June 30th, 2020 – Second Reading Podcast

[0:00:00 Speaker 0] welcome to the second reading podcast from the University of Texas at Austin.

[0:00:05 Speaker 1] The Republicans were in the Democratic Party because there was only one party chart. Tell people on a regular basis there is still a land of opportunity in America. It’s called Texas.

[0:00:17 Speaker 0] The problem is these departures from the Constitution. They have become the norm.

[0:00:24 Speaker 1] At what point must a female senator raise her hand or her voice to be recognized over the male colleagues in the room?

[0:00:35 Speaker 0] I’m Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin, and welcome back to the second reading podcast for the week of June 29th. I’m happy to be joined today by my friend Jonathan Tyler, chief political writer for the Austin American Statesman, The Capitals daily newspaper. Jonathan. Thanks for taking the time to join us.

[0:00:57 Speaker 1] Thanks for having me.

[0:00:58 Speaker 0] Well, it’s our pleasure, Jonathan. I talked a little bit about some of the stuff that we want to talk about. Texas continues to be in the national spotlight as one of the hot spots of the coveted 19 pandemic in the US, and it’s hard not to talk about that. Ah, But first I want to talk. I want to talk about this. State is responding eventually and in particular, check in on how Governor Abbott is responding to the worsening situation. But I want to start today on a subject that we have really talked about so much so far in the podcasts. And that’s the election for the U. S. Senate seat in 2020 the incumbent Republican, Senator John Cornyn, is running for reelection to his fourth term. In that seat, multiple Democrats lined up to challenge him in the spring primary. In the top two finishers in that primary were MJ Hagar and Royce West. Hagar, who’s never held elected office but managed a strong challenge yet in its unsuccessful one to an incumbent Republican congressman in 2018 finished first in the first round of voting with 22 plus percent. Royce West, the state senator from the Dallas area for selected to the Texas Senate in 1992 narrowly came in with 14 plus percent in a fairly high turnout primary. There was a gap of about 140,000 votes between Hagar and West, which it least nominally makes Hagar the front runner. So we’re talking about this today because there was a short televised debate between them last night, and in a lot of ways, it was the first sign of fireworks, at least the first public sign in what, up to this point has been a fairly quiet race. So, Jonathan, you wrote about the debate in today’s paper? What did you make of that debate?

[0:02:45 Speaker 1] Well, it was It woke me up. It may have looked race up. As you said, it’s been a very quiet race, in large part because of the pandemic. So, you know, most of the time since the Marsh third primary, they haven’t been able to campaign in person or in any of the usual ways, which has dampen their ability to generate news and have obliterated coverage of the race. So while some of the things that came out last night were not unexpected, the intensity of them or entirely unexpected and I think I don’t think either candidate going in would have known how hot it would get, how quickly

[0:03:29 Speaker 0] we’ll talk about how that happened. I mean, there was, you know, there was stepped. There was a particular flashpoint, so you know, as much as we’re saying it may have worked in the rose up, I’m guessing a lot of people didn’t see it sotto give us a little bit of the color.

[0:03:41 Speaker 1] First of all, it’s only 1/2 hour, which is, I think, fairly unusual. Usually, you know, you have an hour. So it had to be kind of pact, and it was just the one anchor who was interviewing them. And the 1st 15 minutes were pretty much just bashing Trump and Corn in. And then, at one point of sort of previewing what was to come, she asked the candidates that offer one word to describe something good they could say about their opponent. And throughout the primary and now the runoff, Hager has treated Cornyn as her opponent, looking toward to him and the full and kind of ignoring whether it was the multiple people who were running against him in the get against her in the preliminary primary or on the run off. And she said, I have nothing good to say about Cornyn, and she was told, No, we’re talking about Royce West and she said commitment and he said about her military anyway. Then came time for them to ask a question of each other. And Hagar, who’s, you know, essentially nursing a front runner ship and wants to keep things steady. Asked Royce if there was if he could talk about the things they have in common, that would make them a better senator than Corn in. And, uh, he did not return the favor. And he said, Why is it that you contributed money to Cornyn’s campaign? Albeit you know, 10 or 20 bucks? And why is it that you voted in the 2016 Republican primary for president? I think

[0:05:11 Speaker 0] part part, part of the color there by just cutting for second is that as he delivered that you could see her and you captured this in your story in the Statesman. You know, her face visibly changed,

[0:05:22 Speaker 1] who you know, is trained to kill. I mean, you have

[0:05:25 Speaker 0] to tell people what you say that

[0:05:29 Speaker 1] because she was, she’s she’s got the distinguished Flying Cross. She was, ah, helicopter pilot and she was wounded and, you know, in her under heroic circumstances, and she talks about how you know when you’re talking about assault weapons. I’m trained to use weapons of war. So the point is, this is this is a military woman and she looked it Royce, like, you know, you don’t know what she just did and and she returned fire. You sort of way beyond what he had said because she said that the reason she gave $25 to corn and was because that was the price of being able to get a meeting with them, that that’s when she realized how corrupt the system was decided to run and in fact, raise your part of that corruption that you’ve enriched yourself as a senator practicing lawyer while you’ve been serving in the Legislature, legislating on your behalf, not on the people’s behalf. And that’s what’s wrong with politics. Uh, it went downhill from there,

[0:06:25 Speaker 0] and so I think there’s something about, you know, a typical challenger primary here. If we step back a little bit in the you know, you have somebody use a front runner trying to keep the race quiet, maintain the advantage and not shake things up. And it’s It’s a typical situation for the person who is ostensibly coming from behind to try to shake up the race and to be more aggressive. And so in some ways there was There was some kind of predictable about this, given that the, you know, early voting started. Ah, yesterday in Texas is we record this on Monday, and so this race is coming down to its final stages, and and I I wasn’t surprised that Royce West tried to shake it up, but nonetheless made whether it’s just because it was a point off the line or because it did get hot fast. And he did, you know, really get fairly aggressive. It was pretty notable. I want to talk to you about, you know, then unpack that a little bit some of the the underlying currents in this race. And then maybe we’ll talk a little bit about the look forward to the fall in this race a little bit. You know, there’s a sense in which this race, once it came down to West then an M. J. Hager, was kind of two different versions of what attacked a Democratic candidate. Might teii in Texas, right? Right. You know, I mean I mean, how would you How would you describe?

[0:07:54 Speaker 1] Well, there’s Yeah, basically, there’s the appeal to the center. See if you can get some crossover votes. People who are just can’t take Trump but are normally Republican voters. It’s some of what Beddoes appeal was sort of toe suburban moms and white voters, and he didn’t

[0:08:13 Speaker 0] better Aurora, who ran for the Senate in 2018 Nearer

[0:08:18 Speaker 1] Loss. He did. He did on a statewide basis what MJ did in a single congressional district. So that’s her appeal. It’s it’s she’s not a zoo, Royce pointed out. She’s not deeply committed to the Democratic Party. But that theory is that what you want to do is to be able to attract voters in the middle, people who might be independent or Republicans who just can’t countenance Trump and are ready to vote for a Democrat under certain circumstances. So suburbanites, white women particularly this is This is the constituency that propelled that will work when you went to the Senate in 2018 to a very close loss against Ted Cruz. The counter argument is what Democrats really need to do is not worry about trying to appeal across party lines, but just bring out every last base voter. So it’s black voters, Hispanic voters Asian voters, young voters, urban liberals, urban liberals and just maximize that. And I think while while Royce isn’t sort of a he’s not an AOC progressive, he is someone who has been on the battlefront for civil rights and other issues important to those constituencies. And so he would have been someone who could make the argument that he’s going to maximize the kind of turnout that Barack Obama got out of black voters. That really made the difference

[0:09:46 Speaker 0] well in the recent attention to civil rights and racial inequity, I think has shaken up this race or complicated it, particularly per Hagar status is as a front runner, but also for the way that Royce West presents his candidacy in the race. And I think we saw him making reference to that to some degree last night. But I thought fairly subtly you read that same way.

[0:10:10 Speaker 1] Well, it was both subtle and unsettle. The subtle part was, you know, I have a record on this IE I have experience. I was there on body cams and on racial profiling and other voting rights. All these issues, what was less subtle but was maybe as important was when she accused him of being corrupt. He said, Well, I’m from the projects in Dallas and if you think that my being able to make money and help people in my community with jobs is a problem, go ahead and say that. And that was, you know, laying down a marker that if you’re accusing me of corruption, you are playing on an old stereotype and that is not fair. And in fact, the response from Cornyn’s campaign afterward is well, she’s accused him of corruption. Now it’s up to her to prove it.

[0:10:59 Speaker 0] So you raise corn and I want a transition to that. But I do want I want toe, you know, ask, you know, one last judgment on your part. You’ve been following this race closely for a long time, you know, Just to be fair is people that watch this a lot. You and I were both, you know, frankly pleased to see something that just wasn’t snoozy again. But do you think it changes the dynamic of the race?

[0:11:19 Speaker 1] I don’t know. I don’t know. I think what What it’s going to depend one is Royce West. His practical ability to maybe change the outcome here in what is obviously gonna be a relatively low turnout election, was to deploy all the alibis he has because he has endorsements from legislators across the state and other local officials. And, you know, I always was always Maybe that’s just something they do because, you know, it’s just pro former. If people rally to him now because they feel that she crossed the line, I think that does make a difference, because these are local officials who can turnout people. Um, and it might make a difference. I mean, you know, we’re even waiting now for the results in Kentucky from last week, where Amy McGrath, who like M. J. Hager was better in a pilot, seem to be the foreign away front runner. And she’s now locked in an undetermined outcome. We should know today Legislator named Booker, who is African American and really seize the moment with the protests to change that that race. It’s just that he’s a much younger and more dynamic version of Royce West. So who may have been in better stead to try toe try to capitalize on that? So I don’t I don’t know if always has. That was kind of chops.

[0:12:47 Speaker 0] I mean, you know, I think as we look at this election, you know that we’re now, you know, for you know, the voting has started. For all intents and purposes in the in the very short term, I think it’s hard not to say that the combination of the pandemic and the increased scallions and public attention T issues of race and racial equity have changed the terrain of this campaign. And they’ve changed the terms in which people are going to receive these candidates. So, you know, I think in particular the the approach that waas so frankly in vogue in Democratic politics in 2018 which is bring candidates like M. J. Hager to the four these air candidates that have little political experience. But you know, some other kind of civic experience or or cultural kind of heft. You know, in a lot of cases, as you as you mention in your comparison case, people that are veterans and you you make an implicit kind of claim that incumbents, you know, have have kind of lost their mandate, whether they are of the opposite party or inside the Democratic Party, that people need to, you know, reset institutions. But I think that, you know, in in these races that involve, you know, in the case of Texas, an establishment African American candidate. But amidst a continuing proceed, failure of government but also a time when government action is seems a Sina’s central, the equation has changed a little bit. I think we just don’t know how much. And so as we go into the election, you know, it seems to me you add that unknown. That is, you know what is the mood of the electorate to two other big question marks? What is the level of turnout gonna be? These are, as you say, notoriously, these runoff elections are notoriously low turnout elections. But we also don’t know whether you know there’s gonna be increased interest because of the environment and if so, how much? I mean, I don’t expect turnout to go through the roof, but it’s a little unclear whether we can really rely on the normal low level of turnout. So turnout is a big question mark. And then what is the composition of that electorate gonna be? If it does get bigger? Do we have more people voting in this Democratic runoff because the context has changed. So you have those kind of three big unknowns mood composition and then level of turnout. You know, you mentioned, you know, kind of raised John Cornyn. Let’s talk a little bit about John Cornyn before moving on. Talk about Abbott. I don’t want to focus solely on the Democrats. So so So talk about where Cornyn stands right now. You’ve also written quite a bit about Cornyn and and how how all these things in the current climate seemed to position Cornyn, who went into this race as a favorite, but not not a bit of one per se. I mean, there’s a lot of debate about that. I mean, I’ve argued a lot that, you know, corn has been damned with faint praise by his own party. In all of our polling, though, nonetheless, you know you can’t undersell the fact that you know he’s won three elections in a row to state Senate there to the U. S Senate and won his last couple of statewide elections before that. So it’s not as if you would call him weak, but there’s always been ah, perception of vulnerability around Cornyn, but one that’s never really quite been fulfilled. And so after 2018 I think there was a lot of questions about where he would stand in this in this election cycle. What do you think?

[0:16:29 Speaker 1] Well, I e I think there was sort of, Ah, after a bit of a war came close with Cruz, there was sort of ah sense that Cornyn would be tougher because he was a less polarizing figure. And one of the reasons that that’ll work ran so well was because people just didn’t like Ted Cruz, even though is based really loves him. I think the problem for Corn in now is that people still after all this time don’t feel strongly about him. They don’t really have a fix on him is your polling And I think his favorables around 35% unfavorable, probably about the same or a little higher. And so I just think he, at this point, is subsumed under Trump. He’s he rises or falls based on how Trump does, and for those people who might have been predisposed Cornyn as a less polarizing figure. Things were so tense and intense around Trump that I think somebody who has played the role of a get go along defender of Trump, who remains quiet sometimes but never disturbs the universe by challenging Trump is a problem for him and one that makes it harder for him to look for a split ticket. Voters who are gonna vote for you know, maybe Biden and Corn in eso. I think he’s He’s in a vulnerable situation because which may turn out fine if things go as normal and Trump carries Texas. But I just think things Aaron such as Odd state now that we really don’t know where things were going to end up, and he’s really not the master of is, uh, it was destiny here,

[0:18:04 Speaker 0] you know, I wonder if the calculation that the corn campaign seemed to be making pre pandemic pre George Floyd was still holds. And that is, I think it was generally thought, based on the fact that they bought an attack ad on Royce West during an early Democratic presidential debate that that they preferred to run against West. Does that sound right to you?

[0:18:28 Speaker 1] Yeah, no, I think that was clearly what that was about. And it was under the pretense of fearing West and therefore needing to go negative against him early. They were really promoting West because why else advertised to Democrats in order to increase the likelihood that he would be the nominee or at the very least, mix it up with heroin up to kind of force her to move to the left? Because I think what corn in really didn’t want was to run against the kind of middle of the road candidate like, hey, guard. But But you’re right now, Maybe he doesn’t want to run against a, um, invigorated Democratic Party with Rice West as the candidate,

[0:19:08 Speaker 0] right? I mean, just, you know, not to be overly subtle about it, you know? I mean, I think that there was a calculation that on urban, African American was a good contrast with John Cornyn in a general election arm and that they would benefit from that. And that seems to I’m not sure that’s the case, or at least that the yield on that is as substantial. Is that have been six months ago?

[0:19:34 Speaker 1] No, I think that’s exactly right, though I would imagine that right now, his sort of ah, his his campaigns being somewhat protective of Royce’s reputation will give way to clips from this debate in which she’s describing West as corrupt and part of the culture of corruption in the capital.

[0:19:53 Speaker 0] Which is certainly the way that they wanted to run against him from the beginning, I think, and you know, that would be the surface message. I think, then with racial overtones. So we will see how that how that shapes Adam will, of course, to keep an eye on that race and return to it on the podcast. In our last you know, 8 10 minutes, I do want to return to the to the pandemic and Governor Abbott last week, right after we recorded this this podcast Governor Abbott reverse the opening up process. At that point, when we recorded last week, he had just kind of hit the pause button is people were calling as numbers in Texas, we’re moving the wrong way. Those numbers really kept moving the wrong way. And within a couple days of our recording last week, he undid the pause button and hit rewind that torture the metaphor. I guess you know, they closed bars. They reduced restaurant occupancy, limited the size of outdoor gatherings. And it’s something that seemed to really capture the attention of the news media, closed down the ability of Texans. The tube, which I think the national media really seized on, is a very Texas part of the shutdown. And in the meantime, leaders in the major cities have done what they can to urge the public to wear masks. I think that, you know, the abbot team has cranked up to some degree their urgency in their messaging. But it’s been, I think, a rough backpedal for the governor. What do you what do you make of his position now?

[0:21:22 Speaker 1] Oh, yeah, I think this is clearly the low point of his governorship. He’s had a governorship that has thrived on crises. You know, Harvey Church shooting school shootings, and he’s acquitted himself well, because those are things where everybody is pretty much seeing eye to eye on Miss. There’s been political animus back and forth over things like masks and stay at home orders from the start, and he was trying to navigate between what he felt was, you know, the public health imperative and at least Aziz, you noted pretty small but noisy elements of the base who considered the pandemic some, if not a hoax, then something that was not worthy of the kind of economic and shut down that the state and the nation were undergoing. He seemed to be doing okay until he started reopening and then kind of went one phase to the next in rapid succession without really seeing how the previous openings were doing. And then finally, you know, last week this was less get confused on time that he says, Stay home. If you don’t have to go out, don’t go out. Just stay home and you realize things have changed And, um, he finally I guess last Friday acknowledged that he was wrong to open the bars, and that is for Governor Abbott. A very rare thing to acknowledge that he made a mistake. So, you know, this is he’s now become a national figure in a way that the last way he wanted, which is as a governor who didn’t get it right. And, you know, it’s not as if he was alone in that. But Texas is a big deal, and he’s caught between you know what Trump likes and what, um, the reality on the ground here and with local officials who previously seemed alarmist but now seem to have been closer on the month. And he has been.

[0:23:18 Speaker 0] While there’s been a dynamic in which they’ve always been tourney, between relying on city and county leaders to be the front line of both fighting that the pandemic and sending signals and information back up and and the impulse that I think has been consistent throughout the Abbott in the attic governorship too being charged basically into and to make sure that state authority when there was a conflict if it all you know, if it was at all possible to do trumped local authority in this, you know history of them the last few years invoking the Texas Constitution and various things to ground that you know, I think, is we look at this. I you read of the fact that it’s It’s a tough time for the governor politically and and policy wise is really just in the news daily now. So he closed the bars. There’s now a group of bar owners, I think, mostly in Dallas, that air finally suit against the state and suing him, and they’re getting the I mean, I thought the lawyer in that case is the same lawyer who’s connected with conservative activists who filed lawsuits against the Harris County early on in the pandemic back. I think in March and you’re getting various forms of pushback and we’re coming up on the Fourth of July weekend and it seems like they’re gonna have to continue to pivot in their public message ings, you know, simply as a matter of public health. And I I think that they’ve struggled to get that tone both right, and to make it seem authoritative rather than something the more Kindu advice from the governor. I

[0:24:59 Speaker 1] mean, he’s he’s stuck because I heard him on TV last night and the question is, is inevitably why? Why not mandatory my ask orders? And I think they think Round Rock was imposing fines and he said, Well, I guess maybe that’s in violation of my order because once they attempted to, once they jailed a woman, uh, with a salon in Dallas for opening too early, he went to extraordinary lengths to undo her sentence, and he still can’t bring himself to suggest that it would ever be permissible for someone to be fined or certainly not jailed for violation of an order. And yet he wants to say, But you really should do this. And there’s a difference there, at least in terms of the way it appears that Texans respond to those two different. You know, one is a suggestion, and the other is in order.

[0:25:59 Speaker 0] You know, when you mentioned going into this are, you know, is part of, ah, this discussion that you know? In some ways, the constraint looming over Abbot, at least given his political position and will be might cause political predispositions is that the president continues to double down, you know, in the opposite direction. And any kind of no more decisive action always risks a confrontation with the president, which, which it seems to me. By and large, Republican elected officials are still unwilling to risk at least a long as as the president’s position stays at least moderately strong. Now his numbers are fading nationally, but I think you know, last polling soon to see where they are in Texas. But that equation has been a very constraining one for Governor Abbott.

[0:26:54 Speaker 1] Yeah, completely. I mean, he got he got through Ah Pence coming to Dallas last because Pence essentially is not Trump and was perfectly happy to talk about the importance of masks in a sustained manner in a way that the president would not have been able to do without making some offhand remark that would have undermined the message. So it’s a very, very delicate dance. But yeah, it’s still fatal to come on the wrong side of Trump as a Republican in Texas or really anywhere.

[0:27:23 Speaker 0] Well, I think that’s a pretty good summary of that position. So, Jonathan, and thank you for being here. Ah, you’re welcome back whenever we can arrange it if you can, if you are willing to do so. OK, um, wanna remind everybody Early voting has started in Texas. So if you’re registered to vote, you can early vote now or do you to get out there and do that. Pay attention to what the public health authorities air telling you as things continue to get worse in Texas, take care of yourselves and take care of the people around you. Thanks, and we will talk to you next week. Second reading Podcast is a production of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.