Feb 8th, 2024 – A Conversation with Ross Ramsey about Donald Trump and the Texas GOP

[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. Sir, I

[00:00:12] Intro: tell people on a regular basis, there is still a land of opportunity in America. It’s called Texas.

[00:00:17] Intro: The problem

[00:00:18] Intro: is these departures from the Constitution,

[00:00:22] Intro: they have become the norm.

[00:00:24] Intro: At what point? Must a female senator raise her hand or her voice to be recognized over the male colleagues in the room.

[00:00:34] 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. Happy to be joined by my friend and colleague Ross Ramsey. Ross will be known to most listeners here, I, I suspect. Um, He’s co founder of the Texas Tribune, where he served as a leader of the organization for 13 years after, uh, an illustrious and [00:01:00] interesting career in journalism with a couple of little breaks, or one little break, I guess, uh, during the previous period.

[00:01:07] Jim Henson: He left the Tribune in May of 2022. I was looking that up, thinking, well, it’s been about a year, right? It’s been almost two. Closer to two. Right. You know, near as I can tell has been doing a mixture of consulting, speaking, and hanging out since then. I, you know, you promised everybody at the time though, I went back and looked at the Evans piece, which was very nice when you announced that you were retiring.

[00:01:32] Jim Henson: Evans dearly departed piece, right? And you at the time going, well, you know, I’m retiring, but my, you know, I don’t know if that’s really what I’m doing. And I think that seems so When I, when I say consulting, speaking, and hanging out, welcome back. And is that a fair enough description? Yeah, that works. That works.

[00:01:46] Jim Henson: Thanks for having me here. Uh, it’s great to have you back. So, you know, let’s dive in. You and I were talking recently about the perspective from Texas and the politics of And, [00:02:00] Trump’s presumed locking in of the nomination and, and, you know, how I guess Trump’s standing among Texas Republicans has evolved and, you know, I, you know, we were talking, I think it’s interesting to unpack that a little bit when we were talking recently, you used, uh, speaking of departing, but not departed.

[00:02:18] Jim Henson: Patrick Svitek’s look at this subject in the Texas Tribune, and that was published earlier this week. I think it was posted on February 6th for people who want to take a look. It’s a, it’s a good starting point, and that piece is, and the headline does kind of set us up. It’s called, Once hesitant, Texas Republicans have united behind Donald Trump again.

[00:02:38] Jim Henson: You know, there were a lot of issues lurking underneath that and you kind of flagged that piece, right? Let’s just start. What did you find interesting about the piece? Well, I think,

[00:02:48] Ross Ramsey: you know, there was, you know, I think there was some initial reluctance, um, among those Republicans. Reluctance may be the wrong word.

[00:02:57] Ross Ramsey: A lot of those guys were waiting to see if Trump still had [00:03:00] it, you know, or if there was another way here and they were, you know, whether they were doing it vocally or not, they were watching DeSantis, they were watching Haley. For all I know, they were watching Christie to see if anybody would break out if Trump still had the hold on the party and, you know, after Iowa and particularly after New Hampshire, it’s clear that he does have the hold and the best latest evidence was the vote on the vote not to accept it.

[00:03:28] Ross Ramsey: The immigration compromise, the Texas delegation was 100 percent united behind Trump’s position that they should

[00:03:35] Jim Henson: shoot down the Republican delegation. Sorry. Yeah. Um, easily, you know, easy enough mistake to

[00:03:42] Ross Ramsey: make. Even the reluctant ones, you know, or the ones who had held back, you know, John Cornyn, notably Ted Cruz, notably, um, had jumped in on that.

[00:03:51] Ross Ramsey: So, you know, I think, um, Trump’s control of the party, at least in Texas, is

[00:03:56] Jim Henson: solid. I mean, you know, it’s interesting because I think, [00:04:00] um, like, when you and I were talking about this, you know, part of, uh, a bit of Patrick’s piece was about The Dessantes, you know, the, the rise and fall of the, the Dessantes bubble, shall we say, you know, and I mean, in terms of our public opinion polling, I was kind of, I was initially a little like, well, you know, I’m not sure Dessantes ever had the leverage among Republican voters in Texas, in Texas that, you know, but ultimately I think, you know, other than Florida, a lot of places, but certainly in Texas, you know, it.

[00:04:38] Jim Henson: Josh Blank kind of put this reasonably well at some point, kind of saying, you know, people like, you know, voters liked him just fine. Right. But they just weren’t, you know, they weren’t going to choose him over Trump, which was, you know, I mean, and there’s an argument there, but I mean, I think what was interesting about Patrick’s piece was that it [00:05:00] points to the Disjuncture that we’ve, I think, I think has been evident from the beginning of Trump’s rise between the response of the Republican base and the response of Republican elites in Texas.

[00:05:13] Ross Ramsey: Right. I mean, it’s the discomfort with this guy. You know, I don’t necessarily want to be in a room with this guy, but this is the guy, so we’re going to go with the guy, you know, and they finally have come back around to, okay, we’re with the guy, but, you know, I think there were a lot of them, you know, privately or, you know, semi publicly saying, I’m, you know, I’m willing to look around.

[00:05:34] Ross Ramsey: I’m willing to consider. Um, you know, or I’m willing to see what the voters say this time. That was one of the hiding places. There were a bunch of places for someone who didn’t want to go full throated early for Trump to sort of park their car and wait and see what happened and what happened was, you know, Trump is, um, in the same place with the political, you know, the really political Republicans in the country that he was in in 20.

[00:05:59] Ross Ramsey: And that [00:06:00] he, that he got into in 2016.

[00:06:03] Jim Henson: Yeah, I mean, I think, um, you know, what’s interesting to me, and you talked, you know, during, you know, during your, you know, when you had to do this on a day to day basis, and I know you’re still talking to people, you know, there was an interesting dynamic among Republicans in that, You know, there was a kind of, there was, and I think it’s still evident, there’s a bit of a disjuncture between, even, even among Trump, vocal Trump supporters, between their public embrace and their private doubts.

[00:06:37] Jim Henson: I mean, I was struck, I mean, I, you know, would violate a confidence, but I, you know, I had a Republican elected official approach me at a social thing, maybe, you know, 18 months ago or so, maybe even two years ago. So, you know. Post presidency, but well into the post presidency, you know, somebody that [00:07:00] I, you know, could point to a zillion examples of being not just supportive, but, you know, publicly, you know, enthusiastic about Donald Trump, you know, in a very straightforwardly going like, is it, are his numbers moving at all?

[00:07:14] Jim Henson: And, and the real implication was kind of, and I, and I said, you know, no, not really, you know, he still got the base locked up and the person was kind of like, well, um,

[00:07:25] Ross Ramsey: You know, got to live with it. You know, it’s like, it’s like family. It’s like, you know, yeah, we have that family member, but that’s my brother.

[00:07:31] Ross Ramsey: So, you know, we’re,

[00:07:31] Jim Henson: we’re in it together, you know? And so, and I was thinking about that a lot in terms of, you know, the, the notion of, you know, Trump hesitancy among elites, you know, to, to, to use that, to rob the phrase from the headline, you know, and, and, you know, how we really think about that. I mean, and so, as you think about, Watching Trump’s rise and seeing where we are right now in this [00:08:00] notion of people, and I want, I want to come back to Cornyn on this, but you know, the kind of convergence, whether it’s, you know, Patrick’s article in Sid Miller saying, see, I told you

[00:08:12] Ross Ramsey: so.

[00:08:13] Ross Ramsey: Yeah, Sid Miller was in early and strong and never wavered.

[00:08:15] Jim Henson: And I can’t remember who it was. So he quoted, I think it was a member of Congress, sort of. Saying, Hey, I was here early and you know, if you’re coming in late, well hell with you, you know, who you think you are? Right. You know, this is not going to be good enough, etc, etc.

[00:08:30] Jim Henson: It’s like claiming

[00:08:31] Ross Ramsey: firsties when you’re eight years old. Right,

[00:08:32] Jim Henson: exactly. Yeah. But. You know, I’m wondering how you map this, giving these dynamics on to You know, the pre existing or the kind of operative political divisions that have been so important among Republicans, you know what I mean? I mean, you know, I mean, I think out there in the world, you know, I mean, it’s certainly the Democrats and the president are, you know, trying to make this, you know, much [00:09:00] simpler than it almost certainly is.

[00:09:01] Jim Henson: Well, you know, it’s all these MAGA Republicans and you’re kind of a MAGA Republican or a non MAGA Republican, but, you know, this has been going on for a while, and I’m just wondering how you think about.

[00:09:11] Ross Ramsey: Well, this is, you know, this is highly subjective, and I’m completely open to argument and objection.

[00:09:15] Ross Ramsey: But the, but I think, you know, one of the fundamental things here is that there is a difference between the voting base behind Donald Trump and the donor base in the Republican Party. And I, and I think, you know, Trump has really nailed the grievances and concerns. Uh, and anxieties of, uh, uh, blue collar Republican voters, a lot of rural voters, a lot of, you know, the whole thing we’ve talked about for years as the, as the Trump voting base.

[00:09:47] Ross Ramsey: And I think they’re with him, you know, not because they’re stupid or anything like that, but because he’s actually speaking to them and he’s talking to their concerns and he’s addressing them and he seems to be the only guy doing that. And the rest of this world is full of elites who are just, you know, [00:10:00] a pain in the neck, and we’re not going to listen to those guys anymore.

[00:10:02] Ross Ramsey: The donor base has more of the elites in it, and more of the sort of, you know, the, you know, quote unquote traditional Republicans, country club Republicans, business Republicans, whatever you want to call them. And I think, you know, to some extent, one of the things that you see in this You know, back and forth going on in the elected class is that they are responsive to their voters and also their donors.

[00:10:28] Ross Ramsey: And so they have this hesitancy sort of built into, well, I was at a fundraiser the other night and I hear a lot of people saying, Well, you know, Trump’s kind of troublesome and I don’t like his personality. And, you know, I think we ought to give Nikki Haley a look, or I think we ought to give, you know, DeSantis a look or, or whoever.

[00:10:45] Ross Ramsey: And at the same, and then the next day they go to a rally. And they, you know, whoa, that’s a full throated roar. They’re still there. They’re still in their trucks. They’ve still got their signs up. The Trump thing is real. And, you know, the party has to come back, in election years [00:11:00] particularly, to the voting base.

[00:11:02] Ross Ramsey: The donor base, if you watch it nationally, through the Iowa and New Hampshire, and to some extent now on the Republican side, has been, um, Experimenting with a lot of other candidates and putting significant amounts of money into other candidates to see if there’s anything besides Trump and there clearly is, you know, just based on those numbers, there clearly is in the donor base.

[00:11:24] Ross Ramsey: I don’t see it. You know, I mean, you don’t see it in your polling numbers. I mean, you know, that MAGA base, that hardcore. We are for Trump. Damn it. Voter is still hardcore. We’re for Trump,

[00:11:36] Jim Henson: right? And I think you You kind of bolt onto that. I mean, there’s the, I mean, there’s a lot of talk out there is everybody’s read about, you know, Trump’s floor and, you know, Trump’s floor and Trump’s ceiling, right?

[00:11:49] Jim Henson: And, you know, part of the problem. And I was talking to a Republican candidate about this recently is that, you know, whatever that floor vote is. You know, [00:12:00] it’s significant enough to have shut out other people. My floor is higher than your floor. Right. And, you know, there’s enough, you know, and you and I talked about this, you know, 15 years ago with the Tea Party, right?

[00:12:12] Jim Henson: You know, there’s, you know, you were saying there’s the hardcore people that will not move off of Trump no matter what, I don’t think, at this point. And then there’s a degree of passive support. But what that means is if, you know, as you said, if you look at our polling data, that’s that combination kept Trump at, you know, 80 percent or more job approval among Republicans in Texas throughout his presidency.

[00:12:38] Jim Henson: It’s dropped a little in terms of now his post presidency favorable favorability ratings, but it’s still in the seventies. Right. Right. And so you’re just not, there’s not much to do with that.

[00:12:50] Ross Ramsey: You’ve got that thing. And, and, you know, this, this. may be offensive to a pollster, but you know, you’ve sort of got the Trump base and it’s a positive vote for Trump.

[00:12:58] Ross Ramsey: And then you’ve got [00:13:00] this second group that is a negative vote for anybody from the Democratic Party, especially Biden, right? And you combine the sort of the, yes, I’m for Trump and no, I’m not for Biden. And you’re, you’re up in your

[00:13:11] Jim Henson: high numbers again. Yeah. The combination of like, you know, real, you know, and I think, you know, it’s not too offensive.

[00:13:15] Jim Henson: I mean, I think, um, you know, there’s the baseline, but then there’s also this kind of, uh, You know, where all the other larger forces at play in the political system are there and it’s, you know, basically, you know, the forces of negative partisanship and things like this. So, you know, I, I want to come back to an element of this, but I mean, you know, you mentioned Cornyn and Cornyn is, you know, is an interesting exhibit for making the argument that, You know, this is the, you know, the replaying of what some people would just, you know, see as one of the fundamental cleavages among Texas Republicans, which is, you know, essentially there’s a kind of pre Tea Party [00:14:00] Republican and a post Tea Party Republican.

[00:14:02] Jim Henson: That’s not that everybody elected after 2010 to the legislature or Congress is automatically You know, a far right, whatever you want to call it. No, but they’re,

[00:14:12] Ross Ramsey: but they’re certainly continually conscious of it. Yeah,

[00:14:15] Jim Henson: and they’re, they’re conditioned

[00:14:16] Ross Ramsey: and wary of it.

[00:14:17] Jim Henson: And, you know, yeah. And as a group, they, they are more likely to be in that group.

[00:14:22] Jim Henson: You know, and Cornyn

[00:14:23] Ross Ramsey: It’s like having a dog that doesn’t usually bite, but he might. That’s, that’s

[00:14:29] Jim Henson: your first Ross Ramsey ism of the, of the podcast. You know, but Cornyn is such an interesting guy in that regard. Right. I mean, and in some ways it It’s kind of impossible not to see Cornyn’s trajectory here through that lens, right?

[00:14:48] Jim Henson: I mean, you know, I mean, Cornyn is not only a pre Tea Party Republican, I mean, he’s, you know, I mean, Cornyn wins his, you know, is, is a judge [00:15:00] in mid 90s, right?

[00:15:01] Ross Ramsey: Right. Early 90s. He’s a trial court judge in San Antonio. He comes up, he’s on the Texas Supreme Court, you know, um, and in the, and in the court, in that court, um, which was a Republican court.

[00:15:16] Ross Ramsey: He was, he was kind of a centrist. He was a dealmaker on that court and, um, then became Texas attorney general and went to Washington essentially with Bush as a U. S. senator and rose very, very quickly through the Senate, you know, in large measure because he was Bush’s go to guy. He’s the go to guy for the president and his rise in the Senate was as fast as anybody from Texas since, or faster than anybody from Texas since LBJ.

[00:15:42] Ross Ramsey: And, you know, he’s in the, I think there’s three guys that are generally speculated about, you know, as successors to Mitch McConnell. There’s, there’s

[00:15:51] Jim Henson: Cornyn. Right. And, and, and just in his affect through all this, I mean, you know, you and I, you know, when we were working on the poll [00:16:00] together, um, you know, it was kind of the set piece.

[00:16:04] Jim Henson: It’s like, there’s Cornyn’s numbers again. Right. You know, astoundingly kind of, you know, you know, if we had a dime for every time we use the term, you know, damned with faint praise about Cornyn, you know, We’d be rich and, you know, watching that play out here, you know, and, and Cornyn’s kind of reluctant endorsement of him after New Hampshire, you know, I mean, it really encourages that kind of read of who he is, that he’s kind of one of the last men standing of that generation of Republican leaders, you know, as I think about it, I mean, I, you know.

[00:16:41] Ross Ramsey: Yeah, it’s the, you know, it’s the thing, you know, you, this is, you know, completely speculative, but the, you know, it’s the kind of thing where if the Republican Party had decided to change gears, and we’re not going to be MAGA anymore, we’re going to go back to what we were, the old Republican Party, Cornyn would have been the tallest building on the landscape.

[00:16:59] Ross Ramsey: Right. [00:17:00] And one of the things that, you know, you sort of have to nod to his political skills is that he’s not sort of, overtly, he’s not a quote machine, he’s not, you know, necessarily on all the talk shows and anything. He doesn’t particularly show well in polling, doesn’t, it’s not horrible, but it’s just sort of mediocre.

[00:17:18] Ross Ramsey: But he’s also done all of that, you know, as kind of a non Trump guy that the Trump guys still rely on. And he’s, and he’s still a go to and, you know, he’s, you know, he’s, he’s found a spot. He’s found a pocket.

[00:17:33] Jim Henson: Yeah. And, you know, in watching him, you know, you referenced kind of the immigration thing in the U.

[00:17:36] Jim Henson: S. Senate. Right. Right now. I mean, and the way, you know, his, again, his trajectory within that discussion. You know, fits that interpretation personally, I mean, perfectly. He was one of the people early on saying, yeah, you know, this is kind of, we had to talk about this. This is kind of going well. I could see this working.

[00:17:55] Jim Henson: And then he voted

[00:17:56] Ross Ramsey: no. If you skip back a couple of administrations, he was Bush’s, one [00:18:00] of Bush’s leads when, you know, Bush came close to an immigration bill when he was president. And one of his leads in the Senate was John Cornyn. You know, he’s in a border state. This is a, you know. You know, we’ve talked about this before, you know, Senators, national politicians from California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas have a different take on this and a different approach to it.

[00:18:19] Ross Ramsey: And frankly, more familiarity with how immigration actually works in an economy and all of that kind of stuff. And Cornyn’s been in the middle of those battles. You know, at the end, like you say, you know, Cornyn and McConnell encouraged this thing and did what they could to help it, and both of them voted against it.

[00:18:35] Ross Ramsey: Right, I mean, it’s Because they’ve got the thing that they want. You know, and then they’ve got the reality that they’re against and they eventually went with reality, you

[00:18:43] Jim Henson: know, as a, as a, as a way of transitioning here, but I, you know, it’s, it’s striking to think about. You know, to look at, you know, a couple of things to look at this set of events in the Senate from and in Congress from the last few [00:19:00] weeks or a few months and kind of culminated this week with the failure of the bill in the Senate and to look at what’s going on with Greg Abbott on the border and the and the politics of Abbott’s approach to border security and immigration.

[00:19:17] Jim Henson: To look back, I mean, as I was thinking about some of this, I was going back and looking at a piece that, you know, I did for the Tribune that you edited, you know, back in 2011, right, talking about how, The way that Rick Perry was balancing elite preferences on the border and where the base was clearly headed, and you know, we’ve been talking about the Tea Party interlude, 2011, you know, the, you know, the issue of sanctuary cities was kind of the focal point in that narrow 2010 2011 sequence.

[00:19:55] Jim Henson: You know, and, and how different that [00:20:00] looks now, right? I mean, does that make sense to you? I mean, I’m not articulating that very clearly, but I mean, one of the things we talked about a lot at the time in the, you know, really in the run up to the Tea Party surge was Perry’s ability. to deploy this kind of rhetorical tool that separated immigration and border

[00:20:24] Ross Ramsey: security.

[00:20:25] Ross Ramsey: Well, he did, you know, at that time, you know, one of the, if you said too much from the conservative side about immigration, you were into accusations of racism and, you know, all kinds of stuff. Well,

[00:20:39] Jim Henson: and pragmatically that the problem of not being attentive to demographics.

[00:20:43] Ross Ramsey: Right, right. And, and, you know, a lot of the conversation at that time was, you know, this is going to be.

[00:20:48] Ross Ramsey: uh, majority Hispanic state in just a minute, um, you know, and he was already, you know, approaching at that time, I think was approaching plurality. Um, and Perry figured out that, you know, well, I’m not going to talk about immigration [00:21:00] anymore. I’m going to talk about border security and I’m going to talk about safety and I’m going to talk about all of that.

[00:21:03] Ross Ramsey: And it gave him a way to talk about it. That was not only not only skirted all of the problems, you know, associated with conversations about immigration, but also got him some Democratic ears. Yeah. You know, and, and, and was more of a hold on, I want to hear this kind of a thing for voters who had shut him out when he was talking about, shut Republicans out when they were talking about immigration.

[00:21:25] Ross Ramsey: It was, you know, it was nuanced and it was really interesting and it was working for him until he became a national candidate and took that show on the road. to Iowa. And, you know, it didn’t sell up there. It wasn’t, you know, it wasn’t the same thing. You know, up there, the language was already more like what we hear now.

[00:21:44] Ross Ramsey: This is an invasion. This is, you know, all those kinds of things. And the appeals from people like Rick Perry and John McCain at that time that, wait a minute, wait a minute. These are our friends. These are part of our economy that just didn’t sell in Republican circles. And, and, and, you [00:22:00] know, it was the beginning of what we see today.

[00:22:01] Ross Ramsey: Yeah. I mean,

[00:22:02] Jim Henson: I think we think back about, you know, you know, Rise and fall of Rick Perry as a presidential candidate. People of course remember the three things and oops and all that, Right But really the under You know, the real, you know, the real underlying trigger. When his rise hit, hit, hit, hit a point and then he started to drop Was actually when he was asked about, about DREAMers and And his response was, you know, you kind of have a heart a little bit, and it was like, okay, he’s done.

[00:22:32] Jim Henson: Right. Who’s this guy? Right. I mean, you know, the other thing helped finish him off.

[00:22:35] Ross Ramsey: But what was interesting, you know, and, you know, being in newsrooms in Texas at the time, you know, the, your ears are trained differently, right? If you’re a reporter from, you know, the New York Times or the Washington Post, and you’re not in a, and you’re not in Texas or Arizona or New Mexico or California.

[00:22:52] Ross Ramsey: You know, we heard that and went, yeah, that’s, you know, that’s the line Perry’s been on, you know, that, that sounds pretty normal down here. And everybody else was like, whoa, what is that? [00:23:00]

[00:23:00] You

[00:23:00] Jim Henson: know? Well, and he got, you know, as I recall, and he got, you know, is it a live debate? He got booed. Um, you know, the other thing that’s interesting about that trajectory in terms of like, coming back and thinking about where we are now and how it’s changed with the ark of that is, you know, is also that, you know, at the, at the state level in that debate over, you know, the early waves of attempts of show me your paper bill laws and in particular sanctuary cities thing, you know, The pushback in the legislature that really helped, the pushback that really helped halt that stuff in the legislature, you know, the two key pair, you know, people there that really weighed in in an unusually public way were construction industry, Bob Perry and Perry Holmes.

[00:23:46] Jim Henson: Right out of Houston. And, and

[00:23:48] Ross Ramsey: Charles Butt. Right. Charles Butt was H E B. And basically, you know, one’s looking at his customer base, one’s looking at his employee base. And, you know, we gotta build houses out here. We gotta, you know, look, this is an important part of the economy. At the same time, in [00:24:00] other parts of the country, they were having these moments of disquiet.

[00:24:03] Ross Ramsey: My brother lived in Georgia at the time and sent me an article, um, or a set of articles, actually, about the agriculture business in Georgia. And they were actually having Produce die on the vine because we had tightened immigration so much that they didn’t have any agricultural workers. And they were like, oh wait, this is, you know, Bo Pilgrim, who was a chicken magnate, I love that term, from northeast Texas, you know, was campaigning against this with Bob Perry.

[00:24:31] Ross Ramsey: It was a very interesting Right sort of dynamic at the time, but that’s no longer the conversation.

[00:24:38] Jim Henson: Yeah, and you know, I you know I’m trying to think as we’re having this conversation and we sound like a couple of old guys talking about this But so it so it goes but you know you have a sense as you think back on that about when we really noticed that The kind of dynamic we’re talking about, the political [00:25:00] space that Rick Perry attempted to occupy in that, like when that ended?

[00:25:05] Jim Henson: Well, I

[00:25:05] Ross Ramsey: think part of it was the, you know, you know, Perry’s experience, you know, everybody was watching that. I mean everybody in politics watches everybody else in politics. You know, that’s a new trick. Ooh, don’t do that. Yikes. And Perry’s was one of those ooh, don’t do that things. The show your papers laws, you know, that was Um, the subject of, or, you know, one of the subjects of an Arizona case that went into the federal courts.

[00:25:28] Ross Ramsey: And the federal courts said, you can’t use local or state officials to enforce federal immigration law. That’s the feds thing. And that was, you know, that sort of stood as the, you know, the fence line for years and years. Operation Lone Star that Greg Abbott. that, um, has employed now for several years and spent a ton of money on is a straight up middle finger to that ruling.

[00:25:54] Ross Ramsey: And you know, come challenge us. Um, here we are, we’re going to enforce these laws. We’re going to do [00:26:00] what we’re going to do. You know, they’re in direct opposition to the federal government. And so. One of the things that happened when you had that federal ruling and everybody sort of honoring it was kind of kept everybody at a distance.

[00:26:12] Ross Ramsey: The other thing was, you know, Abbott and all the others are responding to a change, and there’s a change in migration patterns. There’s a huge change in the load of people trying to get to come across the border. There’s been, um, You know, there’s been a lot of flux in these policies. We went through Remain in Mexico.

[00:26:32] Ross Ramsey: We went through Section 42. We went through all of these other things where, you know, the federal government was trying to throttle this or get some kind of handle on it. They obviously haven’t done that. This attempt, you know, this bipartisan attempt that failed in Congress this week was another attempt to go at that kind of stuff.

[00:26:51] Ross Ramsey: Um, Right now, you know, this is, you know, this is becoming a more common phrase, but right now, the problem is more useful politically than the solution [00:27:00] is. And, you know, in an election year in 2024, the Republican Party, you know, pretty much decided, you know, wasn’t like it was a side issue. They actually talked about it.

[00:27:12] Ross Ramsey: If we pass this bill, it’s going to take heat off of the Biden administration and take an issue away from Trump. Let’s don’t do it. So

[00:27:18] Jim Henson: we’re not doing it. Well, and I guess, you know, in terms of thinking about that transition, it seems to me that You know, the, you know, the thesis that national is a Republican candidate.

[00:27:34] Jim Henson: Or as a, you know, as a Republican elected official, you could drive that issue harder in response to, you know, these more restrictive, you know, in some cases, even nativist impulses among the Republican voting base, you know, is a convergence of a couple of different things. I mean, I think, you know, Greg Abbott is already moving in that direction [00:28:00] prior to Trump’s rise.

[00:28:01] Jim Henson: I mean, in terms of trying to figure out when this is. When this really takes hold, right? You know, Abbott is elected in 2014, Trump rises the following year, and they’re both tapping into very similar things. Trump, you know, moves the boundaries, you know, the rhetorical and policy and cultural boundaries further out, for lack of a better term, to the right.

[00:28:27] Jim Henson: You know, and sort of, you know, to my mind, he kind of,

[00:28:33] Jim Henson: you know, he confirms impulses that we were already, you know, that You know, you were talking about politicians watching other politicians, right? He kind of demonstrates to people that are already experimenting with that kind of rhetoric in the wake of the Tea Party and kind of says, you know, whether he’s doing it on purpose, I mean, he’s doing it on purpose, but he communicates to other political leaders, including in Texas at the state level.

[00:28:57] Jim Henson: Oh, look, you can take this a lot farther.

[00:28:59] Ross Ramsey: Well, he [00:29:00] also is in an environment, you know, one of the things we’ve talked about for years is the prevalence of immigration and border security as a top issue among Republican voters in Texas. And I think since we started, you know, you know, since we started really paying attention to it, I mean, it’s been there, it’s been a very, very persistent, it’s clearly one of the base issues.

[00:29:19] Ross Ramsey: Trump was in a primary or was entering a primary with a bunch of Republicans who had already taken pretty strong positions based on that perception. You know, this is a big deal with Republican voters. I need to be, you know, strong on immigration and border security, you know, whether I’m Rick Perry or anybody else in that giant primary that year.

[00:29:39] Ross Ramsey: And Trump, you know, I mean, in one sense he did a good job of product differentiation. He came down the escalator and talked about rapists and murderers. And put it in a crime context and, you know, raise the stakes considerably. Some of them weren’t willing to go that far. Some of them obviously were.

[00:29:56] Ross Ramsey: Voters obviously responded well to it. And, you know, it’s become a [00:30:00] key part of his political brand.

[00:30:02] Jim Henson: You know, and as I think about, you know, the other piece of that we were talking about before we started recording was also, I think, you know, a, a revisiting and. Um, and some of this, you know, was changed, but certainly in Texas, a revisiting of assumptions about the growing Latino vote and where they were going to come down on these kinds of issues.

[00:30:27] Jim Henson: Right. Right. I mean, we talked about, you know, the, the initial stretch, political strategy in the two thousands, you know, that we were talking about in connection with Perry and, you know, obviously also reflected Bush that, you know, you had to have some kind of regard for the And that there was going to be a larger Latino voting bloc, and they might not respond very well to this kind of rhetoric.

[00:30:50] Jim Henson: But I think, you know, one of the things that was problematic about the Teixeira et al. [00:31:00] hypothesis, and that changed in the realization of this point that changed the political calculations. was that this rhetoric was not uniformly alienating among all Latino voters, right? If you, you know, I mean, there were some things that were very alienating, right?

[00:31:19] Jim Henson: But particularly in Texas, it was a kind of miscalculation about what was going on with voters. And, and it may, I think what it did is it really made people confront something that became one of the horriest of that’s H O A R. One of the horriest of cliches when you talked about Latino, like, well, you know, Latinos are not a monolith, right?

[00:31:45] Jim Henson: But you know, the point of that was often like At a national level, you have to differentiate between, you know, country of origin or, you know, ethnicity, you know, that Cuban Americans, different Puerto Ricans, different than Mexican Americans,

[00:31:58] Ross Ramsey: etc., etc. Well, and there’s also, [00:32:00] there’s also, you know, there was a, there was a, there was, and to some extent still is, but there was a very prevalent argument that demographic change, equaled political change.

[00:32:11] Ross Ramsey: Right. That because Hispanics tend to vote for Democrats, then this growth in the Hispanic population will mean growth in the Democratic thing. And, and, and the, the, you know, the failure of that was you’re assuming that they’re voting Democratic because they’re Hispanic. And, you know, the new ones might not vote that way, you know, kids might not vote like their parents did.

[00:32:34] Ross Ramsey: Well, and the Republicans, you know, led really by George W. Bush in his first race against Ann Richards and in his second race, uh, where he didn’t really have, you know, strong opposition from Gary Morrow was, we’re going to, we’re going to assume these are up for grabs and we’re going to go for a big vote, border vote.

[00:32:53] Ross Ramsey: They went to my hometown of El Paso like three or four times and really changed the numbers there. And it was like a demonstration case or a [00:33:00] little. Petri dish over there is like, look at this little political experiment. This is not a monolithic vote, as you said, and it’s in play. And then through the Trump years, it turned out to be in play.

[00:33:19] Ross Ramsey: that were not about, you know, race, but were about nationality.

[00:33:24] Jim Henson: You know, we’re going to get a bunch of irate emails about how you can overplay this or whatever. I think

[00:33:28] Ross Ramsey: you can overplay all of this, but I think the, I think the mistake I’m trying to point out is that the Democrats and the Republicans made some big assumptions on demographic changes that didn’t pan out.

[00:33:38] Jim Henson: Well, yeah. And where I was going to go with the point about, you know, the, the, uh, the, the, the Not being a monolith is that that applied to Texas Latinos, who I think were often kind of not a big part. I mean, Texas was an exhibit in that discussion in contrast to Florida and New York and California, [00:34:00] right?

[00:34:01] Jim Henson: But the point that got missed in that, I think, that speaks to your point about what we saw kind of post Bush and we’re seeing with Abbott now, is that the heterogeneity here, or the, you know, the not monolithic, you know, argument didn’t apply just on sort of basis of ethnicity, but on things like geography, you know, urban, rural differences, and I think that explains a lot of what we’ve seen in the Trump thing in the last.

[00:34:29] Jim Henson: Couple of elections and all the, you know, sort of hoo-ha about that, if you will. And generation,

[00:34:35] Ross Ramsey: right? Yeah. I mean we used to have, you know, for a long time, if you look at maps, Texas had a blue border, you know, the border counties, everything south of I 10 and west of I 35 tended to be democratic strongholds.

[00:34:48] Ross Ramsey: Right. You know, the whole South Texas block and, you know, that’s, um, that’s in play

[00:34:53] Jim Henson: now. It’s eroding. Yeah. And, and I think that, you know, and that has a lot more to do I think with. You know, economic [00:35:00] factors are saying, you know, demographics of those areas, which are more predominantly rural and, you know, have particular economic orientations and it’s not, you know, and, and, you know, it’s, it’s actually not had, it’s not, it’s not, if you look at the numbers at the top of the ballot, we’re not talking about a whole, a lot of movement if you go back and you figure, you know, look, You know, Greg Abbott’s gotten 40 percent of the Latino vote, you know, a couple of times, you know, a couple of times north, at least once north of that, um, and that, you know, that seems to get lost in this discussion a lot, I think, that, you know, on one hand, Yeah, we’re seeing some movement, but I mean, you know, you’re still seeing, you know, the areas, you know, this is a big point, you know, Josh not being here today is a big point.

[00:35:53] Jim Henson: Josh really likes to make a lot that I think is exactly correct that, yeah, you’re seeing some movement in those areas. But if you look at the [00:36:00] urban areas where the votes are. Right. You know, you’re not seeing nearly as much movement among Latinos as you are in some of these other non urban areas, right?

[00:36:08] Jim Henson: Right. And in that sense, Latinos look like, you know, a lot of other voters. Right. Which is, uh, you know, gets you into a lot of, I think, from, you know, sitting here on campus, you know, there was a lot of, I think, I think there’s a lot of resistance to that within the kind of academic Latino community. Right.

[00:36:27] Jim Henson: You know, because the Latino academic community and the people that look at Latino studies because, you know, it’s kind of an uncomfortable point to make, right? Right. So, so before we run out of time, I want to, you know, at least You know, uh, we were talking with, uh, uh, some of our staff here in the studio about the primary going on.

[00:36:46] Jim Henson: Oh yeah, the primary. So as you look at the, at the primary in Texas right now, having seen a lot of these primaries, you know, what do you, what are you

[00:36:54] Ross Ramsey: noticing? There’s, there’s two things, you know, one of them is a continuing trend that’s been going for a long time. Redistricting has [00:37:00] reduced the number of competitive districts to a handful.

[00:37:04] Ross Ramsey: You know, 30 years ago there, you know, 50 or 60 seats in the Texas House, which has 150 seats, on any day could go Democratic or Republican, depending on the issues and what was going on nationally. And now, you know, that’s a dozen, maybe. And so the importance of the primaries to the final result has risen.

[00:37:25] Ross Ramsey: You know, this is a primary in the Republican party for a seat, no Democrat can win. So this is a March race and it almost doesn’t matter Right. Who you throw at them in November. Um, so, you know, the other thing is sort of the, the law of small numbers. You know, if you can win, you know, the turnout in primaries is lower.

[00:37:45] Ross Ramsey: About 2 million, 2 million people in the Democratic primary, about 2 million people in the Republican primary. A million votes can win a primary in a state, a statewide primary in a state with. 30 million people in it, you know. So if I can get [00:38:00] organized and really get my partisans rolling, particularly in something, some subset of that, like a house district, I can take this thing.

[00:38:06] Ross Ramsey: Right. People have figured that out and figured out that, you know, if you spend your money wisely, doesn’t cost nearly as much to run over somebody in a primary as it does in a general election. So there’s a lot of money involved. And there are, you know, a couple of overriding things. I think, you know, Texas politics right now is almost entirely described by national issues.

[00:38:30] Ross Ramsey: Um, there are a couple of local issues that are a big concern in the Texas capital and in kind of the 16 blocks around it that I’m waiting to see, frankly, if they’re, if they really play. Does anybody out in, out in The rest of Texas, really, are any of those people really going to base their vote on how you voted on Ken Paxton’s impeachment?

[00:38:52] Ross Ramsey: Whether, you know, you were voting to impeach or you were voting to convict on that impeachment? Um, maybe? And it might work in this [00:39:00] ad or that ad? Um, that’s what Paxton is playing. Are people really talking a lot about vouchers? School vouchers? Um, so Paxton is campaigning for and against people based on how they voted on him.

[00:39:12] Ross Ramsey: Greg Abbott is voting, is actually campaigning, um, for and against people on the basis of how they voted on vouchers. And, and, you know, he’s had a couple of special sessions. He’s gotten dunked every time. Vouchers has been around Texas, around the Texas legislature for 25 or 30 years. And rural Republicans don’t like it.

[00:39:31] Ross Ramsey: It doesn’t divide nicely on Democratic and Republican lines, but on lines of, you know, rural, urban, um, and suburban. And They haven’t been able to get it through. So, you know, we’ll see how those issues play. I still think, you know, most voters are going to go in the booth thinking about immigration or thinking, you know, among Democrats and maybe thinking about abortion or thinking about Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

[00:39:56] Ross Ramsey: Um, and I’m curious to see what’s going to happen. I don’t [00:40:00] expect a ton of change in the numbers in the legislature. Senate’s going to be about the same number of Republicans and Democrats. House is going to be about the same number of Republicans and Democrats. They’ll hang some pelts on the wall.

[00:40:12] Ross Ramsey: There’ll be some people that are on the hit list that don’t die and they’ll come back cheering and there’ll be some people that, uh. Governors and the Attorney General’s assassins can claim, you know, but I don’t really expect a big numerical change or a big change

[00:40:26] Jim Henson: in direction, you know, looking at looking more more specifically at the Republican primary.

[00:40:30] Jim Henson: I mean, you were talking about kind of, you know, laws of numbers. You know, there are more challengers, right? And in in more races this time, you know, and I guess as you talk about, you know, our voters paying attention to Paxton or vouchers. But part of the dynamic right now, I think, is, you know, on one hand, there are some people that are fighting the fight around vouchers.

[00:40:56] Jim Henson: I mean, there was a an ad In [00:41:00] Travis against incumbent Travis Clarday that was circulating. I saw it in the last couple of

[00:41:05] Ross Ramsey: days, right? East Texas Republican voted against

[00:41:07] Jim Henson: vouchers, right? Well, right. And the end but the you know, I was interested in the rhetorical play of the ad right, which was not, he voted against vouchers, it was kind of what we anticipated a little bit, giving where politics were about 18 months ago, which was the vote against vouchers was a vote against being able to move your kids away from subversive DEI woke public education.

[00:41:39] Jim Henson: Right. Right. And, you know, and so I’m wondering, as I think about what’s going on in the primary and, you know, we’re getting all these signals. I’ve not, I’ve not seen any district by district polling. I’ve seen some, I’ve had people talk about it, but I haven’t seen any of it. Right. You know, there’s a lot of nervousness about there because I think there’s a lot of bank shots, right?

[00:41:59] Jim Henson: In the sense [00:42:00] of, you know, Yeah, you know, people may not, you know, base their vote on the Paxton vote or the voucher vote, but the resources pouring in, particularly on the voucher side, I mean, you know, there’s the, I don’t think it’s too insulting to say that, you know, or Governor Abbott got a 6 million contribution from one donor.

[00:42:24] Jim Henson: Jeff Yaz, who’s

[00:42:26] Ross Ramsey: a New Jersey Venture Capitalist, or

[00:42:29] Jim Henson: And, you know, it seems to be passed through money, right?

[00:42:32] Ross Ramsey: Well, he’s a big, you know, the Jeff Yass, this guy is a big, um, advocate for vouchers and has spent a lot of money in states around the country. He’s, you know,

[00:42:40] Jim Henson: I guess the point I’m trying to make is that you, you know, just because you got that 6 million targeted on vouchers doesn’t mean that the ads you buy or the arguments you make or the candidates you promote are obligated to talk about vouchers.

[00:42:56] Jim Henson: They might. Right. Vouchers. They can go talk about whatever, [00:43:00] right? Right. Once they get the money. And I wonder about that.

[00:43:03] Ross Ramsey: Well, I mean, you know, the way you get around that is, you know, you spend your money on their behalf so that you can control the ad, you know? Yeah. And it’s going to be, you know, interesting to see what they do.

[00:43:11] Ross Ramsey: If, if, you know, Abbott needs a certain number of votes to get this issue through and he’s targeting the people who voted against him, I mean, it’s, you know, pretty straight up, you know, Right. Textbook politics. Um. The question is, you know, can he overcome the reluctance in some of these rural communities, like Travis Clarity’s, against vouchers?

[00:43:31] Ross Ramsey: You know, they don’t have a bunch of private schools that they can send kids off to. Right. The schools in those, in, in small towns are often, you know, And, and, you know, everybody’s at the football game and we have our big meetings at the gym. And you know, there’s a, there’s a cultural aspect to this that doesn’t exist necessarily in cities and suburbs and, and also a lack of choice because the schools are not, you know, nobody’s starting a school like this in DeLeon, Texas.

[00:43:59] Ross Ramsey: [00:44:00] They’re starting them in Fort Worth and Dallas,

[00:44:01] Jim Henson: where the market, where the market is. And the flip side of that, obviously in this, you know, people are going to be familiar with this. Those schools tend to be smaller, and so the potential loss of enrollment and the money that comes with student enrollment, you know, much more impactful.

[00:44:16] Jim Henson: And that was part of, you know, that was baked into the deals, like, how long are you going to make us whole, and at what rate, and, you know, very, you know.

[00:44:25] Ross Ramsey: So it’ll, it’ll be interesting based on the, based on the results of the Republican primary, you might be able to say, you know, well, it looks like, you know, he’s going to get his bill now or he’s not going to get his bill now.

[00:44:36] Ross Ramsey: Um, so, you know, that’s, that’s kind of an interesting thing to watch, but you know, other than that one issue, I don’t know, I don’t really see a change in numbers here that affects the, the, the overall balance, the overall balance.

[00:44:51] Jim Henson: Um, you know, I appreciate that because it’s not as myopic as, you know, it’s one of the reasons I was, I was interested in talking to you about this [00:45:00] and, you know, we talked about this and a lot of the primaries that we’ve seen is we’ve been working together when you’re right in front of that thing.

[00:45:05] Jim Henson: It’s very easy to go. Oh God, this thing, right? It’s shocking. This is going to be, you know, right. And then, you know, overestimate the degree of change, right? And just how much of an earthquake,

[00:45:15] Ross Ramsey: quote unquote, it is. Yeah, it’s usually not an earthquake. You know, if it’s an earthquake, everybody will know it.

[00:45:19] Ross Ramsey: Tremors.

[00:45:20] Jim Henson: And if, yeah, if the plates shift, it’s a, you know, it’s a 3. 3. It’s not a 7. Right. Right. Right. So, with that, um. Ross, thanks for being here. This is fun. Hopefully we’ll do this again more often. Uh, thanks again to our excellent production team in the dev studio in the College of Liberal Arts at UT Austin.

[00:45:40] Jim Henson: If you’re listening to this on a podcast platform, if you go to texaspolitics. utexas. edu Um, we’ll also post the podcast with some supplemental material. Some of the data we’ve talked about, we’ll throw a link on there to Patrick’s V Tex piece in the Tribune that we talked about earlier in the podcast.

[00:45:59] Jim Henson: [00:46:00] So thanks to all of you, uh, for listening and we’ll be back soon with another Second Reading Podcast.

[00:46:11] Outro: The Second Reading Podcast is a production of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.