February 21st, 2023 – State of the State address sets the stage for the Texas Legislature

[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.

[00:00:24] Jim Henson: 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. Joining in today by Joshua Blank, research Director of the Texas Politics Project. Good morning, Josh. Good morning. I, I would judge you excited by the prospect of the Austin FC season opener.

[00:00:55] Jim Henson: I mean, you’re playing it cool, but I’ve

[00:00:57] Josh Blank: been on a slow. [00:01:00] Increase in my intensity and excitement, and I can barely keep it inside. Now we’re that close? We’re that close. You’re doing a pretty good job. I’m trying. So I’m gonna take

[00:01:09] Jim Henson: Friday off though. Oh yeah. I think that’s fair. No, you know, you gotta really warm up.

[00:01:13] Jim Henson: You wanna rest up for the big festivities on Saturday here. Exactly. Um, so, so last week was a big week for getting a few of the final early stage indicators of the legislative agenda in Texas in place.

[00:01:26] Josh Blank: I like the way you put, you said, you said to me earlier in the, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s the end of the beginning.

[00:01:30] Josh Blank: Yeah. And

[00:01:31] Jim Henson: I, and I think that, that, you know, I was just looking at the, uh, house appropri. So one of the subcommittee meetings wanted to hire on education. On the education article. Education article before we came in and. You know, certainly feels like, you know, it’s, it’s happening now. Mm-hmm. again, I mean, to be a little more direct about it, uh, you know, early last week, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick unveiled Senate Bills one through 30, which I think we talked about a little bit in a [00:02:00] kind of defi, in a de facto declaration of his priorities that followed up on his previous declaration of his priorities in a press conference, right.

[00:02:09] Jim Henson: Uh, several weeks ago. You know, follow that. And, and of course we, we commented on this last week, not coincidentally, on Thursday, the governor delivered his, uh, state of the state address. And this is really where an, you know, another big shoe dropped. Yeah. And that the governor unveiled his seven emergency items, Bri briskly.

[00:02:28] Josh Blank: Yeah. I would say. And, you know, thank you. Yeah. I mean, that,

[00:02:30] Jim Henson: that was a fast 30 minutes. It was a fast, yeah. I know. I was 28 or however long it

[00:02:34] Josh Blank: was. It’s someone with kids who works during the day in the same space and then has. Carve out time in the evening to watch something like this. Right. You know, a nice 30 minute speech.

[00:02:44] Josh Blank: Appreciated. Yeah. No, I

[00:02:45] Jim Henson: think you appreciate it in real time. I mean, you texting going, that was brisk . Yeah. So, and I, and I think that’s right. So, you know, and, and of course as I, I think we discussed last week, I mean the, you know, this is one of the, you know, the [00:03:00] points where the governor has, you know, at least some leverage in the process and it’s an important public declaration.

[00:03:07] Jim Henson: Mm-hmm. , I don’t. Friday morning, Texans, you know, from one side of the state or the other. Were sitting at the breakfast table and speak, talking to their families about the seven emergency items, the, the the governor declared. But you know, it, it, it is designed to have some resonance with. Some quarters of public opinion.

[00:03:25] Jim Henson: Yeah. Which we’ll get into. And, and, and more importantly, it’s signaling to the legislature. You know, in addition to, as we, again, as we discussed last week, you know, the constitutional provision that allows the, the legislature to pass bills on these seven items before the 60 day limit. Now I. Doubt. We’ll see that, but

[00:03:43] Josh Blank: we’ll see.

[00:03:44] Josh Blank: Yeah, and I’d add to that, there’s a little bit of CYA here too, which is, you know, at this point, you know, for the governor in particular, but even for the lieutenant governor, they can both now point to a list and say at the beginning of the session, right, I said this, and whether it happens or not, they can point back to that as a, as a point to say there was, it [00:04:00] was a priority of theirs.

[00:04:01] Josh Blank: Right. We

[00:04:01] Jim Henson: communicated, we communicated with each other, we communicated to the legislature, we communicated to the public. Right. Um, you know, and that is a, a, a kind of. You know, that reflects experience, shall we say. Mm-hmm. , you know, in the sense of, you know, there have been governors in the past who have been dinged for not communicating enough with the legislature.

[00:04:20] Jim Henson: It’s a, it’s a common mistake of, of, I mean, first term governors

[00:04:25] Josh Blank: poppin. Yeah, I was gonna say, I’m gonna put in parenthesis some could say that about this governor at certain points in time.

[00:04:29] Jim Henson: Yeah. And, and we’re, you know, but I think

[00:04:30] Josh Blank: we’re pretty well, well beyond that. But we are, we are very well

[00:04:32] Jim Henson: beyond that.

[00:04:33] Jim Henson: Right. And, and, and, and to be fair to, you know, the executives in this case, You know, it, it’s common for legislators to say, well, you know, they didn’t clearly convey their their wishes. And then the governor says, well, we did, and then there’s a, you know, we did, we didn’t, et cetera, et cetera. And it’s fair to say this is a very public communication.

[00:04:54] Jim Henson: You know, a lot of communication goes on behind the scenes and ways that the public doesn’t [00:05:00] seem with, and I think we talked about this last week too, the governor’s staff fanned out across the legislature. So that said, um, the seven items that the governor laid out in the order that he laid them out.

[00:05:10] Jim Henson: And I, I feel like I may have even thought about this too much, but the, I, I do think that the. There’s something about what gets pride of place. Although some of this I think was also for narrative flow in the speech itself. Mm-hmm. , frankly. But, um, so those seven items, cutting. And, and this is, these are verbatim from the speech cutting, property taxes and covid restrictions forever.

[00:05:32] Jim Henson: Forever. Education reform, education freedom. Oh yeah. Karen, making schools safer, ending revolving doorbell, doing more to secure our border and addressing the fentanyl crisis. . Um, you know, and I think, you know,

[00:05:47] Josh Blank: I like, I like that doing more in there, , just, you know. Yeah. Um, but

[00:05:50] Jim Henson: anyway, sorry. Well, I mean, you know, they, they’re gonna spend a little more.

[00:05:53] Jim Henson: Yeah. So, you know, that may just be inflation. Um, but we’re already doing so much so, so know. So the questions for us to kick around [00:06:00] today, I think, do we know more about the priorities and the shape of the legislative agenda than we did a week ago? As we look at all this and. How do the items that are leading candidates for attention from the legislature align with public opinion as we know it?

[00:06:14] Jim Henson: Our usual thing. And, and there’s a, a blog, a pretty extensive blog post that went up yesterday that covers some of this ground. We, you know, we’re, we will add and subtract a little bit on this, so, um, I would urge people go to Texas politics dot u texas.edu, follow the blog site, follow the link to the blog, and it’ll, it’ll be at the top of the pile or pretty close when you get there.

[00:06:35] Jim Henson: So, you know, let. You know, let, let’s step back before we go through these, and we’ll just go through each of them fairly quickly to get to some takeaways. But, you know, I am curious in this brisk speech, what’s your, what’s your gut response to, do we know more about the priorities and shape of the agenda than we did a week ago?

[00:06:56] Josh Blank: Um, my gut response would be to [00:07:00] say, no, not really. Yeah, I mean, you know, I, I, I’d like to say, I mean, part of it is I think, you know, my own, my own ego and like, you know, my place is like an alleged so-called quasi or real expert in this makes me think I should come away with some kind of like, oh no. Like we know all, you know, and it’s like, right.

[00:07:16] Josh Blank: And I think, you know, to the, sort of the discussions that we’ve had and the way that I’ve been thinking about it, I mean, I think this like, , you know, might provide some more degrees of clarity. Right, right. But I don’t think that there’s a, a major shift in the understanding

[00:07:30] Jim Henson: of Yeah. I mean, I, I, I kind of thought that, you know, there were no.

[00:07:34] Jim Henson: you know, big, you know, news alerts in

[00:07:36] Josh Blank: here. Right? I mean to, you know, to your point, I think, you know, this is a sort of thing where, you know, , this is the second reading. And so when you do sort of parse these things, it does make you think about the pride of place given to different things. The kind of, I mean, and then here’s the thing, in every piece of language that’s used is chosen very specifically in a case like this.

[00:07:53] Josh Blank: Yeah. And so it does make you kind of start to wanna pick apart, you know, the pieces here and kind of think about [00:08:00] it. But I mean, to me, I sort of, I guess I would say, , you know, it, it really, the speech in law was bookended by the property taxes in the border, and those were the two things like Right, not knowing anything else.

[00:08:12] Josh Blank: Those are priority pieces. I think the fact that you see those in the bookends just reaffirms that, you know, and then the middle is kind of squishy, right? Yeah. I mean, it’s a little bit, it’s a little bit squishier and so, you know. Yeah. I mean, I think

[00:08:23] Jim Henson: what I would say is, I mean, it’s inherently squishier on a, on a list of seven items on it.

[00:08:27] Jim Henson: Yeah. But I also think. No, it’s fair to say that there’s some subtleties here. Yeah. Right. So let’s start with something. Let’s go through the list kind of quickly. Yeah. We’ll start with something not subtle, right. Not a surprise. You know, property taxes, were at the top of the list. Um. They weren’t, you know, it wasn’t the number one item as I recall on the Lieutenant Governor’s list, but it was near the top.

[00:08:49] Jim Henson: Yeah. And, and I, I think there’s, you know, I, I think I put together like a sort of tongue in cheek bingo card for social media for this, and property taxes was kind of the free square in the middle. [00:09:00] Right, exactly. Easy right. In which, you know, you know, I mean, instead of just giving people the free square, it’s all, but you know, , you know, a lot of campaign pro, pro, uh, promises.

[00:09:10] Jim Henson: Uh, the governor sort of laid out a 15, the 15 billion number, which is interestingly consistent with what he had declared earlier. Yeah, I mean, back when we were expecting this, the, the, the budget, uh, uh, remainder, the, the, the surplus, the budget surplus to. You know, about 27 billion right before the, the latest, uh, uh, increase that delivered from the controller.

[00:09:37] Jim Henson: The governor said that, you know, his line in the sand more or less was that the state should spend half, right. So now that we’re at 32 7, he’s actually, you know, kind of picked a, a middle point. Yeah. Right. Right. At 15 billion, he’s already negotiating. Right. Which was interesting enough. And, and, you know, we can wave at public opinion, and I think there’s something interesting in this.

[00:09:56] Jim Henson: I mean, I, I think. , the public [00:10:00] opinion patterns and property taxes are kind of interesting in the sense that, you know, when we ask people in the this, in our, I guess, October poll going into the election, what issues were, you know, would be on their mind. Mm-hmm. going into the ba, you know, to vote right as a standalone item.

[00:10:19] Jim Henson: Property taxes scored reasonably. Right. But when asked to say what was most important, it really slid pretty far down on the list. Right. And so there is a sense in which, you know, I’m not, I’m not saying that people don’t care about their property taxes and if, you know, you’re in a certain social circle, social milieu of property owners and the issue of taxes come up, I mean, people would own, you know, that own their home will be pretty quick to complain about property taxes in my anecdotal experience.

[00:10:47] Jim Henson: But it’s. It’s interesting that it’s, it’s not quite as prominent and salient in public opinion as it is among the elites right now.

[00:10:55] Josh Blank: Yeah, I mean, it’s interest. I, I think, yeah, I mean, I, I at

[00:10:58] Jim Henson: least as measure as we [00:11:00] measure it,

[00:11:00] Josh Blank: you know? Yeah. I mean, we’ll see. I mean, I think it’s one of those things that the, the impact of, you know, inflation.

[00:11:06] Josh Blank: in combination with the fact that, you know, Texas’s property values have, you know, even though they’ve cooled, they certainly are still, have still increased, you know, dramatically year over year. You know, even if you wanna say for the last couple years or the last decade or whatever timeframe you wanna put on it.

[00:11:18] Josh Blank: Right. I mean, part of this is like, there’s something just so systemic about this, right? Which is just ultimately, you know, there is something. , you know, systemic in two ways. I mean, that one, you know, Republicans are always going to want to try to find ways to cut taxes. It’s just hard to do it in Texas.

[00:11:31] Josh Blank: Right, right. There’s only a couple points of leverage that they have to really address this and, and they can’t be too aggressive because they have so few points of leverage and the state is so big, like Right. Just ultimately we have a big budget, you know, . Um, and so, and so there’s that kind of, there’s that kind of piece of it, you know, the, the, the desire to constantly, you know, be able to show that you’re, you know, fighting the good fight on taxes.

[00:11:53] Josh Blank: You know, makes, makes this sort of a perpetual issue, right. At the same time, you know, I think Texans are dissatisfied with [00:12:00] their property taxes because it is the main form of taxes. And I mean, you gotta like, and like, look, I, you know, I don’t really care what the system is. I mean, to be honest, but there’s a public opinion point of this, which is like, it’s just so obvious, which is like, look, if you’re gonna attach basically people’s taxes to something they can’t control.

[00:12:15] Josh Blank: You’re gonna get conflict. Right? Right. Because their home value goes up, their income stays the same, all of a sudden they’re at a loss. And who do they blame? Well, they’ve gotta blame the, some government. Right, right. That, that’s, that’s loving it. And the thing is, we’ve seen this, so like, I mean, you know, at the end of the last session in October, 2021, we asked people in the end of the, all the last sessions, right.

[00:12:32] Josh Blank: Basically to rate the legislature and state leaders on a, on a list of issues. I think we did about 12 issues. Yeah. And property taxe. Was third from the bottom. Overall only 20% of taxes gave, uh, the legislature and state leaders’ job, uh, an approving, uh, review on their handling property taxes slightly higher than the electric grid.

[00:12:48] Josh Blank: 18%, slightly higher than the foster care system, right? 15%. So if you think about how all, I mean, again, I hope people listen to this note. If you think about all the troubles we’ve had in the state’s foster care system, they got 15% approval for handling of [00:13:00] that property taxes. 20. Among Republicans, it was only 29%.

[00:13:04] Josh Blank: Yeah. And so that’s the thing, I mean, There is, there is space here to improve. And there’s also obviously an issue that I think they can look at the electro and say, this is, this is kind of something we have to

[00:13:12] Jim Henson: do something, right? I mean, yeah, it, it’s an exposed nerve. It may not be a nerve in a place that, you know, people are always are, you know, noticing all the time.

[00:13:20] Jim Henson: But if you hit it well and the problem, the response is negative. Well, the problem

[00:13:22] Josh Blank: point, it’s a systematically exposed nerve and it’s not easy to fix. I mean, that’s really the hard part. And the other piece of public opinion that we, we just just mentioned here is when we do ask people about, you know, these sort of efforts to.

[00:13:32] Josh Blank: To lower their property taxes. And it’s kind of say, you know, there’s always a number that filter around, well, the average homeowner will save X amount hours. We might ask in a poll, you know, basically, do you think this will make a difference to most tax cents? Like, would this make a difference? We don’t ask about you because there’s a lot of specifics, right.

[00:13:45] Josh Blank: But the idea is like, does this seem like something this would affect? And generally the answer is not really. Yeah. And that’s the thing, I mean, when you’re talking about like, well, you know, you’re gonna say, you know, you’re gonna save, uh, $124, you know, over the course of the year. You say, well, that’s $12 a month.

[00:13:58] Josh Blank: Yeah, baby, that’s not a lot. , [00:14:00] you know?

[00:14:00] Jim Henson: Right. And I, and I think. Um,

[00:14:03] Josh Blank: so it just, this is why it never leaves the agenda in some ways.

[00:14:06] Jim Henson: Right. And, and, and I guess in terms of the mechanics of this, the governor was not especially specific either in this or in, I don’t wanna call it a budget, cuz it was more of a budget proposal that he issued in conjunction with the speech.

[00:14:20] Jim Henson: Right. Um, Was not very specific about this. Kind of waved it, you know, fixing compression and, you know, well that’s the thing. I mean, very comp, which is a very complicated,

[00:14:29] Josh Blank: I, I love, I love these things cuz, I mean, cuz we do this for a living, so I have an excuse to look into it when the time comes, but like, I mean, this is.

[00:14:36] Josh Blank: This gets complicated pretty quick and it can touch, and the thing is, it’s not even that it’s, it’s complicated in and of itself. And then depending on the vehicle by which they go to do it, it automatically has all these other tentacles that end up becoming also really complicated.

[00:14:48] Jim Henson: Yeah, and, and I, and I think what the lieutenant Governor, you know, to sort of has talked about, I think most prominently, although not exclusively to be fair dam, but that one of the things he thinks ought to be considered in conjunction with [00:15:00] man, you know, managing all this complexity of.

[00:15:03] Jim Henson: The linkage to school funding and things like, and assessments and things like this, you know, has been raising the, the, the homeowner exempt, uh, the homestead exemption by a pretty good bit. And I, it was interesting to me that, that the governor did not. speak to that directly. Yeah. And I mean, not even speaking to that idea

[00:15:23] Josh Blank: directly.

[00:15:23] Josh Blank: Yeah. And I mean that’s one of those interesting things because when they did that at the very end of the last session, largely probably in response to some of the polling that we’re, we’re talking not our polling, but their general sense of this in the atmosphere, that there was dissatisfaction. I mean, it wasn’t necessarily clear before we got through this cycle and this new budget estimate that they even had the money to like continue paying for it.

[00:15:41] Josh Blank: Right. And so, I mean, just so just as an aside, like, I mean yeah, they, the homestead section for 25 to 40. They basically covered it more or less through the bium and then it was kind of an open question. Yeah, they’ve got the money now, but the idea that like, well, let’s go from 40 to 75, it doesn’t mean that they’ve got this money in perpetuity

[00:15:57] Jim Henson: going forward.

[00:15:58] Jim Henson: Well, and it, and it speaks to, you know, [00:16:00] the question hovering over this more broadly that we’ve raised in here is that, you know, if you’re inviting recurring costs on this moving forward, Everybody, I think is, has been urged by the controller and by, you know, anybody who kind of knows what they’re talking about, you know, not to, to consider this very much a one time shot.

[00:16:21] Jim Henson: Right, right. And so, all right, so moving on. I would say that, you know, having said there weren’t a lot of big surprises. Yeah. I was a little surprised at the elevation and the pride and the kind of pride of place. , uh, given to the end, you know, to the declaration. Mm-hmm. of the, the, the items saying that, you know, the end of covid restrictions should be, would be one of the emergency items.

[00:16:43] Jim Henson: Now, you know, I don’t want to, you know, it, it’s not inconsistent with where the governor has been on covid. It’s certainly tied into. , you know, the, the governor’s saying that he’s not going to end the, you know, the, the disaster [00:17:00] declarations related to covid mm-hmm. until the legislature acts on making sure that mm-hmm.

[00:17:05] Jim Henson: local governments can’t, you know, act in, in, in ways that are, you know, not desired well by the governor is allies and he’s si it’s a way of signaling that he wants the legislature to act. And I realize, you know, of course, There’s the awkwardness of, of President Biden having already signaled that national emergency conditions will be ended in May.

[00:17:26] Jim Henson: So I, I get all that, but I, you know, it was pretty odd to have that be the second item. I, it just struck me as a little, I, I was a little surprised at the moment. I’m not surprised by the position, but I am surprised. Where it sat in the speech and, and I, I kind of felt like this could have very easily not been an emergency item.

[00:17:47] Josh Blank: Yeah, I agree. I mean, I would say the more I look at it, it’s like, you know, the, the, the, you know, the power of hindsight, but like, when I look at this, actually, I think it makes a lot of sense. I think it provides you, we were talking about, like, you were talking about like. the Ukraine and said like, what’s Putin’s [00:18:00] off-ramp?

[00:18:00] Josh Blank: It’s like, well, what’s Abbott’s off-ramp from this thing? Yeah, and you know, the thing is that his disaster declaration is very different from Biden and that, you know, sure. The, the idea here and exercise, wanna lay it out for people. What’s sort of interesting about this is, you know, ultimately the governor declares a disaster declaration, and the idea is, is that he’s supposed to do that so that he can circumvent laws in order to address the disaster.

[00:18:18] Josh Blank: Right. In this case, the governor took the disaster declaration as a way to prevent local entities. Basically counties, local municipalities from engaging in covid restrictions and precautions. And I’m just gonna say then he used them as a foil. Yeah. And so it’s sort of the thing where, you know, it’s was always, it was always a very strange use of a disaster declaration.

[00:18:39] Josh Blank: Now I should point out, the legislature could end his disaster declaration at any time it wanted, but you know, just on its own and say, Hey, you know, that’s not how this works. But the issue here is like, this is a slam dunk for everybody. I mean, some of these, you know, I think the extent to which. Covid restrictions and, and what governments did during the Covid Pandemic is still out there in the atmosphere.

[00:18:58] Josh Blank: It’s much more active on the right than [00:19:00] on the left. The left. Sure. I mean, weird. Some weird, strange ways the left has kind of moved on. Yeah. You know, and, and the right has moved on from Covid for sure, but they haven’t moved on from the government restrictions. So here everybody gets to say, You know, no, Abbott didn’t have, you know, I, I could see, you know, I mean, again, if we said multiple times, we don’t expect Abbott to run for president.

[00:19:16] Josh Blank: I still hold that. But if you’d imagine a situation in which, you know, there’s some sort of debate and you’ve got Abbott up there and you’ve got DeSantis, and you’ve got Trump, and they’re all talking about what they did. Abbott doesn’t want this multi-year covid emergency declaration hanging over his head any longer, and so he’s ending this on.

[00:19:30] Josh Blank: His terms and in a way that I think every member, every Republican member of the legislature will say, yeah, me too.

[00:19:35] Jim Henson: Yeah. I mean, it’s an easy, you know, I mean, it’s, it’s one of the other things on here that’s, you know, it’s a pretty easy Republican vote. I, you know, and, and look, I, you know, to move on. I think it also, along the lines of that explanation, it does raise it, it also, it also, Yeah.

[00:19:51] Jim Henson: I mean it ra I, I still think it raises it in kind of a funny way. Yeah, I agree. There are a lot of people kind of going, I thought that was over. You

[00:19:57] Josh Blank: know, I think, you know, I think it, you know, just, just to be like real [00:20:00] qualitative here, you know, I think it does reflect a certain amount of, you know, uh, I think, you know, Reticence and careful approach on the part of the Abbott people often to sort of where he’s exposed.

[00:20:12] Josh Blank: Yeah. And I think that this, the fact that this was seen here and to your point, like we talked about it when Biden, uh, announced the end of the, of the Amer of the, you know, national Disaster Commission. Like what an odd place that put Texas in and the governor and all this stuff. Yeah. And so it may be maybe a little bit of an overshot, but it’s an understandable one maybe.

[00:20:27] Josh Blank: Yeah.

[00:20:27] Jim Henson: And, and you know, maybe this is one of the things that, you know, I would expect that the legislature can move on. You know, fairly easily in an emergency item early on. Oh. So it’ll be interesting to see if this, if that, if that turns out to be true, we’ll put a pin on that, you know, in the look and in the structure of the speech.

[00:20:43] Jim Henson: Um, it was a good transition into mm-hmm. , the next item, which was, Education freedom, quote unquote, right? Which is ultimately, you know, the umbrella concept for a whole lot of touchpoints and what we’ve discussed in the podcast and, uh, as the [00:21:00] GOPs kind of play to disrupt democratic ownership of the issue and to highlight certain things about, about higher, about education.

[00:21:09] Jim Henson: And, and, you know, that effort was ongoing in the speech. And so there was a definitely kind of a freedom-based transition on that. You know, obviously with the, the, the, the education issue and education freedom, this is an area that, you know, interesting. I mean, it’s very, this effort is very interesting in ways that we’ve talked about it manifested in the speech and that as I read it, this was the longest.

[00:21:38] Jim Henson: This cluster of issues and subjects in rhetoric got the most real estate in the speech. Yeah, and I mean, I’ve been kind of as, as one subject, right? There were themes, but Yeah, and I

[00:21:48] Josh Blank: mean, to me, like the way that I’m sort of, I mean there’s a lot of ways to understand this focus on education. You know, there’s a lot of ways we could kind of lay it out.

[00:21:56] Josh Blank: But I mean, I think one of the ways that I keep coming back to [00:22:00] is you. The way that this sort of cluster of education issues is being presented and prioritized. I think it has a really clear target, which is, you know, it’s target conservative and concerning le conservative leading parents and even non-parents in suburban areas.

[00:22:15] Josh Blank: Yeah. You know, the cities are kind of doing what the cities are doing, the suburbs are doing what they’re doing. I mean, the rural parts are doing what they’re doing and that both inc, that that involves both, I would say in education. and also politically, right? Yeah. And we’re talking about different places and the suburbs are where this conflict is playing out.

[00:22:29] Josh Blank: And, and I think, you know, there’s two things here. I think one, you can see that this is an issue that, again, mobilizes the type of people that Republicans wanna mobilize, you know, in a, in a increasingly competitive state, right? Um, and so I think. That’s, you know, a very important part of this, but I also think there’s a, this is something else, and I don’t know if I’ve talked to you about this.

[00:22:47] Josh Blank: I’ve talked to some other people about this, but to the extent that Republicans have found success on this issue and they found a lot of success taking over like school board seats and some, some conservative areas, I think it behooves. Republican state leaders to put [00:23:00] some, some guardrails around what these efforts look like.

[00:23:02] Josh Blank: Yeah. Because you know, to the extent that, you know, the people who kind of like got funded by outside sources to, you know, insane degrees got themselves on on school boards, well what are they gonna do now? And I think, you know, at this point, and given where we are in this kind of discussion, it it.

[00:23:16] Josh Blank: Probably behoove, again, really behooves Republican state leaders to say, okay, this is what education freedom means. This are the rights of parents, because I don’t think they want this to kind of be just like anything else left to every single. I s d and they’re newly elected members, you know? Well, yeah.

[00:23:32] Jim Henson: I mean, I, I

[00:23:33] Josh Blank: I think there’s exposure there. Yeah. I wonder, um, I wonder It’s

[00:23:37] Jim Henson: just an, it’s a thought. Yeah. I mean, I mean, I think, you know, it’s a lot of, lot of unknowns here as this plays out. I think, um, I was interested in the speech and the way that the, the governor hit a lot of. I was gonna call them Grace Notes, but they’re sort of Discord notes, Uhhuh , you know, that are central to this discussion and that are lined out much more specifically in the Lieutenant Governor’s [00:24:00] priorities.

[00:24:00] Jim Henson: And the Lieutenant Governor’s priorities are also very education heavy. Um, but, you know, there was, you know, I, I, I thought that, you know, some of these references in the governor’s speech were much less directly. , but, but still, well, you know, it is still sounding, you know, like trying to resonate with the same chords.

[00:24:21] Jim Henson: I mean, in terms of talking about curriculum and, and woke this and that, woke education, et cetera. And it was in there. Um, , but again, not quite as, you know, not, not, not, not nearly as hot as Lieutenant Governor has been. Right. I

[00:24:36] Josh Blank: think he’s, I think he’s hitting, trying to hit sort of the cen the center point on this and, and you know, center point in the Republican party in the Well, yeah.

[00:24:44] Josh Blank: I mean, I,

[00:24:45] Jim Henson: no, I mean, look, I know what you mean. I kind of put this in the blog post right there, you know, on one hand. I mean, he does something that’s different. I’m gonna step back. Yeah. Let’s reframe this a little bit. Sure. I mean, look, to the extent that part of what is going on here, that’s kind of implied in what you were saying is.[00:25:00]

[00:25:01] Jim Henson: Or laid out in what you were saying is that there is part of this effort, the kind of, uh, recode public education as a more, as a better issue for Republicans to mobilize on. Mm-hmm. has a certain amount of kind of anti-institutional animus towards public education. Yes. That is a critical of, you know, the failures during covid or the difficulties.

[00:25:29] Jim Henson: In places, failures during covid is measured by student achievement, et cetera, et cetera. You know, which made that, you know, that kind of transition step from Covid in the speech useful, but then also it branches out into the hotter issues curriculum. You know, the woke education stuff that we’ve talked about in here a lot.

[00:25:46] Jim Henson: But it also, um, you know, but the governor was also pretty clear at the beginning to do something that I think the lieutenant Governor and some of the. , you know, sort of red meat activists on this, don’t do. Mm-hmm. , which has [00:26:00] said, look, public education, our public education system is great. Right? We’ve run a bunch of awards, you know, students in public schools will continue to be funded.

[00:26:08] Jim Henson: And so to the extent that you’re saying he’s kind of was more balanced, I kind of get that. I think

[00:26:13] Josh Blank: Well, there’s that. And then the other thing I was gonna say, you know, we did an open-ended question about, you know, the, the, at some point we did this recently, you know Yeah. About basically the most important issue facing public education to try to get a heat check just without any sort.

[00:26:24] Josh Blank: Any sort of precondition on what people are noticing is the issue. And part of it was to see, you know, what kind of curriculum concerns are people raising? And you know, to the extent that like certainly conservative curriculum, you know, curriculum concerns about, you know, race and gender and how those issues are taught was more prevalent than like liberal curric curriculum concerns, you know, about not enough of this kind of stuff.

[00:26:43] Josh Blank: There was a really large share of, of people in that group who just were basically talking about like curriculum concerns in the context. Reading, writing and arithmetic. Right. This idea, and this is in Texas, I think you’re in a pretty okay spot if your view towards curriculum and education is this, instead of saying no, they [00:27:00] shouldn’t be talking about, I mean like I think you raised Covid.

[00:27:02] Josh Blank: I think Covid came on the heels of a lot of racial unrest like the schools are trying to deal with and Right. And it became very public and messy and then we’ve seen a backlash. But ultimately the idea of like, well, you know, let’s not talk about slavery or let’s not talk about these issues, is kind of like there’s a little bit of a non-starter there.

[00:27:16] Josh Blank: I just think in the public, . But if you flip that and say, listen, you know what education is for? It’s to teach kids about reading, writing and arithmetic, and making a living listen. And making. Making yes sure. And making a living full stop. Anything that’s beyond that is not the domain of school. Right. And the thing is that is something that not only resonates with certain conservative parents and allows you to kind of.

[00:27:37] Josh Blank: Sort of say, yeah, yeah, we agree with you on that stuff. But it also, I think, extends that argument in a way that sounds better to other people. Even out, you know, who don’t have kids in the

[00:27:44] Jim Henson: education system and have seen test scores struggling and, and experience, especially parents. Yeah. And my, even if you’re not a parent, have seen stories about just, well, and you know, but this, a lot of noise in the system, not

[00:27:53] Josh Blank: to their eye.

[00:27:54] Josh Blank: And again, this isn’t cynical cause we love politics, but like, you know, if you’re like in your fifties, sixties, seventies, your kids are [00:28:00] way, way outta school and you’re kind of like, this is in the ether though. Yeah. This idea of like, wait, wait, what are. Drag shows. Right. You know what’s in the library and the governor and hey, we need to focus on reading, writing, and arithmetic to keep our schools great.

[00:28:14] Josh Blank: It’s like that’s a very,

[00:28:15] Jim Henson: that’s a much more, and then targeting the anti woke thing. A little more narrow cast. Yeah. Which is easier

[00:28:19] Josh Blank: to do. And so that’s a much more refined, it’s like version 2.0. Right. You know, it’s not what we’re focusing on. I mean, it’s not what we’re not gonna focus on anymore. It’s what we are focused on.

[00:28:27] Josh Blank: And I think the

[00:28:27] Jim Henson: dynamic with the governor, which you’ve seen the speech, is, you know, it’s an institutional factor here. Yeah. Right? I mean, the governor is as the governor, you know, and the figurehead is much more likely to be. At least nominally more attentive to, you know, broadcasting compared to narrow casting.

[00:28:44] Jim Henson: Right. And that’s why the narrowcast messages are, are a little more, are a little more encoded. Yeah. Right. So, alright, so a adjacent to this and the next sort of item of also education related, but in a very purpose of way was the priority of making schools safer. [00:29:00] Um, you know, it’s been widely noted that.

[00:29:03] Jim Henson: The governor didn’t mention the Uvalde mass shooting directly in any way. Um, and there’s no. There was no, but there was no, there was no mention of guns in any direction. Yeah. In any, in any meaningful way. So other than, you know, in, in a law, in a law and order context, which we’ll, we’ll touch on in a minute.

[00:29:23] Jim Henson: So I think no big surprises here. I mean, I think, you know, if, if you really wanna parse this and, and some of this is in the, is in the, is in the post, you know, we know that school safety is one of the areas where, , you know, there’s not a lot of partisan difference, you know, more intense partisans. You know, Democrats lean a lot more in the direction of looking at the weapon used by the shooter.

[00:29:47] Jim Henson: Republicans tend to lean, you know, not, not see that as a, as a, as an important factor, lean more towards school safety, mental health. And in terms of the Uvalde shooting itself, uh, you know, the big point of consensus [00:30:00] is police response and that kind of washes a lot of the south.

[00:30:03] Josh Blank: Yeah, I mean, really, you know, school safety.

[00:30:06] Josh Blank: You know, we’ll see what they do and we’ll see how they interpret it. Right. I mean, I think, you know, part of it’s, to your point, you know, there’s no, uh, there’s no critical mass in the Republican party to address guns. The reality is, even though you know most. PE people in Texas, including most Republicans, blame the response of police.

[00:30:21] Josh Blank: You know, the idea that the response to to mass shooting in school would be to like, you know, deal with the doors on the schools like this. We’ve had this conversation before, right? Lieutenant Governor had talked about hardening schools in response to the last mass shooting in schools, you know, five years ago.

[00:30:34] Josh Blank: I mean, we’ve. You know, this is, this is sort of par for the course. I mean, the interesting thing to me about this, and I’m curious, see how they end up doing it, is, you know, how much of this is about hardening the schools and how much of this is about the mental health? Yeah. And part of it is just because the mental health piece is hard.

[00:30:48] Josh Blank: The school piece is real expensive. Right.

[00:30:50] Jim Henson: And, and there’s, and there’s a movement on both. And what I, what I suspect is that, We’ll see some money thrown at both of those things, but it’ll be relatively [00:31:00] incremental compared to some of the money. We’ll see, we’ll see thrown elsewhere.

[00:31:03] Josh Blank: Well, that’s, that’s exactly right.

[00:31:03] Josh Blank: I mean, that’s the point. You know, I mean, that’s the thing that I think is interesting. Whenever you hear a number being thrown out, going forward about, oh, we’re, you know, the legislature’s considering spending this many. You know, millions of dollars on school safety upgrades. You know, you gotta go and sort of say, okay, wait, how many campuses do we have in the state of Texas?

[00:31:19] Josh Blank: You know? Right. Like, yeah. The usual school for, and it’s kinda like, yeah. You know, it may sound like a lot and it may be very

[00:31:25] Jim Henson: incremental and, you know, it’s, it’s. , there’s a lot more, you know, like most things when you start looking at the building codes and where they are, yeah, it’s a lot more complicated and expensive.

[00:31:35] Jim Henson: And there’s a lot of, and and there’s a lot of conflicting, you know, stakeholders in that space. So the next, the, the, the other, the next, uh, uh, emergency item was ending revolving doorbell. Um, , you know, partially not wholly in response to attempts by Harris County, though, you know Dallas as well, to deal with issues in their bail system.

[00:31:54] Jim Henson: Some of this was driven by some court decisions. Speaks to, you know, the longstanding [00:32:00] debate about policing. You know, you referenced the, the, the summer of 2020 and, and, and activism around policing and race. . You know, I, there was nothing too surprising about here. I mean, I’ll, you know, I can’t remember who it was somebody on Twitter noticed.

[00:32:17] Jim Henson: I didn’t have, I didn’t have Harris County on the bingo sheet. Yeah. And I absolutely should have. That’s too bad. But it didn’t take them long to call out Harris County in particular. Yeah. Which the governor did. Um, you know, I would say that stepping back, and, and I think you and I, you know, chatted about this the night of the, uh, as the speech was going on in real time, you know, the governor did.

[00:32:40] Jim Henson: Not focus on, you know, a big crime item, although that’s what this is. Yeah. But there was a definite taste of, you know, sort of g o p law and order approach in this speech. A few, you know, instances of calling for increased punishment. Yeah. You know, the issue of, of people [00:33:00] being ac accused of violent crimes, being let out on bail.

[00:33:03] Jim Henson: I mean, that’s, we’ve, I was in the speech last time. Mm-hmm. . Um, but there was kind of a, there was a law and order move that hovered over this, I mean, support for the, you know, and this was an area where the governor was in line with the lieutenant Governor in terms of supporting mandatory 10 year penalties for, you know, I think felonies create, you know, crimes committed with a gun.

[00:33:23] Jim Henson: I think it was felonies, um, using a gun. And that that was, we should say what we heard about guns in this. Right. Um, so I, you know, this seemed like an interesting set piece, so it, it will also be interesting to see where it goes.

[00:33:38] Josh Blank: Yeah, I mean, it’s interesting, this, it definitely plays on the law and order themes, but it does, it really, really in a, I mean, I think I, I’ll add into this kind of like, you know, Lieutenant Governor’s emergent or, uh, priority legislation on removing district attorneys who don’t follow the law, right?

[00:33:52] Josh Blank: I mean, there’s sort. You know, law and order contra local enforcement. Yeah, I

[00:33:57] Jim Henson: think that’s right. And, and, and the governor’s speech did have [00:34:00] not, you know, not, not specific references to those officials or that those bills, but had had a reference to local officials not enforcing the law, et cetera. This

[00:34:12] Josh Blank: area is really interesting to me.

[00:34:13] Josh Blank: I mean, I think they’re gonna, you know, the legislature’s gonna do what it’s gonna do, and I can imagine them kind of, you know, clamping down a little bit on efforts to sort of, you know, let’s say reform work on. Loosen whatever word you want to use, the cash bail system. Right. But it’s interesting in the sense that this definitely, you know, based on polling that we’ve done generally, like it definitely kind of definitely flies in the wrong, in the opposite direction of where public opinion has been going with respect to like bail practices for like misdemeanors and non-violent defendants and for people who just simply can’t afford bail.

[00:34:41] Josh Blank: I mean one of the things about the way that, like in this, I mean this was one of the pieces that kind of stuck out to me in a little bit of speech cuz it almost had a little bit of a, he doth protest. Too much element too. It’s like, you know, tell me all. The murders and the mayhem caused by the people out on the bail.

[00:34:54] Josh Blank: And it’s like, yeah, but like, that’s not really like what a lot of these discussions are about. So I’m kind of curious [00:35:00] to see.

[00:35:00] Jim Henson: Right. Well, you know, I mean, how, where this goes, it’s why Harris County is a good point for this. Yes. There’s been a lot of, there has been a lot of discussion on those lines in Harris County.

[00:35:08] Jim Henson: Yes. Particularly among Republicans. And, and, but, but again, also, you know, you, you don’t have to be a Republican to notice that, you know, there have been some high profile cases in Harris County. It’s been an issue.

[00:35:21] Josh Blank: Um, it’s one of those like things though where it’s like, I mean, anyway, there’s like a social science thing.

[00:35:25] Josh Blank: Like, it’s like you, like, yes, there are, you know, there are people who are out on bail for some kind of, you know, crime who commit other crimes. Like they’re also just people not out on bail who commit all kinds of crimes. Right. Like it’s, and,

[00:35:36] Jim Henson: and people not out on bail who have not been convicted of anything as they can’t afford to get out, so, right.

[00:35:41] Jim Henson: And Yeah, exactly. You know, there’s a, yeah, it’s a, it’s, it’s a, it’s, it’s complicated there, but I, and I do think that there’s. You know, the, the, it is gonna be interesting to see where the legislature moves. And I, and just to hit on something you mentioned before we move on, I mean, it is one of those [00:36:00] interesting turns where, you know, if you looked at, you know, the 2010s mm-hmm.

[00:36:06] Jim Henson: what you saw was a really interesting dynamic in terms of. Bipartisan at the, you know, kind of opposite ends of the political spectrum. And often when people say, well, the people at the, you know, opposite ends are kind of more alike and similar, I always think that’s bullshit. Yeah. But in this case it’s not.

[00:36:21] Jim Henson: Cuz they were more alike. But there was interesting coalition work between. Social criminal justice forces on the left and on the right that was percolating through the decade, that really

[00:36:32] Josh Blank: has hit a wall. And I thought about as sort of, you know, the libertarians on the right and the social progress on the list had found common cause and even some conservative, I mean, I think some fiscally conservative people on the right, Hey, this costs a lot of money.

[00:36:42] Josh Blank: Yeah. These are thing, I’ll just point this out and we can move on from this, but like, you know, it’s really interesting in the sense that, you know, at a point in which you know republicans are. sort of keep raising the issue of law and order. And especially in Texas’, you know, major cities and, and lax enforcement, all this stuff, you know, these places are still under a revenue cap.

[00:36:57] Josh Blank: Right. So, I mean, there are not [00:37:00] unlimited resources in these counties to actually go in fight crime to prosecute every cases. Yeah. To put people in safe conditions in jails and prison. Like, just throwing that out there, you know. Well, and

[00:37:10] Jim Henson: there, and there’s, you know, and there’s, yeah, there’s something interesting about how people have developed a reflex whenever something sort of disrupts the social order.

[00:37:19] Jim Henson: You know, to point to, well this is about there not being enough police. This is about that whole discussion. Yeah. I mean, you know, we had this car rally thing in Right. Austin over the weekend, you know, and you would think that this was like a homegrown thing that happened in Austin because all these muscle car drivers they knew, you know, knew that, you know, Austin was under policed.

[00:37:39] Jim Henson: And it’s absurd. Yes. Right? I mean, this thing is a phenomenon. It’s been going on all over the country for Right. A few years. I mean, it’s. It’s just ludicrous, frankly, but, all right. Final item. Oh no, actually second to the last item. . How can we forget this? And, and this is one of those things where I, I understand, you know, doing more to secure the board, our border, making border security an [00:38:00] emergency item.

[00:38:00] Jim Henson: No way. Border security could not be an emergency item slam dunk. But it also, you know, and we beat this to death, we say on this podcast a million times about, you know, the centrality of, of, of border security to the Republican political psyche in the state, particularly, you know, both voters and elites.

[00:38:19] Jim Henson: Um, you know, but you know, you have to flag emergency item. This could also be, this is something where, You know, there’s no will to disagree with this emergency item that I’ve seen within the governing coalition. I think we mentioned last week, both preliminary budgets in not only maintain the incredible increase in border security spending mm-hmm.

[00:38:40] Jim Henson: that we’ve seen, uh, over the last biennial, or, you know, if you go back even the last about three by any. , but there’s even a, something of a, of an increase. So, you know, there’s not, this emergency I think is will, this is an emergency, will be well

[00:38:54] Josh Blank: received. You know, one thing I’m, I’m, I’m sort of doing, and I’m sort of noticing as we talk about this, as we always do, you know, some things, and one thing about this [00:39:00] that’s interesting, and I always think about slight adjustments that you know about the rhetoric and the way Yeah.

[00:39:04] Josh Blank: And you can see usually, you know, there’s an evolution that makes sense. You know, one of the things that I think is. Seemingly smart from a political standpoint about, again, this real increased focus on the border and specifically the border, is that it gets Texas Republicans out of legislating undocumented immigrants and the people they know in other parts of the state.

[00:39:22] Josh Blank: Right? And if you think about some of the discussions we’ve had about sanctuary cities for years and about, you know, show me your papers, laws, and things like, we’re not talking about that right now. Right? We’re talking about securing the border. And that’s something that not only do you know Republican, Almost unanimously agree with and support, you know, to the, you know, basically to whatever extreme you can find, you also have a ton of independence and you’re gonna have a significant share of Democrats, right?

[00:39:42] Josh Blank: You’re gonna say, yeah, you know, we need a secure border.

[00:39:43] Jim Henson: Not yet non, non-trivial minority of Democrats.

[00:39:46] Josh Blank: And that’s a pretty, and I say, but like, you know, we were having serious discussions about, again, what police, what rights police officers had and whether they shouldn’t enforce federal immigration laws.

[00:39:53] Josh Blank: And that was something that really brought that close, close to him. And it’s interesting now thinking about this, that we really have like, no, let’s

[00:39:59] Jim Henson: look down [00:40:00] south. Well, yeah. And the longer term history of that, in terms of. When border security and immigration are, you know, sometimes seen as conjunction in conjunction and other times, you know, one tries to separate it.

[00:40:11] Jim Henson: We’ve seen that fluctuate a few times. Yeah, I think you’re right. There is something kind of interesting going on with that probably may have to do with the migration pattern, but, um, so, you know, border security. is con. In some ways it’s stepping back and again, looking at the structure of the speech again, it’s kind of the sec, the center of the gra center of gravity of the bottom of the speech.

[00:40:32] Jim Henson: Yeah, because the transition to border security really is. within the rubric of that law and order theme, right. That we talked about in the previous point. And then it, it follows over into the, the final emergency item, which is addressing the fentanyl crisis, which is real. And, and you know, there are numbers out there and this is getting a lot of national media attention.

[00:40:55] Jim Henson: Yeah. Today even, um, uh, but also, you know, for the [00:41:00] governor was squarely framed in the context of border security. The flow of illegal drugs across the border, um, you know, the role of the border flows in, in, in, in feeding the Fentanyl crisis, you know, the fentanyl, uh, Uh, you know, uh, confiscations, you know mm-hmm.

[00:41:23] Jim Henson: have been one of the, the metrics that that Right. Uh, sometimes in odd ways that the, that the Abbott administration has used to, to justify Operation Lone Star. Um, but you know, to be fair, the, the governor has also. has also been a little bit upfront in a, in a way that I think surprised some people making Narcan about Narcan availability and funding and expanded Narcan availability prob, uh, uh, program in the state, et cetera.

[00:41:49] Josh Blank: Yeah, we should run out of funding earlier this year. Right.

[00:41:52] Jim Henson: So I think at the same time, I, I think we’ll probably see that happen. So, so that kind of gives us the thing, you know, sort of exhausted from going [00:42:00] through every item. You know, few of the takeaways have, I think, kind of come up in this. Yeah. I mean, again, more evidence that property tax reduction remain.

[00:42:08] Jim Henson: At the center of what’s going on in the in. Yeah. How they figure it out, the remainder of the session and what’s gonna happen with that and the fact that something’s

[00:42:15] Josh Blank: gonna happen. Yeah. And how, and how they figure out how to do it and what it looks like is kind of the big question, but it’s not whether it’s gonna happen.

[00:42:20] Josh Blank: Right. Yeah.

[00:42:21] Jim Henson: And not, you know, I mean, I’m not sensing a ton of distance here until they really, you know, they’ll get into the weeds and they’ll be arguments about this, but

[00:42:27] Josh Blank: to me, you know, the property tax reduction that they’re gonna pick is gonna be the one that’s gonna pass both houses.

[00:42:33] Jim Henson: Right. Um, you know, I, I, I think another thing that was interesting about this speech, and you know, this kind of speaks to things that we’ve been thinking about a lot lately.

[00:42:41] Jim Henson: It’s really been a be in my bonnet to some degree, I guess. But, you know, Abbott does remain kind of the most prominent pro economic development Republican in the state. I mean, yeah. You know, there, you know, it’s interesting. He’s now done two straight state of the state speeches with, you know, a factory in the background.

[00:42:57] Jim Henson: Uh, Um, you know, and there was [00:43:00] lots of of development talk about economic development credit claiming for the success in the state and really like

[00:43:07] Josh Blank: right, right at the beginning of the speech for the five minutes that people might be tuned in before they figure out their wait, my show’s not on. Like, that was, and that

[00:43:13] Jim Henson: was, and that was very much consistent with what he did in the previous speech.

[00:43:18] Jim Henson: And again, a lot of governors. Yeah. I mean you start with victory lap and Yeah. You know, there’s been a lot of ground to take victory laps in Texas and the economy for, you know, given. Um, but you know, he went further. I mean, it was, it was kind of low key and it was only a line in the speech. But he did insert a plug for a successor program to chapter, the chapter thir, uh, article three 13 programs and.

[00:43:41] Jim Henson: There wasn’t the kind of slamming of woke business that we’re seeing among a lot of legislators on Twitter that were seen certainly from the Lieutenant Governor. No, that was safe for educators and yeah, I mean, it was much more the, you know, the, the woke business was applied. Yeah. Again, to. You know, if you’re gonna take on an institution, you’re gonna say, what [00:44:00] institution does Greg Abbott seem more enthusiastic about taking on in the, the battle against wokeness?

[00:44:07] Jim Henson: Much more about public education and educational institutions, much less about business. Where I think if you were to ask about the Lieutenant Governor, he is been pretty fullthroated in both and, and so is the,

[00:44:18] Josh Blank: and I think, you know, just, we were talking about this earlier today, you know, and, and it seems like, you know, it’s almost when you say that Abbott remains the most prominent for pro economic development Republican, I say part of the thing that I think is sort of, you know, shifting underneath the sand, you kind of have to remember is I think we all have an assumption here that well aren’t all Republicans sort of pro economic development, right?

[00:44:34] Josh Blank: And we say, well, you know, before we say, well, let’s, let’s, let’s, let’s set off the few who are like kind of more concerned about, let’s say like social issues about kind of grassroots activist right? Kind of engagement. and that, you know, if you, and I think, you know, I would encourage the listeners to think about, you know, yeah.

[00:44:48] Josh Blank: Like, do you still think that that assumption holds equally kind of across the Republican coalition the way you

[00:44:54] Jim Henson: used to? Yeah. I mean, I, I, again put a devil. I think we used to think about it a little bit as an either or that yeah, [00:45:00] you know, you’ve got these forces in the Republican party, they’re focused on this one thing.

[00:45:04] Jim Henson: and the other kind of thing is more or less spine. Yeah. You know, and that goes for either, whether, either way. Yeah. It’s whether you’re the social bucket person or the eco divo bucket. Right. But now that the sort of social, you know, ideologically driven bucket seems to be sort of seeping into the other bucket.

[00:45:21] Jim Henson: It’s a different, it’s, it’s a different thing. And that’s kind of what we’ve looked about that a lot at that. A lot. That is one of, I think, the notable differences between mm-hmm. between. , you know, and it’s both a bit of content, point of emphasis and tone. Mm-hmm. , uh, in terms of the differences with the Lieutenant governor.

[00:45:37] Jim Henson: Yeah, right. I mean, uh, a couple of things specifically stuck out to me on that, on the grid, you know, Patrick build the grid as a much higher priority in his announcement of both, you know, his priorities in the earlier speech and in, uh, his first 30 bills. Um, and the governor was, Didn’t make an emergency [00:46:00] item.

[00:46:00] Jim Henson: Right. Talked about it a bit. Talked about in general terms, wanting to generate more capacity, which is where the lieutenant Governor is, I think at this point in time. Mm-hmm. has, has actually drawn a pretty rhetorically strong line in terms of saying if there wasn’t something about, you know, encouraging more, fostering, more generating capacity and building more capacity that you.

[00:46:22] Jim Henson: You know, he’d think it required a special session, which since he can’t declare a special session, implies that, you know, he would hold something hostage for that. Right. So, you know, a pretty blunt force bargaining statement on that. But the, you know, a a, and look, we’ve all known that the lieutenant go, that the governor has stuck by his earlier declaration that, yeah, we’ve solved this.

[00:46:43] Jim Henson: Mm-hmm. , and he’s probably encouraged by the fact that clearly the Democrat. wanted to make an issue of this in 2022 and it fizzled. Right? Right. And it fizzled in the face of, you know, no more recent stimulus. You know, it was also, and I, you know, we’re always hesitant to mention this, so I [00:47:00] would also say that another notable difference was higher ed.

[00:47:03] Jim Henson: Yeah. Um, the governor’s tone was again, uh, Fullthroated, you know, not fullthroated support for higher ed as an institution. Yeah. But he did talk more about vocational training, workforce preparation, which has been a big theme. He’s doing it

[00:47:19] Josh Blank: from a high tech factory just outside

[00:47:21] Jim Henson: Austin. Been a big theme in the state.

[00:47:23] Jim Henson: Um, and that has not been a, a, Patrick has his approach approached this much more aggressively in terms of ending tenure, uh, a, a more DeSantis esque approach, if you will, in terms of trying. Intervene in curriculum and discussions of c r t.

[00:47:40] Josh Blank: Yeah. But to your, but to your point before, I mean this just actually is another piece of how, you know, you might say that Abbott kind of remains the most, you know, sort of proco dev dev kind of person, right.

[00:47:49] Josh Blank: And the e ether, because, you know, the reality is, is that, you know, . And again, we’re sitting here at a university. I know that acknowledged. Right, right. But the reality is, is that, you know, Texas has some pretty fine institutions of higher [00:48:00] learning. They com you know, they contribute pretty heavily to the economic environments of the places they are.

[00:48:04] Josh Blank: Right. And the truth is, Texas is not gonna have a competitive higher education system without tenure when every other university in the country has tenure. Sure. And so that’s just, you know, that’s just one of those things where, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s minor, but like, I think the reality is the people who are.

[00:48:19] Josh Blank: In Abbott’s ear on this, or the people who are in legislator’s ear on this, there are a lot of them, and they’re saying, yeah, like, let’s just, let’s, let’s pump the brakes here. But it doesn’t hurt Patrick to put it out there to have the emergence, you know, have, have the priority item to have it be talked about, to have him be at the forefront of it.

[00:48:34] Josh Blank: And, you know, whether he succeeds this session and doing something, they do something in between tenure review or whatever, or it becomes a multi-session thing, or he drops it.

[00:48:43] Jim Henson: Well, they’ve, yeah, they’ve, you know, I. Higher education institutions are a good foil in this political environment. So I’m not, you know, I mean, this is consistent with what we’ve seen before.

[00:48:55] Jim Henson: Um, but I, you know, I think it is notable, um, that, that, that the [00:49:00] approach has been different. Right. So anything else stick out, stick out to you in terms of difference? You know, kind of notable differences?

[00:49:07] Josh Blank: You know, I mean, I’ll just say, you know, in thinking about the grid, you know, I do think it’s interesting to think about the institutional dynamics and the fact of, you know, who gets to, who gets to own what, when.

[00:49:16] Josh Blank: Yeah. You know, I think Abbott’s sort of, you know, Abbott’s obviously in the executive branch. I mean, technically Patrick is too, but I mean, it’s sort of whatever, but like, but I mean, you know, but Abbott ultimately is the one who has to execute. , you know, basically the running of the state and you know, the PUC are his appointees, right?

[00:49:31] Josh Blank: They’re looking over Ercot. And so on the one hand, you know, it’s kind of interesting to think about, you know, I try to, I don’t have an answer to this, but I’m thinking a lot about, you know, What do each see as like, you know, the, the, the rewards and the exposure with respect to acting or not acting. It’s clear that the lieutenant governor see that like there is either some reward or some exposure out there that requires him to keep pushing this forward.

[00:49:52] Josh Blank: And clearly the governor has a different view of this. And that’s the kinda something I’m just trying to like,

[00:49:56] Jim Henson: well, you know, I mean, to me the question is, [00:50:00] and I, you know, whatever, I, I think I know what the answer to this is, but I’m not informed on it. You know, how much does the, does the Lieutenant Governor.

[00:50:08] Jim Henson: The credit for knowing that he can probably push a bill, push some of these bills that are, you know, that threaten the, you know, the functionality of higher ed as an institution within the political economy. Mm-hmm. , knowing that. , somebody else is going, either the house is not gonna take this bill up, which, right.

[00:50:29] Jim Henson: Which I think is probably pretty likely based on the signals that I’ve seen. Yeah. Or that the governor may very well, you know, reg, you know, probably reluctantly, but would veto it. Yeah. You know, in, in the interest of economic development and you know, there’s gotta be a better way kind of thing. I think that’s probably floating around out there.

[00:50:50] Jim Henson: But, but clearly, I mean, it, it, it does underline the dynamic we talked about, you know, and it’s kind of the, in, in [00:51:00] that there was more attention between the intensity of, you know, anti wokeness, the ideological cultural battles in the, you know, that are being fought by some factions of the party and.

[00:51:16] Jim Henson: economic development perspective that’s there and we’re, you know, it, it’s the most important topic I think, going on in the, in the leg. It’s, it’s the most, I shouldn’t say important, most interesting topic, I think going on in terms of the long term politics.

[00:51:28] Josh Blank: Yeah. It’s, it’s probably, you know, I mean in, in the sense of like the, the overall, as we talk about the party system, yeah.

[00:51:34] Josh Blank: It’s probably one of the most consequential

[00:51:35] Jim Henson: things going on. Yeah. I mean, it’s, and, and, you know, and look for the, you know, I mean, it’s important for the state’s economy and the political economy of the state that if, I mean, imagine a world in which. , you know, you were talking about guardrails earlier.

[00:51:48] Jim Henson: Mm-hmm. , some of these guardrails are just not there on some of this. Right. And Texas were to become the first state to, you know, fundamentally, you know, pass, you know, [00:52:00] pass laws that fundamentally. dictate curriculum in higher education or, you know, materially ends tenure. I mean, it would, it would be a big deal.

[00:52:11] Jim Henson: Yeah, it would be a very big deal. You know, and so I think that the, you know, we’ve talked about the coalition shifting here and I think, uh, you’re right in the party system, it has as a lot of implications for the party system. But there’s some real practical things going on here too that I think. Are gonna be very interesting to see debate at an open court right in, in the course of the session.

[00:52:33] Jim Henson: Yes. On that. Uh, thanks to Josh for being here. Good luck to the FC this weekend. Um, thanks again to our excellent production team in the dev studio in the College of Liberal Arts here at UT Austin. Uh, a lot of the data that we’ve discussed today can be found at Texas politics dot u texas.edu. As always, thanks for listening and we’ll be back soon with another second reading podcast [00:53:00] that I think next week’s podcast will have some real interesting surprises, I think.

[00:53:04] Jim Henson: Ooh, you’re probably right, . So with that, thanks for listen.

[00:53:14] Jim Henson: The second reading podcast is a production of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.