January 17, 2023 – The Shifting Politics of Business in Texas

[00:00:00] Intro: Welcome to the second reading podcast from the University of Texas at Austin. The Republicans were in the Democratic Party because there was only one party. Sir, I tell people on a regular basis, there is still a land of opportunity in America. It’s called Texas. The problem is these departures from the Constitution, they have become the norm at what?

[00:00:25] Intro: Must a female senator raise her hand or her

[00:00:28] Intro: voice to be recognized over the male colleagues in the room?

[00:00:34] Jim: And welcome back to the second reading podcast. I’m Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. Joining in today by Josh Blank, the research director of the same project. How was your long weekend, Josh? It was

[00:00:51] Josh: busy ish. I mean, you know, we had some, uh, we had.

[00:00:54] Josh: Work related events. Yeah. We

[00:00:56] Jim: had a good event Saturday at UT [00:01:00] Austin, our biennial internship training seminar, which was well attended and well guessed. You know, we were talking about our, our programming seems successful. We were, uh, happy to have a variety of people from the legislative side, the media side, the advocacy side, and I think it, you know, went over well and.

[00:01:20] Jim: Broadly is

[00:01:20] Josh: planned. You know, I, I like to think the kids got something out of it, but I’d also say, you know, I always watch it and. . Well, if they didn’t, that’s on them. Yeah. , because to some degree I think’s there’s some, there’s some great guests who really reinforce some good messages for them. So I hope, I hope there was, I hope that they, they got it.

[00:01:36] Jim: And so, you know, if any of you are listening, thanks for being there, both on the guest side, but also on the attendee side. So today, We’re back for a podcast. As the legislature continues to get itself organized today, we get the statewide officials, you know, the made the governor inaugurated. I thought that today we could look at some of the results from [00:02:00] some of the questions on our December poll.

[00:02:02] Jim: You know, the had their genesis really in the increasing. Attention to, and frankly friction within the Republican party about policies at the intersection of business and government. You know, and we’ve talked about several of these things in, in. Recent months because they’re not entirely new. And I’ll go into that with a little background, but we made a foray into some preliminary assessment of public opinion in these areas in the poll that we talked about last week that we ran in December.

[00:02:32] Jim: And you know, some of this was, I mean, You know, I don’t want to suggest that we’re piloting questions on our survey, but you know, I, I think as a year end survey, there were some taking stock and a little bit of, you know, catching up with things that we hadn’t done in a while, but also thinking about. , some preliminary probes of attitudes that we think are gonna come up later, before they become more salient and maybe work out some of the issues beforehand.

[00:02:59] Jim: Yeah, and I would

[00:02:59] Josh: even [00:03:00] say, you know, it it, you know, there’s a, there’s a term of art that we use and it’s called, you know, level of conceptualization. Yeah. Right. And sort of how do we, how do we conceive of these things where we’re looking at? And I think, you know, with a legislative session where, you know, there are going to, there’s likely to be, you know, some action, we’ll see how much.

[00:03:16] Josh: At this intersection of sort of policy and, and business. And we’ll talk about what that means, , you know, cause obviously that’s pretty broad. That could be everything. That could be 95% or 99% of the legislature’s doing. But you know, before we get into, you know, maybe assessing some specific proposals that might start floating around, or that might seem likely they’re gonna pass.

[00:03:32] Josh: But we really wanna do, I think what this poll is kind of take a step back and start a little bit higher up. Yeah. And try to get a, a sense of, you know, what are the boundaries of some attitudes that voters. You know, towards business. Cause as you said, you know, we’ve, we’ve observed over the last few years especially and has sort of been increasing this, this, this friction really.

[00:03:49] Josh: Yeah. For, for lack of a better word. And it’s, and what we sort of, I think what I, what I wanna ask as sort someone who studies public opinion is, well, okay, is this, is this a sort of top lead or is this bottom up? Right. Yeah. And if [00:04:00] so, is it widespread or is it concentrated? Right. And we can kinda ask some more questions about it.

[00:04:04] Josh: We’ll get into some of how we start to think about that. Yeah. But that’s something that we want to do now before we start asking about like, well, what if the legislature does X? Yeah. Or Y or Z, because that explain gives us a better sense, not of, you know, direction on potential policy proposals, but some of the y maybe behind

[00:04:18] Jim: those attitudes.

[00:04:19] Jim: Yeah. I mean, I mean, I like the way you framed that because. , there’s always a certain amount of question of this dynamic, and it comes up in the podcast all the time as I think about it, where are we in some kind of this, you know, the classic relationship between what’s elite led mm-hmm. and what is, you know, quote unquote kind of bubbling up from the bottom.

[00:04:37] Jim: And the business stuff is very interesting on that, in that. . It’s not as if we catch a lot of these issues perceived as business issues when we do our general SAL tests. Like the most important problems or Right. What, you know, what’s shaping your vote or what do you wanna see the legislature handle.

[00:04:55] Jim: It’s not like we see people, and this goes to this question of level of conceptualization check. [00:05:00] Yeah. People go, well, you know, I’m gonna pay more attention to the relationship between business and the state. Well, no, it’s

[00:05:05] Josh: funny when you say that cuz we’re sitting here and you know, if I was gonna say to, you know what?

[00:05:08] Josh: what is the drinking game word? If you’re, if you’re going out right now to kind of ledge previews and different things and kinda just floating about that, like, I would say was, is a new one. It’s, it’s e s G. Right? Right. Now what percentage of people in, in a, you know, general, you know, voter survey are naming E S G is their first, second, third, fourth, fifth, right.

[00:05:28] Josh: Most important problem. Probably almost nobody. Right?

[00:05:33] Jim: And frankly, even now, sometimes I, I have to go back and go, okay, wait a minute, what? What is the precise Yeah. , right. You know, abbreviation here and you know, you, you know, if you go out and you’re Googling it already, go out and look at it. If you’re not super familiar with this, you know, it’s basically, you know, what you see most often is, you know, equity, social, and governance policies

[00:05:52] Josh: or Yeah.

[00:05:53] Josh: Environment,

[00:05:53] Jim: social and government, I mean, right. Or environment. See, I’m, I’m still not quite getting, cuz so you’re right. It’s basically environment, social [00:06:00] governance and, and governance. Although sometimes you see equity. Anyway, but you know, to the point, so this has been bubbling under and, and you know, a little bit of context.

[00:06:10] Jim: I mean, as you say, of course, you know, per all the old saws, a lot of what the legislature does, p. You know, in some estimations in the old saw estimation, right. You know, most of what the legislature and state government do has to do with stuff that’s important mainly to business or intersects that, that sphere, um, right.

[00:06:32] Jim: And usually

[00:06:33] Josh: sectors of business.

[00:06:34] Jim: Right. And, you know, yeah. Sorting out conflicts, regulatory rules, all the, you know, even, you know, in a, in a state as repeatedly minimal as Texas, if you start digging into it, There’s a lot of boards and commissions, lot, lot, lot of licenses. There’s a lot of licensing, there’s a lot of referee that has to go on.

[00:06:51] Jim: And I think in some ways, some of this, the, the aftermath of the, the 2021 blackouts has kind of brought some of this to the fore. Mm-hmm. , um, [00:07:00] Yeah, it’s an interesting point, you know, as, as a big salent example of something that, you know, is a quote unquote unregulated market, but is passes through state regulation in a lot of very important ways.

[00:07:11] Josh: Let’s, well, I say, I mean, you know, right now there’s a, there’s an ongoing discussion going on in the courts about whether or not, you know, ERCOT is a state is, for example, is, is, is it is, you know, a state is basically government, right? Anyway,

[00:07:22] Jim: so. But the, you know, but this particular notion of the way that business behaves and, and businesses posture towards, you know, social issues and how that, you know, is incorporated in their behavior and their public statements, you know, is not.

[00:07:39] Jim: Entirely new. I mean, uh, you know, the uptick is not just right now, even though we’ve heard about it now. And of course, ESG policies have been a thing for at least a decade or or more in the private sector. You know, the, the legislature passed, uh, an anti BDS law that is boycott divestment. And sanctions sanction, uh, in [00:08:00] 2017 that mandated that the state could not have a contract with a company unless that company signs a statement saying it does not boycott Israel.

[00:08:08] Jim: Now there’s a lot of sort of negatives in there. It’s a strange, yeah. Double negative law that got a lot of attention when it was discussed and debated on the floor in 2017. , it ran into court problems as being overly broad. Was amended again by the legislature in 2019 after a court ruled that the law was overly broad over a specific kind of lawsuit that had been filed by an individual.

[00:08:33] Jim: You know, they tweaked the law mainly, you know, to raise the threshold that, that this would apply to in terms of firms the size of the, the economic actor of the firm being subject to this. And there’s been a lot of back and forth since. You know, in hindsight, what seemed to be an instance of nationalized politics around Israel and just how specific that whole issue can be.

[00:08:56] Jim: Yeah. That’s

[00:08:56] Josh: got a whole political, we could spend a whole political

[00:08:58] Jim: dynamic, right? Whole thing. Yeah. Anyway, unto itself, you know, [00:09:00] May well though, have been an earlier indication of the legislature’s willingness to get more involved in direct actions at shaping business behavior. And we saw more of that last session with SB 19, which prohibited contracts with companies that, you know, discriminate, you know, that quote unquote, I should say, for the letter of the, the caption of the law that discriminate against the firearm or ammunition industries.

[00:09:25] Jim: You know, I think that was seen as part of. A minor part relative to other things that happened of the kind of conservative right policy production in the legislature last time. But it did, you know, it was another indication that this is something that the legislature was gonna keep an eye on. This, of course, is, could be seen as one way in which.

[00:09:45] Jim: National political phenomena are seeping into Texas. But this is also one of those areas where, because Congress has not been able to move very fast, right? There’s been discussion of this at the national level, but now states are moving on it. I think, we’ll, you know, with, with [00:10:00] Republicans running the house at the national level, again, it’ll be interesting to see if we see more of this at the national level.

[00:10:05] Jim: But yeah, I’m skeptical, but , yeah. Well, I mean, I, you know, I, I think they’re gonna have a lot on their plates, so they, they have a big agenda. And again, you know, I. As we get into this, we wanna qualify this, right? It’s not new for the legislature to be involved in the sphere of business, but I, I think there is something different about this particular

[00:10:25] Josh: thing.

[00:10:25] Josh: And just to be fair also, I wanna say, you know, it’s not new for governments to use their contracting power to. Right. Try to influence, you know, business policy in, in different ways over time.

[00:10:37] Jim: Right? Yeah, sure. It’s not, and, and, you know, nationally we’ve seen that from, from the left. Yeah.

[00:10:40] Josh: From the left. It’s more, I think it’s more historically common to see it in a leftward push.

[00:10:44] Josh: Right.

[00:10:44] Jim: Which is, which is one of the things that’s interesting here, right? It’s very, yeah, exactly. . So, you know. I think if we focused on Texas, you know what’s different is it does, it does feel to many observers and many people in the process. Mm-hmm. , completely impressionistic. But you know, I’ve had a lot of conversations with [00:11:00] both Democrats and Republicans about this recently and that it feels like there’s something different in what has classically been.

[00:11:08] Jim: a relatively uniform mm-hmm. pro business posture among Texas Republicans. Mm-hmm. . Um, and, and an increased willingness to articulate which, which often feel. , like oddly kind of anti-corporate themes. I mean, I think on the podcast we talked a bit about the Senate State Affairs Committee. Mm-hmm. hearing that took place in December, I guess on Yeah.

[00:11:31] Jim: E s G policies. Right. Which was, you know, very striking in its combative

[00:11:36] Josh: tone. Yeah. I mean, it’s almost like if you had said, okay, it’s. It black, you know, BlackRock not to name drop, but BlackRock’s being, you know, brought up before the committee and they’re gonna get, you know, if not raked over the coals, you know, in, in a, given the, how affable the chairman was.

[00:11:49] Josh: You know, just told that the Coles are right over there. Yes, yes. Well, you know, we can get the Coles out anytime

[00:11:54] Jim: you want. I think it’s part of Chairman Hughes’s brand that he can really very affably rake

[00:11:58] Josh: you over the coals. Yeah, exactly. So [00:12:00] the coals are right there. We’re not doing it yet, but Right. But the thing is, is, you know, if you had just like, kind of blinked your eyes a little bit and kind of shook your head around and said, you know, is it 2006?

[00:12:08] Josh: Are those Democrats like, Yeah. Right. You know, it feels, Amanda, to your point, it’s just, you know, it’s an anecdote. It’s not data, but you watch that and you’re like, boy, this feels a. A little different.

[00:12:19] Jim: Yeah. It feels like something, right? Right. It’s kind of what we’ve been saying up, you know, all along. So, so we looked at this a lot in the December poll, as we said.

[00:12:27] Jim: So let’s start by looking at what we did with, you know, again, the preliminary foray into the E S G stuff in which, you know, we designed a battery in which we ask people to look at what business and corporations are doing. on a number of topics and to say whether they were doing too much about the right amount, too little, or did people not know?

[00:12:49] Josh: Right. And this is kind of, you know, this is our Goldilocks question. And again, part of the idea is we don’t know that this is super salient to people and we don’t know that people have strong opinions about, you know, the [00:13:00] extent to which business is trying to address. Racial discrimination, for example, or climate change.

[00:13:05] Josh: And that was kind of what we wanted to get. This is a heat check for us about kind of where the gravity is in terms of people’s, you know, I guess response to get more activity by businesses and corporations. So we asked about, you know, again, business and corporations, whether they’re doing too much about the right amount or too little on climate change, racial discrimination, women’s rights, abortion, Accra access, democracy and voting rights, and L G B LGBTQ Q rights.

[00:13:26] Josh: And ultimately what we found was, Every case, but L G B T Q Rights, a plurality of Texans said that they were doing too little. So climate change, racial discrimination, women’s rights, abortion access, democracy, and voting rights. Now, if you listen to the podcast, you’ll know where this is going.

[00:13:41] Josh: Overwhelmingly driven by Democrats at lea, a majority of Democrats across each of those issues said that businesses were doing too little not. We can come back to this probably in a different podcast in some ways, right? The one area that we’re, it was, uh, close was only fif, only 53% of Democrats said that businesses were doing too little on [00:14:00] LGBTQ rights, but nearly a third, you know, 31% said they were either doing too much or about the right amount.

[00:14:05] Josh: So that, you know, again, this is only we can come back to as an interesting topic about the, the lack of. A coalescing around LGBTQ issues around Democrats

[00:14:12] Jim: put a pin in that. Very much an in-process issue as we’ve mentioned. And we’ll come back to that I think. Yeah, you’re right. So

[00:14:17] Josh: then, but the point, main point is, you know, across the board, Democrats are driving this, you know, again, positive evaluations of businesses, responses to these various issues.

[00:14:26] Josh: Obviously, you know, not surprising, we’re find Republicans with pretty different attitudes. Climate change, 53% say businesses are doing too much. Uh, LGBTQ rights. 62% of Republicans say businesses are doing too much in general, in most cases. Or actually I’ll say this, in no case did more than 17 or let’s see, than more than one in five Republicans say that businesses were doing too little on any of these issues.

[00:14:50] Josh: So the, the center of gravity’s on the other side here, and then, you know, there’s a couple areas where there’s sort of, there’s mix, you know, women’s rights. 37% of Republicans say that they’re. The business are doing too [00:15:00] much. 37% say about the right amount, democracy, voting rights, 32% say too much, 30% say about the right amount.

[00:15:06] Josh: So there’s some interesting areas in and of the cell that we could plumb a little deeper. But generally the picture here is that, you know, there’s a lot more reticence on the right about these forays by businesses, if not outright hostility in some cases into these, these social areas that they’re, they’re moving into.

[00:15:22] Josh: You know, I think at the Behe, you know, in their view, likely, I’m talking about businesses now at the behest of consumers. , maybe shareholders, you know, that’s kind of

[00:15:31] Jim: going back to Right. You know, management of employee relation, you know, recruitment. Yeah, recruitment.

[00:15:34] Josh: Yeah, exactly. Employees. Exactly.

[00:15:36] Jim: Well, and I think that’s something we’ve talked about.

[00:15:37] Jim: I mean, I, you know, I want to on the results themselves, you know, for a beat. I mean, climate change has been one of the real mm-hmm. vocal points of this area in the legislature in that, how businesses responding and incorporating climate change into their strategies has run into the position of, you know, just to be blunt about it, of the oil and gas mm-hmm.

[00:15:59] Jim: [00:16:00] business in Texas and, and the energy sector in Texas, wri large. You know, and I thought that the. , you know, the two little response on that, as you say, that was, you know, overall the two little response was, you know, was highest on that. Driven primarily by Democrats. Mm-hmm. , but not an overwhelming Republican.

[00:16:18] Jim: Counter response. I mean, you know, more than half, which yeah, is plenty and enough in terms of how, what kind of response we might see from elected officials, but not nearly as intensely polarized as I might have

[00:16:32] Josh: expected. My guess is if we cut into that data, where we’ll see is, we’ll see a divergence, uh, Among Republicans by age.

[00:16:39] Josh: Yeah. And that’s what we tend to find on climate change related questions is that, you know, there’s a soft spot on sort of the, whatever you want to call it, anti cl, I dunno, anti anti-climate change. I don’t know what it’s, right, right. Yeah. Anti anti-climate change. There’s usually a soft spot amongst younger Republicans on those issues because they just view

[00:16:54] Jim: it differently.

[00:16:54] Jim: Right. And we wrote a, you know, we should probably, you know, coordinate, look at this in that way. Yeah. Look [00:17:00] back at the piece we wrote a few years ago. Mm-hmm. . That diversion, you know, young Republicans and climate change and how there was, it was a difference in degree, but not necessarily. You know, it wasn’t, it wasn’t, it wasn’t super powerful as I recall.

[00:17:15] Josh: No, it was pretty powerful

[00:17:16] Jim: actually. Oh, I know what it was. It was that it was powerful, but the numbers were small.

[00:17:20] Josh: Right. The nu the numbers are small because, because there’s not that many, there’s not that many young Republicans, but, but the interest, but on climate change, the, the young Republicans actually looked a lot like young Democrats Right.

[00:17:28] Josh: On those issues. So it was interesting. But anyway, but to your point, you know, I mean, climate change is the one that we, that you know, has sort of been out there for a while and certainly has sort of the softest. Maybe opposition among, well actually no, it has strong opposition. Nevermind. Take that back.

[00:17:40] Josh: Okay. So anyway, yeah, no, go. Moving on. So all

[00:17:43] Jim: of these issues and, and look, I mean, one thing that I think, you know, we’ll probably come back to this and I, you know, who knows we’re still working things and when, when or if, if, and when we rerun this, and I think we will wind up rerunning this at some point, but we’re gonna see different aspects of this in legislation.

[00:17:58] Jim: Certainly with, you know, for [00:18:00] example, the abortion access results are likely to encourage. , you know, Republicans in some of the, you know, moves to, to, to legislate against businesses providing are support provide, for example, providing support for traveling out of state. Yeah. Right. Which, you know, given the partisan structure that we see here, so, alright.

[00:18:20] Jim: Right. So let’s look at another, another way that we looked at this was in the December poll, was we. Broadly speaking, we look at views of different actors with an emphasis on business. So right in the December poll we asked respondents how favorably they viewed a range of institutions and organizations.

[00:18:38] Jim: We called it institutions just cuz we needed shorthand. Yeah. But it’s kind of a mixed bag. Yeah, little mixed. So, you know, just to flag, we know that with a particular interest though, in looking at the views of different types of businesses, so we parsed businesses into three broad groups. Local businesses, major US based corporations and major foreign corporations.

[00:18:57] Jim: We didn’t phrase it exactly like that, but, [00:19:00] and then along with some other actors.

[00:19:02] Josh: Right, right. Yeah. And so, you know here what we tend, and I mean the main takeaway here as opposed to sort of the, the previous battery where you say, well, okay, you know, , obviously there’s a lot of, there are concert, you know, let’s say consistent pockets of Republican concern about these business activities and these different sort of social areas.

[00:19:18] Josh: But that doesn’t mean that Republican voters have like turned on business, right? Or something, right? So when we look at this overall, not surprising, local businesses are viewed extremely favorably. 75% of Texans have a favorable view of local businesses. Only 6% have an unfavorable view. There’s almost no difference between Democrats and Republicans on this.

[00:19:34] Josh: Almost exactly the same, uniformly positive. Then we go to major US corporations and you start to see a little bit of that actually, you know, I wanna go to International Corps, I wanna come back to, to, to US Corps. Cause it’s more interesting, right? International corporations are viewed, I think, somewhat surprisingly, negatively.

[00:19:48] Josh: I mean, maybe not, you know, given the politics of the last, you know, six or eight years I soho. Yeah. So only 16% of Texans. Positive views of of major, you know, international corporations. 42% hold [00:20:00] unfavorable views for Democrats. 16% favorable, 38% unfavorable for Republicans, 16% favorable. So same amount as Democrats, 50% unfavorable.

[00:20:09] Josh: Okay. . So that’s something kind of interesting to set aside there. But then when we look at, uh, major US corporations, what we find is, you know, again, over, you know, positive on balance, 41, 27 fave, un fave, Democrats look a little bit more business skeptical. We’d expect 36% of a favorable opinion, 31% unfavorable, and the remainder either neutral or don’t know.

[00:20:29] Josh: Right? And that’s sort of, I think, fits what we think of as traditional politics. And then we look at Republican. In the, you know, in Texas today, 49% hold a favorable opinion of major US corporations, 22% and unfavorable opinion. Now, what’s interesting to me about that is, yes, it’s more than Democrats, it’s more positive than Democrats, but we’re not talking about like a total difference in kind here.

[00:20:49] Josh: Yeah. Right. I mean, turns, you know, given you, if you wanna say, if you wanna say to, you know, to someone, Hey, I want to teach you everything, you know, let me teach you one thing about public opinion. And you know, in Texas or anywhere that you should know. It’s like [00:21:00] party polarizes opinion. and we have a million graphics where you say like, okay, you know, one side are all the red bars, or the other side are all the blue bars.

[00:21:07] Josh: Yeah. And this is not that. Now part of it is that, you know, Democrats have a little bit of ambivalence here, but the, the other thing I think is interesting, you know, 36% of Democrats in Texas hold a pos, you know, favorable view of US corporations, 49% of Republicans. So 13 points more. Yeah. You know, 22% of Republicans hold a negative view.

[00:21:25] Josh: So one in five as opposed to one in three Democrats, give or take. I mean, yeah. You know. is that, it’s interesting. It’s interesting. It’s not as, you know, it’s again, as positive, but it’s not overwhelming

[00:21:36] Jim: and it, and it points to one of the things that we thought was gonna be very interesting about this finding, you know, like that.

[00:21:44] Jim: Cluster of results is, you know what I, I think, you know, certainly what interested me going into this, because, you know, we’re looking at this as a, and you set it up really well in terms of the fact that, you know, in so many areas we can just throw up a [00:22:00] slide in a talk or in, in something we’re writing and there’s these, you know, a big red bar on the one, one side.

[00:22:06] Jim: Yeah. And a big, and a big blue bar on the other side. And you kind of go, well, you know, that’s where we are. , but this is a result that I think, you know, I is very interesting because it’s so counterintuitive and to, to our expectations in a lot of ways, and, you know, has a lot of implications for the coalition of politics, of the

[00:22:28] Josh: parties.

[00:22:28] Josh: Well, and you know, and the thing is as just, you know, good, you bring that up. Like what I’m thinking about and looking at this is that, you know what we don’t know here is the direction this is going at. Right? Right. This is one measure. And so for all you know, I would suspect. , right? That if had we asked this, this exact same battery, let’s just say, let’s just say 10 years ago, yeah, we were polling then my expectation would be that the view of major US corporations among Republicans, the favorability numbers may not be 78% like it is for local businesses, but if it was 65%, I wouldn’t be surprised.

[00:22:58] Josh: Right? And [00:23:00] so, Yeah. And so there is this question be like, where are we and where are we going with this? Right. Yeah. I

[00:23:04] Jim: mean, it make, yeah, it, it, you know, a lot of these, and I was gonna say this in the, when we talked about the the E s G piece, but especially for this. In this, in the context of this question, it does make me feel like we had thought, I wish we had thought about this earlier.

[00:23:18] Jim: Okay. So, you know, so let’s move on to like one more set of results and that is, we asked a couple of questions about the chapter three 13 program. I was, didn’t call that without calling it that and we’ll, so you know, so let’s do this. So the chapter three 13 program, broadly speaking, is the program that was allowed to expire in the last legislative session has been.

[00:23:41] Jim: You know, the subject of a great deal of spending and mobilization and organization efforts and now, you know, internal politics, which we won’t necessarily get into in this podcast. Um, Around this program that provides incentives, tax break incentives through property tax, [00:24:00] temporary property tax, abatements, uh, to incentivize corporations to locate in areas.

[00:24:06] Jim: So you, they get Yeah. Breaks on their, on their, On their, basically the property taxes that go to school districts, they have to be negotiated with the school districts. They run through for approval through the, through the controller’s office. You know, somebody could say, Hey, you left out another detail.

[00:24:20] Jim: That’s the broad outline. And of course, we can’t give any of those details to our respondents anyway, so, This was an area where we had asked about this. Broadly speaking, this is an area we’re always looking, we’re looking more for the underlying attitudes towards the mechanisms of the program rather than the program or the legislation itself.

[00:24:41] Jim: And even in this poll, as a result of discussions on the poll team, we actually even asked the question a couple of different ways,

[00:24:49] Josh: right? . Yeah. I love the way you set that up. And, and the thing that’s funny about this is I’m gonna, you know, I’m gonna, I’m gonna tell you what the question is. I’ll tell you what the response is and then I’ll tell you why I think it’s kind of dumb

[00:24:58] Josh: Okay. But it’s dumb because we learned [00:25:00] something. Yeah. And that’s why, and that’s the, that’s good, right? So the question we ask public learning, but you know, hey, you know, still goes. Public university, do you think state and local governments basically should or should not offer economic? And then we tried two different, we’ve asked this question before, but we decided we wanna ask two different versions of it.

[00:25:15] Josh: Economic incentives on one hand, economic benefits on the other. Uh, and part of that is just the notion that potentially, you know, economic incentives might hold a, a negative connotation or economic benefits actually might hold a negative connotation. It sort of depends. Well, and also

[00:25:28] Jim: as I remember us talking about it, I mean, I, I had concerns that.

[00:25:32] Jim: Economic incentives might be too opaque to some of our respondents.

[00:25:35] Josh: Right, and and ultimately, like, look, we’re not trying to bring clarity to the Chapter three 13 program to serve our funds. What we’re trying to understand is whether or not they think that state and local governments should or shouldn’t offer economic.

[00:25:48] Josh: Basically goodies, incentives, goodies, goodies to persuade businesses to move to Texas or to expand their operation series. Ultimately, that’s what it’s about, right? We’ve asked other questions around this topic about, you know, basically whether, I remember we asked one question, and you can go [00:26:00] find it if you want, whether they should give the money back if they don’t create those jobs.

[00:26:03] Josh: Oh, right. So anyway, this fun, you know, this fun stuff you can kind of do around this, but so what do you find? Well, what you find is, you know, one, it doesn’t really matter how we asked it, and two, they haven’t changed much since we asked it before. The broad outlines here. 46% of Texans in December said that they should do this.

[00:26:18] Josh: 31% said that they shouldn’t. Among Republicans it was 53 29, which is not a great number. I think, you know, when you’re kind of working the politics here, depending on the strength of those attitudes, you don’t really want a third of your voters going, well, you know, I don’t know if that’s right.

[00:26:34] Jim: Yeah, it, it’s interesting as we look at these like responses, you know, a minute, a couple minutes ago, we’re talking about a 52% response.

[00:26:40] Josh: No, it, it, it lines up, but in a way, but

[00:26:42] Jim: slightly, the slightly more than half full can really look different in different

[00:26:46] Josh: contexts. Well, what’s interesting here is that, you know, Democrats aren’t far off Republicans on this. I mean, they were 44 said they should 31%. They said they shouldn’t. So basically, whether you’re talking about Democrats or Republicans, you’re talking about a half say, this is a good idea.

[00:26:58] Josh: About a third say it’s not. [00:27:00] But I think what the previous discuss. Should highlight Here is something that actually, you know, again, and, you know, we’ve made mistakes before and I don’t think this is a mistake, but I do think it, it begs another question, which is, So what business are we providing incentives to?

[00:27:13] Josh: Is it a local business? Is it a Texas based business? Is it a US business? Luckily national, we got shaded some light on that, right? And the idea is, well, you know, depending on who that target is, you could probably expect some different responses to this question next though. The other thing that I think is making this, again, even more challenges, but No, but which company?

[00:27:29] Josh: Because I bet if we were to actually put a, a specific company in and said, let’s try do an experiment. Let’s try Nike, let’s try Tesla, and let’s try Hobby Lobby. , you know, we could do some local, you know, national, international dynamics, but just to, but just to make the point, and I’m being, I’m, you know, this is tongue in she, but, but honestly, I would expect different reactions and different partisan reactions to the idea of, you know, should your local community provide, you know, economic bene benefits including, you know, breaks on property taxes too, and then fill in the blank to [00:28:00] expand operations here.

[00:28:01] Josh: Right. And that’s the thing I think that’s really interesting about this is, you know, where we started with this idea of, you know, Historically we would think of the parties as having sort of more of a, you know, sort of like say pro business alignment pro, you know, you could say anti-business, but I’d almost say, you know, pro consumer, pro worker alignment.

[00:28:18] Josh: Right, right. But as, as the social stuff has sort of moved into more, you know, I would also say, you know, other thing I’ll say, so that where we started, and I’ll pass it back to you, but this idea that, that most of what the legislature does is about business, I think you. I’ve watched a few sessions now and I think it was pretty easy to say.

[00:28:35] Josh: Yeah, 98% of what the legislature is doing, you can put over here as kind of the, you know, this is regulatory stuff. I mean, these aren’t, not, these aren’t gonna be big fights, but they’re fights within small communities. Right. And there might be this tiny little thing, you know, bit of legislation. And I have always tell people this, you know, of, of all the legislation that gets filed every year, there might be less than a dozen bills that, that really.

[00:28:56] Josh: You know, I would say gain public consciousness, not even as a bill, right. But as just [00:29:00] an idea in the ether is going on. Right? But what happens when like those two areas start to kind of touch, right? And in some cases directly overlap. And that’s sort of the thing that’s. Really interesting right now, right?

[00:29:15] Jim: Yeah, no, I think that’s right. I mean, you know, the old saw that people used to tell me when I first started, you know, hanging around from people in the process, and I don’t remember where this came from, if it’s even attributable, you know, was, you know, 95% of what the legislature does is business and 95% of that is business versus business.

[00:29:33] Jim: Right? And so, you know, it’s just. Yeah. Salent to the public. And in those fights there’s also a calcula. There’s always a calculation, or at least often if there’s a pitch conflict, can we make it salent to our advantage? Right? Most choose not to do that, right? , right? They mobilize within their sectors in an, in an effort to.

[00:29:53] Jim: Affect, you know, the, uh, uh, legislative behavior and, uh, to win votes or to, you know, to kill or, [00:30:00] or kill something or, or push something forward. So, yeah, I mean, I, I think that’s right. And I think that there’s a, you know, there’s a lot of ways we can tie all this together. Um, you know,

[00:30:15] Jim: as we begin to kind of think about tying this together, I mean, look, on one hand. I think what this underlines, when you look at those close cuts that you were talking about, and we talked about, you know, some of the implications at root, the drive in the legislature to push back on business doesn’t seem to be rooted in public opinion toward business per se.

[00:30:37] Jim: Right. Mm-hmm. , I mean, there’s little evidence in that poll that Republican voters, which are kind of key in this right now. Yeah. Because ultimately, well, I’m actually, I don’t wanna say that, but because Republicans are, are in the driver’s seat and state government. . You know, it’s worth noting that there’s not much evidence that Republican voters, either general or primary voters, have somehow turned negative on business writ large in any [00:31:00] way.

[00:31:00] Jim: And I don’t wanna, I, I wanna be careful not to leave that implication. I’m kind of over elaborating that, but I think it’s important or you know, That on the policies that they’re getting pushback from Republicans, that legislatures are getting, legislators are getting pushback from Republicans in a big way.

[00:31:18] Jim: But as you pointed out, I think very well, if we look at the results on the E S G policies, I’m wondering, and I just kind of floated this and I don’t know, I, you know, I floated it before we came on. I know what you think, but, and maybe you just implied a little bit of agreement. I’ll take it that way. But we’ll see.

[00:31:35] Jim: You know, we might be discovering something akin to what we’ve seen in other areas, and the one that really comes to mind is local control, which we wrestled with a lot. Mm-hmm. got a decade ago now, I guess. And at least started then, you know, and that is that the judgments of a principle, like being pro business or pro investment or you know, Pro private enterprise, you know, whatever kind of high [00:32:00] level concept and rhetoric you want to deploy to deploy here are still subject to judgments of the particulars.

[00:32:06] Jim: Right? Right. They’re, you know, and because there are indications, and we are looking at this a little bit right before we came up here, and we need to kind of probe this more, I think, but there are indications that, you know, look ideological intensity is a factor here. Mm-hmm. , right? If you look at the results, particularly if you look at the results on the items on these, you.

[00:32:24] Jim: Quote unquote, ESG issues. Right. You know, on corporate action on most of those issues. Roughly speaking, there’s a lot of structure. If you look at ideological intensity, in other words, again, not uniform, but it’s, it’s pretty consistent. And if you guys wanna, you know, we’ll put some of this on the website, but we broke all those issues out individually.

[00:32:45] Jim: You know, the more intense your conservatism, the more likely you are to think corporations are doing too much on those issues. The more liberal you are, the more likely you are to think they’re doing too little with that exception of the L [00:33:00] G LGBTQ issues. Right. But even then, I think that that general statement, I think still holds.

[00:33:05] Jim: So, I mean, look on some ways that’s elaborating the obvious, right? Yeah. It. . Sure. That makes all the sense in the world, but I, I don’t think I’ve seen anybody else that’s looked at this in Texas yet. So I think it is worth kind of thinking and beginning to drill down. It’s one of the things I think that’ll help us move forward as we, you know, construct more ways of exploring this.

[00:33:27] Josh: Yeah. I, I like, I like the local control comparison and, you know, I mean, I think, you know, as you were saying that I, my reaction to thinking, well no, you know, you’re right. It’s not that there’s some sort. You know, wellspring of antagonism towards business in the Republican party. But I think that there is a negative assessment of this sort of, and we’ll use this, I’m gonna use this terminology of the concept of woke business.

[00:33:47] Josh: Yeah. Right. But the problem is, is that, you know, what’s a woke business? . Yeah. And I think this is sort of where there’s, there’s danger here. You know, and I sort of, and I was giving you this sort of, you know, where I, what I, what, you know, where my guy kind of starts to flash on this is [00:34:00] I started thinking about, you know, election integrity.

[00:34:01] Josh: And we were talking about this, you know, in the podcast last session about how, you know, when you don’t have voter fraud, but you have a big, big push to stop voter fraud, you get a lot of policy that’s kind of like random , you know? Right. Because cuz you can’t eradicate something that doesn’t exist or, or at least

[00:34:15] Jim: not tethered to.

[00:34:16] Jim: Problem

[00:34:17] Josh: solving per se. Yeah, per se. I mean, but ultimately, look, if, if the goal is to change public opinion in terms of perceptions of, you know, fraud or, or lack of integrity, then so be it. Maybe that’s the, maybe that’s the outcome, right? Whatever. But the point is, but from a, from the perspective of a, of the policy maker, I mean, one of the interesting thing here, things here is that, you know, because you know, traditionally, you know, and historically you’d say,

[00:34:40] Josh: If you want to know, like, you know, what’s good for Republicans or you know, what’s good for business, that’s what’s good for Republicans and vice versa. There’s a sort of, you know, symbi symbiotic relationship. And, and that’s been really kind of central, I think, in a lot of ways to sort of the, the Texas narrative about how this is, this is the best state for business.

[00:34:55] Josh: This is why we keep growing. This is why people keep coming here because we, we run things well and we have a good [00:35:00] business environment. That’s like, and then you’ve

[00:35:01] Jim: got, and why people are voting for Republicans

[00:35:03] Josh: and why they, at this point, right? Yeah. Thank you . And then it’s like, and then you’ve got, you know, , you’ve got the winter storm, you’ve got this kind of, I would say, I wouldn’t even say increasingly antagonistic view of business from leadership, I would say.

[00:35:19] Josh: Unknowably antagonistic view of business from leadership, and that’s the, in the state, that’s kind of what’s interesting to me here is, you know, all of this is gonna play itself out. And look, I wanna just make something big pointer. It’s not like, you know, again, maybe it’s not 95% of , you know, this stuff is gonna be, you know, may and it’s not gonna be on.

[00:35:35] Josh: 95% of this is business stuff and 5% of this other thing, there’s gonna be some problem. And maybe that ends up being like two or 3% of what goes on, but it’s a big deal, right? Yeah. I mean, ultimately, you know, the legislature’s still gonna do. , it’s still gonna primarily do the stuff that it needs to do around businesses, regulation, licensing, these various inner, you know, these very tiny fights and stuff.

[00:35:55] Josh: But to the extent that, you know, again, , [00:36:00] whoever the politician is, who’s sort of putting forward the proposal against woke businesses has given the, the latitude to move. You know, there’s a lot of unknowns going forward about where these right are gonna move. And I think like a lot of things you say, like, you know who’s in control of it.

[00:36:14] Josh: Yeah. You know, at some point, you know, you kind of, you catch the car and you say, okay, well we’ve, you know, we, we’ve, we’ve gone after all the businesses on all the ESG stuff, and then you go Atlanta and we ask these same set of questions, let’s say next December and what. You know, low and bold. You know, local businesses are still 78 5 among Republicans, but now major US corporations are like, you know, 30, 30 fave un.

[00:36:37] Josh: Yeah. I mean, that’s gonna make it a little bit more challenging to keep pushing, you know, I say keep executing this brand of government when you’re saying, no, no, no. What makes Texas great is the fact that we’re so open to business. We’re a great place to raise a family because there’s jobs and there’s all this experience.

[00:36:53] Josh: but then what happens if it’s like, but actually, you know, one of our biggest accomplishments is, is really, you know, or one of the big things that we do is fight with [00:37:00] business,

[00:37:00] Jim: right? I mean, you know, if, if, if this session were to end and on the list and, and in the session roundup.

[00:37:06] Josh: I wanna say it doesn’t matter in the, in the elite sense.

[00:37:09] Josh: Right. Well, the question is if you lose control of the p among voters. Yeah. I mean, I

[00:37:13] Jim: think there’s, yeah, there’s a couple of different things there. I mean, I, yeah. Before I finish, I thought I’ll go back and say, you know, one of the things you flagged earlier I think is really important here, which, which connected with me kind of sitting here thinking, God, I wish we had done this 10 years ago.

[00:37:26] Jim: Yeah. Is that, I’m, I agree with you. I’m pretty confident that, you know, those favorability numbers for some of those other, like the big C. . Mm-hmm. , the foreign, the foreign corporations is an open question, but certain, but I, I think even that too. And, but certainly the big, the, the major domestic corporate actors in the United States, the, the favorability ratings among Republicans almost certainly would’ve been higher.

[00:37:53] Jim: Certainly 15 years ago, maybe even 10. We start getting the Tea Party thing. It gets a little tricky, but I, you know, [00:38:00] I don’t know. Yeah. Right. But I, I do wish we had that. You know, I mean, I, so what I was gonna say is, you know Yeah. If we end the session in response to what you were saying, and when we are reading, when we’re reading all the session summaries, if there’s a section in which the outcome is, yeah.

[00:38:18] Jim: They continue to, you know, hold, you know, that the, the legislature chose not to continue anything like the three 13 program mm-hmm. and to just not go back and reestablish that subsidy program. and we saw legislation with any kind of teeth, but even if it just tiny teeth on ESG policies, you know, that’s something, I mean in technical terms, it’s uh, this is going back to some of my previous intellectual history, so forgive me, but it’s a different regulatory model.

[00:38:53] Jim: It’s a different model of the intersection of state and business. If the state is going to say very [00:39:00] straightforwardly, We are going to implement statutory regulations on decisions made in these areas by businesses. Yeah. Even if it’s just with state vendors, even if it’s. Constrained in ways that reflect what we were talking about seeing with the Israel law a few years ago, things like this.

[00:39:21] Jim: You know, I, I don’t see how you don’t see that as significant. I think the other thing that I would, you know, I was kind of thinking on this also, is that, you know, we have to kind of, if we step back from, you know, even higher than 30,000 feet, You know, it’s hard for me to look at this in Texas, and it’s one of those areas I’ve been thinking, I’ve been thinking about this in a couple of different subjects where.

[00:39:47] Jim: Texas politics are nationalized. Mm-hmm. , but they’re nationalized in a very particularly Texas context. Mm-hmm. and the Texas context here is if you have the stranglehold, you [00:40:00] f if you have the subjective feelings that Republicans in the state have, and I think justifiably mm-hmm. that basically you’re running governance for the foreseeable future.

[00:40:09] Jim: Right. You know, you’re gonna feel more. When you think about the connection between how you govern with coalition politics in a state like Texas, particularly where business plays such an unregulated role in politics, you’re gonna feel more confident about your ability to pick off some business actors.

[00:40:30] Jim: Yeah. And to pick, you know, pick some people and kind of go, you know what? We’re gonna stick it to these guys and not feel like it’s gonna double back into a much broader, that there’s gonna be much broader backlash. And I think that’s why, you know how Democrats. Respond to this, if at all, is really a big important question.

[00:40:51] Jim: Yeah. But I think in the, in the big institutional kind of historical sense, it’s hard for me to not think about this as, [00:41:00] you know, this is, In part, a product of a non-competitive political system in which, you know, you can very confidently go into what has generally been seen as part of the basis of your political power, right.

[00:41:14] Jim: And your electoral power. And go, you know what, yeah, we’re gonna pick on BlackRock and we’re gonna, you know,

[00:41:20] Josh: I, no, I’d like to see your governance documents. Yeah.

[00:41:23] Jim: Fact. Oh, I mean, I think it’s, you know, yeah. I mean, I think it’s interesting and I think it’s got a lot of implications for how we think about, you know, what the.

[00:41:31] Jim: What the architecture of politics in the state is

[00:41:34] Josh: right now. Yeah. Yeah. Two quick reactions you to what you were saying. I mean, one, it’s sort of like I imagined in my head, you know, sort of the Texas is open for business with an asterisk. Yeah. You know, that’s number one. And the other thing about the sort of, you know, national politics, including Texas and Texas politics, you know, most of everything about the idea in which these national discussions are actually influencing Texas politics.

[00:41:49] Josh: But what’s interesting to me also is like, you know, Texas is big. I know, yeah, you’re here. Everybody knows. But here’s the thing is that, you know, when you start talking about like, this is like, I mean, where I started thinking about like [00:42:00] textbooks, right? You know, what Texas and California want the textbook industry to do has an effect on the entire textbook industry, right?

[00:42:05] Josh: And ultimately, if Texas starts to, you, Put some laws together with, with teeth, and again, teeth really could just be, you know, a fine every day, X, y, and Z or something, you know, and they could make it even worse, right? I mean, they can make it, they

[00:42:19] Jim: can make it very painful or, you know, I mean, I, or they’re looking at, you know, they’re looking at the kind of teeth that they w.

[00:42:24] Jim: You know, I think, you know, you can’t do business with Right. Which is like, you know, well, you can’t in, in X settings that we can, that we think we can

[00:42:30] Josh: get away with. Yeah. And the thing is, you know, Texas is what, you know, I mean, someone will correct me, but somewhere it’s, it depends on when I look, but it’s between like, you know, the 11th and 13th biggest economy in the world on its own.

[00:42:38] Josh: You know, I think 90. More than 90% of all of the overland like trade comes through Texas, through the southern border. I mean, like, you know, there’s a lot of things that like, you know, these kinds of little, you know, what are in many ways obviously political decisions to, to, to, to pick certain kinds of fights could have on the back end in a broader sense.

[00:42:57] Josh: And you know, I said to your point too, you know, [00:43:00] what did the Democrats do? You know how, you know, I mean it’s interesting in that. No, you know, it’s not like Democrats don’t think there should be three 13 incentives on balance. You know? I mean, ultimately, you know how and in what way Democrats can be, and I’m losing quotes, an effective.

[00:43:16] Josh: Opposition party to this is sort of, you know, I mean, one of the things that this tells you to me is that, you know, they can’t base it on the idea of, of, you know, basically protecting minority rights. And by minority rights, I don’t mean political minorities, I mean like, you know, numerical LGBTQ people, you know, racial and ethnic minorities.

[00:43:32] Josh: You know, ultimately that is not a, a broad basis. I mean, they have that within their party, but if they want to try to like, Expand beyond that. If there’s a crack to be made, they’re gonna have to figure out something that they haven’t done before. I don’t know what that’s gonna look like, and I don’t know if Texas Democrats are necessarily gonna be the ones

[00:43:46] Jim: to execute.

[00:43:47] Jim: Yeah. And, and you know, again, I mean, I, I think this is, this is where, as I, as I’ve thought through those kinds of things, this is why I think that the fact that this is in part poten, you know, can potentially be [00:44:00] understood in a productive kind of instructive way. Yeah. as linked to, you know, entrenched incumbency.

[00:44:07] Jim: Yeah, right. Because that’s a, it’s a factor here That is, I think, you know, it’s like liberating for the, for the republican, for the Republican legislators that are, that are wanting to take a lead on this, right? Yeah. Now, like everything else, , they are making decisions in an uncertain environment. It could have unintended consequences.

[00:44:25] Jim: I’m not picking up a lot of worry about that right now. And I think part of that is the national messaging on this and this dynamic of, you know, you’re hearing about what corporations quote unquote a lot in conservative media. Yeah. The opportunities to respond to that if you so choose in Texas are much broader than they are in say, California.

[00:44:46] Jim: Yeah. Or even at the national level right now. Yeah. So I think we’ll leave it there. I think that, you know, obviously this is going to come up more. This helps us kind of lay the groundwork. For that. You have thoughts on this. Obviously these are one of those things that we’re thinking about a lot. Drop us a line.

[00:44:59] Jim: [00:45:00] Always happy to hear from people even if you’re unhappy. Um, with that, thanks again to our excellent production team and the dev studio in the College of Liberal Arts at UT Austin. You can find the contextual data that we talked about here at Texas politics dot u texas.edu. If you’re finding this on Spotify, Stitcher, apple Podcasts, you can go to that website.

[00:45:22] Jim: There’ll be a post for this podcast. Uh, with a lot of that data right there. Or you can use our search tool to find things, uh, yourself. And there’s a lot more than what we even talked about. Thanks to Josh for making it here today, uh, and his input. Thanks for listening, and we’ll be back soon with another second reading podcast.

[00:45:47] Outro: The second reading podcast is a production of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.[00:46:00]