, and intensity is obviously what can carry elections, voter intensity. Having said all of that, um, I think it’s going to be a good year for Democrats. I think that Colin Allred will probably spend a hundred million dollars or eighty million dollars branding Ted Cruz as Dobbs decision, all of which is going to help up and down ballot.

And, um, so I’m guessing I’m, I’m going to put the possibility out there, believe it or not, that Trump could actually win Texas at 52 percent is his high watermark. You add, uh, RFK, who’s going to be on the Texas ballot, scraping two or 3 percent off. If he scrapes two or 3 percent off, it’ll be on the Republican side.

And uh, I’m not predicting, I’m simply saying, I haven’t seen a setup like this for Democrats, um, going into an election, um, actually since about 1994.

[00:05:59] Jim: Yeah, I mean, I think it’s an interesting, you know, now in 1994, you know, not the greatest year. Right. For Democrats. For Democrats still. I mean, now, you know, different point in historical trajectory and all that.

You know, I mean, I guess as I think about that, you know, the way that I’ve kind of been parsing this out and again, without seeing. How the numbers are going to move here, if at all, is that, you know, prior to the debate, The presidential debate and, and Biden dropping out, what it looked to me based on the poll numbers and where the relative enthusiasm was in your ride.

I mean, up to this point, democratic enthusiasm has been down compared to Republican enthusiasm. Trump’s numbers were steady, not stellar, but steady and strong. And Biden’s were very soft, you know, in particular among Democrats, not, you know, among Democrats and among independents. Now, independents right now kind of hate everybody, which is also part of the opportunity, I think, for Democrats.

But, you know, before all the big changes happened, what it looked to me, you know, looking at that same series of presidential results, you were talking about where the gap, you know, the, the margin at the top of the ballot among Presidential candidates has been going down. Obviously the statewide races, you’ve got the 2018 or work 2018 exception generally.

But at the presidential level, this, the trend was headed in one direction and what it looked like to me at that point was that Biden’s weakness was going to bend that curve back up a little bit, you know? So in other words, if you look at Hillary Clinton winning by or losing by a little less than nine.

And then Biden, Biden losing Texas by about five and a half, five and three quarters. Right. That if you expected that trend line to keep going, you know, we’d be, you know, maybe a little bit below five and a half this time. The Biden weakness made me feel like, you know, as we were looking at early Trump leads of between nine and 12, depending on the polling.

It looked to me like they were set to bend that curve back up on the assumption that, you know, those early numbers, you know, Oh, you mean the spurs

[00:08:20] Harvey: are bending the curve back up in terms of, in other words, it would have

[00:08:23] Jim: gone back up to, yes,

[00:08:24] Harvey: it would have

[00:08:25] Jim: probably somewhere between five and nine. Yes.

Right. But now I, you know, I mean, I think your scenario is more plausible. It’s just how much further down can you bend it? And, you know, I, you know, I, I don’t have a clear sense. I mean, I, you know, I, I’ll be shocked if the democratic numbers aren’t significantly better next time. And the kind of measures of that we’re seeing another polling, you know, I mean, I think it makes sense to expect that Harris’s approval numbers will go up.

They’ll go up pretty dramatically, probably, or noticeably anyway, among Democrats. Big question is going to be, what does she look like among independents? And, you know, where, where are the Trump numbers?

Because I

[00:09:11] Jim: think the independents have to be a piece of the recipe that you’re kind of putting together, that you’re cooking up over there.

Right. You know, some independent terms. The independents are the whole game. Well, yeah. Well, that and, you know, increasing democratic turnout, you know, so that You know, and this goes back to the old debate we’ve heard a million times, right? Do you focus on running up the numbers where you already have an advantage in those count in those large counties you’re talking about?

How much do you try to peel off a little bit in rural areas? That seems to me to have not been a very successful strategy. Not a good allocation of resources. Losing, you know, to the extent that I think part of what’s happening there, too, is, you know, even if Democrat democratic efforts are maybe driving out turnout on the margins, you know, you’re also losing some Hispanic, some rural Hispanic votes, which I think is an underappreciated part of the shift in Hispanic votes.

Right.

[00:10:07] Harvey: South of I 10 will tell us a lot about the future of Texas.

[00:10:10] Jim: But there’s a lot of insulation here. I mean, I, you know, I’m interested in your point about abortion. I mean, this has been, you know, an argument that we’ve seen a lot among Democrats, you know, that, that abortion is the issue. And, you know, it’s the indicators on that are mixed because there’s a lot of noise out there.

[00:10:28] Harvey: But they haven’t lost an election where abortion has been the central issue.

[00:10:31] Jim: Well, not nationally. Yeah.

[00:10:34] Harvey: Well, statewide too. Well, you’re talking, I mean, other states. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:10:39] Jim: Yeah. In other states. I mean, and I think, you know, part of the, the structural issue that I, you know, I have a hard time getting over here yet you alluded to, which is, you know, one, can the, you know, can the Democrats demonstrate The organizational and resource wherewithal to effectively mount the kind of campaign you’re talking about.

And I also think that there is a public opinion piece that, you know, is a little, is a little vague in Texas. So when we ask in various ways, you know, what do you think is the most important problem? What’s, what do you think the legislature should look at in the primaries? You know, what is driving your vote?

You know, abortion has a presence in. the democratic mindset. But as you well know from years of following politics and knowing all, you know, it’s crowded up there. Democratic headspace, very crowded when it comes to issues. Now, I think abortion is a good mobilizing issue. The extent of that, I think, just, you know, is going to depend a lot on, a lot on execution and also just how the issue set evolves as we get closer to, you To the beginning of early voting here in October.

Lemme

[00:11:53] Harvey: put, uh, three predicates out there. Yeah. And I hope I can remember all three. I don’t wanna have a Rick Perry moment here, but the first is eventually the Trump campaign will reset despite its cam, uh, the top of the ticket. Yes. And they will start branding, uh, uh, Kamala Harris, and, and we’ll see how successful they are at the moment.

She looks unstoppable, but let’s not forget that at one point Dukakis had a 14 point lead and it evaporated overnight. Yeah. And

[00:12:18] Jim: she has nowhere near

[00:12:19] Harvey: that. I mean, she’s above the margin or in the margin or above the margin in the battleground states by the current polling. Uh, second,

[00:12:27] Jim: you know, the averages are still pretty in the margin, I guess, but

[00:12:30] Harvey: second, the Republican party of Texas is even more useless than the democratic, the Texas democratic party.

But. Uh, they have external structures that Democrats don’t do, don’t have. Um, and so, for instance, they’re far more successful in registering new arrivals from the West Coast than Democrats have ever been, uh, and they know where their voters are. But third, uh, the disaffection, uh, this is purely anecdotal and your polling will prove me wrong, I’m sure, but, uh, uh, anecdotally, uh, I, I have a number of silos of what I, I.

It’s wine tasting groups, but they’re essentially white, white Republican gated community males. And all of them, virtually all of them are one or two time Trump voters. And at least at the moment, 90 percent of them say they can’t go back there now. That, again, purely anecdotal, but to see that kind of transformation, and this is all being driven by the president being, former president being totally out of control on the, in front of a microphone now, um, and, and, um, and just being mean.

And um, so. Uh, those, the two of those three things work for the Democrats. The, I mean, yeah, work for the Republicans, the third works for the Democrats.

[00:13:46] Jim: Yeah, I mean, I just, you know, I don’t know what the extent of that, I mean, I think the wine tasting sample probably is a fairly , , a fairly specific band if the Republican electorate.

But I mean, I, you know, that, that’s always been the question, right? Or that part of the question is what is. You know, what is Trump’s floor and what is the ceiling and his floor, I think, is still pretty high and, you know, the ceiling issue with that crowd. I mean, you know, the crowd, the kind of social, the type of Republican, right?

That you’re playing. I mean, that is, you know, that’s been his soft spot. I would also say that many of those Republicans have complained mightily and then Swallowed their objections, right?

[00:14:29] Harvey: Do they come home and independence as we both know, um, call themselves independence, but they tend to break Republican

[00:14:34] Jim: Well, and I think you know, I mean what we look at is like the real real independence, right?

So yeah, I mean, if, in terms of, you know, if you, if you take the three point independent measure as a third of the electorate, which is absurd, just absurd, right? Then yeah. But I mean, I think, you know, but, but even then the nine to 12 percent that we get is like true independence with no leaning tendencies and that, you know, that moves, people move within those groups and move back and forth.

That’s why I say nine to 12, nine to 14. You know, they’re, they’re a prickly bunch. I mean, yeah, in Texas, they lean in a conservative direction, particularly on the issues that are top of the agenda. But they are, to your earlier point, that lean is not as pronounced when it comes to abortion. Particularly, prohibitionist abortion.

I mean, The sweet stop for independence is probably the exceptions zone. You know, you know, for rape, incest, threats to the life of the mother But since that, in Texas, is off the table You know, it does, it does make you wonder about, you know, just how much leverage you can get and whether Democrats can find another point.

[00:15:42] Harvey: Well, we’re about to see a series of commercials of women who had to go to court and were still ultimately denied medical care they needed.

Yeah.

[00:15:49] Harvey: I am not going to say that that’s a universal problem for women voters, but it’s a substantial problem for women voters.

[00:15:56] Jim: Well, and you know, yes, particularly younger democratic women.

[00:16:02] Harvey: I’m going to disagree with you. I think that it reached once it’s framed and, and it, uh, it becomes a battle cry. You’re going to peel off a substantial number of, uh, historically Republican voting women.

[00:16:13] Jim: What do you think? What do you, what do you think of as a substantial number?

[00:16:16] Harvey: I would be surprised if, uh, you don’t see 25 percent erosion among Republican women.

[00:16:21] Jim: That’s a lot.

[00:16:22] Harvey: I know.

[00:16:22] Jim: Yeah. I’d be surprised. I mean, I, you know, I’m trying to think about what we see in, you know, Republican women are not, I mean, there are some Republican women that are uncomfortable with abortion, but.

[00:16:33] Harvey: Again, we’re going to have 100 million spent turning Ted Cruz into the face of, of Dobbs.

And it’s going to be, remember, Beto never ran a single TV spot, um, on, on post Dobbs. He was given that gift. He had 60 million. We don’t know the resonance, but again, in, in, You know, virtually every world I operate in, um, uh, the intense, it may be, it may be showing as number three in your polls after the border and the economy, but, um, when highlighted, I, it’s very difficult for me to believe that it’s not going to be.

But that’s,

[00:17:07] Jim: that’s the, that’s the trick though, right? Is that, can you, this goes back to the, you know, democratic resources and 700 million on the, the all red campaign that will not be happening in a vacuum. Correct. And every Republican candidate will be running on. the border.

[00:17:23] Harvey: Yes, but we still have that wonderful picture of Ted Cruz, uh, refusing to answer reporters after the Supreme Court decision.

Now the border, maybe the border has sustained its intensity. When we get into campaign mode, we’ll find out whether Trump’s rejection of the bipartisan border deal has any resonance or not. Um, but at least it’s a talking point and it’s a substantial talk, potentially a substantial talking point. Um, but the border is obviously going to be.

I think the economy is actually going to fade here in Texas because we’re in a better situation than most obviously, but, um, we’ll see. I, um, um, remain convinced that, um, the exit, if you trust exit polls, which are also, I think we’ll see, um, um, Uh, pretty high voter intensity on, on, on women’s health. So we’ll see.

[00:18:14] Jim: We’ll see. Yeah. And how that’s distributed, which I still think will be a bit. And don’t forget that Texas is still, you know, banned, you know, prohibits. Yeah. No, that’s kind of what I was getting at is that, I mean, because, you know, particularly among independents, but also among some Republican women. The overreach on abortion in the state and the way that that is, is a factor, I think.

Um, well, let’s, you know, as you’ve mentioned this a couple times in glancing, what do you make of where the Cruz all red race is right now? It’s been awful quiet to date.

[00:18:42] Harvey: It’s, um, all red doesn’t need to engage personally. It’s going to be an air war, a television war. Ted Cruz’s polling must show he’s in trouble because after two terms in office, he suddenly, uh, touting his bipartisan rhetoric, um, uh, trying to work with Democrats and have some accomplishments.

Obviously, I think it’s a little, it’s too little, too late. Uh, uh, he will be defined by, uh, abandoning the state during URI, uh, green hay, eggs and hams, bringing the government down, uh, or attempting. to bring the government down, collaborating with house members, uh, to undermine the speaker in the house, which was an absolute, well, it used to be an absolute no, no.

Now Dan Patrick is doing the same thing here in Texas. It’s

[00:19:23] Jim: now just in the playbook.

[00:19:24] Harvey: But anyway, having said all that, I think that, um, this is more resembles the, um, uh, uh, Cruz Beto, uh, battle. And I think it’s probably a two point race one way or the other. And from a democratic perspective, you don’t have to waste 30 million building the cruise brand.

[00:19:41] Jim: Yeah, I mean, I, you know, the polling on that has been interesting because you’ve got a lot of people that have been running or some people that are running likely voter models and getting that race at a two, three point race. I have questions about what a likely voter is. And. April, May, June. Right.

[00:19:59] Harvey: When you’re trying to think of which beach you’re going to go to.

[00:20:01] Jim: Yeah. And well, and just, you know, I mean, I just, if you look at the underlying numbers in that polling, aside from the, you know, in the horse race, you’re picking up a lot of just partisanship and that doesn’t mean the numbers don’t mean anything, but that’s what you’re picking up when you look at the fav unfav ratings of all red and.

20, 25 percent of Democrats still don’t have a view of him. Now in our polling where we’re not doing likely voter screens yet, we’re having crews up by, you know, 11 or so, which a lot, you know, some of their polls that are still doing RVs without doing likely voter screens are finding it in that range still.

Right. So, you know, I expect that race to tighten. Um, Well, I don’t think Allred’s a particularly good

[00:20:46] Harvey: candidate. Well, I was

[00:20:47] Jim: just going to say, but I mean, I think, you know, and I, you know, I was talking to somebody about this yesterday and I think the Allred campaign is going to kind of have a, you know, has a decision to make that I think they’re, they’ve not made yet.

And that is, they were picking the entirely plausible strategy of keeping Joe Biden at

[00:21:05] Harvey: arms. You know,

[00:21:05] Jim: arms, arms length doesn’t even capture, you know, I mean, the metaphor fails, right? And thus far they seem to be. Keeping their distance from the Harris campaign, you know, I think that is, you know, I mean, pending how some of these redefinition battles go on and, and Republican efforts to brand her as, you know, I think inappropriately as some kind of, you know, left wing radical, right?

I’m not sure that that is helpful, that if the momentum, if even, even if the inevitable cooling of the, of the initial Harris sort of momentum cools, you know, that, if that initially eventually cools, I’m still not sure that the math isn’t different if you’re calling all red and how you relate to the top of the ticket compared to

Biden.

[00:21:56] Jim: I’m going to be interested to see what they do. I don’t, you know, I’m not giving advice. I don’t, you know, and I don’t, and I honestly don’t have a strong feeling one view of the other, but it does seem like, you know, it is a different race and for Colin Allred and the, you know, what’s the best word, you know, the strategy and the, and the, you know, I hate this word, but you know, the optics of him.

still continuing to keep a black female candidate at arm’s length. It’s a little tricky. You know, it’s a lot trickier than keeping 82 year old Joe Biden at arm’s length. I mean, nobody, nobody even questioned that.

Right.

[00:22:33] Jim: Right. I mean, cause everybody, you know, it’s like everybody was doing it.

[00:22:36] Harvey: Well, remember incumbents don’t get beat, they get fired.

[00:22:38] Jim: Yeah. And, and so I don’t, uh, You know, I kind of, I, I kind of wonder about that, but we’ll see.

[00:22:45] Harvey: And I mean, I don’t know what do you mean?

[00:22:47] Jim: Do you think he shifts? Do you think they keep, I mean, look, the conventional wisdom would be, look, they’re going to, you know, whatever you think she is a black Asian woman who served with Joe Biden, she is going to be seen.

negatively in Texas as a liberal and, you know, let’s just be honest, you know, a liberal, you know, a black liberal from San Francisco Democrat, why would you change strategies? So I, you know, I get that. I don’t want to, you know, come across as an idiot here.

[00:23:15] Harvey: One of the fundamental problems that All Red has is that historically Latinos don’t vote for African Americans.

And that’s an important part of the, obviously an important part of the Democratic coalition. Um, I think Maybe it’s too nuanced for this kind of campaign, but he, he separates himself from her on the border and then is joined at the hip on pretty much everything else. And, um, you mentioned, uh, she’s, she’s, uh, African American, she’s Asian.

Well, she’s also, um, I mean, can be defined as an Indian American. And, um, we have at least three, amazingly large communities, two of which have been in historically, well, all three are actually in historically Republican, uh, community, uh, communities, uh, Collin County, um, Fort Bend County, uh, have huge pop and very wealthy Asian, uh, Indian populations and or the, uh, Irving area is similar.

Um, and, uh, They engage in politics, they have money, and how they’re going to participate in Texas remains to be seen. Uh, and I don’t know that there’s a groundswell of identity politics over an Indian American, but I suspect that’s something that we haven’t really looked at yet.

[00:24:21] Jim: And I don’t know what those, you know, I need to look at what those numbers are, but the broader Point I think is well taken and you know, an adjacent point is there been a lot of interest and for good reason in the dramatic growth in the Asian population.

Asian writ large. mm-Hmm , which is exponentially even more complicated than, you know, talking about Latinos, quote unquote. But, and I think this is gonna draw a lot of attention to that, and it’s gonna draw a lot of attention to how little we know. about the political, you know, from real, you know, from in depth research.

Cause I know from people on campus here, you know, are kind of looking into it and on our team, you know, it’s very difficult to pull the preferences of. Asian immigrants and Asian descendant people out of the overall data, because even though the growth has been dramatic, the numbers are still very small.

And so I think this is going to also throw a lot of fuel on, you know, in terms of like my world, this is going to throw a lot of fuel on that fire, you know, when this is over.

[00:25:25] Harvey: Well, their per capita participation, I’m, I’m, uh, when you start testing, I’ll be curious on the response, but my understanding is their per capita participation in elections is pretty damned high.

Uh, starts out pretty damned high.

[00:25:36] Jim: Yeah. I mean, that’s the general kind of sense, but you know, our ability to figure out like, You know, at the state level, what’s going on with these populations is limited,

you know,

[00:25:47] Jim: to say the least, I mean, and look, part of it is just a math, you know, and it’s, you know, I was having a conversation with a, with a report, new reporter in the area, just kind of a background lay of the land conversation yesterday.

You know, when we were talking about this movement or the, you know, the alleged movement among young black males. uh, toward Republicans in particular toward Trump. And you know, if you sit down and do the math and figure out what share of a sample is black voters to begin with, which is going to be around here, it’s going to be around 12, right?

Then you look at the numbers in that. And by the time you hone down to the black males that are 18 to 29 that are getting so much attention, you know, you’re looking at. You know, maybe 10 or 15 cases, individual respondents weighted up in your average in a thousand person poll. So the margin for error for this is like, you know, do you put my science hat on about a million?

It’s not a million, but it’s, you know, it’s double, double digits. I’m looking for those margins in my business, but so, yeah, so we don’t, you know, I mean, you know, I, Um, that’s going to be another interesting piece of the next round of polling in the state and what we see going forward after this is just how solid those numbers actually were.

[00:27:10] Harvey: Well, if Democrats have a good year, it’s going to be because of, uh, the coalition of a number of marginal, previous, previously marginal, um, uh, groups that by themselves are, have low, low impact, but, um.

[00:27:21] Jim: Well, you know, I think that’s one of the interesting to get, I mean, this is off the track a little bit, but hell it’s our show.

We can do whatever we want. Um, You know, one of the things that’s been interesting is, you know, we look at the state becoming more competitive and we spend a lot of time, you know, on the the big picture adjustments in particular, kind of, I spent a lot of time on issue focus because I think that is how you kind of lead public opinion if you can.

Um, and I want to put a pin in the x ray to come back to that. Um, but both parties, but in particular the Republicans, I think, have been doing a very precise job of realizing that it’s worth it now to move smaller numbers of voters, you know, and that’s, that’s now. Has been enhanced for a long time by micro micro targeting the atomization of media consumption all this kind of stuff Right has fed this, but it’s fed at a time if you go back to that trend We are talking about a few minutes ago where you know, look 20 years ago When you and I were just becoming friends, what was, what was the Republican baseline?

If you talked to our friend, Mike Bassalese, he would tell you at least 10 to what is at that point, 10 to 15 natural advantage. That’s not where we are now. Right. And as that number gets smaller, and I don’t think it’s even, but as that number gets smaller, where that 10 years ago, I mean, we would laugh if anybody said, well, you know, what about independence?

It’s like, I’ll tell you what about independence, right? If they’re nine to 12 percent of the electorate. Dur it and you know, you’re talking about moving a point or two either direction. What about independence? They don’t matter,

[00:28:59] Harvey: right? Well, the, um, not

[00:29:00] Jim: the case anymore.

[00:29:01] Harvey: Um, I remember when, uh, you know, George W.

Bush went to the presidency and um, and, uh, Rick Perry, uh, ascended to the governorship. He ran again, he ran in 2002 against Tony Sanchez and his, uh, press sec. I mean, his campaign manager at the time was Deirdre Deisi. And I said, are you guys doing microtargeting? And she summed up the, uh, the Republican program and.

In, in pretty much three sentences, she said, nah, we don’t have to. There’s seven counties, they’re 70, 80 percent Republican, uh, they’re the largest counties in the state. We just flood those counties with media, whether it’s mail, block walking, uh, commercials. Uh, we know we’re going to get a 70 percent turnout.

And it’s going to be 70 percent Republican. And that’s pretty much all we need to worry about. And, um, the 10 largest Democratic counties in those days might get a 30 to 35 to 40 percent turnout.

Yeah.

[00:29:52] Harvey: Um, and, and they were smaller counties to start with. So, um, it has obviously become more nuanced and, uh, the, the growth in those seven counties at that point was pretty much all white.

Now those seven counties are increasingly diverse. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, in Harris County, uh, for instance, uh, theoretically, they need to, they need the capacity to be able to teach in 60 languages. Yeah. Think about that. The most diverse county, uh, county in the country.

[00:30:18] Jim: Yeah. You know, huge amount of that are, you know, are, to our earlier conversation, are, are Asian languages.

Exactly. So let’s, you know, so let’s, you know, get back down to Texas a little bit while we still have some time. So you were talking beforehand, state of play in legislative elections. I think you seem to see. Okay. More potential for change than I do, and that I’m kind of hearing generally what seems to be in there.

I think you’ve laid the predicate for some of that already. Like what? So what, you know, what are you watching there?

[00:30:46] Harvey: Well, very much. I will concede. I’m an outlier on this, but I do have a bet with the former redistricting chairman. That Democrats will gain six. His was three. He’s kind of saying, well, you could be right.

The, uh, the premise for all of this is when you look at, we’re talking

[00:31:01] Jim: about the same redistricting share. He told me only five seats would be competitive, which is, you know, not unlike what we’re looking at. Yeah, exactly. You know, I don’t, I don’t think that’s unreasonable.

[00:31:12] Harvey: Not that

[00:31:12] Jim: he’s a disinterested party or that person is disinterested.

[00:31:15] Harvey: One of the ways we determine what a swing district is, is to look at the presidential, combine presidential with some down ballot performance, um, and then look at it district by district. Uh, Republicans now have 86 seats in the Texas House. You need 76 to have a majority. They’ve got 86. The, you know, You can tell the state is transitioning because they had to draw some pretty thin districts to try and sustain that 86.

16 of those districts have under 58 percent presidential, Republican presidential performance, and I’m going to argue that that’s eroded. Uh, so if, uh, Uh, typically I would consider a swing district, a 56% Republican, uh, presidential performance. Uh, it hasn’t, it’s not a hundred percent guarantee, but it tells you what the swing districts potentially are.

I initially counted six that I thought were were exposed. I’m gonna raise that to eight or nine now. Um, if. If the Democratic momentum is sustained and I based that to a large degree on watching what happened in 2018 where it was a referendum on Trump and Cruz. Uh, Trump wasn’t on the ballot. Cruz was on the ballot.

Um, uh, and it turned out a surprising number and that was a, that was a midterm election. This is a presidential election and I think the possibility of surprise is pretty enormous. Uh, and if I am correct, here’s life’s great ar Irony. I think your listeners probably know the violence that Greg Abbott did to Republican incumbents trying to, uh, eviscerate them, uh, uh, uh, the, the pro public,

[00:32:43] Jim: we have to, in this environment, we have to, you know, figurative violence, you know,

[00:32:47] Harvey: yes, but, uh, pro public violence.

Pro public school Republicans, he went into their districts and essentially lied about their records, got them beat, uh, with a not very distinguished class of, uh, of newbies. Some of those have created opportunities, some of those seats, uh, Abbott primary wins have created some opportunities for Democrats.

But um, uh, the grand irony is he did, he spent 6 million of TikTok billionaire Jeff Yass money to beat these folks. And the irony may be that if I am correct in this assumption, that we end up with six or eight additional, uh, Democrats, um, uh, he will have elected more Democrats and the voucher vote won’t have changed one bit.

We’ll see.

[00:33:27] Jim: That, you know, I, I have yet to hear anybody expect that much Republican success because you’ve also got, I mean, if you count this on a net peer, you’ve also got some formerly democratic seats that are under some degree of pressure. There’s two or three. At least three. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yep. I mean, you know, 3470

and

[00:33:46] Jim: 80 from mixture of retirements and, and then you’ve got a couple of our seats that are clearly being contested 37 and 18, Jenny Lopez and Lujan.

[00:33:56] Harvey: No, I would argue that Morgan Meyers in trouble, Angie Chen buttons in trouble. The Steve Ollison seat is a potential swing, uh,

[00:34:04] Jim: yeah, the, yeah, the, the, the Chen button and what was the other one you mentioned Morgan

[00:34:08] Harvey: Meyer

[00:34:08] Jim: and the Morgan Meyer seat, you know, those were both close races last time. Right. So there’s some reason to expect that they’ll be under pressure this time with a more democratic electorate.

[00:34:17] Harvey: And I can tell you the level of organization in Dallas County, we’ll see if it actually, you know, in the last three weeks, whether it executes, but it’s pretty damned high. And they’re making promises. They’re going to have a 60 percent uh, democratic vote in, um, in, um, in the election. And if that happens,

[00:34:35] Jim: that’s a pretty big promise.

I know. Just, I just want to, that’s a big promise. Um, we’ll meet on November 10th and see. So you mentioned, uh, uh, governor Abbott and, and his relationship. So it is with the house. Um, I want to talk a little bit about, you know, the close of, you know, as insidery as we can, I guess. Well, you know, what’s going on with the big three?

Cause it seems like the voucher fight. Among other things, the Paxton impeachment to some degree, but the voucher fight has really shifted the gravitational field among the big three and Josh and I talked about this in the podcast a bit last week, but after years of this really not being the case Patrick and Abbott and Patrick and Abbott seemed to me to be the governor and lieutenant governor much more aligned now than they’ve ever been

[00:35:26] Harvey: Issue wise, but that doesn’t mean that Abbott’s not still afraid of Patrick, and that’s historically been the case.

He’s been,

[00:35:32] Jim: well, let’s just say, I mean, yeah, stipulating that, that, you know, it’s not like they’re going golfing now or something or whatever they might, you know, not,

[00:35:41] Harvey: uh, well, let’s just say, I

[00:35:42] Jim: just mean, yeah, I mean, I think the political alignment right now, though, seems much closer, whether, you know, Right.

Every, I mean, you know, I was describing this last week is like the three, you know, it’s the Texas legislature’s three body problem, right? You have these three centers of gravity that are inherently unstable and very unstable for the last decade or so. But if you go back, I mean, Go back as far as you want, you know, talk about Preston Smith and Ben Barnes and Byron Tunnel.

[00:36:10] Harvey: Well, you know, one of the things we’re making, historically, we make the assumption that the Republicans will win the presidential election. Let’s just for a moment think about what happens with, uh, if the Democrats win the presidential election, uh, generally, and if whether, Um, if it’s a 50 percent if Trump wins with 1 percent margin, um, I think it changes a lot of the frames of conversation and the frames of legitimacy.

Uh, after 2018, the Dem Republicans had such big scares that they, it was actually the two nights, 2019 session was one of the best governing sessions that we’ve had in the century. Yes. I mean they really did accomplish a lot, but that was because the Republicans were stampeded into good government.

[00:36:51] Jim: Yeah.

Yeah. Well, you know, we were talking. I guess it was before we were recording, but you know, enough house members and in addition to Ted Cruz and Lieutenant Governor had a death of a, you know, near death experience compared to what they were used to, that, you know, you definitely had a different tone in that session.

But then. Joe Biden won in 2020. Right.

[00:37:12] Harvey: So if Trump loses, uh, remember the Dan Patrick is the chairman of the Trump campaign and Abbott can’t, uh, uh, work hard enough to eliminate any space between he and Trump. That that’s a unifying principle at the moment. I think their natural impulses are to spin away from each other.

And that ultimately that it looks like they’re politically more aligned right now, but, um, Patrick is a free, is just a wild card, a loose cannon in a lot of ways. And I wouldn’t. Pardon me? A free radical. Just a pin. Now. That works. After Abbott’s performance in trying to, to destroy Speaker Phelan, although he never said he was trying to destroy Speaker Phelan, the joke has been, I’m not sure his people will get floor credentials onto the House side, but I think that, uh, and, and, um, Phelan made a number of political mistakes over his career where he deferred to the governor and it proved to be a bad bet.

Um, however, I think that, um, by the end of the session, we’re going to be surprised at how close, not how close, whatever marriage, it’ll be a marriage of convenience only and it’ll be episodic. But I don’t think that it’s a durable relationship between, I don’t think anybody has a durable relationship with Dan Patrick that’s, um, uh, sustainable over a legislative session.

You know, or,

[00:38:23] Jim: you know, or, you know, I, this particular. This particular configuration has been inherently fraught. Yes. In terms of who are the big three are for this last. The only thing it’s been good for is the news business. Well, I think what it, I think what it, you know, what it underlines for me, I mean, and the way you said, well, they’re in alignment on policy right now and in a very narrow kind of way that has had real political implications.

Mm hmm. But the other thing that’s lurking out there, I, you know, this sounds like a democratic talking point and I’m always at pains to say, look, this is, you know, this is a read of what we’re seeing very consistently in the underlying public opinion data, which is that there’s still a lot of doubt out there about the grid, about reliability and about, and that extends a little into other areas of infrastructure.

And also in books, a general kind of declining trust in institutions, including government, including, you know, including among Republicans, you know, and you know, it’s not, you don’t have to go back too far, have that good a memory or been watching even that closely. Oh, they had to be watching a little closely to see that, you know, the Lieutenant Governor and the governor were not on the same page in the aftermath of storm Uri.

And this issue has not gone away given what happened in Houston after the last storm. And while everybody is currently doing, has, has to date by everybody, the governing majority has done a pretty good job of finding people to blame. Initially it was the, the PUC, whoever was in reach to be shit canned, frankly.

Now it’s center point. And that’s not to say that some of these people

[00:40:04] Harvey: are not responsible, you know, had some answers, had some questions to answer. A general rule of thumb is the louder the Senate screams, the more they’re at fault. Well,

[00:40:11] Jim: and you know, I mean, and clearly as we were seeing these, these hearings on.

You know, that was going to be an over, you know, just the usual interim hearing reporting on the previous legislation. The undercurrents among some of the senators, like the current and former chair of business and commerce were pretty noticeable.

[00:40:29] Harvey: Who has been proven consistently right

[00:40:31] Jim: and, you know, so that even

[00:40:33] Harvey: though he was punished for being right by the lieutenant governor.

[00:40:36] Jim: So I point to that as an example now, but you know, that also goes back to my, our previous discussion both here and, and before he came on that. There’s gonna be a lot of moving parts in terms of, you know, we’re, you know, you’re talking about Trump wins Texas by one. But if Trump loses the national presidential election, and again, this is not a prediction, but the election we’re held today, it’s conceivable, he’s, he’s probably the underdog.

Mm-Hmm. . Right. Not by law, just by, you know, I mean, I think the people that think, you know, Carris is now running away with this. It’s nuts. Right. But I, I get the impulse, but a lot of pent up desire for optimism among Trump opponents and, and Democrats. But if you know. Harris wins the election, and then we get, you know, in a lot of ways, that’s an easier playbook for Texas Republicans.

It’s a much easier playbook for Texas Republicans. Much like the

[00:41:23] Harvey: reaction to Obama in 2010. Right, exactly,

[00:41:25] Jim: and to Biden in 2021. Right. Which is you go back to using the Democratic leadership in Washington as a foil. That means we find out how much more we can actually spend on border security. And it means other things to talk about as long as the grid, we don’t have another big grid failure.

But I think one of the things that we’ve seen is that, you know, our polling has shown consistently that every time we ask about people’s expectations of either this future reliability of the grid or their assessment of whether the political class has successfully addressed the problem. Do not have a lot of faith that the problem is no faith as it has been.

Well, you know, there’s some, but, and it’s gotten marginally better, but not very much, but you know, that just means it’s latent and it’s waiting out there. And I think the other thing that’s happened is that the threshold for people paying attention to it has become lower. In other words, at any time, the power goes out anywhere on anything beyond an intensely local scale.

And there’s collateral damage, it re raises this issue.

[00:42:38] Harvey: Well, the only two reasons I would, I would, I would actually not disagree, but compliment one is, um, Beryl, obviously, with two million people for a week, uh That easily met the threshold. Exactly. But, you know, every three days on my cell phone, I get a text from ERCOT saying, this is an emergency day, please cut back your power.

[00:42:58] Jim: And, yeah, and, and the thing is Honestly, there’s nothing wrong with that. Oh, no, it’s promising policy perspective. It’s the right policy, the right thing to do, but because you’ve got these underlying attitudes, it’s, it has an activating effect, right? So, so, you know, that’s kind of out there and it’s, it’s.

It’s a wild card.

[00:43:17] Harvey: Well, on top of which, I want to toss another total wild card, which we’re going to, you’ll roll your eyes at, but we still have, there’s the possibility of a Ken Paxton indictment that’s still hanging out there. Um, feds are notoriously slow. I think the Blagojevich, uh, indictment in Illinois took, uh, two and a half years of investigation.

The grand jury in San Antonio was supposedly rapping to this. Yes. Uh, well, I think the grand jury was impaneled about a year and a half ago. Yeah. So now if If the indictment were to happen, um, which obviously may be contingent on who wins the presidency, but if the indictment were to happen, I think that has a pretty serious impact in terms of legitimizing Dade Phelan for having initiated the impeachment and, um, problematic for, uh, Dan Patrick for having squashed the impeachment.

[00:44:05] Jim: But let’s talk about, so a cynic would say, so what? Yep. Well, and I’m not, and I, and I don’t, I, you know, look, I think that’s not a story. Any of those people you mentioned wants.

[00:44:16] Harvey: Well, let me just frame it. It doesn’t make any difference to the general public, but we’re talking inside the 140 days of a legislative session and the interaction between the big three.

And it’s the content, the contempt between Phelan and Patrick are palpable right now. If Phelan and gets up being ends up being vindicated, uh, And Patrick disgraced it effectively inside the building, I think, uh, could potentially have a substantial impact.

[00:44:44] Jim: Although, you know, I mean, you know, one of the, I, you know, I wonder though, if we’re not completely internalizing the lesson of just how hard it is to really make that kind of stuff stick.

I mean, I, I appreciate you bringing that up in the context you did, cause what it kind of points to is like, what are, you know, what are the things that are lurking as we move into the next session, as we start thinking about the next session. And, you know, that would, you know, that would mix things up as would another big freeze in February or January, you know, something like that, you know, but then how that all, you know, another surge in migration, depending in response one way or the other to the outcome of the presidential election, you know, let’s, you know, I, I’m going to ask you, you just Did something in that conversation, which was, you know, assume that Dave Fiedlin would be speaker.

That’s the odds on. It’s the odds on. It’s not a given. Seems like the odds on bet right now. The, um, uh, there, of course, the betters are sometimes wrong. Yeah,

[00:45:53] Harvey: exactly. Yeah. Conviction doesn’t necessarily mean outcome, but, uh, well, depends on if it’s a criminal conviction. It definitely impacts outcome. But, uh, uh, I think the, the fundamental reality is how a, the Republican caucus I think is going to be smaller this next time around.

Part of this primary season was this drumbeat to eliminate democratic chairman. Um, The, there is no candidate, there is nobody that 76, there is no Republican that 76 Republicans will vote for. I mean, that’s just a given. Um, so you are going to have to rely on Democrats. The question is, the Democratic calculation is Phelan our best shot.

Uh, Phelan has disappointed them on a number of occasions, including that final decision he made on Sinoday, the closing day of the last legislative session. Republican gets up. The Senate had sent over a fund, a school funding bill that did not have vouchers. It was a clean bill. If the house had passed it unamended, money would have gone to schools and teachers and Phelan made a bad choice.

Uh, he refused to recognize him for the motion to bring that bill up. It went away. And our

[00:47:02] Jim: understanding is that that was. What the government the governor did not want us to have to decide to say again

[00:47:06] Harvey: And then the governor goes out and tries to destroy a date feeling so and which you know One thing we haven’t talked about is does the governor have any legitimacy this session?

I don’t think so anybody that takes Greg Abbott at his word is a fool after this last primary cycle, um, including Dade Phelan, um, having said all that the, um, uh, uh, he, they, they pass sanctuary cities under Dade Phelan. The only thing that Democrats can claim, he didn’t try and arrest him when they broke the quorum after the poison pill on the elect so called election integrity bill was, um, put in by the Senate.

Uh, two sessions ago or three sessions ago, but, um, uh, there are a number of alternatives, mostly older alternatives, um, and, um, uh, but speakers races, anybody who jumps out in front right now, like all of us, Oliverson or Slauson, obviously doesn’t know what they’re doing. Speakers races are decided. There’s a lot of

[00:48:06] Jim: speculation about whether, you know, this was a stalking horse for, of course, ambition.

Oh, it’s not. But I’m, you know.

[00:48:11] Harvey: Which is, you know, it was a stalking where Oliverson was a stalking horse for Patrick, no matter what he says, um, Slauson little more nuanced, but, um, uh, she carried the, uh, a bill banning abortion. There’s no way she’s ever going to get democratic support. Um, uh, well,

[00:48:29] Jim: you know, I mean, a lot of the people that, you know, I mean, you can, we can talk about some of the veteran legislators, Republicans that are,

[00:48:36] Harvey: they will all shoot us if we mentioned their names.

Yeah. Which we,

[00:48:38] Jim: well, you know, yeah, it’s just, it’s, it’s a pretty thin fig leaf there, but I mean, but you know, they’re, they’re not likely to be candidates. And you know, when you look at the candidate pool, a lot of the people that might have been. thought of as democratic alternatives, uh, are not coming back.

And I think, you know, whatever you think, you know, however you, you know, view it. I mean, one of the things I did for a presentation was I took Mark Jones scaling, uh. you know, his, uh, his pool Rosenthal scaling of the relative ideological positioning of members. And I looked at the Republican spot and just went from left to right and crossed out all the people that aren’t coming back.

They are disproportionately from the section of that graphic that is closer to the center. And that’s where, and that’s where other democratic possible candidates might’ve been. Well, Abbott did radicalize that.

[00:49:35] Harvey: Yeah. And you know, the one thing it just occurred to me. We are so certain that, um, that it’ll be a Republican house.

In 2008, uh, Obama, um, uh, led a historic election and, uh, we got 76 Republicans and 74 Democrats, which is a fun, a functional tie. I’m not predicting that now, but it is,

[00:49:58] Jim: you came close to predicting it earlier. You might as well stick by it,

[00:50:02] Harvey: I mean, maybe it’s just wishful thinking, but it would be so much fun to be a political reporter, uh, covering, uh, a surprise democratic win in the house that, uh, um, and you, I mean, you can just hear the dominoes around the state of all the infrastructure built by 25 years of Republican dominance.

Yeah. Um, uh, imploding so well, but it would be fine. I’m not, it’s not predictive. It’d just be fun

[00:50:30] Jim: as long as we’re fantasizing, I guess. Um, but I mean, you know, the, but I mean, I think the analysis of the, of, you know, where feeling stands, I mean, I, you know, You know, I think I would have thought, I shouldn’t even say this just to admit, I mean, I thought he would be in more trouble if he, given that he had the narrow escape that he had, but I, but I think I, you know, I underestimated the lack of alternatives.

[00:50:54] Harvey: And his single best credential is that he and Dan Patrick hate each other. Any other candidate to a certain degree is going to be suspected of being a stalking horse for Patrick. Yeah,

[00:51:07] Jim: but I, you know, I also. I mean, look, I, I, you know, like you, you know, talking to public groups or something, I always am reminding people that, you know, the general public that doesn’t follow this all that much that, you know, you have to take the institutional factors into account of that.

There’s a certain baseline, you know, of ever. Simmering antipathy and contention between the House and the Senate. It’s designed that way. If, if you’re seeing that it’s working per design, I’m not saying it’s great, it’s not great, but that’s per design, per specs, right. But I don’t wonder if, you know, I, my question, and I have not talked to enough House members recently, is whether there is some exhaustion with that paradigm, given what it’s gotten people?

You know, and I, I, and I, you know, I don’t know, I asked that as an open question on one hand, you know, I preface that with my mention of the institutional thing, because I believe that is very fundamental, but I also believe that, you know, when you’re an individual actor, after a few sessions of going, Hey, if it’s bad for Dan Patrick, it’s good for us and watching your colleagues fall around you.

And seeing, you know, the bodies functioning in the way that the bodies are functioning. If people don’t start thinking, I, you know, I don’t think it requires them to say, I give up. I love the lieutenant governor. I’m throwing my lot in with him. But if people aren’t beginning to think about, maybe there’s a different way to approach this.

And I don’t, you know, I,

[00:52:37] Harvey: if, if it’s, if the presidential race is close in Texas, MAGA is discredited to a certain degree. Uh, I don’t

[00:52:43] Jim: know. Maybe.

Well,

[00:52:45] Harvey: we’ll see. But again, it depends on the numbers. The house is the only barometer we have this and it’s not.

[00:52:49] Jim: Yeah. I mean, I, you know, I guess, you know, we should close, you know, we’re going to get into the weeds here pretty soon.

But I mean, you know, when you say MAGA is, you know, sort of discredited, well, that it really does raise the question of what that really means. And it goes back to something that we started with that, you know, this nationalization versus, you know, organic state level, you know, You know, what’s bubbling up from, you know, besides oil and gas, you know, what’s boiling what bubbles up in the political culture here, you know, that is influenced by that and maybe, you know, reflect some of it, but it’s still distinct from that.

And you know, what is a Republican party with Trump having lost another election? But having already sort of liberated the spirits that he has liberated in the Republican Party, which in Texas predated Trump, you know, I mean, you know, a lot of the elements that we think of now is MAGA. I would say we’re very present within the first three years of the Tea Party movement here.

Oh yeah. And so, you know, and so when you said that, that’s why I kind of glitch at that. I’m like, well, we’ll still have Tim Dunn and Morris Wilkes funding. And, you know, we’ll still have, you know, a pretty good clutch of, I would say, Republican House members and a few Republican senators that are between the age of 35 and 55, just to bring, you know, I would even say 35 to 60, that are rooted in, you know, the political soil that.

You know, spawned Trump elevated Trump spawned what we now call MAGA that will be perfectly willing to rebrand a little, but carry on a fight in the same category. So I don’t know, you know, and, you know, and as we said, and if, and if Trump loses. At the same time that people are saying, yeah, that didn’t work.

We have to carry on with our own thing in Texas going into our midterm elections. I think what that means is a bunch of people scrambling around in that space, trying to pick up version, whatever, you know, Version two point, you know, post-Trump version, MAGA version 1.0 or also known in my mind is the modern Texas Republican Party version about three or four.

And I think that’s what I think will be interesting about that because I don’t think the, you know, the kind of, especially if Trump wins the state, even if he only wins by a point or two, I don’t, I don’t see it being de-legitimized as a winning strategy. I think. I think people, you know, and I think we saw this in the interim, between 20.

20 and now people didn’t push back on Trump, but I think there’ve been plenty of people that have been saying, you know, I’ll bet I can do this better. I mean, the most prominent national attempt at that failed with DeSantis, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t a lot of other people. I mean, you know, look, it’s like the magnetism

[00:55:50] Harvey: on this is the cult of personality.

I mean, that’s, that’s the glue that’s holding it together. Um, I’m not going to say those threads. won’t exist. Uh, and they may still be dominant in the Republican primary. Um, but as governing principals, I’m, I think if Trump were to lose decisively or, um, it, um, it’ll be a spasm through the Republican party of, of total

[00:56:15] Jim: rebranding and remaneuvering.

And, you know, but,

[00:56:18] Harvey: and, and being a party of addition, it stopped being a party of addition a long time ago. It’s a party of subtraction right now.

[00:56:24] Jim: Well, I mean, except that, you know, I think Republicans have convinced themselves that they’re They’re adding Latinos at a reasonable pace, which is not, and so, you know, I don’t know.

I mean, I

[00:56:34] Harvey: will see in Arizona, Nevada. Yeah,

[00:56:37] Jim: I, you know, but I, I think that it’s going to be. You know, that scenario is a very fluid one. Do I expect the Republican party after the last decade to suddenly, you know, move back towards the free trade oriented center? I don’t. I mean, I just, you know, in Texas, the

[00:56:57] Harvey: only reason they won’t move back is because of Tim Dunn and Morris Wilkes.

There has to be a funding source for this. the essentially they paid for the, as you may know, the Republican convention ended up about 300, 000, almost 400, 000 in debt. Who’s going to pay that? The same guys that essentially elected picked the new chairman. And

[00:57:17] Jim: yeah, but the, you know, the Republican convention is not, I mean, it’s the center of something, it’s the center of all this, right.

But it’s not, you know, to your argument, Perhaps

[00:57:26] Harvey: I’m just making the case that there has to be a funding center. And, uh, if, if, if it’s a conclusive election, that funding center boils down to essentially two sources right now, there’s still about, I would argue that about probably 70 percent of overall Republican funding in the state, not, not election funding, operational funding.

[00:57:43] Jim: Yeah. Yeah. I don’t, I was going to say, I don’t know about that, but, but I also, you know, There are other people willing to jump in there as we’ve seen.

[00:57:50] Harvey: Yep.

[00:57:51] Jim: That are not named Wilks and Dunn and that are not part of that thing. Or they’re only, you know, you mentioned Jass, you know, the Adelson, you know, Mary Madelson is obviously going to invest a lot of money here.

[00:58:01] Harvey: One last chuckle, of course, is, um, uh, the former president attacking Adelson and, uh, of course, Dave Carney, uh, Abbott’s.

[00:58:10] Jim: But this is also why I think that, you know, to the previous discussion, if you remove, I mean, in some ways. Trump, you know, this is the problem that a lot of Republican elected officials have.

Trump is both the biggest resource and the biggest headache at the same time.

[00:58:26] Harvey: There will be a sigh of relief that they don’t have to get questioned. And I have

[00:58:30] Jim: no doubt of that, including people that publicly, you know, sing his praises when he’s gone, they will get up and go, God, I don’t have to do that anymore.

To my mind, that doesn’t alleviate them from the ownership of having done it. But, you know, such a goes, well, you know, this, we could do this for a long time more, but I’m not going

[00:58:51] Harvey: to probably will off, but I’m not going to, yes. We’ll we’ll

[00:58:54] Jim: continue this over, you know, sandwiches or something. So Harvey, thanks for coming.

It’s been great.

[00:58:58] Harvey: It’s been fun. You know, do

[00:59:00] Jim: you have a, it’s, it’s, I was looking last at you’ve been on 2022. So we’ll get you back. I still

[00:59:05] Harvey: use the picture as my, uh, my, uh, I like it ID. Um And I haven’t changed a bit, nor have you. No, no. I

[00:59:13] Jim: mean, yeah, identical. Um, yeah, I’m just going to say identical. So with that, thanks again, Harvey.

Uh, thanks again to our excellent production team in the dev studio here in the college of liberal arts at UT Austin. Not a data heavy discussion, but of course all our polling results, thousands of, uh, downloadable graphics of, you know, every conceivable result. for your presentations, teaching, et cetera, all available, uh, open access at texaspolitics.

utexas. edu. So thank you for listening and we’ll be back soon again with another second reading podcast.

The second reading podcast is a production of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.