December 12th, 2022 – Reviewing the year and looking to Texas politics in 2023

[00:00:00] Jim Henson: 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. Sir, 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?

[00:00:25] Jim Henson: Must a female senator raise her hand or her voice to be recognized over the male colleagues in the room?

[00:00:34] Jim Henson: 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. Uh, joined again today by my colleague in friend Joshua Blank. Josh, how are you? Today is the, is the, is the year winds down.

[00:00:50] Josh Blank: I’m feeling pretty. You know, we, yeah, I like, I like the holiday season.

[00:00:53] Josh Blank: Right? Yeah. Well, good. You know, why not?

[00:00:56] Jim Henson: Yeah, I, you know, I mean, I, I, I, I think I, I’m still waiting for the onset a little bit more, but that may have more to do with our work schedule and haven’t been under the weather last week than anything. But it’s still, I, you know, , it’s still not looking totally like the holidays to me or feeling

[00:01:12] Josh Blank: that way.

[00:01:12] Josh Blank: Way. Well, no. Well, and especially with this, I mean, you know, this like stupid text, like, and this dang, you know, slight like warm front that’s come through here has really kind of messed with it. Yeah. I think

[00:01:21] Jim Henson: that’s a, I think that’s

[00:01:21] Josh Blank: a, that’s a point, you know, humidity, sweating in the holidays don’t really

[00:01:24] Jim Henson: feel Yeah.

[00:01:25] Jim Henson: What It’s hot and clammy. It’s not, you know. Yeah. So, Anyway, . Well, you know, it’s only December 12th, but you know, as we sit here at the, uh, UT Austin on campus, I mean, it, it always feels like the end of the year comes a little sooner here. Oh, yeah. As things shut down, parking very easy today. Right. Um, the end of the year though is objectively close.

[00:01:43] Jim Henson: Um, this will be the last podcast of the year for us, so. I wanted to do something that helps us set the stage for next year, but also helps us in some ways to look back at what we’ve done. We’ve done a lot of polling this year. Yeah. Turns out , and it’s been a, as we’ve talked about in, in several circumstances, that different contexts, it’s been a fast and, you know, somewhat frantic here in some ways.

[00:02:09] Jim Henson: It certainly has felt that way to me. Um, you know, as we worked into some new workflows and, and, you know, election years. Just they’re election years. They’re kind of relentless, you know? So, you know, as we’ve talked about this, what we thought we’d do today for the podcast was sort of use a few key numbers that we’ve pulled out of mostly our data from mostly this year.

[00:02:32] Jim Henson: Although, you know, we go back a little further for a couple things. That, that kind of have that, that we think have implications for politics in Texas, uh, in 2023. And that’s, you know, including what looms law, you know, the legislative session, which of course looms large in, in our lives and, and here in Austin.

[00:02:50] Jim Henson: And for people that follow Texas government and politics closely. So in a way that it allows us to kind of take stock a little bit, but with an eye towards really what’s coming up. Right. I mean, and you know, we. We’ve been going to events and talking to reporters and you know, I’ve done many panels and things like this in the last six, eight weeks or so, including a couple of things last week, and it’s very much in the air.

[00:03:13] Jim Henson: I mean, I, everybody’s trying to balance that. .

[00:03:16] Josh Blank: There’s certainly a lot of, uh, you know, sometimes you walk into a session and it’s clear like, oh, this is the thing. And then sometimes it’s like you walk into a session, it’s like, okay, everybody’s competing over what the thing is. Yeah. And right now you hear a lot of different versions of kind of what, what the focus is gonna be.

[00:03:29] Josh Blank: And obviously, you know, this is gonna unfold, but like, we’re in that period right now.

[00:03:33] Jim Henson: Yeah. And, and I think that, you know, I mean, we were, we’ve had that version of that conversation. I’m thinking, I think in some ways. You know, I wonder, you know, I don’t know that we have so much less clarity this time, but I do think that the factors that are, that are driving, you know, I feel kind of certain about the factors that are driving the uncertainty, let’s put it that way.

[00:03:55] Jim Henson: Right? Yeah. I mean, in other words, I think the, you know, the end of the election year, the results of the election and the way, you know, as we’ve talked to the podcast a lot, the election fits into the sequence of the last couple of elections, say the last three elections. You know, they kind of clarify what some of the questions are, even if we don’t, you know, without knowing how it’s gonna shake out.

[00:04:16] Jim Henson: And I’m sensing a lot of

[00:04:17] Josh Blank: that out there. Yeah. And I don’t think that this is necessarily like, you know, there’s less clarity now than there normally is or anything like that. I mean, and I, I sh. . I think I said it this way, but I’ll be even more specific. Like I think sometimes there are sessions where it’s very clear what is going to be at least one or a couple of the priorities like that is, you know, you say that’s set in stone.

[00:04:33] Josh Blank: You can bet on that. Yeah. And then when in a session that doesn’t have, you know, those clear anger points that everybody just knows is, is are gonna be a big piece of, you know, attention. Then you’re kind of at this level of clarity, which is where we are now, which is kind of, you know, trying to figure out.

[00:04:47] Josh Blank: Who, who’s gonna get what and what the what, what there’s gonna be

[00:04:50] Jim Henson: time for And yeah. And yeah. And who’s gonna be, you know, and, and who, you know, who’s gonna be successful at driving what they want to drive. Right? So, so like, you know, so let’s dive into this. We’ve, you know, we’ve taken, like I said, five or so numbers, you know, as, as points of departure.

[00:05:03] Jim Henson: And one of them actually speaks to this, like Yeah. You know, things that have seen certain things that I, you know, one, and so we’ll start with this number. We’ll start with 60. And 60% is the share of Republican voters who said that immigration in the border was the issue area most important to their vote.

[00:05:21] Jim Henson: in 2022, and in that same poll that I pulled that out, our, our, our most recent poll so far, October, uh, uh, of 20 22, 40 5% said the state spends too little on border security spending 33 said about the right amount and only 11% too much. And even though we didn’t kind of lay it out that way, this is, I think, a perfect example of this kind of certainty, uncertainty, balance, right?

[00:05:49] Jim Henson: So on one hand, we’re like broken records about how consistent this kind of result is. But I think that how this is going to shake out this session because of what’s happened not only in the election, but in the last two years, year and a half, two years Yeah. Is, is really interesting. Um, we added the spending number to the, to the notes and that that’s a good ad because on one hand, We know what Republican attitudes are in border security and immigration.

[00:06:20] Jim Henson: Mm-hmm. , we know that Governor Abbott ran pretty hard on this as a component of his, of his campaign. Whether it was in all the ads, it was certainly part of his effort to secure the base running into and during the election. But we also know, as we’ve said in here a lot, they’re spending an awful lot of money.

[00:06:38] Josh Blank: Well, right, and I mean, it was also certainly a feature of a lot of down ballot races. And part of the reason, again, we’re broken record on this number, but it’s important because it, it conditions, you know, the political speak. But now as we transition from the campaign, you know, season in which, especially, you know, a lot of, you know, post redistricting, you know, down ballot from the statewide level, you had a lot of Democrats running in very democratic districts.

[00:06:58] Josh Blank: You. Republicans are in very Republican districts, and if you want to talk to the most Republicans about an issue that they care about, immigration and border security remains that issue. But as you’re, you know, alluding to, and I’ll just be more specific here, as spending and funding for border security has gone up over the last two years, in between the last time the legislature came and provided funding for dps and board security operations.

[00:07:21] Josh Blank: Yeah. Ultimately that seems like, you know, that budget has increased from probably, you know, A billion dollars to close to over 4 billion. Yeah. Now

[00:07:30] Jim Henson: a lot of, well, even that’s

[00:07:31] Josh Blank: just. Yeah, I mean, look, and this is all just, these are all approximate, but you know, as a lot of people would point out, you know, these numbers are kind of, are necessary even just to kind of keep up the troop levels.

[00:07:40] Josh Blank: I mean, there’s just a lot of spending that goes into this. So, you know, I think this, one of the real questions that this, this issue raises is, you know, if you’ve got. This budget surplus of which so far under the spending cap, there’s about 12 billion or so to spend unless you budget the budget cap the spending cap, which is possible.

[00:07:55] Josh Blank: Yeah, that’s a separate question, but let’s say there’s 12 billion, we’ll put a pin in that. We’ll put a pin in that. Yeah, write that down. But let’s say there’s about 12 billion as a starting point. You know, you figure that, you know, without covid money to basically make the agency’s whole, that a lot of the money was moved from to pay for operation loan star, and you know, again, ongoing expenses for that.

[00:08:12] Josh Blank: That’s a big. Yeah. Right. I mean, so just as a starting point, you know, I think that’s something that we need to acknowledge here is that’s like a big, I think opening first question. I mean, that’s sort of not even really, really high on the radar of like the policy things that people are talking about, but like how much and how and how longer is the legislature going to continue sort of, or is gonna make this operation whole really going forward?

[00:08:33] Josh Blank: Cuz it’s a big ticket item. Yeah, and

[00:08:34] Jim Henson: I, I, you know, you know, we were both at the. The legislative preview event that the, that the Texas Tribune did last week, on Friday, I guess. And um, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday. And I think on one hand, you know, I didn’t have legislators on that panel. I had did, I did moderated the panel of reporters.

[00:08:52] Jim Henson: But I’ve yet to, you know, have anybody suggest, you know, when I’ve asked somewhat rhetorically, you know, if there are concerns about spending more than 4 billion on border security, who is the first Republican in the legislature, that’s gonna raise their hand and say that in a definite way in open court.

[00:09:08] Jim Henson: And I, you know, I don’t see a lot of takers exactly.

[00:09:11] Josh Blank: But it, but it’s interesting because this is one of those ways where the, you know, I think that the very clear political constraints around immigration, the border are gonna create some real. Fundamental mechanical constraints. Yeah. In terms of on the budget, almost immediately, if the, if the, basically the goal’s gonna be, okay, we’re gonna continue this at current spending levels, if not higher.

[00:09:28] Josh Blank: Well, okay. That’s, that’s a lot of the surplus, whether it’s 12 billion, whether it’s 24 billion. Yeah, it’s, well, I mean, you

[00:09:34] Jim Henson: know, it’s a big number, you know, to, to, I think a little over 2 billion has been added in the interim. I think by the time you added everything up in the regular. It was around two and now it’s north of four.

[00:09:45] Jim Henson: Right. So that still is, yeah, as you say, a pretty big chunk. And I, you know, and I would add to that, I mean, you know, I did a, I moderate another panel on Wednesday that involve state legislators and I, you know, most. . Interestingly, this was a panel that was focused on higher education. Mm-hmm. . And towards the end of the panel, as you know, the legislators talked about, it was for the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.

[00:10:11] Jim Henson: You know, largely good discussion, fairly positive, probably a lot of people in the room heard things they wanted to hear about, you know, the enthusiasm for things like workforce development and affordability and et cetera. But I tried to press them a little bit and I just think, you know, in particular, appropriations chair or expected appropriations chair again, uh uh, representative Greg Bonin about where higher ed would be in the queue.

[00:10:40] Jim Henson: Yeah, and you know, there was a moment there. I mean, it was interesting. There was a moment as we were talking about these priorities where the Democrat on the panel, Senator Jose Menendez said, look, I think we all just have to say that the elephant in the room is that property taxes is the number one thing right now on the agenda for the leadership.

[00:10:57] Jim Henson: That everybody is gonna try to do something. About, and that’s going to, you know, that’s gonna have to be taken care of first. Essentially. That’s putting words in his mouth a little bit. But that was the point. Yeah. Well, chairman Bondon then kind of made it a point to circle back and say, look, I just want to be clear.

[00:11:13] Jim Henson: I think we can do property tax relief and higher ed. It’s not an either or. We can do something on, on both of those fronts. Sure. Now what that made me think was that exactly. Sure. , um, , how many different conferences? You know, if I was to do a public ed conference the next day or I’d moderated a panel on border security the day after that.

[00:11:37] Jim Henson: I mean, I think there are a lot of people saying, well, we can do more than one thing. Mm-hmm. . But as we’ve said in here before, this is a little like, you know, the psychology of, you know, getting a windfall, right? You, you could spend it a lot of times in your head, and there’s a lot of heads in the legislature doing that.

[00:11:54] Jim Henson: It’s a very interesting political question about here that I, you know, I don’t think there’s a clear answer

[00:12:00] Josh Blank: to this at this point. Yeah. And I think what you’re talking about here about, you know, sort of how much real estate there is on the agenda Yeah. Is something that, you know, I think we’re gonna come back to a couple times going through these points and sort of where there are some, some challenges here is gonna be, have to do with again.

[00:12:14] Josh Blank: Yeah. The limited tension time space, all the things everybody knows about who probably listened to this podcast. But the fact that all those features that already make legislating, you know, during the 140 se day session, difficult, it’s not like the addition of the money.

[00:12:26] Jim Henson: easier. Right. Which, which is why, which leads us to the next number.

[00:12:29] Jim Henson: Right? Right. So the next number I have on here is 52%. 52% is the share of Republicans. And again, we’ve got a couple of Republican numbers here cause we’re talking about politics and the governing coalition. Largely 52% was the share of Republicans who said in our April, 2022 poll, the population growth is bad for the.

[00:12:49] Jim Henson: This really, I think, brings this issu, you know, this, this notion of what the carrying capacity is of this, of the, of the money on hand is because there’s a really interesting kind of emerging discussion in legislative circles, particularly, you know, in this kind of, well, it depends on your audience, maybe.

[00:13:08] Jim Henson: Mm-hmm. , but it, I keep hearing people talking about infrastructure. We heard about it on Thursday. Yeah. We’re hearing about it from. , you know, non-trivial actors in the process who are talking about transportation, who are talking about water. Mm-hmm. , who are talking about, you know, social infrastructure.

[00:13:28] Jim Henson: Right. And that was sort of, that’s the, the theme of some of the education discussions. And we’re gonna, we’re gonna hit education in a minute, but it’s not the kind of thing that’s getting a lot of public airing. But when we, the reason I chose this number is, There are a lot of reasons, obviously, that people might think that population growth is bad for Texas.

[00:13:48] Jim Henson: Sure. And we’ve talked about that in here, given demographics, given cultural politics. But we’ve done a lot of polling both here and in some of our other work that suggests that it’s not just that. I mean, people feel like the state in many policy areas is not managing its growth very well. Healthcare would be another one.

[00:14:09] Jim Henson: Yeah. Um, rural areas and I, and so I think. I picked this number because I, I really do wonder, if there’s a through line here in these, in these infrastructure discussions, and as we’ve talked about in here before, we were just talking about a few minutes ago before we, we started recording, you know, these big infrastructure packages wind up taking more than one session.

[00:14:31] Jim Henson: There’s just no two ways about that. People talked about water for. If you go back to the very beginning, you know, kind of close for a D to a for a decade, close to a decade before we got the big water infrastructure, funding, design, and all that infrastructure that was passed in 2013, which I would also add relevant to this, is those entities are on sunset review this time.

[00:14:55] Jim Henson: Right. So, you know, I, I think that that is out there. I mean, you know, and it’s a really open question about whether, you know, to the extent that we, you know, we, as we think about this, about who is willing to spend time and political capital on this. At a point, you know, I mean, I, I believe infrastructure, the Lieutenant Governor even mentioned infrastructure, I think in, in his agenda setting press conference, a, a, a couple of weeks ago.

[00:15:20] Jim Henson: You know, I think this is out there and, and I, I just wonder how much of it is gonna coalesce. Or whether it’s gonna get kind of lost in the shuffle, because there are gonna be opportunities to talk about this pursuant to the sunset discussion, if nothing else. Yeah,

[00:15:35] Josh Blank: I mean, it’s tough. I mean, I think you’ve covered most of what I think is interesting about this.

[00:15:38] Josh Blank: I mean, I’ll just say, you know, this is one of those interesting things that I think hits at a very interesting, complicated intersection, right? I mean, Texas, Texas and Texas is elected officials. Really take it as a, as a a point of pride. They return to over and over again the state’s business friendliness.

[00:15:53] Josh Blank: Right. And being friendly to business isn’t simply about low regulations or low taxes, it’s also about having the infrastructure that allows businesses to operate. And that means roads, that means houses that they’re workers can live in, piece a lot of water to make chips reliable. A lot of water to make chips, a lot of electricity, right?

[00:16:08] Josh Blank: Yeah. To, to, it’s a lot of, takes a lot of electricity to run, uh, Bitcoin farms. Right, right. I mean, ultimately, uh, and, and, you know, Catalog, sort of negative eval, you know, continuing negative evaluations of that, about the trajectory of the state. You know, we’ve done various, you know, polling that shows a certain amount of dissatisfaction with a lot of the basic services.

[00:16:26] Josh Blank: So, I mean, there is a, there’s like a clearly a need here. And going back to where we started, you know, there’s a, a big surp, budget surplus. And I’m thinking if I’m a big trade group, you know, it’s not like I’m necessarily looking for like another tax cut, although I wouldn’t mind it. I mean, there’s certainly discussions about that going on, but really, I mean, in a lot of cases what you need is you need road and you need.

[00:16:43] Josh Blank: Yeah. You know, in a lot of places. At the same time, it’s really bad politics, right? Infrastructure projects take forever. You know, I, I love this example. I returned to this cause it’s a good one, which is, you know, any major transportation project is about a 10 year project. So for a politician who’s going to be, have five elections in that time period, yeah.

[00:17:00] Josh Blank: You know, essentially all you’re delivering to people is more bad traffic. Before they actually get the solution. In the case of, let’s say for example, you know, something like that. And then I think this number that you raised, you know, the 50, you know, sort of the, the 52% who say the population growth is bad.

[00:17:13] Josh Blank: Again, there’s a lot of dimensionality to, to what people are reacting to when they’re reacting to population growth. But I think, you know, living in Austin, I think you feel this a lot, but it’s not. Totally clear what the, what the, I’m putting this in quotes. Like what the correct ideological response is to growth and the policy response to it.

[00:17:33] Josh Blank: Yeah. Right. And so that creates a lot of, I think, you know, not only, they’re not landmines because they’re known it’s limits, because it’s unknown. I mean, ultimately, you know, when you get into this sort of development, Stuff and infrastructure stuff. You can have a lot of very progressive Democrats who don’t look very progressive anymore.

[00:17:46] Josh Blank: And you can have a lot of business friendly Republicans who maybe not, may not understand the importance of these infrastructure projects to kind of long-term, you know, business, you know, vitality in an area. And so this is just one of those areas that’s like, ooh, you know? Right. And to, to your point, I mean, in the past when it has been something like water or the transportation, The point was to build up momentum.

[00:18:07] Josh Blank: And I remember, I mean, when we were doing some polling around the water stuff, I remember we poll on on that amendment. Yeah. Which we didn’t really want to do, but we did it anyway. , you know, it was a long time ago. But ultimately what you find is at that, at that, by that point in time, most people had understood and we were kind of made aware of the fact that like, this is important key infrastructure, we have to do this.

[00:18:24] Josh Blank: Right. But that took time. Right. This is an on people’s well

[00:18:27] Jim Henson: and that’s, you know Yeah. That’s ex that’s very late in the process. Right? Yeah. And, and what was painstaking about that was how much of work has to be done. in ways that are not, I, I, I don’t wanna say out of the public view, because as soon as you say out of the public view, p you know, I’m, and that’s not really what I meant.

[00:18:41] Jim Henson: It’s just, but in parts of the process that are not salient to the public and that are not watched, I mean, you know, there’s a lot of coalition building, but the public, you know, you know, I, I use the number of Republicans, but if you look at the overall re responses to. , you know, only a third of respondents in that poll said that population growth was good for the state.

[00:19:00] Jim Henson: Yeah. And the difference along party lines was, you know, most noticeable in the sense that the people that didn’t have an opinion there was, there was a lot more, you know, sort of lack of commitment or attention among Democrats and Independents than among

[00:19:14] Josh Blank: Republicans. Yeah. Which again, I think speaks to this overall issue, which is, I think it’s, you know,

[00:19:18] Jim Henson: people might be seeing that, you know, Different things are being read into the question at that point, possibly, but yeah, I think

[00:19:23] Josh Blank: that’s right.

[00:19:24] Josh Blank: But I, but I also think part of this is that, you know, you know, again, this is the nature of the question and all the kind of stuff, but, you know, I think for a lot of people this is, this is mixed. Yeah. I mean, ultimately, right. And, and I think that’s, that’s, that’s what’s sort of so, so tricky here. But you know, ultimately it does have like a very, you know, very kind of clear potential constraint when it comes to.

[00:19:44] Josh Blank: Well, how much money are we gonna spend? Right on infrastructure. Right. When you know, when you look at this and you say, well, is who’s clamoring for infrastructure? Well, no. We say, well, nobody right now, per se, except for the fact that all of this infrastructure costs. I mean, the other piece of this has gotten.

[00:19:58] Josh Blank: Much more expensive than it was. Yeah, a year

[00:20:00] Jim Henson: ago. Yeah. That came up in one of those panels at the ch at the something we saw. We were both there. I think it was one of the tri panels that people were talking about, the increased costs. But you know, I, I think the other piece of this is, you know, this is a little bit by way of transition.

[00:20:14] Jim Henson: One of the things that’s interesting to me about this is, you know, trying to parse. where the, you know, I, I, I wrote down when you used the works, I’ve been using it a lot in trying to, you know, and I’m still not sure it’s quite right, but where the energy is in terms of what we used to think about as the very powerful kind of developmentalist coalition in the state.

[00:20:36] Jim Henson: Yeah. You know, and this goes eve, you know, back a long time to. Previous periods of rapid development in the state’s history that involves, you know, when the Democrats were running the show, you know, it’s thought of as kind of centrist from some perspective. It’s sort of pro business. Mm-hmm. . But how that impulse, let’s call it Right.

[00:20:58] Jim Henson: You know, where that lives right now and how powerful it is. You know, the ability of people that see. Governing and see, you know, this kind of development, this developmental impulse is part of the governing responsibility of the legislature. It’s hard to get a read on where that is right now, to me, vis-a-vis all the other powerful things.

[00:21:20] Jim Henson: It’s why I really enjoy, I mean, you raising, like that work we did almost a decade ago now, I guess in terms of the, the constitutional amendment and the run up to all that, you know, really underlines the importance of being. It’s to carve something like that out in the agenda, sustain a multi-year effort to get it in front of people and to actually get these big structural institutional limb.

[00:21:47] Jim Henson: you know, for lack of a better term, you know, subsystems put in place. It’s just so noisy around that right now.

[00:21:53] Josh Blank: Yeah. Well, and I mean, the thing is, you know, like, look, you know, we’re smart guys. That stuff is really complicated. Yeah. You know, I mean the, the whole financing mechanism set up for water back then was, was pretty complicated.

[00:22:02] Josh Blank: And I was, you know, I mean when you’re talking, I was just thinking to myself, and we can move on from infrastructure to something a lot more salient to people here in a second, but I mean, I also wondered to what extent, you know, because of the winter storms, because of continu. Uh, you know, I think concern over the possibility of any sort of, you know, stoppage in the generation of, of the state’s electrical power.

[00:22:21] Josh Blank: Right. You know, ultimately I wonder, you know, that’s gonna take up a lot of Yeah. Mental energy and resources around the infrastructure question that kind of makes some of this other stuff like, well, are we also gonna do

[00:22:30] Jim Henson: transportation? Yeah. It’s hard to imagine. And, you know, I think this is something else that’s kind of, I mean, You know, because of the complexity you’re talking about, I’d written this thing.

[00:22:38] Jim Henson: Cause you mentioned the grid in passing as part of the infrastructure. I mean, that is not settled. No. There’s a big fight going on about that right there. There’s several big fights going on right around that right now that have to do with, you know, as fundamental a question that’s been moving, that there’s not agreement.

[00:22:54] Jim Henson: I mean in the state’s key leaders about, about who’s actually going to do this. Right? Because, you know, a plan has been put forth, which has received significant pushback, particularly in the Senate. Mm-hmm. and Lieutenant Governor Patrick has. Staked out a very interesting position on this that is very different than that is, that is I think in, in important way, is different than the position the governor has taken and in some ways very subtly antagonistic and we’re gonna come back to that.

[00:23:22] Jim Henson: But, and so that, I think you’re right that that has to be settled, I think. And I don’t know how you settle the other stuff before you settle that, or, or at least divert people’s attention. Although again, You know, there will be a lot of different centers of power on this. Now, we talked about this developmental politics, the next number of points to like, you know, maybe the alternative vision of Yeah.

[00:23:44] Jim Henson: Of where the agenda should be. So, you know, uh, another, you know, the next number I, I would start with is a departure point is 50%, and that’s from our August, 2022 poll and 50. Is the share of Republicans who said that they disagreed that the same sex marriage should be legal in Texas. Right. So at a time when there’s been a lot of discussion of, you know, about how the social policy and the cultural politics of the legislature in the last couple of sessions has been a particularly last session has been out of step with identifiable majorities in Texas public opinion.

[00:24:21] Jim Henson: You know, it’s important to keep in mind that the cultural occurrence in the Republican party still are still feeding a very powerful counter-reaction to what I think a lot of people, particularly, you know, Democrats, I suppose, but you know, a non-trivial share of Republicans, you know, had thought of as a much broader social and institutional acceptance of the secular expansion of rights, not just the gay people and l LGBTQ constituencies.

[00:24:51] Jim Henson: If I can call them that, but for that matter to women, I mean, I led with gay marriage because the number is so striking, you know? And, and I made a lot of it kind of at the time when we were doing media on this, because we hadn’t asked about gay marriage in a while. Right. And it was a reminder, it’s like, So a pretty big chunk of people that are very resistant out there, but the politics around L G B T Q issues and abortion in the last two years in Texas have underlined, you know, the dynamic that this is not settled in very stark terms.

[00:25:22] Jim Henson: Um, obviously Dobbs underlined that at the national level and underline, you know, just how many differences there are regionally and in the different states. . But I think you know, it, it’s one of the critical dynamics that I think is another open question that we’re gonna see play out in this, in this session.

[00:25:40] Jim Henson: I mean, I think, you know, there are issues that many urban and secular people thought were settled and in a sense, subject only to a kind of, you know, rear guard. Yeah. You know, action, um, that are pretty obviously not settled for a lot of people. Yeah. I

[00:25:54] Josh Blank: think that, you know, there’s, there’s been a, you know, a certain confusing of let’s, I would say you.

[00:25:59] Josh Blank: Pop, you know, I’d say progress in the, yeah, I think it’s word I’m use progress in the popular culture with respect towards depictions of, of various different minority groups and that not just racial and ethnic, but obviously also, you know, in terms of sexual orientation and gender identity. And there’s been a confusion of, I think, the prevalence of those images for consensus.

[00:26:20] Josh Blank: Yeah. And I think the point is, you know, and you could have picked, I mean, we kinda had a little back and forth. I mean, we could. We could have picked a bunch of different numbers for this. Right. To, to illustrate this point, we’re just picking one here to kind of, again, make this point. Even though, you know, we look at the last legislative session we had noted, you know, it’s, you know, how conservative it was.

[00:26:37] Josh Blank: I think many members, and again, in these legislative previews are. still, you know, I think taking credit for it being the most conservative session. So I think, you know, it’s, it’s fair to call it that. And we had pointed out throughout, you know, throughout last, you know, throughout the 2021 year and in 2022, where, you know, I think policy was deviating from kind of the central tendency of public opinion in Texas.

[00:26:57] Josh Blank: Yeah. But that doesn’t mean that it is that, that, that, that policy has deviated significantly from the central tenancy and Republican opinion in Texas. Right. And so when we’re talking about a lot of these cultural issues that it feels like, you know, the legislature went so far on last time. Um, You know, there’s not really anything underlying like the, let’s say, the voting populace that would lead anyone to say, oh, well, is this gonna change?

[00:27:22] Josh Blank: You know? And I think the best example I have is, you know, uh, is in terms of, to my mind, would be about, you know, abortion politics. We could have picked an abortion number for this, but, you know, a lot of, a lot of reporters have asked me, well, you know, now that like, You know, you know, the legislature’s gone so far in basically banning abortion on almost all circumstances in a state that obviously, you know, the majority of the public is not for this.

[00:27:42] Josh Blank: You know, do you expect them to kind of move back in the other direction? In my head,

[00:27:45] Jim Henson: isn’t

[00:27:45] Josh Blank: the thermostat gonna kick in? Isn’t the thermostat gonna kick in? I said, and one of the things I’ve just been saying to people, and it’s true, and I sort of realized this myself, is yeah, but like all that data was there.

[00:27:55] Josh Blank: So, I mean, you know, when we talk about where abortion attitudes are in 2021 and 2022, That’s pretty much where abortion attitudes were in 2019. In 2016, really? Even in 20 13, 20 14. Yeah. and the laws were passed, right? The six week, you know, uh, ban was passed, the trigger law was passed. The vigilante, you know, law was passing enforcement mechanism.

[00:28:16] Josh Blank: All this was passed under that, that, that structure and that set of, that set of public attitudes. Yeah. And they all still exist. So this is just to say, you know, if, if anybody is necessarily thinking like, oh, well the thermostat’s gonna kick back on and we’re gonna move back or something a little more. . I actually think, you know, this is a good example of, yeah, I don’t think so.

[00:28:33] Josh Blank: Yeah, I mean, ultimately there’s still a lot of appetite among Republicans for, you know, I would say, you know, conservative policies and, you know, returning to conservative social structures and norms. We see that all throughout the data. We could have picked, again, a bunch of different numbers that would point to this, but there’s a lot of appetite for tra, you know, quote unquote traditional social structures among Republican voters.

[00:28:57] Jim Henson: And Republicans are institutionally positioned to deliver that and, and a lot of legislators feel institutional incentives in that direction. Right, right. Given something we talked about in here a lot, of course the, you know, the systematic weakness of the Democratic Party, the primaries is a filtering system for this, et cetera.

[00:29:16] Jim Henson: Now,

[00:29:16] Josh Blank: now, in terms of the uncertainty going into the session, I think the one question becomes like, I mean, I said we could start making a list of all the potential things that could kind of fall under this category of sort of you. Whatever we want to call it, you know, a Yeah. Socially polarizing policy.

[00:29:28] Jim Henson: Look, look at, yeah, you can look at a lot of early bill filings by the usual suspects for

[00:29:31] Josh Blank: this. And I think, you know, traditionally what we, what we tend to think about this kind of stuff is like, you know, again, it’s similar thing. There’s only so much room on the agenda and also this kind of stuff takes a lot of time and makes a lot of hurt feelings along the way.

[00:29:44] Josh Blank: So in terms of, you know, we’ve talked before about how they pace out, you know, another abortion bill when it comes out and the session kind of matters, right? But if you. You know, more abortion restrictions, you know, attempts to, you know, limit the rights of l lgbtq people, uh, you know, more forays into public schools, you know, which we’ll get to in a second.

[00:30:01] Josh Blank: Yeah. You know, ultimately, like that just, that’s a lot of floor fighting. Right? That’s a lot of parliamentary inquiries. That’s a lot of, you know, time and space and, you know, generally, you know, further, I think, you know, negative impacts on whatever collegiality exists. Right. . And so how does that get balanced out given again, an elector That seems to still be pretty, you know, again, a Republican elector still seems to be pretty, you know, still seems to have a pretty good appetite for a lot of this stuff.

[00:30:27] Jim Henson: Yeah, and, and I think one of the things that we have to kind of, you know, we, we we’re seeing an early. , you know, kind of taking of the temperature on this in terms of the Yeah, the fight over, you know, that, that it’s not even the fight, I should say this, you know, the, the nominal challenge to the speaker, uh, to speaker feeling by forces that are co coalescing around representative Tinderholt.

[00:30:50] Jim Henson: um, and his declared candidacy about democratic chairs. And you know, that’s kind of a heat check on this, you know, as you raise collegiality and, and the desire to work, you know, to cooperate on issues and on some of these things. I think how that gets handled is going to be very interesting. Well, and what I mean by that, just to be direct, is not, I mean, I don’t, you know, Tony, tender Holt is not gonna be speaker, and I’ll be shocked if Dave feeling is not speaker again, but how much ground is given.

[00:31:20] Jim Henson: Yeah. You know, I think an early indicator and it, it will not come as early as everybody wants probably cause it never does, is when we see who the house committee chairs are, how many chairs Democrats do you get? You know, I think I sat on here a few weeks ago. The obvious compromise here is to say, you know, I hear you and to say, you know, there’ll be fewer democratic chairs, but that’s, that’s politically sensitive for the speaker.

[00:31:43] Jim Henson: Although I, I, you know, I will be surprised if we don’t. You know, some decrease in the number of, of Democratic chairs from the previous session. What will that decrease be and where will those

[00:31:53] Josh Blank: committee chairs be? Yeah, and ultimately, you know, you know what this is about is, you know, I mean, again, the de the Democratic Committee chairs a part of this, but what this is also about is the fact that, you know, in general, the house of re, you know, the house in Texas doesn’t necessarily want to have a floor vote and a floor.

[00:32:08] Josh Blank: Every single piece of culture war policy that could come to their desks. And part of the issue about democratic chairs, at least as I understand it, is the notion that is out there, which I think is, you know, both a notion among some voters, and I think it’s fanned on by, you know, some representatives and, and their allies to say, well, look, we have a Republican legislature, we have Republicans.

[00:32:26] Josh Blank: We should be able to do whatever we want. But the issue is this assumes that there’s really agreement even among Republicans that whatever we want, Is actually,

[00:32:34] Jim Henson: well, because one of the most active transmitters of that message is basically the other ch you know, the Senate, right. And the lieutenant, you know, led by the Lieutenant Governor.

[00:32:44] Jim Henson: You know, and this came up at the Tribune thing too, and I think it was a good thing to kind of be handling it, is that given what we saw, given the results of the, of the 2022 election, I think I have, I have every expectation that we are going to see. One of the things that we’ve seen from the, from the.

[00:33:01] Jim Henson: In previous sessions, it wasn’t so prominent last time, which is, although it was there to some degree, which is the Senate sending over bills by the cartload. Yep. You know, and the house having to figure out. What they’re gonna do. In particular the speaker and and the leadership team. Right? All right, so before we went out of time, so let’s go to another number.

[00:33:19] Jim Henson: 20%. 20%. And this is from October of 2021 and goes back to the end of, you know, and remember this was kind of the after session poll. Very end because, uh, there were three special sessions last time, but you know, At that point, only 20% approved of how state leaders in the Texas legislature had handled property taxes.

[00:33:40] Jim Henson: And you know, we mentioned prop. You know, I mentioned prop property taxes, anecdotally, but this goes to a point that you were making this morning, which I think is, you know, I, I think you’re right because it’s so complicated it. It comes up in some discussions. I think probably, I think we both agree not enough, but it is complicated and that is when we’re talking about this powerful impetus for property taxes reduction that inevitably is going to cost money because of the interrelationship and the dependency between property taxes and school

[00:34:14] Josh Blank: funding.

[00:34:15] Josh Blank: Right. I mean, basically, I mean, it’s one of these things and it’s, it’s sort of so interesting to me that. This isn’t, I mean, I don’t know. It’s not interesting. It’s like one of the things that I feel like I’ve drawn out of, it’s interesting when you’re in a certain mood. Yeah. Well, well, no, I mean, it’s one of those things like, you know, there you could obviously fill many books with the things that, you know, people don’t understand about things they don’t care about.

[00:34:31] Josh Blank: Right? Yeah. But to me, this is one of those sort of fundamental relationships that I think gets oversimplified or just ignored. Perpetually, both from the political standpoint, but even once we get into the policy space here, which is, you know, you can’t mess around with property taxes without messing around with public school financing.

[00:34:47] Josh Blank: Right. And it’s, and that is not a little dial to be turning. That’s a big dial with a lot of, yeah. With a lot of impact. And so part of it is, you know, I mean there’s this, all these questions to my mind about, you know, the idea of using, you know, again, a surplus for something that ultimately is going to be an ongoing expense, but also, you know, they’d have to make the public schools whole.

[00:35:06] Josh Blank: and this kind of goes back to the agenda question again, which is, okay, well you know what’s on the agenda for public education. And I say, well, okay, obviously the Senate would like to do school vouchers, right? There’s also a lot of talk about curriculum, right? There’s a lot of talk about, uh, L G B T Q students and, you know, sort of , you know, their, their rights.

[00:35:24] Josh Blank: You know, there’s talk about libraries. There’s also, you know, potentially a real shortage in teachers, right? There’s school safety.

[00:35:30] Jim Henson: Okay. And, and you know, and I would also add that in the very, you know, in one of the, you know, kind of more old fashioned now, you know, is concerns in public education, you know, we’re seeing a lot of data about.

[00:35:42] Jim Henson: A real decrease in student achievement in the aftermath of the pandemic, right? Absolutely. Which is a, an serious problem. It’s, well, you know, it might even be a core problem. Yeah. .

[00:35:53] Josh Blank: No, it’s gonna be, well, it’s one of those things, you know, if you’re, if you’re in economist, you say, what’s the most expensive problem of all these things?

[00:35:57] Josh Blank: That’s the most expensive problem, right. , right? I mean, a bunch of, a bunch of third graders who can’t read and fourth graders and fifth graders who can’t read is a very, very expensive problem. Right.

[00:36:06] Jim Henson: And it’s a problem that ripples through.

[00:36:08] Josh Blank: Yeah. No, I mean, and when I say that, when I say expensive, I mean like, you know, like thinking about when these kids turn 25, I mean, that’s how expensive we’re talking about these kinds of problems.

[00:36:16] Josh Blank: And so, you know, the sort of, I mean like the one thing that seems to be what everybody agrees on, which is, well, we’re gonna deal with property taxes. And everybody’s kind of saying, yeah, look, you know, we’ve gotta figure out a way to do something on this and we’ve got the surplus to do. It’s like, yeah.

[00:36:28] Josh Blank: what happens to all of the, you know, the other things that come up because you deal with property taxes. And that’s something that I’m kind of like, again, going back to, you know, we’ve talked about, you know, generally when you deal with the public school finance system, it’s like a big deal. Like last time they did that, there was a whole inter, a lot of interim hearings, a big interim report.

[00:36:44] Josh Blank: Very good read. I recall, yeah. I’ve got, you know, really explain some of this stuff and what they were gonna do and what the constraints are. That’s not really how we’re talking about this. And, and what

[00:36:52] Jim Henson: they did was substantial, but, It didn’t, it wasn’t a fundamental redesign of the architecture or anything like that, I

[00:37:00] Josh Blank: remember.

[00:37:00] Josh Blank: No. It was an adjustment of the formulas. Yes. Mean, ultimately what happened was the formulas had gotten out of whack to, I mean, the, the gist of this. Yeah. I mean, everybody who listened to this should know, but if you haven’t, just do this real quick. Yeah. Because it’s worth it. Right. Basically what happened was is that, you know, essentially property taxes fund, you know, local schools, but then to the extent they go over a certain amount of money for that area, they go to the state.

[00:37:19] Josh Blank: And the state then makes up some of the additional, uh, money. And there’s formulas that then basical. Divvy up that money to the school district based on the number of students and the type of student. Right. Okay. The issue was over time, essentially as property values have gone up and up and up and up, the share of money that’s coming in via property values kept going up and the legislature realized, oh, we could spend less on our side because we’ll still be spending the same amount of money.

[00:37:41] Josh Blank: But then what’s happened is the balance over time between who’s paying for the majority of public school funding had shifted to the taxpayer, to the homeowners, we would say, right, or to property owners. So the legislature came back, they said we need to adjust that formula. And ultimately what they did in that last session was, I mean, again, I’m oversimplifying this and feel free to, you know, I’m being very clear, this is very oversimplified, but adjust the formula so that the state could then become the majority provider of the funds for public education, while hopefully while trying to give teachers a raises and do some, accomplish some other things.

[00:38:09] Josh Blank: And obviously reduce property taxes, ultimately

[00:38:10] Jim Henson: re-injected some funds that had actually been. . Right.

[00:38:14] Josh Blank: You know, but the difficulty is the fundamental problem that underlies this has not changed, which is that what, what did this, and what created the situation is that, you know, if property values keep going up, well then property taxes are necess or property tax revenues are necessarily gonna increase.

[00:38:27] Josh Blank: We can try to constrain them, which the legislature has done as. From the top, from the bottom. There are different ways they can try to constrain and they’ve done all of these things, but ultimately the market is what the market is for houses and it creates this issue. But having said that, you can’t just go in there and say, well, what if we just give everybody a, you know, what if we just increase everybody’s, you know, home set exemption is like, well, okay, you got, now you’ve got a big hole then in your public education budget that needs to be refilled, which is actually what you’re refill.

[00:38:54] Josh Blank: Right. That’s actually where the money gets spent. But the issue becomes, you know, I mean a couple things. One is the political one, which is most people are not gonna notice this property this,

[00:39:02] Jim Henson: right? This is which we’ve, which we’ve found farm and time again, you know, seemingly large percent increases in the, in the home, in the ho, in the homestead exemption, generate very low return.

[00:39:12] Jim Henson: Per

[00:39:13] Josh Blank: taxpayer. Per per taxpayer. Right. And so, but the whole in this context per promoter, but the whole that you’ve created in on the budget side Right. Is still there.

[00:39:22] Jim Henson: And you know, this is coming at a time when, for the reasons I was talking about before, I mean, you know, one of the data points that we can add to this, you know, only 6%, and this is a pretty steady say that Right.

[00:39:32] Jim Henson: K through 12 public education in, in quality in Texas is excellent. Right. That was as recent as October. You couple that with. , you know, the lost ground that we’re experiencing in a, in a, in a, in a state education system that was functioning at best mediocre in terms of achievement and score anyway. Sure.

[00:39:52] Jim Henson: It’s kind of a, to me, at least from a policy perspective, it’s a difficult position to stand up and say, yeah, we can give you a property. cut. Mm-hmm. , yeah. Broadly speaking, but make edu make the public education system whole again, because the o cuz the obvious response to that is, Hey look, making it whole in the status quo.

[00:40:14] Jim Henson: Yeah. Not really. Kind of, kind of not really doing much here, you know, given all those things like teacher raises and, well, I think yeah, all the o all the other things that could be done, you know, remediating loss, you know, finding out what, you know, figuring out ways of, you know, what we’re gonna do to capture, but this,

[00:40:28] Josh Blank: but, but I think the contrast exactly between like this sort.

[00:40:32] Josh Blank: You know, walking into kind of this idea that we’re gonna do a property tax reduction on the one. Whereas when they actually did, uh, work on the school finance system and property tax session and that, and the property tax in that session, like that was a very concerted effort where I think everybody knew like, okay, we’re doing these two things together and they have to happen together.

[00:40:50] Josh Blank: And so there was a, yeah, there’s a tandem conversation going on about these things where it’s like, right now I don’t, I don’t see where the conversation, like, I’ll say this in no, in no preview that I’ve gone to or article that I’ve read, have I seen any indication. Of how the public school system would be made whole in the face of a property tax cut, and that’s a let alone, let alone made better or improved or fixed or dealt with these major issues.

[00:41:15] Josh Blank: And like that’s a. Big, big, big open question.

[00:41:19] Jim Henson: Right. Particularly given that I think, you know, the politics of this are such that if you settle a deal on that, there is no way that the Senate, in particular, the Lieutenant Governor, is not gonna hold any kind of deal hostage without some money for vouchers, which could kill the whole thing.

[00:41:32] Jim Henson: Whether it’s a, yeah, you know, Yeah, Absolut, pilot, pilot, programmer, whatever. So, you know, I think if there’s one place you start looking for where, you know, we might wind up watching the legislature have to come back in June, , you know, it would be there. So, alright. So, you know, we’ve, we’ve gone on for a while fi you know, we’re gonna start with one last, you know, and we’re, tie this together,

[00:41:52] Josh Blank: end.

[00:41:53] Josh Blank: What was that? You said

[00:41:53] Jim Henson: start. I’m saying we’re gonna end well. We’re well, yeah, we’re, well, we’re gonna start to tie this together. Got it. Sorry. We’re gonna start to tie this together with one last number that is not a poll number, but I think is critical here and endpoint to some poll numbers, and that is 12.5%.

[00:42:08] Jim Henson: 12.5% is not a poll number, but it is the average Republican margin of victory in the six top statewide races in the 22 20 22 election. In other words, the non-judicial races. Mm-hmm. , uh, you know, as we know, you know, governor Abbott wins by by 11%. Then the others are, you know, sort of around that, you know, and it really does point to this macro.

[00:42:31] Jim Henson: Question that we’re kind of elaborating here that kind of helps us end here, which is, you know, where does the agenda fall? If we take, let’s take, we’ll take the two much recent sessions as like the model for right say endpoints, right? 2019, as you were saying, being a very pragmatic session bandwidth like taken up by this, either largely by this education, property tax.

[00:42:52] Jim Henson: Mm-hmm. . You know, sort of discussion that went on 2021 being, you know, as everybody’s quick to trumpet, you know, the most conservative legislative session in the history of legislative sessions or something ever anywhere. You know, I mean, I, you know, I guess you have to go back to post reconstruction maybe, but say, you know, depends what you mean by conservative, I guess.

[00:43:12] Jim Henson: Um, you know, and then you’ve, so you’ve got this debate. . Another layer of context there being, you know, governor Abbott’s job approval among Republicans right now after winning the election, about 80% right? Lieutenant Governor Patrick, about 70%, but proportional, you know, pretty close to the governor if you count, if you adjust for the degree to which.

[00:43:37] Jim Henson: You know, few, many fewer people know who the lieutenant Governor is than know who the governor is. And I think right now the, there’s just not a lot of clarity. We’re already seeing, and we were talking about this before the, the podcast started. I mean, I think one of the things that we’re seeing right now that really points to all this uncertainty is, you know, you look at.

[00:43:56] Jim Henson: And again, we’re reading for some, some degree of tea leaves here for sure. But the, if you think about it as signaling, you know, the agenda that, that the governor kind of implied in the, the night he was elected. Mm-hmm. . Then you have the agenda laid out by Lieutenant Governor Patrick last week, week before last, and we’re seeing the table set.

[00:44:18] Jim Henson: With the terms of what the trade-offs are gonna be here. And I think we’ve covered a lot of them in this. We’ve done a Yes. I’ll pat our, I’ll pat ourselves on, I’ll surprise a little more than I think we intended . We got a lot of things on the table here. Yeah. Um, but that kind of gives you the sense of where the universe of trading is gonna be.

[00:44:32] Jim Henson: But I think, you know, the other thing that is interesting here is that we really are at a very kind of threshold moment, policy-wise for the state. And that’s why I wanted to emphasize, you know, the business pieces, the development, you know, this notion of, you know, if, if you take 2019 and you take 2021, what we’re really looking at, I think is like what is the, what is the mix between fan service to the Republican base and a broader vision of governance of the state?

[00:45:05] Jim Henson: And as we circulate around in capital circles and start talking to people and begin to look at. The trade groups and the professional associations and the industrial associations are, are doing, you know, there is a lot of uncertainty out there and I think a lot of, you know, there are a lot of questions about how much responsibility the, the legislature is gonna take on right now for some of the big.

[00:45:29] Jim Henson: Policy questions about what is going on in the political economy of the state and in the economy of the state. And I don’t, I don’t see a lot of clear signals about how that’s gonna be, how that’s gonna shake out yet.

[00:45:42] Josh Blank: Yeah, that’s an interesting way to put it, Megan, you know,

[00:45:44] Jim Henson: Yeah. So I think this has been a, this has been a good, this has been a good way of doing that.

[00:45:48] Jim Henson: Yeah. You know, we’ve gone on for a while. I’m gonna thank you for all the time you put into this and all the stuff you’ve done all this year since it’s a year end podcast. Oh, thank you. We’ve got a lot, you know, we’ve, we’ve covered a lot of ground this year. We’ve got a lot done. It’s felt like a tr. It’s like a slog a lot of the time.

[00:46:03] Jim Henson: I think we both, but you know, one of the funny things about doing this is it was a, this was a good exercise. Preparing for this and looking back and kind of going, you know, there a lot of shit this year. Yeah. Pretty interesting. Pretty interesting stuff. There’s a lot of stuff out there that said, so what I’m gonna say is you’ve made it this far, uh, you know, Heads up, spoiler alert, keep an eye out for a final poll of the year that we’re gonna do, and that’s gonna drop at the end of the week.

[00:46:24] Jim Henson: We’re not even exactly sure when there’s a lot on the table right now, but certainly by the end of the week we’ll have a, a, another poll that’s somewhere between a taking stock. It’s not quite a, it’s, it’s not really a pre-session poll, per se, in a very direct way, but it. Look at some of the issues that we’re talking about here in a way that we don’t, we haven’t looked at much, at least in a while.

[00:46:48] Jim Henson: And some of these things, and some of these is some, yeah, some first effort stuff. So keep an eye out for that. Cause I think, you know, if, if, again, if you are one of the people that listens to this and you’ve made it this far in this podcast, yeah. There’s gonna be some interesting stuff. You’ll probably be interested.

[00:47:00] Jim Henson: Yeah. So with that, um, thanks again to Josh. Uh, and thanks again, uh, uh, to our excellent production team in the dev studio and the College of Liberal Arts here at UT Austin. We’ll probably post this podcast since we’ve, the nature of this was so numerical. Uh, we’ll put together a blog post with some of the data that we mentioned in here.

[00:47:21] Jim Henson: Thank you for listening, and we’ll be back next year with another second reading podcast.

[00:47:28] Jim Henson: The second reading podcast is a production of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.