Jan 23rd, 2024 – A busy Interlude in Texas Politics – from a SCOTUS Ruling on the Border to Paxton’s about-face

[00:00:00] Intro: Welcome to the second reading podcast from the University of Texas at Austin.

[00:00:05] Intro: The Republicans were in the Democratic Party because there was only one party. Sir, I tell people on a regular basis, there is still a land of opportunity in America. It’s called Texas. The problem is these departures from the Constitution, they have become the norm. At what point? Must a female senator raise her hand or her voice to be recognized over the male colleagues in the room.

[00:00:36] 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 today by Josh Blank, research director for the same project. How are you today,

[00:00:49] sir?

[00:00:50] Josh Blank: Dry so far, but we’ll see.

[00:00:52] Jim Henson: Yeah, it’s a little rainy here in Austin as we, uh, record on Tuesday late morning, after [00:01:00] morning.

[00:01:00] Jim Henson: Um, so, you know, John, you know, what to say? There’s just been a ton going on in the last couple weeks, and in many ways, some of the stuff we kind of have on the bullet list for this week, we could have talked about last week. Um But we really wanted to kind of take a break and talk about Trump a little bit now.

[00:01:18] Jim Henson: Because we’re sick. Yeah, exactly. You know, but there’s a lot of intersecting developments in both state and national politics. So today we’re going to kind of survey a development or two or three or four. Um, but you know, speaking of Trump, first though, you know, and that’s just, we look, it’s 2024. Hey, you know, it’s a presidential election year.

[00:01:41] Jim Henson: It is going to be a Trumpy year one way or the other in terms of what we’re all talking about. So first, you know, we should add a little Texas angle to what is the dominant. political story nationally coming out of the weekend, and that is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis dropping out of the Republican [00:02:00] presidential nomination contest, the winnowing of the field to a two person air quote contest, such as it is, uh, between Donald Trump and Nikki Haley with, you know, something of a showdown in New Hampshire today.

[00:02:14] Jim Henson: I mean, it’s an interesting heat check without, you know, recapping. All the national media stuff, you know, New Hampshire, not really, if you’re gonna old comparative politics methodology, you know, you’re gonna plug the watermelon to sample it. You know, if the watermelon is the Republican Party, if New Hampshire is the way you plug it, you’re not really getting a representative sample of what is going on out there in Republican politics for

[00:02:41] Josh Blank: the main part.

[00:02:42] Josh Blank: And I mean, just to take, you know, that’s not, we don’t need to go into a lot of detail about this, but it is sort of like, I mean, it is interesting how much politics has moved in the last few decades when you look at sort of the role New Hampshire used to play and people talk about like, this is where you save your campaign.

[00:02:55] Josh Blank: And we were kind of spending some part of the morning talking about like, well, you know, How bad [00:03:00] could Nikki Haley lose and still want to go to her home state to lose again, probably? And that’s kind of what we’re talking about here. I mean, it is like, it’s not Right. It’s not, it’s not going to save her candidacy or something.

[00:03:11] Josh Blank: I mean, the question is, is it going to prolong? I mean, maybe I’m saying, is it going to prolong

[00:03:14] Jim Henson: it? And a good, you know, whereas not quite as, I’d like to think not quite as guilty, but you know, we’re certainly susceptible as everyone else to over interpreting what’s right in front of us sometimes, right?

[00:03:26] Jim Henson: And so, you know, the last several weeks have been all Iowa, New Hampshire. Yeah. You know, and, uh, you know, after Iowa, frankly, I was kind of like, okay, Iowa’s caucuses are over. Don’t really have to think about that for a long, for, you know, three, three point,

[00:03:42] Josh Blank: you know. Yeah, as

[00:03:43] Jim Henson: long as we can manage. Three plus years.

[00:03:45] Jim Henson: Right. Um, and you know, there, there’s an element of that to New Hampshire. I mean, you know, I mean, I, as you were saying that and, and we should say, you know, one of our colleagues, the Jeremy Suri had dropped by as we were prepping for this and we were just kind of kicking around what, you know. [00:04:00] You know, what does Haley need to get to go on, I think was kind of the way Jeremy posed it.

[00:04:05] Jim Henson: And I, you know, now as I’m sitting here thinking about it, I mean, say, Nick, and I do not think this is even close to it, but hypothetically speaking, say Nikki Haley won New Hampshire. Right, sure. You know, how would that actually change the dynamic of the race in the long term? I kind of suspect not much.

[00:04:30] Josh Blank: Yeah, I mean, unless,

[00:04:31] Jim Henson: unless you would have to go, you know, she would have, you know, she’d have to go on and win South Carolina and she’d have, and it would be harder for her to drop

[00:04:37] Josh Blank: out. Yeah, she couldn’t drop out. She’d have to win South Carolina, which all indications are that she wouldn’t. And then she’d have this sort of difficulty of like, well, you won New Hampshire, but you lost your home state and also a Southern state, a much more sort of obviously Republican state.

[00:04:50] Josh Blank: And it’s probably much more indicative of the way the rest of the contest is going to go. Right. And

[00:04:53] Jim Henson: then you’d go on to Super Tuesday, which is, you know, heavily favors Trump. Um, so I, you know. [00:05:00] I’m not saying I won’t be, you know, watching election returns tonight and keeping track of it, but look, you know, we, you know, we talked, you know, as far as where this is right now, again, stepping back and, you know, because we talked about it so much last week, we don’t need to do it all again, you know, we talked a lot about Trump’s dominance in Texas last week, you know, he’s similarly dominant in most of the states that we’ve Look Republican,

[00:05:25] Josh Blank: well, you know, you know, and just, and to, to our colleagues, you know, comment about whether Trump’s support is strong or weak or whatever.

[00:05:30] Josh Blank: There’s a lot of different ways you could look at that. But I think one of the things that’s going on sort of in the aftermath of Iowa is to sort of, you know, in some ways, you know, talk about the Santa’s failings as a candidate. And there’s been a lot of that kind of going on in the lead up to Iowa about how, you know, he entered with all this great promise and, you know, and, and some.

[00:05:47] Josh Blank: Polls, he was leading Trump early on and blah, blah, blah. And all the problem, blah, blah. But you know what? Like DeSantis was a strong candidate. Like, let’s just take a step back for a second here. You know, I mean, I don’t mean that he didn’t have missteps, but I mean, like, [00:06:00] look, this is the only thing I did like, Oh, DeSantis, you know, had a problem, you know, connecting with people or he had missteps.

[00:06:04] Josh Blank: It’s like, Donald Trump is your nominee. He is going to be the nominee of the Republican party. So the idea that these things are in and of themselves, like. You know, the reason that he lost. Look, in our polling, you know, DeSantis was at unfave among Republicans. He was only a little bit off of Trump when we were looking at, you know, Republicans and conservative Republicans.

[00:06:23] Josh Blank: It wasn’t as though this was a guy who was going to the race where a lot of Republicans had, uh, negative attitudes about him or even like Trump drove up his negatives. The point is, is that Republicans had a choice in that race and a lot of them were choosing between Trump and DeSantis with Trump the heavy favorite and when you looked at the second choices, a lot of the second choices for DeSantis, Would have gone to Trump.

[00:06:43] Josh Blank: And so, I mean, you know, the way I look at it is sort of like, you can kind of say like, oh, well, DeSantis was like, no, DeSantis was a governor, is a governor of a very large state, raised a bunch of money, ran a national campaign for the first time against, you know, basically an incumbent. Yeah. You know, we’ll see him again.

[00:06:59] Josh Blank: [00:07:00] Yeah. I don’t know.

[00:07:00] Jim Henson: Uh, I think, you know, I think I’m probably a little less. I mean, I think that, you

[00:07:08] Josh Blank: know, his

[00:07:09] Jim Henson: numbers on, you know, his numbers on paper, you know, I would at least people say, look, he was a reasonable candidate. But I think, you know, there’s, I mean, the factor you’re emphasizing there, I think is important or that’s embedded in there is that, you know, look.

[00:07:23] Jim Henson: DeSantis was, the argument, you know, the central argument of the DeSantis campaign all along was that they could get to the right of Trump in some key areas with more traditional conservative Republican primary voters and offer DeSantis as similar enough to Trump without the baggage.

[00:07:44] Josh Blank: And that, and that assumed that people cared

[00:07:46] Jim Henson: about the baggage.

[00:07:46] Jim Henson: Right. And that was a, you know, that was a fundamental miscalculation. But I also think there is a way in which And I’d have to go back and look. I’m not, I’m not sure that Trump didn’t succeed in driving up DeSantis’s negatives somewhat. I mean, maybe not [00:08:00] in here, but I think in the earlier states and nationally, I’m just not sure that’s the case.

[00:08:04] Jim Henson: Yeah, I mean, I

[00:08:05] Josh Blank: guess I mean, this is all whatever, matters of degree. I mean, I would just say, you know, I think it’s easy to paint DeSantis dropping out as, you know, him being a weak candidate in hindsight or, or whatever. Um, but I think the reality is he was just a very, very distant second choice in most cases to Trump for most people.

[00:08:23] Josh Blank: And that’s how it played out. I mean, what’s funny is that Haley is the one who’s left because if anything, you know, at least her numbers in Texas haven’t been as strong as DeSantis throughout, you know, the time we’ve been pulling both of them. And I think that’s probably true generally. I mean, she’s kind of, she’s starting from a weaker position.

[00:08:36] Josh Blank: Um, so I

[00:08:37] Jim Henson: mean, I think, you know, I mean, look, I mean, the most charitable version is, you know, to Santa’s theoretically right guy, wrong time. Yeah,

[00:08:45] Josh Blank: that’s a very, that’s right, you

[00:08:46] Jim Henson: know, but I, but I also, you know, I have a lot of questions that, you know, it does seem to me that the more we saw of him, the less well he played and the less well he played [00:09:00] with his core constituency and certainly wasn’t, you know, didn’t have the raw material to move people now, you know, Maybe nobody does, you know, I mean, I mean, look and you know, and the comparison with, with, with Haley, is it, you know, Haley was, was, and is she’s been trying to blur the distinction a little bit more campaigning from a completely different rationale.

[00:09:25] Jim Henson: I mean, the, you know, the reason for her race, the rationale was, was much different. So anyway. Like voters across the, you know, the country, Texas voters certainly don’t prefer DeSantis to Trump and, you know, here, you know, here we are, he’s gone. I, I, I have to say that, you know, when he was making sort of nods towards 2028, I, I find that kind of laughable, but, you know, maybe that’s just, I mean, I just don’t see it.

[00:09:54] Jim Henson: Um, I see the moment having passed for him, but okay. So. So a lot, [00:10:00] a lot of other things happened last week. So a couple of quick hits before we, where do you want to start?

[00:10:06] Josh Blank: You know, we’ll just jump around real quick, try not to spend too much time on any of this, but you know, the fifth circuit, you know, consistently known as the most conservative appeals court in the country, blocked Texas from enforcing its book rating law, which would have required booksellers to rate books based on the explicitness and relevance of the sexual references in this, you know, and without going into a lot of detail about this, you know, I think it’s, it’s notable, again, that the most conservative essentially cited on, you know, First Amendment and also a mixture of both First Amendment grounds, but also the the economic consequences of sort of requiring booksellers to come up with these rating systems.

[00:10:40] Josh Blank: You know, I think the thing we just want to point out is, you know, we’ve been asking a lot about these kinds of these kinds of questions about, you know, access to books, public school libraries, public libraries, efforts to ban books in Texas. And I mean, without going to a ton of detail here, you know, there’s resistance.

[00:10:53] Josh Blank: To things that are aligned or adjacent to banning books, uh, you know, there’s more of an appetite Yeah, it’s

[00:10:58] Jim Henson: fair to say quote unquote because somebody, you [00:11:00] know, somebody will come and say we’re not banning books, etc But right, you know,

[00:11:03] Josh Blank: that’s why I said aligned or adjacent. I’m not saying you know, and that’s right I don’t want to be fair here, but you know, there is more of an appetite around limiting what’s available to minors But it’s still not as lopsidedly partisan as we think of the last time we look in this That’s 60 percent of Republicans were open to basically limiting what books are available to young people in libraries, but 30 percent were opposed to this idea.

[00:11:23] Josh Blank: And so it’s not And again, that’s Republicans. That’s Republicans. So that’s not, this is not a slam dunk. When we look at the electorate and that leads to numbers in the electorate overall, it tends to find a majority of voters sort of against these kinds of efforts to limit, you know, basically book access in one way or another.

[00:11:38] Josh Blank: So that was an interesting thing that happened last week. Yeah. I

[00:11:41] Jim Henson: mean, that was one of those things that really carried over. I mean You know, we pay a lot of attention to these things when they’re in the legislative process, you have these arguments and, you know, we, you know, it’s only fair to note that, you know, there were a lot of doubts about the constitutionality of this.

[00:11:56] Jim Henson: Yeah. Going in and, and this is going to continue to be [00:12:00] debated. And

[00:12:00] Josh Blank: it was also, you know, to get to where they actually got on that bill took a lot of. Just curious routes and a lot of torturing to kind of decide that this is what they were going to do. And the fact that it kind of didn’t end up, you know, It didn’t end up passing constitutional muster, not to my surprise.

[00:12:14] Josh Blank: Doesn’t mean we won’t be back to this at some point later. Right, right.

[00:12:17] Jim Henson: And you know, the advocates and supporters of this, um. You know, we’re not banning books, we’re, you know, managing access. I don’t think that that argument ever completely took, but. So what else, you know, what else in the last couple of weeks?

[00:12:29] Jim Henson: Well, you know, big, you know, just in the last couple of days. Supreme Court issued an order, and they, you know, they didn’t issue a decision in the case per se, but they issued an order allowing U. S. Border Patrol agents to remove concertina wire placed among the U. S. Mexico border by the state of Texas, um, deployed by some combination, I think, of National Guard and DPS, but I think mostly National Guard, but under the, at the order and at the behest and the order of the [00:13:00] governor.

[00:13:00] Jim Henson: Um, You know, this is just taking place among various disputes between, that have been ongoing between the federal government and state forces, the most recently access to a park that the National Guard, you know, wired off and, and restricted access to in Eagle Pass, you know, most, most importantly, refusing to allow Border Patrol access to the park.

[00:13:27] Jim Henson: Border Patrol, you know, was arguing that, Um, essentially this is preventing them from doing their constitutionally designated duty by the time they, we got to court on this, um, you know, you know, and it’s interesting that the court issued this order. They’re also, you know, reviewing the Texas legislation, you know, they’re, they’re slated to give a more full hearing to Texas legislation, you know, empowering state enforcement of the.

[00:13:55] Jim Henson: [00:14:00] Um, you know, I mean, I, I, it was interesting how in the run up to this last week before the court ordered this decision, Um, you You know, I got calls. I know you did. Lots of discussion in the media about, you know, is there going to be, you know, I mean, I think people have this vision of like, you know, the National Guard and the Border Patrol sort of shooting it out at the border, you know, um.

[00:14:27] Jim Henson: And, you know, look, I don’t want to underplay the significance of this challenge by Texas to federal authority and traditional constitutional understandings of who has authority at the border and where those lines are. That’s interesting. That’s going on. But, you know, it speaks something to the, you know, both the nature of media coverage in a generic kind of way, but also the mood around this, how quickly we went to that.

[00:14:55] Jim Henson: In terms of, you know, the kinds of questions I was getting, you know, the discussion, the, you know, the kind of [00:15:00] implication in some of these stories and, you know, that I thought was interesting. Yeah,

[00:15:05] Josh Blank: I mean, I agree with that. I think, you know, coming on the heels, and we talked about this last week, of sort of Abbott’s, You know, I’m pretty unfortunately framed comment about, you know, essentially saying that, you know, we’re not shooting, you know, immigrants crossing the border because we’d be charged with murder by the federal government with the implication being otherwise.

[00:15:21] Josh Blank: Otherwise, yeah, open season, but I think to the extent that that was sort of the backdrop behind this, this conflict ongoing in this park in Eagle Pass. And it is interesting because I mean, my understanding is the DPS is letting like other people go in. Like I could go into the park. Apparently, if I just showed up and wanted to use the park, they’re just not letting border patrol in.

[00:15:37] Josh Blank: Right. Under the, and the idea here being is that they’re not letting them in because the contention that they’re essentially making is that Border Patrol is aiding and abetting the entry of migrants. It’s an interesting position to take, but I do think, I mean, one sort of, I’m

[00:15:51] Jim Henson: just thinking. And that was the, and that was the position taken in, in Texas filing with

[00:15:55] Josh Blank: the court.

[00:15:56] Josh Blank: Right. And so that’s, that’s an interesting position. You know, I mean, I, You know, [00:16:00] ultimately, I don’t know what Texas’s end game is with this because, you know, I mean, really, it’s like either you’re going to get what the court to agree that the Border Patrol is aiding and abetting, or you’re going to take over responsibility for securing the 1200 mile border.

[00:16:13] Josh Blank: I mean, like, it’s, I’m sorry to say there’s, you know, there’s a certain amount of theater here, but I mean, hey, we’re all adults. It’s okay. You know, the concertina wire thing, I think is actually, you know, a little bit more consequential in the short term, just because if you think about, you know, Yeah. The, just the way that these stories were trending to your point, you know, lastly, you think about Abbott’s comment about, you know, essentially murdering undocumented immigrants crossing the border, you think about, you know, this idea that people have the DPS is now standing there with guns, you know, drawn, you

[00:16:40] Jim Henson: know, look, the implication is in order to prevent border patrol and federal authorities from helping migrants cross the border illegally, right?

[00:16:50] Jim Henson: And so,

[00:16:51] Josh Blank: yeah, but I mean, But to go back and say, you know, I think the way that those stories were trending last week was pretty negative for Texas was pretty, you know, it’s probably a little bit negative for Abbott, you know, in some ways, not [00:17:00] necessarily with his core constituencies, but I think in terms of the overall direction of the coverage, but now with the Supreme Court saying, yeah, but the feds can go and cut that concertina wire.

[00:17:07] Josh Blank: It’s like, oh, so the federal government can go and cut the wire that’s keeping out the immigrants. I mean, there’s something about this. It’s actually like,

[00:17:13] Jim Henson: in terms of how you game this out. I mean, I think it’s kind of a save. Well, it’s been, it’s been, I think it’s been a pretty consistent run. feature. I’m kind of thinking about this as I say it, but I think this is right.

[00:17:26] Jim Henson: You know, it’s it’s been a pretty consistent feature of how Abbott and his and his team have played this issue in which, you know, The outcome of being, of getting pushback or being, you know, sort of either courts or politically being, you know, pursuing this to its intermediate term logical end to your point about what’s the long term game, you know, tends to break their way.

[00:17:55] Josh Blank: No, I, I mean, I think there, I mean, look, you know, like a lot of policy things and this, this doesn’t really happen on the [00:18:00] border as much, but I mean, you’re seeing this here is, you know, a lot of ways Abbott is forcing Democratic elected officials at various levels and various ways to, to take positions that they don’t really want to be forced to take.

[00:18:12] Josh Blank: So all of a sudden, you know, I’m a mayor and a liberal leading, you know, very overly well in the democratic city, and I have to be going out saying, stop sending these immigrants here. Right? Like, I mean, that’s not something that you want to

[00:18:23] Jim Henson: be doing. Yeah, no, that’s obviously like exhibit A in how, you know, they did, you know, they did, you know, in stark political terms, they did a good job of kind of gaming this out.

[00:18:32] Jim Henson: Yeah,

[00:18:32] Josh Blank: and I think this is, and I think this is a further part of this, is to the extent that, you know, the federal government is in the position of wanting to cut the barbed wire, that, if anything, is, You know, that becomes proof of the premise,

[00:18:43] Jim Henson: right? And if, and if you watch the coverage of this on different kinds of news outlets, you know, there’s a battle of the semiotics here, right?

[00:18:50] Jim Henson: Because on one hand, you know, the argument so that, so you have it, you know, team Abbott administration has made the argument that, [00:19:00] you know, border patrol is, you know, now helping people through the wire. So you have, what are the images that get attendant to that, you know, without even doing deep fakes or, you know, using You know, you have a still image or a little bit of video of, you know, these guys, you know, border patrol agents, you know, cutting the wire and, you know, shepherding immigrants through.

[00:19:22] Jim Henson: Now, the other semiotics that you see from the more critical side are, you know, sort of pretty nasty looking injuries, you know, that immigrants are getting. So you know, there’s a basic kind of like, Oh, these guys, they’ve been cut. They’re sitting there bleeding. You know, what is our obligation? Right. And by, and I don’t even mean that in.

[00:19:41] Jim Henson: You could mean that in a big ethical sense. I just mean in terms of you’re on the ground. You’re kind of what we, you know, call respond, you know, first responders. You know, and, you know, these people sitting there bleeding, you know, depending on where they are vis a vis the concertina wire, you know, they might already be on U.

[00:19:58] Jim Henson: S. soil. Right. [00:20:00] And so what are you supposed to do? And this, you know, takes advantage of that, and the images work in the way that we’re talking about. Right. You know, I think it’s going to, you know, obviously to to really step back and thinking about, you know, your question before you comment before about how this plays out in the long term.

[00:20:19] Jim Henson: You know, Texas loses a lot of these cases, right? You know, we’re in, you know, we go to, you know, Texas goes to court, Attorney General Abbott or Attorney General Paxton, you know, get a lot of play in the state and nationally for challenging federal authority in various areas. They go to court. The courts work very slowly.

[00:20:39] Jim Henson: You know, if you think about, for example, voting legislation, you know, can think of more than one occasion in which the legislatures had to go back and tweak what they’ve done after the court has told them, the courts have told them they have to tweak it. There’s a real long term, medium term or short term, medium term, long term political calculation [00:21:00] in all of this, which is that.

[00:21:02] Jim Henson: So, to my mind, the short and medium term benefits, whether you’re going to win or lose in court, are outweighing whatever is going to happen down the road. Yeah. Pretty common in

[00:21:11] Josh Blank: politics. Yeah. I will say, though, the court process is moving a lot faster than it usually does, and partially that’s because, you know, you’ve got Border Patrol with guns, and you’ve got DPS, and you know, with guns, it’s an emergent situation that, you know, requires, you know, an exigent response, right?

[00:21:26] Josh Blank: Yeah. But, yeah, I mean, it is, uh, it, again, nobody, you know, again, I’ll say this. There’s no aspect of this. I don’t think that, you know, the governor and all those in part, you know, all those sort of making these decisions aren’t aware of and aren’t gaming out themselves. And right now it’s looking pretty okay for them.

[00:21:43] Josh Blank: I mean, that’s kind of how I would

[00:21:44] Jim Henson: say again, the political, the politics of that. You know, our, our work for them.

[00:21:49] Josh Blank: So a couple other things from last week here. So, I mean, the DOJ released its comprehensive report on the mass shooting Uvalde. And, you know, I mean, the main sort of takeaway, I think that was sort of the headline of the news was, [00:22:00] you know, the significant failures on the part of law enforcement in this.

[00:22:02] Josh Blank: I mean, I noticed that the report was like 500 pages longer than the house report, which I thought was, you know, again. Not trying to be that kind of professor, you know, patient size matters, huh? Sometimes it’s to some people, you know, um, You know back in august we asked people about the factors that they thought are voters what they thought were the major factors That led to the sort of the severity of the mass

[00:22:24] Jim Henson: shooting.

[00:22:25] Jim Henson: This was august of 22, which was pretty proximate, right?

[00:22:28] Josh Blank: And what we found was, you know You know, not surprisingly, you know, three quarters of voters said it was the delay by police and confronting the shooter. The next highest number was in the 40s, where you saw, you know, flaws in school safety practices, you know, weaknesses in the mental health system and the weapon.

[00:22:42] Josh Blank: But those were all up in the 40 percent range, but 75 percent of voters basically, yeah, it was the police response. So in some ways, affirming what people had already, the conclusion people had already arrived at. Um, you know, does it, you know, make a difference going forward? I don’t know. We’ll see. Um, you know, there has been some movement on the, on the legal [00:23:00] front.

[00:23:00] Josh Blank: Apparently, you know, grand jury was impaneled and Uvalde apparently, but nobody really knows what’s going to happen, what’s going to happen or what, or what even they’re really doing yet. So that remains ongoing.

[00:23:10] Jim Henson: Yeah. I mean, I, you know, I thought it was interesting the degree to which. And look, part of this is that this is a little overdetermined, right, in the sense that I think there are very few people, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s a, let’s put it, it’s a relatively rare instance of something with a lot of profile in which there’s a lot of partisan disagreement.

[00:23:34] Jim Henson: on the failings of the emergency response. Right. And so You know, I, I think, and we, you know, we talked about this a bit at the time. It only gives any way to resolve this because it’s, it’s so because the failure was so egregious and is so well documented. And again, to go to, you know, the semiotics of these things.

[00:23:57] Jim Henson: That theme today, I guess, or at least so far. [00:24:00] You know, the imagery really supports this argument. Now that’s not Always a good, I can be misleading, but in this case, the alignment between, you know, all of this video footage we’ve got, you know, if you watch the national news coverage when the report was issued on, you know, probably the six or seven instances that I saw, and again, not random sample, but, you know, across networks and cable, one of the things that you saw, you know, most frequently was, the section of the, of the, of the, of the school camera.

[00:24:35] Jim Henson: And I don’t, I don’t think maybe it might’ve been one of the body cams of, you know, one of the law enforcement, you know, officers running down the hall, you know, you see the smoke coming from the shots and then he runs back. And that’s become kind of emblematic of what happened, you know, and you know, we, we wrote at the time, And I, and I still think this is out there, but it’s [00:25:00] just the nature of, you know, and again, it’s, I think it’s fair, but unfortunate, you know, we know that the gun, the, you know, the presence of the firearm that was there, you know, lots of documentation that there was a lot of chatter saying, Hey, he’s got a high power assault rifle.

[00:25:17] Jim Henson: We’re going to wait until. You know, various things might happen to make it more safe was a pretty big part of this, you know, and, but because that folds into the much more human story, I think of and more apparent, as we said that, you know, like there was a failure of, you know, strategy planning, and just a failure to act.

[00:25:39] Jim Henson: And I think that, you know, that makes such intuitive sense to people. Yeah. You know, particularly given the evidence. And again, I’m not saying that it’s not right. I mean, I think it’s right, but it really just overpowers, you know, the discussion of anything else that might have, you know, of other things that contributed to this.

[00:25:58] Josh Blank: Yeah, yeah, it’s an interesting way to put it. I [00:26:00] mean, I started thinking, you know, and I’m not, I’m not disagreeing or agreeing. I’m just thinking about what you said. It is interesting to consider the fact of, you know, people talk a lot about, you know, like the school safety practices and whether the doors were locked or not and the organization or disorganization of the incident command and through

[00:26:13] Jim Henson: something that was, that was relatively newer and more detail on this and the triage process, which was a triage and medical response also being horrible, horrible.

[00:26:22] Josh Blank: I don’t want to talk about it, but But the thing about that is, you know, you sort of have to take a step back and say, you know, in a situation like that, you know, you can understand why a person might be inclined to say, Oh, that door is locked. And why someone else might say, Oh, okay. Yeah, right. Because, you know, with basically, you know, smoke flying, the high power, you know, all of a sudden it’s like, are you going to jiggle your keys?

[00:26:42] Josh Blank: Yeah. And so, I mean, this is the thing, people become motivated to see what they wanna see, to believe, what they wanna believe. And you know, even in a situation like that, right,

[00:26:51] Jim Henson: and I think in this case what it’s done is that, you know, I don’t, it, it hasn’t led to anything that I think is fundamentally misleading, but it, yeah, it, you know, it if you will, it places [00:27:00] coefficient negative and positive coefficients on certain things.

[00:27:02] Jim Henson: Yeah, for sure. Certain elements of the explanation,

[00:27:05] Josh Blank: you know? Yeah, I agree. Yeah. I mean, we’re getting down to . We’re trying to talk about this in the door case way possible. A hundred percent agree with the way you’re thinking about this. And that’s exactly, I was avoiding talking about it that way, but yes, there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of correlation between these factors and you had, it takes a little bit of disentangling to think about what really was doing what here, but yeah, I mean, you know, you’re right.

[00:27:24] Josh Blank: It is one of those things. It’s, it’s, I don’t know, it’s just, you

[00:27:29] Jim Henson: know, I mean, yeah, and it kind of comes up at a, you know, it’s kind of come and gone pretty quickly as a story. I mean, it was a big story last, you know, I think. You know, we’ve heard, you know, Roland Gutierrez’s campaign, of course, on the, in the Democratic Senate primary, you know, has, you know, has tried to use this to sort of bring, move their issues back to the center, but, or center of the discussion, you know, and I, and I think, um, So what else did we see?

[00:27:56] Jim Henson: Let’s, so we can move on from that. We got another couple of things on the bullet [00:28:00] list. Uh, you know, campaign finance reports came in last week. A lot of, you know, people looking at lots of things there. A lot of things to look at, you know, right. You know, who. You know, how much money is being raised in these house races, uh, particularly on the Republican side, who’s spending money, who’s not spending the money now and what does that mean?

[00:28:20] Jim Henson: Does it mean they’re probably sitting on it for the last, you know, to avoid it being reported in some cases, you know, the thing that really, the element that really kind of made news. Was this the campaign finance report from the governor, right?

[00:28:33] Josh Blank: Yeah. So, you know, in amongst sort of 19 million or so brought in during the reporting period, about 6 million of that donation, this is to the governor came from a single Pennsylvania businessman who’s apparently a big school voucher proponents.

[00:28:47] Josh Blank: And that was sort of. I mean, it was notable because one, it was, I think, the largest single largest, you know, one off kind of contribution in Texas history, you know, it’s sort of, you know, it sort of goes into the list of sort of [00:29:00] Abbott, you know, mega donor kind of instances that people talk about. But it’s also notable because it led to a lot of people asking questions.

[00:29:06] Josh Blank: So is that six million going to go straight into house races? That is a guess. That is a good remark. Yeah. Is that earmark basically to go after, you know, basically the Republicans who voted against a voucher plan, right? Because I mean, I was sort of doing some quick math this morning. You think, you know, like about 26 divided, you know, 6 million five by 26, about 230, 000, you know, a pop, that’s a lot of money to potentially drop on, you know, the carpet bomb a campaign in the last week, if you want to try to move a lot of things at once, you know?

[00:29:31] Josh Blank: So, I mean, this is one of those, I mean, like a lot of this right now, it’s kind of a wait and see, wait and see what he does, wait and see how much he spends. But I mean, I think people, you know, A lot of people are reasonably looking at it and thinking, you know, he could spend 6 million on those 20 races and just, you know, go crazy.

[00:29:44] Josh Blank: Right, right,

[00:29:44] Jim Henson: well and remember, you know, he’s also endorsing a lot of incumbents. Right. Including incumbents who voted for a voucher so that could also wind up being

[00:29:53] Josh Blank: You look for the good side of human

[00:29:54] Jim Henson: nature. Well, you know, I don’t know if that’s the good side or the bad side. You know, it’s, you know, [00:30:00] I’ll tell you what, it’s good for the governor if you said, okay, here’s a big pot of voucher money.

[00:30:05] Jim Henson: You know, that means that’s money, you know, you’re, you know, non voucher money you don’t have to spend to defend some of these incumbents and still get the

[00:30:11] Josh Blank: credit for it. I mean, I’ve been road testing this idea. We’ll move on from this in a second, but I’ll say it here. If I didn’t sound like I said this last week, but I’ll make this again.

[00:30:18] Josh Blank: I mean, I think that’s a good point. And I think it is, it would be wise for the governor to shower that money in both, both directions if he’s planning to. And part of it, I mean, just to say like. You know, if he does, we were to say here to take, you know, the fire and brimstone approach and say that 6 million is to go after, you know, those Republicans who, you know, who didn’t support man vouchers, he’s not going to battle, you know, 1000, right?

[00:30:37] Josh Blank: Some of those guys are gonna come back through. And now all of a sudden, you know, you’ve got people looking at the governor who seems to hoover up like a huge amount of money in the state who’s now taking, you know, again, donations basically from out of state businessmen. Earmark to basically go after incumbents in his own party, you know, that I’m not saying this is going to happen, but it does create the environment that allows for somebody to say, Hey, you know, maybe we should put some limits on this.

[00:30:59] Josh Blank: [00:31:00] Yeah, yeah. And it’s not, I don’t know. I know, I know. I, all I’m saying is it creates the possibility of the environment. It doesn’t mean that that’s what happens, but there’s a, there’s a, you know, there’s a popular narrative out there that campaign finance reform happens when there’s some kind of scandal or something.

[00:31:13] Josh Blank: And that’s not really when campaign finance reform happened. Campaign finance reform happens when. The out party and enough of the in party don’t like the way resources are getting distributed. And that’s all I’m saying. I mean, it’s sort of the dynamics are kind of setting up in a way that if Abbott’s not careful, he is going to give a lot of people a reason to say, you know.

[00:31:30] Josh Blank: Texas is a limited government place, you know, does the governor need to have 37 million dollars in his bank account when he’s not up for re election, let’s say, you

[00:31:39] Jim Henson: know? You know, what I would say in terms of pointing to

[00:31:41] Josh Blank: recent I’d also add, uh, Patrick taking the 3 million before the Paxson trials, another sort of recent example here of, you know Yeah, I, you know Problematic optics.

[00:31:53] Jim Henson: Sure. Yeah, I’m just, I mean, you know, I think the, you know, the last time that somebody kind of pursued this [00:32:00] along those lines and thought that, you know, and I think it was based on that kind of an argument. Was, you know, the Lyle Larson legislation trying to, and it was a very comparatively mild, you know, trying to, you know, limit the time that contributors could be, you know, appoint, you know, become gubernatorial appointees and things like this.

[00:32:20] Jim Henson: And that would be Lyle Larson, who’s no longer in

[00:32:22] Josh Blank: office. He was very much out on an island when he did that. I mean, I was just, I mean, like, on that, on that issue and in general, right? And then he ended, Abbott ended up challenging, or ended up spending money against him and a couple others in that cycle.

[00:32:33] Josh Blank: Um, but I mean, here’s the thing. I mean, look, it worked that time. I mean, the sense that Abbott basically made very clear that, like, Okay, you can pursue that kind of approach with me, but I’m gonna veto it, and also you should know, like, I’m going after you. Right. But the thing is, at this point, you know, it’s one thing to say I’m gonna go after three members.

[00:32:47] Josh Blank: It’s another thing to say I’m gonna go after Twenty, twenty three members, thirty members. It’s another thing to say, I’m going to do that. And also, by the way, I’m going to get a six million dollar check from some out of state business person specifically to go after you. I mean, it’s changing [00:33:00] the calculus a little bit versus, you know, Lyle Larson on his way out, you know.

[00:33:04] Jim Henson: Well, I don’t know that Lyle Larson was on his way out purposefully when he did that. No,

[00:33:10] Josh Blank: well, no, I mean, he, I mean, he was, he was practically, but that’s a different question. Um,

[00:33:15] Jim Henson: you know, I mean, he had defined himself as kind of, you know, obviously not on the reservation.

[00:33:19] Josh Blank: Yeah, exactly. Which is harder and harder to do.

[00:33:22] Jim Henson: Um, yeah, well, you know, I, I’m skeptical, but we’ll see. No,

[00:33:27] Josh Blank: I’m not, I’m not saying it’s gonna, I’m just saying it’s interesting. It’s an interesting set of conditions to my mind. Yeah, sure. I mean, because ultimately, like, ultimately it is up to the legislature. I mean, the legislature does have the power to change the dynamics of the way this works and they could.

[00:33:42] Josh Blank: And if you’re a house member, nobody’s writing you a 6 million check. You know,

[00:33:46] Jim Henson: okay, but, but, but if you’re in the Senate, then they’ve written Dan Patrick a check. It’s not moving through there. Anyway. Well,

[00:33:51] Josh Blank: you know, I’ve been thinking about this too. So that’s right.

[00:33:54] Jim Henson: Unless, you know, unless Patrick, you know, I mean, there’s a lot of questions there.

[00:33:58] Josh Blank: Yeah. I mean, there’s a question about Patrick’s [00:34:00] piece of that. I mean, I think the other thing about this is you wonder, I mean, this is where I start to wonder, we haven’t talked about this, but about, you know, let’s say those senators who might’ve feel like they got feel as though they’re getting squeezed either on the packs and stuff or on other things, looking at Patrick and also feeling the same kind of way about it.

[00:34:15] Josh Blank: You know what I mean? Yeah. Again, I just, I’m just saying there’s some conditions out there. I’m not saying they get activated. It’s just interesting to look

[00:34:21] Jim Henson: at. You know, I mean, I think that, you know, it would require a kind of perception of interest along the lines you’re talking about and also some, you know, risk aversion.

[00:34:32] Jim Henson: Yeah, that I’m not or some, you know, some risk insensitivity that I’m not seen in evidence. Oh, well, no,

[00:34:38] Josh Blank: no, none

[00:34:39] Jim Henson: of that. But, you know, things could change. Yeah. So to wind up, one of the biggest stories on the ground in Texas from the last week or so, from a, from a very Texas centric perspective, um, also intersects both Abbott and the Texas primary GOP primary.

[00:34:57] Jim Henson: And, you know, After the Texas [00:35:00] Supreme Court last week ruled against, uh, AG Ken Paxton’s efforts to avoid having to give testimony, testimony under oath in the ongoing, in the whistleblower’s ongoing lawsuit against the Ag Paxton announced that he would no longer context the facts of the whistleblower lawsuit and was, you know, I think in the, in their words, uh, prepared to accept a judgment in the case without further litigation.

[00:35:27] Jim Henson: Which was, I think, an interesting kind of way to pose that, you know, in effect, Paxton’s office has officially kind of abandoned the denial, uh, that was at the heart of part of his impeachment trial defense, which is that, you know, denying that he violated the whistleblower act. He’s now essentially saying.

[00:35:48] Jim Henson: Um, and so, you know, we’re gonna, we’re gonna stipulate those facts to try to make this, you know, go away. And, you know, the, the, the statements on social media and the official statements [00:36:00] and the statements of his defenders, I’ll try to play that in a different way that this was really saving the taxpayers more money.

[00:36:07] Jim Henson: I’ve got more important things to do. I’ve got to go continue suing the federal government, fighting the fentanyl epidemic, et cetera. Um, You know, but in the end, this seemed like a, you know, Paxton got put in a box and it was a pretty, it was a pretty stunning turn of events in some

[00:36:27] Josh Blank: ways. Yeah, I mean, I think for anyone who watched, you know, the trial closely, you know, and we acknowledge all throughout it was not a legal, I mean, I said the trial in the Senate, it was not.

[00:36:37] Josh Blank: A legal trial is a political trial and it, and it felt like it, right. And it read like it, and it looked

[00:36:42] Jim Henson: like laid out in a legalistic way that ultimately helped him,

[00:36:44] Josh Blank: but yeah. Right. Yeah. And yeah, it was legal when it was helpful for it to be legal. Right. And it was not really so much when it did need to be, but you know, if you spent, you know, at least part of the summer watching that, the idea of going from, you know, sort of this full throated, you know, not [00:37:00] only, you know, I would say it’s not even a saying that, you know.

[00:37:03] Josh Blank: Uh, defensive actions, but endorsement of action saying, you know, if anything, what was going on by the whistleblowers was a coup, you know, was, uh, and in fact, not only was it, you know, in his right to fire these people, you know, he was legally bound, you know, he was legally able to, in fact, he should, he should have fired them.

[00:37:18] Josh Blank: Right. And then you go from that to, well, we’re not going to contest the facts as the whistleblowers lay them out. Yeah. And basically, I mean, it’s hard not to look at, um, I mean, it’s hard not to connect some dots here. I mean, I think the fact that the Supreme Court earlier in the week said, look, you know, any effort you’re going to have to shield yourself and your top deputies from from testifying under oath in a real court of law.

[00:37:40] Josh Blank: Right. We’re not going to do that. And the fact that a few days later, they say, okay, well, then, you know what, we’re going to take our ball and go home. Tell us how much

[00:37:47] Jim Henson: this costs. Sure makes it seem like they’re trying to pay their way out of it, or, you know, buy their way out of it. And they even admitted, look, let, you know, uh, you know, not they, but, you know, it inevitably, you know, raised the discussion of, well, [00:38:00] Do we think that the settlement number is going to go down?

[00:38:04] Jim Henson: Well, it’s got to go up. I mean, that’s right. And so that means, and so do we think when the legislature was unwilling to pay the previous amount that they’re now going to want to pay the other amount? Yeah. Seems like, you know, and so, you know, just in terms of getting some of the, you know, so as of now, the judge in the case has said, has set a date for Paxton to.

[00:38:25] Jim Henson: Testify, which is well before the primary February 1st, um, and, and with dates for whistleblower testimony, you know, in the beginning about a week, week and a half period after February 1st.

[00:38:38] Josh Blank: So they’re sort of two things going on here. And I think it’s probably worth trying to separate them. At least for the discussion.

[00:38:43] Josh Blank: And just, you know, think for thought, right? There’s the actual process of, of this. This trial and like what happens, right? I mean, you know, ultimately they could go back and negotiate a settlement again. I would be shocked if it wasn’t a higher number than the 3. 2 million. I mean, it has to be right. They can go forward, you know, with the trial and have the judge [00:39:00] said it or whatever.

[00:39:00] Josh Blank: I mean, again, we’re not lawyers, but there’s that whole piece of it. And your point, I think is right. You know, I think there is a funny part of this. If you’re Ken Paxson and his allies like, yeah, okay, we’ll just kick this back to the legislature. Let them deal with it next session and see if they’ll pay it right and have them deal with it or not.

[00:39:14] Josh Blank: But there’s another piece of this recently, which is this is attached to the primary. And what’s interesting is, is to the extent that, you know, Paxon has gone on his variously described air quotes revenge tour against the many, many House Republicans who voted for his impeachment, it does raise the question of like, whether that.

[00:39:30] Josh Blank: Effort stands. I mean, how much

[00:39:31] Jim Henson: does this take

[00:39:32] Josh Blank: the air out of that balloon? I mean because it does seem to me that at this point, you know Again, you’re speaking about the social media response I mean the social media response from you know, some of the house managers of the impeachment trial and well Among others was was pretty you

[00:39:44] Jim Henson: know, yeah, it wasn’t even just social media.

[00:39:45] Jim Henson: I mean, you know, the Investigating committee issued a statement right under you know, andrew murr’s signature the chair that was pretty scathing Yeah, I mean and put all these things together and again, not nobody should be surprised

[00:39:57] Josh Blank: by that Yeah, and I think you know [00:40:00] I mean, one of the things that was remarkable about this from, from, from the jump was, you know, the fact that like it was the clearly violated whistleblower laws.

[00:40:07] Josh Blank: I mean, that was sort of that was seemed the most obvious piece of this, you know, kind of just from the basic fact pattern, as much as that was pushed back against in the impeachment trial. The fact that, again, now we’re in an actual trial and they’re just saying, no, that happened is interesting. But then the question becomes, you know, again, from what I’ve been following of some of these local races and what I’ve seen kind of in the press coverage, it’s not as though the challengers to these incumbent Republicans.

[00:40:29] Josh Blank: Aren’t leaning heavily on the Paxton piece. It seems like that from what I’ve seen and again I can’t I can’t speak to all the race I can only speak to the ones that I’ve seen coverage of but when I am That’s kind of what I’m curious about is how much of these candidates, you know Is is the Paxton endorsement and the impeachment vote?

[00:40:44] Josh Blank: Is it part of a broader package challenging incumbents? Or is it the the main rationale and it seems in a lot of cases more like it’s the main rationale And it seems like that rationale has just been totally popped because there’s an easy response if you’re an incumbency. They’re not the state of Texas is under Ken [00:41:00] Paxton’s direction.

[00:41:00] Josh Blank: Uh, the state of Texas is no longer even contesting that they didn’t fire the

[00:41:05] Jim Henson: whistleblowers. Well, I guess the question I have, and I don’t, you know, and I don’t think the coverage necessarily to be fair, I don’t think the coverage necessarily helps us with this. You know, you may have some candidates trying to unseat incumbents that voted against Paxton.

[00:41:24] Jim Henson: Yeah. Who saw this as an opportunity? Right now, whether the rationale for taking this opportunity is how much of that is the public face of these campaigns. I just don’t know. Um, you know, and and, you know, look, we’ve been talking about, you know, we, we’ve pulled on how much people paying attention to this.

[00:41:52] Jim Henson: And, you know, the results seem like, you know, this is, People have heard about it, but it doesn’t seem, you know, amazingly [00:42:00] salient, you know, you, you know, the public, you know, the public opinion data that we have is, I think, you know, ambiguous on this as well. It’s not entirely salient. You look at Paxton’s job approval numbers, they’ve recovered to a mediocre point.

[00:42:16] Jim Henson: Yeah. Among Republicans. You wouldn’t call him weak. No. You know? And so. Uh, you know, when I say, you know, have they let the air out of the balloon? I’m still not sure how much air was in this balloon to begin with in terms of actual voting decisions. Now, that doesn’t mean that, you know, I mean, as we well know, I mean, if you strategize to use this as an opportunity to recruit and incentivize and attract funding for challengers to incumbents, you know, that, that does a lot of lifting.

[00:42:53] Jim Henson: Yep. And that’s a, you know, so the balloon is, you know, there’s, there’s a balloon there to torture the metaphor. But, [00:43:00] you know, I It still seems to me a little vague over just how much you know This is really driving voting decisions and it’s hard for me to imagine this helps in any way No, I just don’t know if it hurts how much it hurts, you know, maybe you know We can you know, we’re talking about ways to try to figure this out right in terms of polling and but even that’s you know It’s difficult and you know, particularly these right at these, you know at these house at the level

[00:43:25] Josh Blank: of a house race to your point I don’t think it has any sort of major impact either way.

[00:43:30] Josh Blank: I mean, the question, the question is, is, you know, sort of the possibility of it helping and hurting in some sort of, to my mind, in sort of a bank shoddy sort of sense, you know, to the extent that there are some candidates out there challenging incumbents whose total, uh, you know, reason for running is the Paxson vote, and that’s the opportunity that led them to run.

[00:43:45] Josh Blank: And, you know, this is what they’re going to base their candidacy around. You know, look, that probably has an impact because you’re an incumbent, you have a ready made answer now at this point, you know, to the extent this comes up now. At the same time, you know, one of the things I keep thinking about is these funding questions, you know, a lot of people have pointed out that, [00:44:00] uh, you know, two things kind of come out of this, you know, one of the things that I think is interesting is that, you know, Paxton, you know, looking at campaign finance reports, Paxton spent a ton of his available cash on his legal defense.

[00:44:10] Josh Blank: And so, you know, at least as we’re, we’re Paxton stands at the moment, he doesn’t have a ton of money to throw around in these races himself. So, I mean, he can throw on his own endorsement. He can go and do events.

[00:44:20] Jim Henson: Yeah. And he’s been doing, you know, a little, you know, both of that.

[00:44:22] Josh Blank: Right. Of course. Uh, you know, the other sort of related development and none of this is determinative and I’ll say why in a second is that, Defend Texas Liberty PAC, which was sort of his big backer, has been notably quiet thus far in primary season.

[00:44:35] Josh Blank: Now, part of that has to do with their dalliance, dalliance if you will, with neo Nazis and sort of the bad press that came out of that. It’s also hard not to wonder how much of that is also related to the fact that, you know, when once Paxson says, Hey, I’m not, you know, contesting this, whether they want to pull back in terms of how much money they’re going to spend.

[00:44:52] Josh Blank: Now, at the same time, as we’ve already pointed out, excuse me. It’s very possible that, you know, if you think about the funders behind Defend Texas Liberties Act, you think about Ken [00:45:00] Paxson’s biggest funders, they can spend as much money as they want. They can spin up an operation very, very quickly. And if they wanna spend, you know, a hundred thousand dollars, $200,000, a couple hundred thousand dollars in the closing days of a campaign to say that someone’s not sufficiently conservative or someone someone voted to impeach Ken Paxton, there’s not enough money or time for incumbents to, to really respond to that in any sort of

[00:45:24] Jim Henson: serious way.

[00:45:25] Jim Henson: Well that’s, you know, that’s the campaign chess game.

[00:45:26] Josh Blank: Right. And that’s the campaign chess. And so we kind of have to just wait and see, you know, you’ve got

[00:45:30] Jim Henson: the other, you know, other, other elements out there. I mean, there’s a lot of countervailing factors. I mean, I think, you know, a couple of things about, you know, we’ve been talking offline about this defend Texas liberty spending question.

[00:45:41] Jim Henson: You know, the other thing to remember is that, you know, there’s a lot of countervailing factors here. Yeah. Right. And I think, you know, Who’s using who here, right, in terms of Paxton and Defend Texas Liberty. Defend Texas Liberty has a lot of [00:46:00] other irons in the fire other than Ken Paxton, right, and not that they, you know, he’s.

[00:46:05] Jim Henson: You know, their guy and all this kind of thing, but, you know, a lot of other things going on in that that they’re interested in. And also remember, there’s a few more, you know, a little more than two dozen, I think, give or take candidates in which Abbott and Paxton are on the opposite side, right. And you know, I, you know, look, this again, varies from district to district, you know, and it varies a lot, frankly.

[00:46:32] Jim Henson: Yeah. You know, all things being equal. If you ask me if I’m a house member in a close race, would I rather have Abbott’s backing or would I rather have Paxton’s backing right now? I think you’d rather have Abbott. I would 100 percent agree with that. Right? And so, you know, at some point You know where the rubber meets the road here in the last couple weeks again a lot of things we don’t know here That’s why we [00:47:00] have these elections, right?

[00:47:01] Jim Henson: Yeah, we’re talking about a very small subset of the electorate and Very small very very small electorates in these individual races. Mm hmm, you know where you know, Yankee Ravage You know, about 15, 000 votes or something in these races. If you have people are really ginned up, you’re looking at 25, 000, maybe a little more,

[00:47:21] Josh Blank: you know?

[00:47:21] Josh Blank: Well, and that’s, and that’s one of the things about this, you know, we say things are endogenous, you know, again, when it ends, no matter what happens, we’re going to hear claims. by everybody about how they were the deciding factor, how they’re so powerful. I mean, one way or another, you know, you’ll hear about Abbott’s role in the primary or Paxson’s role in the primary or, you know, how to true conservatives spoke up and whatever.

[00:47:41] Josh Blank: And there’s two things is that one, you know, it’s almost certainly the actual picture is going to be much, much muddier. But two, you know, when you look at someone like Abbott, who has so much resources, he is, you know, again, we’re talking about those last minute buys right in the chest, which is But you know what’s not going on polling, and it’s not going to last minute, what’s going on right now is the polling.

[00:47:58] Josh Blank: And so ultimately like they’re [00:48:00] not going to play in races where they’re not going to have the impact that they want to have, or they don’t have a

[00:48:04] Jim Henson: chance to. There’s a lot of polling going on in these house races being done by, you know, interested parties that know that we’re not seeing publicly or at best we’re seeing, you know, and this, this hasn’t really started quite as much as I’ve seen, but in the next start getting leaked.

[00:48:17] Jim Henson: In the next couple of weeks, we’re going to start seeing a lot of, you know, leaked campaign polling. Right.

[00:48:24] Josh Blank: And so the thing is, is, you know, when you start to see Selectively released. I shouldn’t even say that. Yeah, selectively released. And so, exactly. So I think, you know, once we start seeing, you know, where does Paxton really put in effort?

[00:48:32] Josh Blank: Where does he start really doing events once we get closer to those elections? Where does Abbott really start spending money, start, you know, putting ads out? Ultimately, that’s not a random subset. It’s not even going to be all of the potential targets. It’s going to be the targets where they know that they’ve got the highest probability of success.

[00:48:46] Josh Blank: So that afterwards they can say, see. Look, I was right. You know, the voters are with me, but they’re not going to necessarily go and just, you know, scatter shot every possible race and see which ones they can get because, you know, they’re smarter than that.

[00:48:59] Jim Henson: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, [00:49:00] yeah. Yeah. I mean, everyone’s going to have probably a lot more confidence in targeting rather than random strategy.

[00:49:07] Jim Henson: Right now. But, you know, I would say that may or may not be right. But I think this is,

[00:49:11] Josh Blank: you know, but I’d say this, you know, this is important. I mean, like, look, you know, knowing the type of people who listen to a podcast like this, I think it’ll be really interesting, you know, after the fact and thinking about, you know, how this gets covered.

[00:49:21] Josh Blank: You know, if Abbott goes and says, yeah, look, I knocked off four incumbents. And, you know, you want to say how many races did they spend more than 20, 000 in or whatever the threshold is. Oh, did they spend, you know, did they spend that in 20, 30 races and they knocked off three? Then you might. you know, come to a different conclusion than to say, Oh, wow, you knocked off four incumbents.

[00:49:37] Josh Blank: Yeah.

[00:49:37] Jim Henson: I mean, you know, what you’ll see is what we see all the time is, you know, the selection of the denominator that most benefits them when they’re looking at their, you know, when that their success rates and, you know, so what they’ll, you know, if, if the normal pattern holds, there isn’t that much turnover, maybe a little more just based on there being a larger universe.

[00:49:57] Jim Henson: Right. You know, you’re going to [00:50:00] see the defense of pro voucher incumbents folded into the success rate.

[00:50:05] Josh Blank: Exactly. And I think the point here is that, you know, because of that, that window. After the election, you have this period where, you know, the election occurred, you get some results, you know, the interested parties start, you know, basically tallying up all the wins that they feel like they have.

[00:50:18] Josh Blank: Right. So they can make that claim. But we’re still waiting for the campaign finance report. We’re still waiting for the final vote data. And those those stories get written. And then about a week or two later, you can start to say, Well, actually, wait a minute, you know,

[00:50:29] Jim Henson: by that time, the audience for that is, you know, a Pretty

[00:50:34] Josh Blank: small.

[00:50:34] Josh Blank: Yeah. And so this is to say, you know, my only prediction here is to say, you know, expect it to be muddy, muddled and muddy, but that’s on purpose and expect again, I think everybody to claim victory. And I should

[00:50:43] Jim Henson: qualify that the audience, the public audience is pretty small, but it’s the kind of thing that insiders will be looking at to handicap.

[00:50:49] Jim Henson: You know, what the balance of power is between different ideological sectors, different interest groups, different factions in the House and the Senate, um, but still a lot to [00:51:00] develop on there. So, with that, um, thanks to Josh for being here. Thanks to our excellent production team in the dev studio in the College of Liberal Arts at UT Austin.

[00:51:10] Jim Henson: Uh, you can find Uh, data we talked about past podcasts, lots of posting by Josh and I in various combinations at Texas politics dot u texas.edu. Uh, thank you of course for listening. Keep in touch and we’ll be back soon with another second reading podcast.

[00:51:34] Jim Henson: The second reading podcast is a production of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.