June 4th, 2019 – Second Reading Podcast

[0:00:00 Introduction] 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. 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?

[0:00:36 Jim] And welcome to the second reading podcast for the first week of summer session? I’m Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project of the University of Texas at Austin. I’m happy to be joined today by Josh Blank, who is research director for the Texas Politics Project, also in the same institution. How are we today, Josh?

[0:00:55 Josh] Doing great, Thank you.

[0:00:57 Jim] Oh, good. I I didn’t necessarily think you were doing that. Great. So it’s good to hear. So we want to kick off the summer podcast by looking at the results of the legislative session that ended at the end of May. What they accomplished, what the session tells us about the electoral environment in Texas in the 2018 2020 sequence and what we mean by that and and then end by maybe how we think about it all in the context of the overall arc of Texas political history. And we’ll do it all in less than 30 minutes. Or maybe exactly 30 minutes. Um, okay, so we want to start with a very brief summary of the main themes in the accomplishments of the 86 Legislature Legislature in Texas says most of you either know or will know soon. Ah, meets every other year for 140 days. So it’s It’s one of the big events that regularly occur in Texas government in politics. The 86 Legislature met in Austin between January and May this year and had, um, ultimately a fairly eventful session, if a little bit different than some of the sessions we’ve seen in the past. Right, Josh?

[0:02:10 Josh] Yeah, that’s right. I mean, normally, when you think about, you know, uneventful session in Texas, you you’d assume we’re talking about, you know, restrictive abortion legislation and sort of new laws limiting immigration or, you know, the ability of the state to crack down on illegal immigration. or something that makes it into the news, Really not just in Texas, but often kind of beyond the state

[0:02:29 Jim] and the occasional fistfight,

[0:02:30 Josh] the occasional almost scuffle. Yeah, I call it a

[0:02:33 Jim] home scuffle scuffle. You know, they’re like basketball players. They actually rarely actually throw up. Now it’s more of a Scotto chest bumping and, you know, wild thrashing.

[0:02:42 Josh] Right? But this session was eventful and sort of in a different way. And I think you know the thing that sort of, you know, I would say, defined the session, or at least the way that most people define the session was the degree of sort of agreement among sort of the top elected officials, you know, in the state. And that includes they say, the Big Three. So the governor, the lieutenant governor and the speaker of the House was not elected statewide, but is considered sort of in that group of people. And it was It was over their agreement on what the major issues were basically what agenda they were gonna cover. And that agenda was, you know, basically public education legislation particular, how public education is financed, Ah, property taxes and whether they could reform the state’s property tax system in a way that would you know, either slow the growth and property taxes or even, you know, really shooting for the moon delivers some sort of actual property tax cut. Uh, and then also just, you know, in general, the spending that went along with being able to accomplish those 1st 2 goals. And again, you may think that that’s the same thing. It’s the spending two comparables they agreed on. But even that’s been serving an area of debate in the last number of legislative sessions in terms of you know, how much money they would cost to reform, you know, public school finance, but also where they were going to get that money.

[0:03:56 Jim] And it also we should add that part of reforming public school finance its overlaps. But it’s not exactly the same thing was a growing sense that not only did you have to change the way that or at least tweak the way that schools, that that’s where the money comes from, but also how much money gets put in it, right? People wanted to spend more in public education.

[0:04:17 Josh] Yeah, this is a big time in you know it’s It’s one of those things that people probably don’t appreciate until they’re told. But, you know, you have to remember, you know, as Texas is a huge state. Texas public education system is huge, and any sort of adjustments you’re going to make to it are going to be, you know, very costly. And so, even though you know, you might say that Texas has sort of, we call you the Texas model of government seeds, low taxes and low services we keep, you know, the state generally keeps the budget relatively constrained and has lots of, you know, ways to go about enforcing that. Ah, but you know, public education expenses are basically about half of the state’s budget overall. So when you think about you know what the Texas Legislature is doing and you say, Well, they only dealt with public education Well, actually dealt with about, you know, basically their biggest budgetary item,

[0:05:03 Jim] right? So what? This led to ultimately was a reasonably successful session in the sense, at least where we’re sitting right now, that after talking about trying to do something about public education and never being able to do it really without being forced by a lawsuit to pump money into the schools or change the way that they that they arranged it. They spend a lot more in public education and cut property taxes, in part because they went in with about a $9 billion increase in revenue. So they had some money to play with. And they had some money in what’s called the rainy day fund, which led to them increasing spending by ultimately over $10 billion

[0:05:45 Josh] of that 11 million. And the thing isn’t just in case, you know. I mean, it’s unlikely that you’re aware of this, but it’s important. Just toe round out this conversation that you know, local property taxes pay, I mean, have been recently paying for a majority of the share of public education expenses in the state, and so is basically as property values have increased. Ah, the the revenue from those property tax is increasingly taking up a bigger share of the public education budget, which has allowed the state to actually spend less and less of general revenue on public education. And part of this whole thing was about reworking this balance back out to where the state was contributing, you know, roughly equal shares to basically local property owners. It’s all these things were connected.

[0:06:28 Jim] Yeah, yeah. The other piece of that is, as those values went up, property taxes went up. So that was enabled to state to not spend as much state money and rely on property tax taxes collected at the local level to pay for education. So you had two things that were intention there. They’re linked in policy and they were linked in the politics and that there’s all this property tax money that’s increasingly going to the schools. But people’s property tax bills are going up. And remember, there’s no incomes, no state income tax in Texas. So the Legislature tackle those. And they did that in a way that also increased spending, which is kind of something that that in Republican dominated Texas and even to some degree years ago, even in democratically dominated Texas but certainly in the last 15 to 20 years has been something we have seen happen fairly rarely in Onley with big political fights and ultimately, the legislature in both chambers decided to spend a lot of money, and there really wasn’t a lot of pushback on the size of the budget. You had a few members of the at the end kind of saying, Well, maybe we shouldn’t be spending this much money and where we’re going to get it going forward. But the votes weren’t close.

[0:07:42 Josh] Yeah, And that speaks to sort of the other big narrative. Are, you know, to the session? I mean, if the 1st 1 was sort of the the repeated note of agreement about what the major issues were and what they were gonna focus on, the other sort of, you know, consistent. Arkan describing this session was how much it contrasted with the last session, right? And in the last session in 2017. You know, if you read or heard anything about it, you probably heard about either. You know, the bathroom bill that ultimately failed. Ah. Maybe you heard about immigration Legislature. You know, basically immigration legislation, sanctuary cities Bill, and show me your papers provision. And if you actually follow this, you know pretty closely maybe you heard about the acrimony between the big three of the time. It is a different speaker. It was Speaker Joe Straus. Speaker in the session was Dennis Bonnin. But the acrimony between the big three over sort of disagreements about what the big issues were and what the agenda was gonna look like. Ah, you know, the idea that we went from a session where the focus was basically on immigration and social issues? At least you know, popularly toe one in which it was on public education. And, ah, property tax reform with a mix of a big increase in spending in there would probably make most will say, Wait, what happened between those two?

[0:08:50 Jim] Right? And and that’s a good question. And what happened was the 2018 election and the way that the Republican leadership in this state interpreted the results of those of that election. So most people look the 2018 election and the thing that they remember most is going to be, if you remember anything. The fact that bitter O’Rourke narrowly lost to Ted Cruz and so the Democratic candidate was Bater O Rourke. He ran against Republican incumbent Ted Cruz. Typically, these races in recent again about the last 15 years have not been very close. Ted Cruz won his first race when he was elected in 2012 by something like, you know, more than about 16.712 mid to mid teens in the last, the last election for an incumbent senator. When John Cornyn ran last time in 2014 he won by 19 or 20 points and then cruise one Onley by 2.5 is better. Rourke surged as a very popular Democrat and a statewide and then, ultimately a nationwide figures. Now, as we record this running for the presidential nomination on the Democratic side, different topic. But in 2018 what we saw was a big surge of Democrat voting overall and including Democratic voting, and we saw several change over and we such several ships in the partisan advantage. So Democrats gained 12 seats in the state House of Representatives, two seats in the state Senate and two seats in the congressional delegation. No, none of this produced Democratic majorities, but it was widely interpreted by Republicans in the wake of the election and in a national environment where Democrats were surging as something

[0:10:44 Josh] of a wake

[0:10:44 Jim] up call. And Josh and I, you know, go to a lot of panels and talk to a lot of elected officials and watch these things happen and are on panels of these elected officials. And it was pretty remarkable in the wake of the November election, just how much everybody seemed to be interpreting the elections the same way. And that interpretation waas what Republicans have done in 2017 was not going to work going into 2019 because Republicans were losing ground with the electorate and legislator after legislator statewide elected official after statewide elected official, with only a couple of exceptions, all seemed to be saying the same thing going into the 2019 section, and it turned out to be what they did, they said. We have to focus on things that are important to the voters. This is what they were telling us. We have to do something about public education. We have to do something about property taxes.

[0:11:42 Josh] Yeah, and that’s probably, you know, I would say the maybe, maybe the third theme in some ways, right, which is that you know, there’s an agreement over the agenda, right? There was this notion that this is really different, But there’s also this idea that, you know, it seemed it seemed to be the case that again, everyone agreed that the elections sent this particular message is very rare that you find someone who seemed to say that this wasn’t the measure, that the message wasn’t to. Some version of you know, this focus on red meat, social issues or, you know, things that are really popular with, you know, the most extreme elements of the party. The Republican Party, to be clear. Ah, you know, that’s not gonna carry water anymore. And I mean, I think, you know, really sort of telling piece that kind of hits on both of these. There’s two things I’d say is one you know, most of those that electoral turnover the gym talked about here happened in the suburbs. You know, it happened in sort of suburban districts that were usually some. Some mix of basically just outside, you know, the urban core, but then usually stretch far out into kind of, you know, Republican territories in the rural parts of the state. And the idea was these, you know, the people where Republicans really got hit hard in that election was in these sort of really suburban area is in pretty good. These are the places where, you know, again, the you know, the increase in property taxes is probably being felt the most in a lot of case in these fast growth areas. And the strains on the public school systems were also feeling, you know, this this straight. And I think you know, lieutenant Governor was very Dan Patrick was very clear about sort of his interpretation that, you know, he had a problem with teachers, you know, in that Not that he had a promise. You just had a problem literally with teachers and this sort of trope after the election that, you know, he lost, you know, he lost significantly basically among educators. And then, you see, sort of the again, this is sort of a good thing to democratically. Then he came in, and their first sort of thing was to say, Hey, let’s do teacher pay raises right now you could look at that and say, Boy, that’s that’s swampy. Or you could look and say its democratic and reactive. But But what was interesting again was the fact that everybody basically took this and said, OK, we can’t do what we did last time. We need to be you know, quote unquote, more serious this time about the real issues, and we agree on what the issues are. So the session was always relatively tame.

[0:13:55 Jim] Yeah, And I think that, you know, as we look at the connection between what happened in 2018 and what happened in the session 2019 and think about the the connective tissue. There really is Thean interpretation that the elected officials brought to the election because

[0:14:15 Josh] fashion, you mean

[0:14:16 Jim] or to the session, Because the overall, I mean, look, one could disagree about that. One could say yes. Better work lost by or lost by only 2.5 points. Dan Patrick and and the attorney general loss by only four points. Both of those had won in their first election campaigns by between 18 and 20. Um, but they still want. And it was a national election year. Democrats across the country voted in much greater numbers. The Democrats nationally took back a majority in the tech in this in the U. S. House of Representatives in the U. S. Congress. And so one might have said, Well, you know, we held the line and we still have a Republican majority is indicated by the overall counts unless carry on. And yet, somehow they took. They took that signal, which is Are you you know, arguably a clear one. And it really does underline Ah, couple of things. I mean, I think one is the space within. What we think of is Texas’s conservative political culture for some interpretation and movement within that band that’s driven by proximate election returns, right? Um and also the fact that however cynical your view of things, um, you know, you mentioned this swamp a few years a minute ago. I mean, there is something in the air right now in our politics that says that politics are inherently corrupt and that it’s clique ish and that, you know, the swamp and then the embedded interests in government sort of are all self serving and don’t really pay attention to the public. Well, you know, Republican leadership was paying pretty close attention to the public on this. Now, did they interpret it correctly that they given everybody what they want it? Is it enough? I don’t know. But if we think about what the classic definitions of say public opinion are and why people watch public opinion whether it’s registered in polling or registered in elections. This seems to follow, at least broadly, the model.

[0:16:24 Josh] Yeah, but I think you know, you also raise a good point there, which is, you know, it does follow the model, but it’s not, You know, it’s not deterministic, nor is it perfectly known. I mean, to some degree

[0:16:34 Jim] explain what you mean by deterministic,

[0:16:35 Josh] right? I mean, it’s not that you know, a causes B in this case. I mean, when we don’t know for a fact that voters went into the election booth and said, You know, I’m really sick of this. Focus on the issues that the Legislature’s been focused on because they have been focusing on the things are important, like property tax and public education. And I’m registering a protest against the the whole government in Texas. We don’t know that you brought up the fact that you know is a good year for Democrats. Why was it a good year for Democrats? Well, you know, First of all, it was a midterm election after the election of a Republican president that usually favors the party not in power in the White House to begin with. Donald Trump is not a usual president, right? So, I mean, in some ways, you know, when is describing it to people during the election cycle? You know, national politics was pretty relentless and continues to be pretty relentless. Ah, you know, on voters basically throughout this president’s tenure, in terms of how active he is in just all manner of things, right? And so, you know, it could be that the election was a reaction to what? Republicans in the Legislature in 2017. But I’m a little bit skeptical about that just because I know how little attention most people pay. So what is going on in particular in the Legislature? To think that, you know, for thinking you know, what contributed most is for the electoral outcomes that gave Democrats a real boost in Texas. You know, I’d probably give more credit to Donald Trump than I would tow What happened? The 2017 legislative session, which kind of speaks to the question of when we look ahead to 2020 you know, one. Did Republicans do enough in this session? Teoh, you know, inoculate themselves from any potential threat they face or you know, continued sort of democratic gains, but to Is that even really a reasonable expectation? Or is the fact that we’re just looking at this big? You know, it sort of next national presidential campaign. And, you know, Texas is going to see record turnout. And is there anything that Republicans you know could do to slow or stop? I think what is you know, I think a pretty un controversial statement to say here a trend towards a more competitive state,

[0:18:40 Jim] right? That is more competition between the two parties and elections. So, yeah. I mean, I think that that brings us to the linkage between then 20 2018 through 2019 through 2020. And you mentioned this notion of inoculation. There are, you know, and to spend that out a little bit. I mean, what a lot of people are now considering in the political world and certainly is in the legislature. And remember, none of this statewide officials in Texas are going to be on the ballot in 2020. But all of the state, all of the car, all the members of the U. S. Congress and all the members of the statehouse and a big chunk of the state senators will be. And so I think the way that you flesh that out is to say, if you are a state legislator running for re election in 2020 how aware are you? And I think they are pretty aware of the fact that this dynamic that we talked about in 2018 in which it’s Donald Trump, kind of defining the electoral environment for most people in terms of what’s at the top of their mind, politically and for, particularly among Democrats. What’s motivating them, right then? How does that translate into 2020 is giving people some or action on public education and maybe a lower tax bill for people that own property? If you’re a renter, it’s probably not gonna get passed down to you, So it’s not going to make much difference to you. In all likelihood, does that provide? You said Inoculation, I would say almost insulation, right? In other words, if you’re if you’re an elected official in your going out there campaigning tryingto win back your state seat of a district of a few 100,000 people and you’re talking about public education and property taxes and people are listening to your message going, God, I love Donald Trump or God, I hate Donald Trump. Do property taxes and public education matter. That’s the question we’re kind of talking about here on the table in terms of this notion of insulation and how we understand responsiveness. And I think what it tells us is that when we look at that formulation, the way I set it up, that public opinion matters because elected officials pay attention to it. Well, it’s filtered through all kinds of screens that, you know, it’s not a straight line between these two points. Is a lot going on in between.

[0:21:13 Josh] Yeah, I think that, yeah, I mean, that’s right. And so, you know, as you look at this, I mean, I think one of the things to think about here is that, you know, public opinion is going to be influenced by you know, a number of things, but also influences the actions of elected officials to and so what’s, I think, interesting. Going back to where we started and thinking about you know, this session in particular in the interpretation of it, you know, someone who studies public opinion and I think this is true both in terms of legislative session and also thinking about the 2020 election cycle. You know, it’s both super importance or of determining how elected officials act. But also, elected officials are constantly trying to influence that public opinion also right. And so I think part of the idea here is is to say that you know what Texas Republicans in particular trying to in the leadership in particular, We’re really, you know, straining to accomplish this session in a way that I think was notable to people was a way to you say, you know, insulate the Republican brand in Texas from a national poet environment that they have no control over,

[0:22:16 Jim] and it has been unpredictable. Shall we call it?

[0:22:21 Josh] Yeah, unpredictable. Put

[0:22:22 Jim] it. Yeah, I think that I think that’s right. And so, um, you know, as we go forward and we watch this, um, we I know I was going to say before we sort of try to close out Ah, good example of what you’re talking about in terms of political candidates and political leaders in particular trying to shape public opinion as they also try to respond to it at the same time. A good thing to look at her. Greg Abbot’s is Greg Average 2018 campaign. And and we didn’t mention Abbott when we talked about the closeness of the election in 2018 because his election was in close. He went in is, ah, relatively popular governor governor. He had secured his base and in terms of what the signals he was sending to the electorate, he was not sending signals Rude in 2017 and at least not exclusively. Um, the Greg Abbott messaging in the 2018 campaign was Things were great in Texas. We’ve done good things for the economy. The state is growing and prosperous, and when he had to a certain little nod towards. And there’s this kind of thing about immigration out here, and it’s really bad. But we’re also spending a lot of border security, and we’re doing what we can about that

[0:23:37 Josh] Stay the course.

[0:23:38 Jim] So it was a stay. The course message focused on what was going on in the state. Not all of the thrashing going on. Now the dilemma for 2020 Republicans is that Greg Abbott is not on the ballot this time. he has an interest in helping preserve the Democratic majority or the Republican majority weight

[0:24:00 Josh] and the resource is

[0:24:01 Jim] and the resources to help with that cause. He’s such a prodigious fundraiser. But the balance between the force of you know, the messages and the stimuli and the agenda coming from the national environment versus what’s coming from this state, the balance is going to be different. If 2018 was nationalised, even though it really wasn’t supposed to be necessarily, there’s no way to avoid 2020 being more nationalized in 2018 because Donald Trump will be on the ballot.

[0:24:29 Josh] It reminds me something that we say a lot, uh, to reporters, and it’s due in the first part gets here. Which is a reminder Texas is part of America. Yeah, right. And as much as Texans and especially Texas elected leaders want talk about Texas exceptionalism and sort of Car of Texas out is being its own unique place within you know, this broader collection of states. The reality is that the the overall sort of political environment climate that we’re going to go into in 2020 is likely to be ah, lot stronger than a 2019 legislative sessions. Output,

[0:25:02 Jim] right? Particularly given is we’ll talk later about insurance. Subsequent podcast. Most people in Texas do not pay an enormous amount of time to the, UH, do not spend a lot of time paying an enormous amount of attention to the Texas Legislature. You know, state legislatures pretty far down on the hierarchy, even though it’s very important to us and, frankly, very important to stay into people’s everyday lives. Okay, so that’ll do it for today. Um, we will be back next week talking about something else currently on the agenda in Texas politics. I suspect maybe trade in tariffs. But we’ll see.

[0:25:39 Josh] I hope so.

[0:25:40 Jim] So have a good week and we’ll be back soon enough. Second Reading Podcast is a production of Texas Politics Project and the Project 2021 Development Studio at the University of Texas at Austin.