March 16, 2021 – Second Reading

[0:00:00 Speaker 0] 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. So I tell people on a regular basis there is still a land of opportunity in America. It’s called Texas. The problem is these departures from the Constitution. They have become the norm. At what point must a female senator raise her hand or her voice to be recognized over the male colleagues in the room? And welcome back to the second reading podcast for the week of March 15th 2021. I’m Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. Joined again today by Josh Blank, research director for the same Texas politics project. Josh, how rested are you today getting? They’re getting What’s What’s the scale? 1 to 7. Uh, five. I’ll take a five. Okay, that’s not bad. Seven being most trusted, right? I don’t know. I don’t know if I’m ever a seven since I had kids. Yeah, you haven’t been a seven years. It’s been almost a decade, but yeah, right. So today we want to look at the, uh, a couple of things. One is the unfolding political response to last month’s storm related power outages, which is taking an enormous amount of bandwidth, um, in the Texas Legislature and and Texas politics and in particular, the financial issues that have arisen from that. And we’ll go into that a little bit in a minute. Um, and then if we have time, I want to talk a little bit about the context of the public rollout of the, you know, much anticipated and quote unquote election integrity, push and the Legislature that Governor Abbott declared an emergency item and has multiple sponsors in the Legislature. And how that is shaping up, particularly given that even though it’s not a big surprise here in Texas and certainly for people watching this, it seemed to have really, you know, taken the national political media by storm. Which is kind of interesting. Um, but let’s start with the politics of what is now Senate Bill 21 42. And when we recorded this podcast last week, Senate Bill 21 42 was, I think, nothing more at best than a gleam in the lieutenant governor’s I if that I don’t even think it was a placeholder. It didn’t exist. Yeah. No. Yeah. The bill itself didn’t exist, but I You know, I’m I’m not sure exactly when they, you know, if we recorded last Tuesday, they were probably cooking it up by then, um was a couple days later when the lieutenant governor, with his big surprises, interesting. You think so? Because, I mean, if they were, don’t you think they would have filed just a shell bill so as not to have to do what they did this week? We’re going to get ahead of the game here. Sorry. Um, yeah. No, I don’t, because I think that they were kind of I mean, I think this has all been unfolding pretty quickly, but, you know, that’s why I said, I don’t know. So, you know, I mean, the headline around this for people that watch this is that it’s brought some very open conflict between the governor and the lieutenant governor over what Lieutenant governor is pushing and his pose on this. So if we go back, you know the fundamentals. Um, the Senate this week very quickly introduced, then passed, introduced, had about a 20 minute committee hearing to cross that t and dot that public testimony with no public testimony and then moved to the floor and passed basically all on the same day. That’s one way in which the covid protocols make it easier. Senate Bill 21 42 you know, and what the bill does is call for the PUC and ERCOT to immediately, as the bill analysis puts it, um, to correct the prices of wholesale, wholesale power and ancillary service that were sold in the ERCOT market during the period beginning 11 55 PM February 17th and ending 9 a.m. February 19. So all of this is falling out of the contracted external audit that said that there had been a massive amount of overbilling $16 billion originally sent, 16 billion, and then they corrected it and said, Well, it’s probably closer to four billion. But I mean, it kind of says, you know, yeah, like a net net for once. You, you know, shake it all out under pressure. But then they kind of walked that back a little bit, too, as this all unfolded. So just just to be clear, and I think you have a much better grasp on this the whole, you know, a lot of aspects of this than I do. And I mean so So basically, I mean, my understanding is that, you know, essentially, er Katsina situation, there’s not enough energy production going on. They went to the PUC and said, Hey, we need to increase the market cat price that will pay for energy to incentivize more energy production into the system. The PUC said yes and then this bill and then basically they let that go for too long. That was Monday and that was Monday night. And the idea is just to correct the basically the point of the shortage and the idea here is to basically correct the market for the period after which it’s been decided. I’m not saying this with any criticism, but after the fact that they should have readjusted the pricing at a certain point, they basically to correct the pricing from then on, right? I mean, you know, the competing narratives are, you know, basically, you know, the P. U C and ERCOT left the price you know, at the higher at the higher point for too long, which resulted in you know overbilling that now threatens to ripple through the system. If you know, from the perspective of some people in which hi Bills were, you know, were sent to electricity providers, they were probably higher than a lot of them have control the rates they had contracted. And we’ve already seen, you know, some financial difficulties. Even the degree of financial difficulties became a point of argumentation by the end of last week. Um, but the idea of being that you could go back and retroactively and this is what the bill orders them to do retroactively lower the price and then lower the price of the bills. And, you know, at this point, you know, if anybody’s paid up, which is probably haven’t just readjust everything, which is going to redistribute the cost, and and and I’ve not heard and I’ve not heard listen to every second of the hearings, I’ve also not heard about exactly You know what? The real you know, the quote unquote real market price would have been and how they would know that well. And it also seems that there’s also a clear debate about whether this can even really be done right. I mean, like from illegals. I mean, not that the Legislature. Yeah, well, I mean, that gets that gets, well, that gets to the point of politics, right? Which is that the governor? The governor has said, you know, as this as this idea was being floated last week, you know, the governor pretty much went on the record. Not pretty much. He went on the record saying that, you know, his reading of the Constitution as a former judge and former attorney general was that there were provisions him that there were provisions of the Constitution that forbade, you know, the speak, you know, in part because it would be, you know, essentially avoiding pre existing. Because exactly. And, um so the lieutenant governor and and and many of his allies of the movement on this bill and the movement of some kind of action on this had a lot of support in the Senate, uh, past 27 But I think, yeah, I think all but three senators, you know, signed on a letter saying that their charges should be reversed, and I think 27 3 and one abstention because it was I think Kelly Hancock is the chair of the relevant committee. It was his rationale. Yeah. And although, you know, he he provided more of a rationale, which is that he aside from the chair thing, he came out, I think, in the last day or two and said that there he had substantive objections as well. So, um, and and that itself was another little, you know, Eddie of this of this whole thing. So, you know, I thought that you know what was interesting for You know, what we The kind of things that we’ve been talking about here is that the politics of this and the politics of this have moved very quickly in the sense that you know, last week, when lieutenant Governor Patrick showed up in a very highly unusual appearance to question the chair and last man standing at the PUC because the other two members have resigned about this, Uh, it was a very combative appearance in which he accused the PC chair of of lying about a couple of things, accused him of being incompetent, reminded him that he needed you know, he was Governor Abbott’s appointee and send very clear signals to Governor Abbott that, um, he thought Governor Abbott should make a declaration. You know, in support of this approach, even though they go, you know, And the governor has been on the record and went on the record again after this, saying he would not do that. I liked it was not in favor of that. I love that. I mean, just as, like, just as I find all this entertaining to me, like by all this, I mean, politics just generally, otherwise we wouldn’t do this. But, I mean, Abbott’s response to that was just so I thought was kind of great in some ways, which was, you know, yeah, the legislature can legislate on this, and, like, somebody’s going to need to implement what you look like, somebody’s still got to be there. I mean, yeah, I mean I mean, in essence, it kind of, you know, it amounted, at least in part two. Yeah. Yeah. I’ve already said the Legislature should do something, but not this. So, you know, and the implicit. You know, people spent the weekend in the Eddie of a very familiar and to my mind, you know, I don’t know. I shouldn’t say strange, because I get it you know, a very familiar round of speculation about what the lieutenant governor’s motivation was with, you know, Did this mean the lieutenant governor was, you know, going to challenge the governor in the Republican primary? Um, okay. You know, speculation on Twitter in print. You know, whoever people were getting together, many of them probably unmasked giving. The people were talking about to discuss these things over the weekend. Um, and then, you know, Monday came and you know which would be yesterday as we record this. And then the Senate did this. You know, uh, you know, super sped up again. Very unorthodox version in which they had to, you know, work on the legislative, you know, have to define the Legislative Day as last Thursday and reverse the clock. And we’ve seen that before, but it’s it doesn’t happen every day. Usually when we every Monday, every Monday does not become the previous Thursday in the legislation. When we go back in time in the legislature is kind of unusual. Yeah, they’re usually it’s a flag that there’s something going on and time travel. The bill sailed through with, you know, relatively minimal debate. Um, and then the person we haven’t talked about here is the speaker of the house, who early on is this was being discussed, had sent a very much a kind of tapped the brake signal about what his approach and what he thought the house approach should be, which was, you know, yes, something needs to be done, but we need to consider it. And at one point, I think early last week or maybe even late the week before, he had said, and, you know, this could probably wait. You just could even wait till a special session when we had time to give it the attention it deserves. So what you have is, you know, people in very different positions on this, and I think it, you know, it underlines, uh, you know, things that we’ve been talking about for years, which is that there’s there’s always been this behind the scenes tension between the governor and the lieutenant governor, Um, that they’ve done a pretty good job of not letting out into the open. Although almost anybody you talk to inside assumes this is a fact of life. Yeah. You know, I’ve been trying, you know, this is interesting I mean, you brought that. You’ve already alluded, if not directly stated the fact that this is sort of a, I don’t know, a consistent kind of frame. Really? About how you know, I think a lot of people think about the internal politics of the Legislature, this idea of some sort of competition, you know, between either the governor, the lieutenant governor on the lieutenant governor, the governor, depending how you look at it and all that kind of stuff. But, you know, my kind of first reaction to that is it just sort of feels lazy in this moment. I mean, you know, I mean, like, it’s there, and it’s kind of easy. But Patrick, to your point, Patrick came out after the lazy on their part or lazy on the part of people interpreting it lazy on the part of people interpreted it. Yeah, I think it’s I think it’s a lazy frame at this point. I mean, you know, I’m not saying that Dan Patrick is. There’s 0% chance he would challenge Greg Abbott in a Republican primary for governor. I mean, look, a lot of things can happen between now and then, but it seems like a pretty low probability situation, and I mean, you get to the point where you know, again Patrick, unprompted, basically came out on Monday or Tuesday or said Monday yesterday and said, I’m not running against the governor, Okay? Guys like I mean, he’s trying to, you know? I mean, I mean, he felt he felt prompted, he felt, prompted then Ross Ramsey’s article in The Texas Tribune. And that’s the point, he felt, prompted by a weekend of coverage that framed what he was trying to do. I think in a way that you know, I don’t I mean, I just think again, I think it’s kind of lazy, you know, in some ways. And I think there’s a lot of things going on here that I could point to that I think are more, you know, telling in terms of style, in terms of representational government, in terms of other things that probably point to where these guys are coming from, and also and also the process itself. None of those might be right. I’ll just say that, but they’re more complicated to be wrong, too, so I could totally be wrong, but they’re more complicated than this whole. Well, you know, Dan Patrick is trying to make a great at it look bad, you know? I don’t think so. I think there’s some complications in there in terms of trying to make sure that the blame lands somewhere. That’s not either of those two, and I think they’re both trying to make sure that that’s the case. But they’re also following styles that I think are pretty like, well worn for them. In some ways, you know. And I mean, they have different incentive structures, right? So just a couple of things and you know, you can go and say I don’t agree with you on that or whatever, you know. But I mean, to some degree, you know, right now, I think the thing about this issue in general is that, you know, obviously sucking up a ton of oxygen because constituents are mad. Legislators are hearing about it. It’s an issue, you know. So when there’s an issue like that, I think you know, politicians want to act. It’s their job to respond to constituent concerns. That makes a lot of sense, right just on its face. I would say you know, Greg Abbott’s approach to some degree. You know, setting aside the responsibility question for a second has been, like, you know, kind of the way he is about a lot of things, which is to be, you know, a mixture of both, you know, political but selective right? And how he approaches these things. Dan Patrick is still a bit of a shock jock, right? I mean, we’re still, you know, and what am I talking about here? What I’m talking about is that what happened with the blackout was a complicated, systemic failure writ large, I would say, you know, and the system was designed by the Legislature approved by politicians in the state for years and not really improved upon. Ultimately, a lot of the actions in the last few days seem to my mind to be focused on really shifting the blame to individual failings, whether that be Bill Magnuson or Kat, whether that be the PUC members, whether that be the out of state board members and basically say somebody messed this up. You know, somebody really made a mistake here, and what we’re doing is we’re cleaning house. I’m making action, and we’re going to do something. We’re going to change this because, honestly, that’s more salient and tangible to like ordinary people and voters. That is something that adjusts, you know, the way you know, a specific function of the way that the energy market, which is pretty complicated in Texas works. So that’s one aspect of it. I’ll put that out there. I don’t know if you know, if you well, I mean, yeah, I mean, I think as far as that goes, all those things are in play. I mean, certainly, you know, almost from before the crisis was even over, uh, the governor was sending the signal that that, you know, you know, they you know, we just say it. I mean, they were fitting Bill Magnus and the peace and the and ERCOT for the blame for all this and, you know, push that message pretty consistently, you know, for as long as they could. Until you know this, the more you know, the first round of legislative hearings when the PUC sort of got dragged into the picture and Abbott didn’t have the leverage. The governor didn’t have the leverage in the process to protect the PUC, and I think importantly, and this is, I think what I would add to that explanation is something I think we talked about last week or week before. And we talked about this. And that’s the You know, if you look in the interest group universe and you know the tectonics of the Republican Party, you know, protection of the railroad Commission and, you know, accommodating the role that the oil and gas played in this and that, you know, still remains kind of out of the frame and a lot of these discussions. And I think that’s the thing. And I think that’s when I say that the whole Well, this is Abbott. This is, you know, Patrick trying to kneecap Abbott is a lazy frame, because that’s exactly I mean. I mean, there’s so much coalitional elements in here that are really at play, right? And so I’m just adding the coalitional. I’m a great I’m really the peace. Yeah, I’m agreeing with you. I mean, I think that’s but I think that’s the point, is why, you know? Yeah, I mean, I mean, I think you know, and I think there, but you know, so that said I mean, I think you know the interesting thing that, you know, you’re kind of analysis. I mean, I don’t know that I’d, you know, I don’t know that I guess so far is lazy because I think that, you know, it gets at an element that I think you see at all levels within the capital and at the system is that you know, if you’re trying to get something done in the capital, this is a factor. You know, whether the lieutenant governor and the governor on the same page or not, how the ongoing jockeying for position and how their calculations have been have affected each other mutually. You know, it’s kind of an unavoidable part of, Of of the of the topic, if you’re of the playing the game, if you’re doing anything. So I think, you know, I think I wouldn’t say lazy so much as just reflexive. But what I would say is, Is that is that is that better described as, uh, you know, an individual conflict between two politicians or as an institutional conflict between a governor has been given a lot of power for a long period of time. Now, over the year of covid and the Legislature that hasn’t really been able to act. But now, faced with, you know, this clearly salient. You know, the other clearly salient crisis in terms of, you know, energy. Patrick would say, Well, I can act, and he and he showed it. I mean, you know, again, the house is the house element to this is another question, right? I mean, I wonder to what extent, you know, go ahead. But the degree. But what I would say is that yes, I mean, yes, you know, the institutional piece of this, You know, it’s the thing that people tend to underestimate systematically in this when they get really up into the because it’s easier to parse it out as an individual conflict. But, I mean, the individual piece matters. I mean, you know, just, you know, it’s hard to imagine just to, you know, to think, you know, to switch, you know, to control for the human variable here. Hard to imagine David Dewhurst trying something like this when he was lieutenant governor. Very different personal approach to this, you know? Very similar. You know, somewhat similar institutional position. Now, you know, Patrick is more powerful for some of the coalitional popular, and he’s more powerful, but both both elite and and voting base. And just and and but. But also there’s a personal part of that is that he just, you know, he’s occupied. He occupies the lieutenant governorship much more fully than his predecessor. Well, but that’s that’s. But that’s also overt, right? I mean, and also in response to right. I mean, that’s that’s the thing. And so it is still institutional thing. I mean, ultimately, you know. Yeah, well, you know, I’m not going to Yeah, if you don’t want to change your mind, that’s fine. But you know, But Dan Patrick and David Dewhurst and the personalities involved there and Greg Abbott versus even Perry and the personages there and they put their position. Their their political positions are rooted in these institutional and coalitional politics. But it’s hard, you know. But, I mean, I guess I’m just sort of giving, you know, some people that are observing this the benefit of the doubt in noting that you know the personal strategies as much as they are determined by all the structural and institutional stuff you know are a factor here and I think that, you know, I mean, you know, as you were describing Abbott strategy earlier, I mean, some of those factors seeped into that explanation, right? I mean, you know, kind of characteristically Abbott. Yeah, you know, kind of parsing this and parsing that. So some of that is at work, you know, to me, I mean, what really crystallizes, you know, for me, And you know how you kind of to me how I kind of divide all these different, you know, all these different factors that are, you know, obviously just just like the electric thing. I mean, you’ve got two layers of, you know, two layers of real, real complex, multidimensional, systemic layers on top of each other. You’ve got the market piece, the electrical piece, which is very complicated and systemically complicated, as you describe, which I think is absolutely right. Then you’ve got this, you know, weirdo institutional sort of design in Texas. You know, these things tend to have pretty over determining forces, you know, But I think that, um, you know, like, you know, a reporter asked me yesterday, so you know, this is really all just about Patrick, Like wanting power, right? And, you know, I think on one hand that’s, you know, sort of grossly oversimplified on one hand, all of politics. But let’s just like not right, Yeah, and and, you know, obviously a little too general, you know, on the other hand, there is something to the fact that, you know, Patrick has proven to be much more interested, interested in maximizing the power of his office. Then his predecessor was. Now it used to be right after, you know Patrick got elected. I thought that that contrast really mattered, because so many of the players we’re doing compare and contrast. And I think that actually that helped Patrick early on. I think it’s not as much of a factor now because he’s been there a while and there’s turnover and, you know, people have short memories, and there’s not that many people going on. David Dewhurst never would have done that. But I still think it’s useful to make the contrast because it does give you a sense of like, you know, what’s similar. What’s different. And Perry was a much more powerful governor at that. Yeah, well, particularly later in the point. And I’m not arguing that the personalities don’t make difference or there isn’t some sort of a struggle here. But to me, the struggle has always been over, basically credit claiming more so than anything else. I mean, if I’m thinking about that relationship setting to her society, you know? I mean, Patrick came in guns a blazin and, you know, really ramped it up in terms of I mean, I remember. I remember when Patrick’s started and it was like here my 30 agenda items. We’re going to press conference. This is what’s happening. 2017 goes out, tries to roll over the house with the bathroom bill, among other things, then gets pretty serious. Not only does Abbott one maneuver around all that incredibly well, you know, with the special session basically at the end gets to say, Hey, look at all these things I had the Legislature do, but also the stuff they didn’t do, man, they messed up. You have a really close election cycle, and Patrick’s been pretty, you know, I mean for Patrick, since if you look compared those first two sessions to the most recent session and even the beginning of this one, people are talking about. Hey, where’s Patrick Patrick? So quiet. Obviously, he’s oriented himself slightly differently. Maybe he’s older. Maybe he’s calmer, I don’t know, but it’s a different thing. But ultimately, I think what they’re both looking for in some ways is still, you know, the ability to claim credit for what happened. Now, if that’s the same thing you’re saying they’re trying to take each other’s chop or they’re looking to get more power or whatever. I guess so. But I’ve never you know, I’ve been well, I mean, with the office argument of Yeah, I mean, it still begs the question of claiming credit to what end? I mean, you know, unless credit is the end, you know, unto itself. And I, you know, I mean, I I and I think that’s still an open. I think it’s an open question with, I mean with the lieutenant governor, and, you know, I think, you know, with both of them, they both want to at least you would think at least they where they are and not lose ground. Um, you know, and that and that does, you know? I mean, it does raise a matter again, you know, this is institutional in the way you know that you’re talking about, You know, there’s a certain, you know, inevitability. You know, there’s friction built into the institutional design here, right? And that’s why you know, if we think about the governor’s, you know, when governors have been successful, you know, at maximizing both, you know, whatever their credit, claiming to whatever and that credit claiming goes, it’s been governors that have orchestrated cooperation or been orchestrated by there, the governor and the lieutenant governor. Right. So, you know, the successful, you know, the most successful sessions have been where that you know, or you know, for where everybody came out feeling like they got something is when those things happened. You know, you think about the you know, whatever the big transportation and water sessions. You know, obviously the preeminent example that, you know, I hate using but you know, is still, you know, the one you know, the most preeminent example of you know, the last generation or so a little more than a generation now, I guess is is George W. You know the Bush Laney Bullock thing? You know, in a lot of ways, that underlines the complexity of all the stuff we’ve been trying to untangle and going back and forth with here now, I mean, you know, did that happen because, you know, we were in a party transition, and, you know, Bush was a less deeply conservative Republican than than you know what we think of as, you know, the modal Republican. Now, did it happen because, you know, Laney and Bullock were less liberal Democrats than we have now, is it? You know how much of that was the three of them? You know, you know, somebody that talked about this always says all the time? Yeah. You know, Laney and Bullet took Bush and they rocked him like a baby. And the next thing you know, he was president. Um, I mean, just something like here. You talk about this. I mean, the one thing that you know, that sort of strikes me in. This is you know, I wonder if the thing about this issue is and where the tension comes from is not about, you know, power per se or about, you know, someone trying to get to a different office. But I think part of it. There’s a tension here because there’s blame. Blame has to go somewhere. And ultimately, you know, I think you know, a really simple analyses say Patrick is really focused on getting the people Abbott appointed out of there. Now the fact that I could put Abbott appointed in parentheses it’s kind of not really necessarily the point here in Abbott. Not surprisingly, you know, being where he is, he’s like, No, I want to keep the people that I trust or that you know And again we’ve already cleaned out a lot. So, like let’s just cool it. But you know, there’s a tension here. I mean, and the tension does come down to the blame and then the credit claiming is sort of a separate piece. I mean, it kind of brings in. I mean, I think what it brings into all of this is the house also, which is. And then there’s those guys who have notice who seem to have expressed no desire to move too quickly on any of this, and they’re facing a different set of pressures and was trying to think about why that might be and I got Well, I think, Well, you know, well, I mean you know. And what’s interesting about that, I think is that, you know, this is underlined the different natures of the house and the Senate right now. You know, in this historical moment where you know, you don’t you don’t You know, as as the lieutenant governor, you know, enunciated and very grateful and thankful terms at the end of the, you know, the when the chamber had convened to pass the bill on on Monday. You know, this this could not have happened without the will of the body. It was very gracious. But, you know, as we’ve noted here before, the will of the body seems to be very much, you know, driven by the lieutenant governor’s boot and their collective behind or some kind of, you know, acquiescence to to what is going, you know, to what the lieutenant governor wants. And, you know, you give him credit for having wrangled the Senate in that way. Or, you know, however you want to kind of, you know, I mean, they’re different, You know, their partisan ways of thinking about that. Um can I give a cynical take? I mean, my cynical take is is that you know they’re going to kick it to the house, and it’s going to sit there for a long time and come back completely different if it comes back at all. So, one, you know, you’re in the same way. You’re you’re demonstrating action on this. You’re doing it quickly and decisively. Ultimately, the content of what they do may or may not actually, you know, ever really shake out specifically and you can point fingers elsewhere. Um, you know, And also, as you point out, I mean, you’ve been watching, you know, we’ve both been watching a bunch of hearings. You know, I think partially if you’re a senator with less than less members and the same agenda, I think you want to do something on this, but still open up some space and this gives you some some breathing room. Yeah, and I think that, you know, I don’t think it’s cynical. I mean, you know, this would not be the first time you know that somebody you know, that one chamber has passed the bill with the expectation that the other chamber would have to take responsibility for either killing it or yeah, either killing it or changing it I mean this, you know, this bill seemed written, you know? I mean, you know, I don’t think it’s cynicism. I think it would be naive to not see that. I mean, you look at the bill. You know, the bill called for, you know, it’s content to be implemented by this Saturday. Yeah, you know, which, you know, puts the onus squarely on the house and then on the governor. And as again as as as lieutenant Governor Patrick said in the in the press conference afterwards, in which he, you know, on one hand, you know, pooh pooh the absurd idea that he ever wants to challenge the, you know, the governor for anything also, you know, it was that, you know, But it would also be very helpful if the governor would just signal to the house that he would sign the bill, you know, And that was the essence of what you’re talking about. And that’s, you know, you know, I haven’t got cynical. I mean, I think that’s how you know. I think that’s how these guys work when you know, in the absence of this kind of perpetual conflict that we’re talking about between both, You know, Lieutenant Governor and the governor and the House and the Senate. And we should say that as we record this, um, you know, the bill has been sent over to the house, has not had first reading. As of today, it’s been, uh, you know, the houses has has adjourned until tomorrow on Wednesday so they can’t read the bill and refer it to the committee until tomorrow. You know, if the will was there, they could still, you know, theoretically, I think passed the bill, get it, get it to the governor’s desk by Saturday. And I guess that afternoon he decided that day and that afternoon they’d come up with me. But, I mean, but the other piece of this and you know where I think the cynicism where there is a fair accusation of cynicism is that against myself is that the lieutenant governor has been, you know, pretty clear in saying, I think there was a quote that’s been circulating that I think was from the I’m not sure if it’s in the press. I think it’s from the press conference, which, you know, it’s not clear who the winners or losers are. if they don’t change the billing or if they do. And that, I think, is a big you know is A is a big tilt in the direction of going more slowly in the position that the house is going to take. And, you know, and I think the politics of that, you know, are are unknown. That’s where you know that that’s where the gambling comes in here, you know, is Lieutenant Governor, you know, write quote unquote that you know, the best thing to be able to do is to say you acted quickly and you took action for action’s sake. And for the sake of being able to say you did something that actually lowered people’s bills Theoretically, maybe, Or is you know, the better political play to say we took our time, we decided to do something. This is what we did. And, you know, the lieutenant governor might go around in a primary saying, you know, and some of the some of the people that voted for that in the Senate saying we wanted to do something and other people obstructed us and they did this other thing well, the other thing be sufficient. I don’t think there’s any way to know that right now. I think from a policy perspective, it’s hard to argue for moving quickly, more ignorantly and by ignorantly I don’t mean to characterize the people is ignorant, but in the literal sense of, you know, with very limited information where they’re still, you know, not very clear. You know, many of the facts of the situation and marry the projections of what would be done are are not clear well, right. And I would And I would argue, you know, worse than not doing anything at all would be telling people you’re going to do something for them and then have it not happened after you say you did right, you know? And then you know, and then there is also, you know, to collapse into the hoariest of cliches. You know, h o a. R. Um, you know, it does seem like in a situation there’s been so much pain inflicted, and so much has gone wrong. Being guided by the principle of, you know, to modify the cliche, do no more harm. Seems to me to be the way to proceed. And I think that is not that is not what we’re seeing in the Senate, and we’ll see what the pressure on the house is like. And you know, my my If I had to predict right now, I think that this is, you know, in the, you know, in terms of the unstable triad, that is the Big Three. This creates a lot of incentives for, uh, the speaker of the House and the governor to be on the same side and to box out the lieutenant governor, you know, and to and to put tests to this discussion that we’ve had so many times from podcast to print two panels to over beers in my front yard. Just how powerful is Dan Patrick? Yeah, and I think this is gonna be, you know, yet another illustration. It’s going to be more grist for that mill, but I will be very surprised if the House does what Dan Patrick wants in this, particularly given that the governor certainly doesn’t seem to want to do this and certainly seems to want to do this a different way. You know, this is probably, you know, this This is where you know if if we want and we want you know, we did this in the weekly mailing that we send out. If you’d like to get on that list, just shoot us an email. Um, what is that? Email is what’s our generic email address with the email address before the podcast is over. But if we put in there, you know, Greg, you know, there’s an ongoing debate right now over how much Crown Greg Abbott has got. You know, you and I haven’t even talked about this. It was the morning consult poll that came out yesterday that suggested a decline in Abbott’s approval. And if you look closely, his number’s got even more negative after he, at least in this one set of data after he announced the mandate, didn’t seem that hurt by the outages a little bit. But not a lot. A tradition among some Democrats. A lot of attrition among Republic among independents and a little bit of a little bit of, you know, a reduction in support and the intensity of support and a slight reduction in extent of support among Republicans. I mean, you know the independent thing, of course, you know, I I sort of sent something to somebody something that’s saying, look, Independence, move around a lot. You look at the multi year trend in our data and you can just see independent, supportive Abbott kind of moving, and I don’t want to say constant. It’s not erotic, but, you know, it fluctuates in waves. Well, the point is, the point is it’s not anchored bipartisanship. So, as you said, you know, Republicans might be less approving of the governor for whatever reason, after any number of things, if they want to be. But they’re not going to be disapproving. They might just not be strongly approving Democrats, you know, they might increase their disapproval. You might see a few of them moved from, you know, like somewhat approval. I don’t know. But your point is right, which is independence are much more impacted by short term forces because they’re not attached, You know which the headlines have into it and intuitively makes a lot of times. These are people who don’t you know, they don’t have a lot of knowledge. They don’t pay a lot of attention. The news gets bad, you know? You ask them, you know, if they want to blame. The governor said, Yeah, sure. Well, you gotta blame somebody. Obviously, that’s what we’re learning. Which is, you know, again, the underlying kind of you know, it goes back to the kind of some of the underlying dynamics here. Okay, We don’t get to elections this week. As you predicted, Josh. I didn’t think, but it is due. But we will. But But, you know, it wasn’t like an act of nature. You had some. You had some influence over its true well, So you were able to help to actualize your prediction. I factored it in. Yeah, I think we call that planning, but one of us has to do it. Uh, so that’ll do it for this week. Um, I don’t think the election topic is going to go away. Uh, so maybe we’ll hit that next week. Um, did you find that that email address? Oh, I’m sorry. It’s a Well, you know I can. Well, this is a bad time to do it. Probably to search for any minute. Okay. Well, I Well, actually, you can look, you can look it up while I’m doing the wind up. So thanks to Josh for being here, uh, we will, and thanks. to our production staff in the liberal arts development studio in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. We do have this mailing list that we send out all kinds of links to data updates on the podcast that email addresses Texas politics at mail dot l a i t s dot utexas dot e d u. So that’s Texas politics at mail dot l a i t s dot utexas dot e d u. So you can see why neither of us remembered it off the top of our heads. So thanks for listening to this wandering podcast. Keep an eye on and keep an eye on all these issues. Be safe and be well, and we will talk to you next week. The second reading podcast is a production of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at