May 29th, 2024 – More than a Phelan: the implications of the primary run-offs in Texas

[00:00:00] Intro: Welcome to the second reading podcast from the university of Texas at Austin. The Republicans were in the democratic party because there was only one party. 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

[00:00:33] Jim Henson: And welcome back to the second reading podcast. I’m jim henson director of the texas politics project at the university of texas at austin Happy to be joined by josh blank research director For the texas politics project.

Good morning, josh. Good

[00:00:47] Josh Blank: morning to you. Happy summer

[00:00:50] Jim Henson: Well, it’s been a long travail, a lot of interesting revelations, and now the jury has spoken.

[00:01:00] Josh Blank: Yes.

[00:01:01] Jim Henson: And no, we’re not talking about Donald Trump, we’re talking about Dave Phelan. So as we meet today to record this podcast, it’s Wednesday morning afternoon.

The Tuesday election runoffs. So we’ve been on hiatus for a couple of weeks to wrap up the semester, but we’re now back on the day after the long awaited runoffs.

[00:01:21] Josh Blank: It’s been a very long wait.

[00:01:22] Jim Henson: Yeah, I mean I could have put four zeros, four os in that and it still wouldn’t have quite captured how long it feels like this primary election has been going

[00:01:31] Josh Blank: on.

And, and I want the viewers to know there actually are three o’s in the notes in long

[00:01:35] Jim Henson: right, and, and that it doesn’t even begin. To cover it.

[00:01:39] Josh Blank: I normally edit these things, but I knew it was on purpose.

[00:01:41] Jim Henson: So let’s just, uh, let’s just look at the results. We’ll just jump right in. So front and center for the audience of this podcast and the text ledge crowd, current speaker, Dade Phelan wins a squeaker over David Covey by 366 votes.

Last I saw out of a total of 26 to 60. Uh, feeling one big in his home County of Jefferson, which is by the conventional wisdom was, you know, the only way he was going to pull this out. Uh, Covey wins in much smaller Jasper and Covey edges feeling my a little more than 800 votes in Orange County. And while I know that the, you know, we’ll see what the feeling.

Debrief is on this and what people say about the the technical aspects, you know, the orange county difference I think was a big difference in that covey beat feeling by about 2300 votes there in the first round in march And he edged feeling by about 800 now We expect the turnout on these things to be lower but in a lot of these race, you know in a lot of these counties, particularly in In jasper in all of them, but particularly in jasper the the The vote was pretty, uh, Annie Jefferson vote was pretty close to what we saw.

The turnout was pretty close in those counties to what we saw in the first round, but was somewhat lower in orange, I believe,

[00:03:01] Josh Blank: right? I mean, just, you know, with the major caveat that when you’re talking about such a small electorate and such a small number of voters, you don’t want to go, I don’t know. You don’t want to overemphasize anything, but certainly you’re, you’re right in the post mortems is going to be interesting to see sort of what the description of is, is either of, How one camp how either failing feelings, you know, succeeded or how Covey failed there.

And I’m just, you know, I guess we’ll have to wait and see what the local reporting looks like. Well, and

[00:03:25] Jim Henson: then there will also be, you know, that will not ever be settled in the sense that, you know, people, people still have very strongly held opinions about what happened in the or work cruise race in 2018.

And people, you know, have not given up on that.

[00:03:40] Josh Blank: Or like our friend, you know, Sasha Eisenberg, who was on this podcast years and years and years ago, wrote, you know, wrote about in the victory line, made a good point. It’s like, you know, a lot of people don’t stick around once they lose, you know, in terms of there’s not a lot of people on the campaign shots.

You’re like, well, let’s. You know, let’s look at why this didn’t go our way. It’s like a close look at one of the worst days of my life. It’s like a hard look at how we could

[00:03:58] Jim Henson: do better. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, so, you know, we’ll talk about it. I mean, in absolute terms, certainly a good night for team, for Jade Phelan.

Within team Phelan, uh, otherwise, not such a great night.

[00:04:13] Josh Blank: No.

[00:04:13] Jim Henson: So not surprisingly, given the precedence that we knew, and there was, you know, tons of the usual suspects talked about, you know, the various permutations of being an incumbent in a runoff and what your odds were. Generally, they’re not good. Yeah,

[00:04:29] Josh Blank: right.

[00:04:29] Jim Henson: And last night, uh, uh, Underline that I was

[00:04:33] Josh Blank: gonna say. So

[00:04:34] Jim Henson: we had a lay, we had a lot of losing incumbents.

[00:04:36] Josh Blank: Yeah. So out of nine incumbents who were up for reelection, uh, seven were defeated, including six Republican can incumbents and, and one democratic incumbents. So not a good night for incumbents runoffs, but as you, you know, plan, I mean, I would say this to a lot of people kind of heading into this, it’s like, you know, a majority of the district already voted for some, or sorry, a majority of the primary voters who showed up, let me say it that way.

Already voted for somebody else.

[00:04:58] Jim Henson: Yeah. And, and, and, yeah, in most circumstances, you have to,

[00:05:00] Josh Blank: well, in all circumstances, right. So you have to overcome the fact that, you know, cause it’s even, even if you’re multi candidates,

[00:05:06] Jim Henson: well, on these races, yeah. And some of these races, there were some people barely avoided the runoff, right?

[00:05:11] Josh Blank: Yeah. But even so, that means that 51 percent voted for at least two other candidates. So you’re just, you’re just starting behind the eight ball in these things. So it’s not surprising to see, you know, a bad night for a lot of these incumbents. I mean, I think what’s, Surprising in some ways, just the fact that any of them escaped.

[00:05:26] Jim Henson: Yeah. So, so what do we, what do we see? So Justin Holland lost to Katrina Pearson, um, and you know, and you know, one of my, you know, sub themes in my head for this With Shelly Luther and Katrina Pearson both going to likely to be house members. This is You know, the revenge of the Tea Party, uh, John Kempel lost to Alan Schoolcraft, Dwayne Burns lost to Helen Kirwan, uh, Frederick Fraser lost to Carissa Richardson, uh, Lynn Stuckey lost to Andy Hopper, Stephanie Click lost to David Lowy, and Sean Theory lost to Lauren Simmons, and that was the Democratic loss that you were referring to, uh, the incumbent survivors in HD1, Gary Van Dever lives to fight another day.

Um, in his very characteristic low key style and then of course feeling one. So, um, you know, you look back overall, you, you look, so. you know, where do we want to go? So let’s, let’s talk a little bit. I mean, so one of the, the key subtext here, of course, is this notion that, you know, which I largely correct that a big part of this was motivated by, you know, two big factors, at least in terms of the, the counter mobilization against incumbents, one vouchers slash school choice to Ken Paxton’s impeachment, at least in the house.

Yeah. Now, I think those are the initial factors. We can dig deeper and be a little more structural. I mean, those are, those are

[00:06:59] Josh Blank: motivating factors. Right. Right. Yeah. That’s what the instigated is. I mean, we’re, we’re, we like to be specific as opposed to maybe determinants.

[00:07:07] Jim Henson: Yeah. Right. So, well, yeah, I mean, the, as has been pointed out widely on this podcast and, you know, some of the, the newsletters, the more institutional newsletters this morning, um, You know, while vouchers were a big instigating factor here, you know, one can argue, I think with a lot of evidence, although I haven’t seen any systematic evidence of this, but, um, but I’m not, I’m not overly skeptical.

I mean, I think this sounds about right. And I think if we had systematic evidence, it would confirm this, even though vouchers are the kind of the burr under the saddle. You know, they weren’t whipping the horse with vouchers. They were whipping the horse with border security in terms of what happened in the campaign.

But whatever that, if you look at the 21 Republican no votes on vouchers, and we now look at what the outcome of the primary was, seven won their primaries, nine were defeated, and five retired. And of those seats that were vacated by the retirements for the five were replaced by pro voucher votes, which is why, you know, this was as at least in the short term, this was a good night for Greg Abbott, a good night for Dan Patrick.

Um, you know, yeah. In terms of the politics of, of that issue, but the way that that issue has become, I think, and this is the more digging under part, I think. You know, there’s a degree to which this primary and the voucher issue, but especially the primary, you know, became a real exercise in the power of the statewide leadership in particular, Patrick and Abbott with a strong assist from Donald Trump, which we’ll get to.

Um, Versus the legislative, the members against the bodies in that sense. I mean, the degree to which Abbott was willing to challenge house incumbents, challenge precedent and custom and get deeply involved in these races against so many incumbents and the degree to which Lieutenant Governor Patrick was You know also involved he was involved in I think a slightly more measured way than the governor At least in its public facing.

Yeah manifestation um but nonetheless if we look at some of the systemic factors and I don’t want to jump too quickly to the takeaways, but you know As we look at episodes of how the power of elected officials in the executive branch, vis a vis the legislative branch, and of course, you know, Patrick is ultimately kind of more legislative than executive, although he’s a statewide elected executive, um, you know, This is a result that, you know, however much we can be myopic in the short term, to the extent that things, you know, have the potential to establish precedence, you know, this could, we could look back on this as a watershed primary.

We may not, you know, people may recede, but I, I, you know, but I think it’s an open question, but in the short term, you know, the governor comes out of this, however much ill will he may have,

[00:10:31] Josh Blank: He

[00:10:31] Jim Henson: may have generated in the body, which is what the insiders, you know, really like to emphasize is that, well, you know, Abbott is breaking precedent and the members all resent it.

And, you know, the upshot, when you look at it with other things Abbott has done to strengthen his position, the position of the governor’s office, the position of the executive branch, you know, one aspect of this story, Falls into that, right? Yeah. In my mind.

[00:10:58] Josh Blank: No, I think, I mean, you know, so I’m listening to you and I’m, and I agree, right?

In the sense that, you know, Abbott laid down, you know, look, Abbott has has followed through on his threat, and that’s really important. We talk all the time in here is sort of, uh, you know, I’m not a big fan of game theory per se, you know, I mean, that’s just because I study behavior and attitudes and things like that.

And, you know, sometimes it works and it doesn’t. But these game theory is pretty useful when you’re talking about, like, institutional settings. You’re talking about states that have a lot of rules when you’re talking about, uh, conflicts are going to have, uh, Uh, repetition to them and Abbott has shown through this, you know, through to today, you know, essentially that, you know, if he makes a threat, it’s a credible threat.

Yeah. He can credibly threaten to end your legislative career if there’s an issue that he cares about that, that you’re at odds with him on, and that’s a demonstration. So I think in that sense, there’s no doubt that he’s stronger. I think he’s also become, you know, there’s a little bit of addition by subtraction here, you know, to the extent that the House, you know, Is a little bit more unruly.

That gives more power probably to I think is more power to the executive generally. I mean, Patrick again is in both camps in a way. It also gives Abbott, you know, I think again, more power, you know, again, we’re going to, you know, we’ll come to him to the, you know, the impact on the speaker race, all that kind of stuff.

But odds are Abbott is going to be Yeah. You know, in a stronger position, potentially. I think so. You know, I think there’s reasons you can kind of debate it. But vis a vis the legislature at the same time, you know, there’s a sort of like the battle versus the war kind of analogy, right? I mean, he’s definitely won this battle, and it definitely has is going to have, you know, uh, Some kind of desired consequence.

I think one thing we may or may not get to in this discussion is, you know, sort of the handicapping on vouchers at this point.

[00:12:40] Jim Henson: Yeah.

[00:12:41] Josh Blank: Um, but at the same time, you know, there is a little bit to all this, which is serving. I can’t help but like dovetail it with the GOP convention that took place last week, right?

And to say, you know, there’s a little bit of the way that this is played out where, you know, you think about the power dynamics here and you say, yeah, but got stronger. But so too did the far right of the party, the dissident wing. And, you know, to your point of, you know, what kind of precedent is established?

Well, you think about what happened at the GOP convention where, you know, Rinaldi’s and Paxton’s, uh, you know, handpicked successor was, was chosen to lead the party. He’s expected to kind of continue in this. In the style of Rinaldi, which I will, you know, describe as, you know, I’ll, I’ll just for the purposes of this discussion, I’ll describe as, you know, having the, having the party organization act more as a, uh, purity maintaining group, maybe necessarily than a, than a fundamental support organization.

Right. Yeah. And that’s been sort of the discussion that’s been going on, you know, in the last week or so about. I mean, I think the

[00:13:43] Jim Henson: way I’ve described that is that, you know, the, you know, the, the. The machinery of the, of the party, the Republican Party in the state per se, has become really an agent of a faction.

[00:13:56] Josh Blank: And so, and that’s important in a very technical sense, but it also becomes a meaningful sense in that, you know, basically once the party censure somebody, they can essentially start spending money against them. They can endorse against them. You know, I don’t not to make too much of the Republican Party platform.

They always are what they are. Maybe this was more conservative than the last one, but they’re all very, you know, extreme documents in most cases with lots of things one can pick and choose out. But at this point, the party has exhibited a willingness to punish members of the party elected officials. You know, basically, selectively, if they decide not to stick to any one of these potential, you know, you know, party positions, which are not really broad party positions in some ways, you know, I mean, I’m kind of coming out of this to say, yeah, a bit stronger, but you know, In the process of this, you know, because, you know, the enemy, you know, whoever’s the enemy of my enemy is my friend kind of thing, all of a sudden, you know, the same people who were essentially going after Abbott, you know, in his last legislative primary to try to knock him off, he’s actually done the most to help them.

That I think has happened in the last decade probably and probably put them in the strongest position vis a vis, you know, in the legislative body, you see what’s going on with the party. They also have a really firm hold of the party organization now in a way that it seems to me it’s hard to imagine this pattern.

As you said, we set something up. Is it precedent? Is it an aberration? But it’s hard to imagine these other things, the way these other things have played out, that you’re not going to see more retribution politics going forward in Republican primaries unless you’re Everybody just toes the line on everything,

[00:15:26] Jim Henson: right?

Which is unlikely. But I mean, I think, but you know, I mean, look, that’s a good, you know, that’s a good area for takeaways and, and I couldn’t help. I’m sorry. I mean, which is, you know, how, you know, what, and how much can we learn about the current state of the Republican party, which is going to be a big part of the discussion today.

And, you know, I mean, I, I think if you look at a lot of the public opinion data that we’ve talked about in here, and you look at the. The distribution of, of not just, I want to say attitudes, but also sensibilities among Republican voters and these divisions that we’ve seen. I mean, one of the things, I mean, I was looking at some of this last night, we’ve talked about it in here a lot.

You know, the idea that. You know, pretty consistently, you’ve got about a third of Republicans who say that the party is still not conservative, that the elected officials in Texas, in Texas, the Republican elected officials are not conservative enough, right? And I think. What we saw last night is the ability of that, the, you know, the elite and operational, you know, those that are, that are a lot, the, the elites and the operatives within the party universe, not just the party, but also the consulting class, et cetera, the donors to use that Base of the electorate within the way that the system that the political system works in texas right now to drive the agenda Yeah, right and and to drive the agenda through this kind of You know transformation to some degree and we were talking about this beforehand of the party now look The republican party apparatus for a long time has been You know, the home to, you know, mischief and activism by the most conservative elements of the party.

I mean, you know, I remember doing a. You know, participant observation trip to the party convention in 2002, and there were people, you know, with no rhino buttons at that convention in 2000. So this has been going on for a while, right? But, you know, there’s been an alignment between, and I think this is what’s interesting about last night is to me is that there’s been an alignment between those forces who have taken over the party apparatus.

Their ally they’re well heeled allies in the donor community. Yeah, and the donor community is a stupid term among the donor base You know that it’s gotten much more attention in recent years And factions within the legislature, I mean, they’ve got enough traction in the party and the base and without significant challenge other than some isolated incidents over the last decade in elections to, to shift the nature of what is going on in the party.

I mean, I think what’s, you know, we used to call. You use the term and I, I mean, I’ve used it a lot, but I mean, it feels a little like it might be time to retire the term dissident faction.

[00:18:45] Josh Blank: Yeah, right,

[00:18:47] Jim Henson: right. I mean, because they are, you know, look, they are a minority within the party, but, you know, I’ve been reminded a lot.

I was thinking about this last night quite a bit to the argument you and I were making. 15 10 10 years ago, I guess about the tea party and the nature of support for the tea party And I think this is all very connected to that I mean that was certainly an important chapter in what we what we’re seeing right now And that is it’s one thing to say Well, there’s really only about a third of republicans or you know, whatever you’re talking about on a certain issue.

Yeah that embrace these, you know, more extreme positions or this more, and, and I think the better way to put it is so the

[00:19:30] Josh Blank: most extreme, the most extreme policy manifestations of Of attitudes that are generally shared though. Right?

[00:19:36] Jim Henson: Well, what I, well, that’s what I was gonna say is that, you know, an extreme, you know, basically, and it’s not just the, the, the, the point here in a lot of ways is the agenda, right?

Yeah. What is the agenda? What are the three or four issues in that are. Top and what is the rationale for that? But we used to talk a lot about how there was a lot of passive support for the T party. And I think what’s happened is that the current generation of political entrepreneurs on the far right have finally incorporated that I think into their strategy and have leveraged that to become You know, not so much the dissidents anymore as, you know, the faction that is driving politics and the agenda and the party.

[00:20:19] Josh Blank: Yeah. That’s interesting. I have to think a little bit more about, you know, not wrong terms, but like sort of the push pull factors between candidates and voters and all that kind of stuff. I will say it is notable, you know, in the sense that, you know, you raised this issue of like, You know, third of Republican registered voters or so tend to say that Republican elected officials in the state, you know, aren’t conservative enough.

We’ve surmised that this group is like probably bigger in the primary electorate, probably bigger still in the runoff electorate. Now, I’m not saying that like that’s as an easy way to say, well, everybody who voted for, you know, a challenger, therefore think they should be more conservative or not. In some ways, that would be a success of the political messaging around a lot of these races.

But I think it is really noticeable the consistency of a lot of these results, except for Frederick Frazier. 6832. If you look at these, uh, you know, Uh, Justin Holland lost 56, 44 Kemper lost 55, 45, uh, Burns lost 58, 42 Stuckey, you know, 58, 42 click 56, 44. I mean, so it does kind of say to you, yeah, you know, maybe that is about, you know, what that percentage of the party kind of looks like in a runoff like this, you know, where you do, where that kind of message that this member, this incumbent member who, and just to say it, you know, for the 80th price time, by all accounts, Very conservative, right?

Nobody would say this.

[00:21:35] Jim Henson: Only for campaign purposes that anybody ever look at Stephanie Click and go, Oh, flaming liberal,

[00:21:41] Josh Blank: right? Exactly. And yet, you know, this seems to be kind of the pattern that that emerged in these, you know, very again, about 25, 000 people or less, you know, voting. And that’s the other thing.

I don’t want to Go in a another direction here. Although there’s some other takeaways here. We might want to talk about and one of the things I think is interesting is, you know, so what to make of sort of feelings victory relative to everybody else’s. And in some ways, I think, you know, my quick my, you know, this is the morning after we don’t usually do this.

This is, you know, my quick hot take. And I’ve said this before to other people, but like, you know, he’s the exception that proves the rule in some ways, which is like this is not it. Indicative of anything because feeling for his own part, probably spent about 333 per vote before you even start calculating anybody else spending anything.

So that’s for about 12, 000, you know, 800 votes, right? So 000 total votes. And just, you know, looking at sort of the numbers that came out yesterday, it looked like feeling and Covey themselves probably spent over 6 million before you start to even include everybody else who was involved in that race. So for me, You know, as much as you know, there may be this desire to sort of take that as somehow a signal of whatever.

And again, I think, yeah, and people are going to do this. This is like a special election in Georgia and an off year in, you know, may it doesn’t, it’s not meaningful to some sort of direction of state policy. What the people in this one district who decided to vote in a runoff apparently made up of some mixture of Republicans and Democrats ended up deciding.

[00:23:08] Jim Henson: Right. Yeah. We, you know, I mean, this is where we note that, you know, the Lieutenant Governor was very quick to message this morning, among others, but the Lieutenant Governor, you know, the most prominent, you know, to, you know, tie the as, as the David Covey, um, not really, you know, in these times, it is very, you know, Difficult to find graceful losers.

Let’s put it that way. Um, but arguing that there were, you know, some, you know, more than some, you know, four figures, I think, more than a thousand democratic voters, you know, voted in this runoff and that they were targeted and, you know, which, you know, Is now, you know, you mentioned the, the, you mentioned the Republican platform, which dovetails with this discussion now getting more active, interestingly, in the Republican Party saying that they should be closed primaries.

We’ll see how many, you know, now that this is over, we’ll see if that has legs.

[00:24:04] Josh Blank: Yeah, I mean, just to put a pin in that for, you know, many months from now, you know, Just something to think about thought exercises. You know, you’re a party. Do you think your appeal is increasing or decreasing? You have decisions to make.

Do you want to make yourself more closed off or more open? Yeah, I’ll just leave that alone to kind of think about, you know, but I’m not sure.

[00:24:26] Jim Henson: Yeah, well, I mean, I think this is going to be one of those things where the yeah, yeah, yeah. The ideological rationale for that, you know, sits oddly with any practical rationale, I would say.

[00:24:38] Josh Blank: But yeah, okay. And,

[00:24:40] Jim Henson: and I don’t think we’ve seen a lot of this in the past, but we shall see. So, so, you know, we, so we’ve talked a little bit about what You know, the sort of big structural thing, you know, what this tells us potentially about inter branch relations, institutional configuration, hot take on, on, uh, a bit about what’s going on in the Republican Party.

Um, you know, you mentioned vouchers. Let’s talk about this. I mean, you know, this is one of the most common media questions, you know, we’re already getting, but, you know, I mean, uh, And I, I, my tone is already saying it in some ways. It’s kind of one of the most least interesting things because it’s, I think there’s the least uncertainty here, at least to the degree that, you know, I don’t think anybody should have any doubt that a voucher bill is coming, but I don’t, I didn’t have much doubt about that beforehand.

So, yeah, I

[00:25:33] Josh Blank: mean, I think the thing, uh. That strikes me about this. I mean, a lot of people have been asking me kind of in the lead up to this, like, oh, well, you know, so if Abbott’s successful, you know, how do you handicap vouchers the next session? And it’s kind of like, look, you know, vouchers, you know, like many big issues in the legislature, vouchers have moved a little bit closer each session, and we’d expect next session to then move even closer.

You know, is it a fait accompli? Well, you know, I don’t know. And part of that is because just because you’ve replaced some number of, you know, voucher holdouts in the house doesn’t sort of doesn’t change the fact that there was a lot of disagreement in the house about what the voucher bill ultimately should look like.

And there’s a lot of disagreement in the house that also would be, you know, contrary to the lieutenant governor’s preferences, contrary to the governor’s preferences. So I do think something’s going to get done. is likely to get through, but I’m not convinced. And you say like, well, yeah, but surely they’re going to do this.

I’m who, why would they even take a chance to say, Hey, they had two special sessions on property tax cuts.

[00:26:32] Jim Henson: Well, I should say when I say they’re surely they’re going to do it. I’m not saying,

[00:26:35] Josh Blank: I’m not saying you’re saying that. I’m not, I’m not trying to say that you’re saying that. I’m just saying that, you know, I said this at the beginning of the last session and I’ll say it again now, you know, tell me what the legislative vehicle is that satisfies all the coalitions and all the institutional players.

Um, And I, and I’ll, and I’m, I’m sure it’ll pass. Well, I don’t know what that looks like. And I

[00:26:51] Jim Henson: think the particulars of that, I mean, all I would say is, yeah, there, there’s going to be a bill. It’s going to move, there will be bills moving in both chambers and we’ll see what they look like and we’ll see how all that.

[00:27:01] Josh Blank: Yeah. And if both, and if either or both changes will accept what the other chambers up to,

[00:27:05] Jim Henson: and it’s a lot like, you know, to go to maybe, you know, as a transition to, to, to another topic or a related topic. You know, it’s kind of like judging what the speaker’s race may look like.

[00:27:16] Josh Blank: I love this outcome, by the way.

We don’t know.

[00:27:19] Jim Henson: We don’t know what the electorate is going to be like. We don’t know what the atmosphere is going to be like. And I, you know, people look at me like I’m kind of crazy on this at times, but you know, I mean, I think. The outcome of the presidential election is going to weigh into this Into the dynamics of this in an interesting way.

I mean in part because how do the allies of trump feel? What is the tone? Is it a anyway that that could affect the atmosphere a lot? And again, I don’t want to collapse in self contradiction here by trying to handicap it too much, but I do think You know, there’s a real temptation in these moments to always say, okay, so this is like, okay, let’s start plotting, you know, what the different roads are and, and, you know, until we see what happens in the general election.

And again, at the state level, do we expect there to be huge turnover in the legislature?

[00:28:10] Josh Blank: No.

[00:28:11] Jim Henson: No, given that there’s just not that many competitive seats, but, you know, if we do have some candidates that come out of this that are, you know, in some cases, much less experienced and perhaps less rooted in the districts or they shift.

[00:28:28] Josh Blank: Less aligned with the districts. Yeah. Or,

[00:28:30] Jim Henson: you know, the center of gravity in the district has, has shifted, you know, in terms of where this candidate is from and what the mobilization potential is. We don’t know what the electorate is going to look like. We don’t know what Yeah, what, what the mood in the house is going to be, but obviously it’s going to be interesting.

And you and I’ve talked about this and some people that saw this may have seen, I did a panel for Pat two weeks ago or last week, I guess, and with Mark Jones and Gromer Jeffords Jr. and Harvey Kronberg. And I was in the moderator role and, you know, I broached the question of, you know, In the scenario that we have and not that I knew this was going to be the scenario.

Oh,

[00:29:13] Josh Blank: you had a good, you’re, you’re pretty. We were talking about different

[00:29:16] Jim Henson: scenarios, but you know, in what seemed to me to be the most likely scenario, which is what we’ve gotten, which is feeling wins, but very, very narrowly, which, and this was very, very narrowly, you know, how, you know, how serious, you know, is the challenge.

I mean, obviously we knew at the point going in, if he lost, there was going to be another speaker. There’s one challenger out there and some people stirring around. Yep. More various degrees of below or on the radar. Uh huh. And, you know, in that conversation, I think I was by far the most skeptical that Phelan was, you know, was obvious that if he survived the race, he would survive his speaker.

[00:29:58] Josh Blank: Mm hmm.

[00:29:59] Jim Henson: Um, and now I guess we’ll see the test of that,

[00:30:01] Josh Blank: you

[00:30:02] Jim Henson: know, and I think, you know, so how you handicap that with all the caveats I just introduced about, we don’t really know, you know, I mean, I think some of the big questions are, you know, you and I were sort of talking about this a little bit indirectly this morning, you know, question was, is, you know, how do his own members feel about him surviving an election where they’re about, you know, 15 members of the previous caucus down.

Yeah, that’s hard to calculate. Is he viewed as a Embattled veteran survivor is he or is he viewed predominantly? As somebody who didn’t protect his members and made bad strategic decisions during the last session

[00:30:45] Josh Blank: yeah, and to speak to your point depending on what the dynamics look like both after the election and and You know what the agenda looks like, you know, he may just look like a really good beat up shield You know, which is kind of what he acted, what, you know, I mean, again, he wasn’t a great show for those 15 incumbents, but ultimately if you’re looking at everybody else right now, you know, he, he’s taken the most heat and, you know, really, you know, extracted the most blood to be able to come back.

And so, and this is the funny thing about this. I mean, it’s sort of, you know,

[00:31:13] Jim Henson: sacrificed a lot of soldiers in this battle.

[00:31:15] Josh Blank: Yeah. And you talk, but, you know, it’s funny, you know, you talk about like, we, you know, we talk with all the time at this point, we’re going to. He’s stuck on this. You know, we just can’t know what’s going on behind the scenes.

We can’t know all the movings and moving in machinations. We can’t know how this is going to play out because the membership’s not set. The mood’s not set. You’re not hearing sort of the early agenda talk, all this stuff. Given all that uncertainty, the question becomes, you know, who is the person right now with the highest probability of being speaker?

Just as a, just as a, as an academic question standing here. And I’m not saying that person has a 90 percent chance or an 80%. I’m saying like, who has the highest percent chance that we can name right now? Like, like, Like 10 percent 20 percent

[00:31:52] Jim Henson: betting market on this. I guess we probably couldn’t do that on the state website.

[00:31:55] Josh Blank: Uh, we can talk not on a state website, but if you were to say, like, who is the plurality likelihood of easy, right? Well, it’s probably the guy who’s actually cobbled together a coalition and gotten the votes to be speaker. Right now. Does that mean he’s gonna be speaker? It’s probably not.

[00:32:10] Jim Henson: Yeah.

[00:32:11] Josh Blank: But to say that he’s not part of the conversation at this point.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, I

[00:32:15] Jim Henson: mean, I would not. No, you’re not saying that. I’m just

[00:32:16] Josh Blank: saying that, you know, to the extent that people feel like, well, he’s dead now, you know, he’s mortally wounded or whatever. It’s like, he’s still a factor in all this. I mean, look, there’s

[00:32:24] Jim Henson: going to, there, there, there is going, there will be a challenge.

[00:32:27] Josh Blank: Yeah. Oh, yeah.

[00:32:28] Jim Henson: Right. I mean, all of us, whether it’s Oliverson, it’s often usually not the first challenger who declares, um, you know, so you start, you know, reading tea leaves. Right. And, and there will be, you know, nothing but that and reading tea leaves and gossip and I’ve heard, and, and leakage of rumors and, you know, but, you know, one of the things I noticed in, in, I think it was Dr.

Des Spark’s coverage and the Tribune was at who the, the name to members that, at least the reporter saw at Phelan’s Victory Party. Yeah. You know, were Leach Metcalf, Patterson, Landgraf and Hefner. Mm-Hmm. , you know. Where was everyone else? And I’m not saying they needed to be there. A lot of them were in their own districts.

You have their own, you know, we know we’re. A lot of people that lost were. Yeah. Um, but we’re going to start watching things like that, like crazy, you know, I mean, and there are some senior members out there who have been here a while, who survived various degrees of challenge in the last couple of years.

Um, a couple in particular who are, you know, particularly unhappy with the Lieutenant governor and the Senate. And you know, I can think of at least one or two and there’s no point feeding this now, but that would be. You know, that could have a meeting with the Democrats and make their case. Yeah. And do some bargaining.

And so, you know, the map on this is going to be interesting. And it, you know, it will be interesting to see how, how the current speaker and his team handle this. Yeah. You know, we should actually mention a couple of things. We’re going to go ahead, go ahead.

[00:34:10] Josh Blank: I want to, if we’re shifting gears, I would like to, yeah, yeah, go ahead.

I want to make sure that we mentioned, you know, that representative, uh, Gonzalez and congressional district 23. That’s

[00:34:18] Jim Henson: where I was going. That’s exactly where I was going.

[00:34:20] Josh Blank: You know, held off a pretty, you know, I’ll say, you know, significant challenge. I’ll put that way from Brendan Herrera, essentially, you know, after, you know, the establishment really came in and back of Zaza.

I mean, he probably had one of the broadest political coalitions. Right. Given how much. Uh, churn we’re seeing in Texas right now. And I think, you know, I’ve been talking to a lot of people about Congressional District 23. You all probably know about used to be the swing district in Texas was made a more republican district in the last round of redistricting, which means it’s about a 55 Republican district um and Brendan Herrero, you know is a YouTube.

Phenomena, if you will on the gun right in the insert of the The gun rights world, which is an odd fit for the district that involve that includes Yuvaldi, um, you know, nonetheless, is a very close runoff 5248 when all was said and done, which I think is a part

[00:35:12] Jim Henson: of El Paso for the part of

[00:35:13] Josh Blank: El Paso. Yeah. I was gonna say,

[00:35:14] Jim Henson: you know, But close, a close race.

It was a

[00:35:16] Josh Blank: close race. And, you know, I’m going to say this was closer than I, than I kind of thought it was going to be when all of a sudden done, just because Brendan Herrera, you know, if you go look him up, I’m not going to, we’re not going to go into it now, but, you know, has a very checkered,

[00:35:27] Jim Henson: very checkered

[00:35:27] Josh Blank: history on the YouTubes

[00:35:29] Jim Henson: and had, you know, people like Matt Gates and, yeah, he had support from certain circles from, from, from the dissonance in the U S corners.

Um, yeah. Who came to support him, you know, let, let’s, let’s Less contentious also, we should mention CD12 on the Republican side, former House member Craig Goldman, when he exits, easily defeated a challenge for that congressional seat, which was, um, the seat vacated by Kay Granger. So, you know, those also, you know, pretty, pretty big and, and important races.

[00:35:59] Josh Blank: We should mention that Jarvis Johnson, uh, won the Democrat nomination for SD15, John Whitmire’s former seat.

[00:36:04] Jim Henson: Right.

[00:36:05] Josh Blank: And, uh. And

[00:36:06] Jim Henson: that in a seat, you know, that’s gone back and forth because of the special election. He technically beat an incumbent.

[00:36:11] Josh Blank: Right.

[00:36:13] Jim Henson: Although an incumbent, you know, very short term incumbent.

So, um, and then, you know, obviously a very, you know, likely to be a very, but going to be a democratic seat. Um, So what else? I mean, what else do we want to say about this? I guess the last thing I would ask you what you think, and you’re, you’re often kind of skeptical about this, but I mean, if we, if we look at the, well, I mean, I think in a good way, I mean, if we look at the, the kind of rough endorsement score and some of this probably doesn’t.

reflect a couple of the last minute, but, you know, roughly speaking, you know, Trump was about seven for nine in his endorsements, Abbott in the range of like 38 for 48, Patrick 24 for 33, Paxton 29 for 59. Um,

[00:37:02] Josh Blank: I had 52, but I don’t know. I just want to say

[00:37:04] Jim Henson: that might be okay. That might be 29

[00:37:06] Josh Blank: for 52 or 59. I think it’s 52.

[00:37:08] Jim Henson: Okay. Um, I could be a typo in my notes. I wouldn’t, it could be me. So

[00:37:12] Josh Blank: just saying it out loud,

[00:37:13] Jim Henson: whoever I stole it from, got it wrong. Um, where it’s

[00:37:15] Josh Blank: the average, but,

[00:37:17] Jim Henson: um, yeah, I mean, there’s sort of what I’m looking at. It’s kind of the proportion here mostly. But the question is, I mean, As we talk about the Gonzales race and what that looked like in CD 23 and we kick all this around and, and, you know, I kind of started with a, you know, the halfway jokey intro with Trump on trial, but I.

You know, the intersection of national and state politics in the Republican Party continues to be kind of fascinating to me in this is I kind of sorted out. I mean, yeah, you know, because we’ve talked about that a lot. Obviously, you know, when we asked in our February poll, What endorsements mattered most in the Republican legislative primaries.

So we lined it out and that doesn’t guarantee that our respondents absolutely answer the question we’ve asked them

[00:38:11] Josh Blank: or behaved exactly as right. But

[00:38:13] Jim Henson: we asked them whose endorsement mattered most. Uh, Trump was far and away the most important.

[00:38:19] Josh Blank: Yeah, by far.

[00:38:20] Jim Henson: Now look, there’s all kinds of. explanations for that that are not necessarily about that, you know, the, the, you know, should caution us from concluding, Oh, when a voter walks into a primary election booth, they’re going, Oh, wait, before I vote, I’ve got to go through who Donald and figure out who Donald Trump endorsed or not.

But nonetheless, it speaks to the degree to which, you know, but I think if you look at that, the Trump piece, you look at this discussion we just had about. You know, dissidents becoming, you know, well, we’re once dissidents now becoming, you know, a very powerful, you know, center of influence in the party.

And you think about the alignment of Trump, you know, the way that Trump obviously completely opportunistically and with the advice of.

[00:39:09] Josh Blank: Yeah. Tons of data and people. And

[00:39:11] Jim Henson: well, and you know. People in Texas that he calls and checks with and says, Hey, what’s going on? Or, or that call him and say, Hey, here’s a good race for you to get it.

You know, your guy’s probably going to win, but you’ll get credit for this. Yeah. Um, you know how that is all meshing to me is, is unclear.

[00:39:29] Josh Blank: Yeah.

[00:39:31] Jim Henson: But you know, I don’t think you can talk about what’s going on inside the Republican Party in Texas without at least considering how it aligns with what has been happening nationally and vice versa.

And as we said, you know, a million times during Trump’s rise. The degree to which, you know, a lot of, you know, what was became known as being Trumpism or MAGA ism, you know, was growing pretty healthfully in Texas before Trump rode down that escalator.

[00:40:01] Josh Blank: Yeah, you know, I mean, just sort of listening to you and thinking about, You know, my reaction to what you’re saying, I mean, what immediately comes to my mind is, uh, you know, we used to talk about purity tests and everything, but even more so than purity, it’s almost like the role that fealty now plays,

[00:40:16] Jim Henson: you know, I think that’s right.

[00:40:17] Josh Blank: And Trump and Trump, you know, Trump is, it was obviously, it has continued to be a huge fealty guy, right? I mean, you’re with him or you’re against him. If you’re against him, you’re basically dead. You know, it’s pretty hard to come back from. And, you know, that’s been true sort of, you know, You know, assuming that, like, and this kind of goes, I mean, in some ways this dovetails really well with your, you know, what you’re saying about the sort of thing we were writing a lot about, about the Tea Party back in the day, and it’s still about the sort of tacit support, you know, you’d have people who wouldn’t describe themselves as Tea Party supporters, but basically we’re pretty okay with the influence, if not encouraging of it, and what I said before is true, you know, we might see, you know, Most Republicans would like to see less abortion, but there’s a small share of Republicans.

You’d like to see no abortion under any circumstance at all. And they really drive this discussion. And in some ways, as long as you know, everybody’s kind of, you know, rowing the boat in the same direction, you know, it’s not really about, you know, what, what the policy outcomes or whatever. It’s just much more now about who’s in and who’s out.

You know, it’s sort of like you think about, you know, Donald Trump and fealty. You think about, you know, again, in the U. S. House, the ability to give basically essentially any, any member in the Republican Party, the ability to try to depose the speaker there, basically, for whatever they see is essentially a lack of fealty to whatever issue is they think is the most important.

And now you’re seeing that in Texas too, right? I mean, we’ve talked about this repeatedly. It’ll be quick, but you know, you have a legislature that has passed, you know, Incredibly conservative agendas. The last two sessions and probably, you know, was successful on on 99 percent or 98 percent or 97 percent of the major agenda items of the leadership in the state.

And yet, and I would say Paxson has a role in this, but again, that in and of itself is a field could be a fealty frame too. But not coming through on this one thing means, well, you know, you’re not with me. So you’re out. And that was one of the funny things I think about the Patrick tweet this morning was saying, well, these 15 incumbents are gone and it’s Dave Phelan’s fault.

They feel it’s like, well, there’s also like the governor who spent millions of dollars against them. And, you know, you were out there tweeting against these people. Like, I mean, you know,

[00:42:17] Jim Henson: yeah, I mean,

[00:42:18] Josh Blank: and it’s silly. I know, but, but this is the whole, well,

[00:42:20] Jim Henson: it’s silly, but look, people believe it.

[00:42:22] Josh Blank: Yeah,

[00:42:24] Jim Henson: right. Um, You know, I mean, again, this is, you know, it’s interesting.

I was going to say, this is completely impressionistic based on things I heard from people on the ground in some of these districts, but we actually do have data on this that I just talked about in terms of, well, whose endorsement was important. I mean, I’ve talked to, you know, a few people that did canvassing that have mentioned to me that when they were just talking to people and, you know, all of the people I talked to were canvassing for incumbents.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, but that when they tried to sort of match, Hey, well, you know, you know that he did X, Y, and Z people go, well, I’ll make it think about it. But ultimately, you know, Trump has endorsed the other guy. Yeah. And so, you know, I mean, that’s, that’s good enough for me. And I think that, you know, sorting out this, I mean, it, it, it makes, it does make me think back to the three questions we did about in the February poll about the, The attention voters pay to endorsements, to policies and to ideology and how all that is kind of in there in the mix and what you’ve got are political entrepreneurs, I think, right now and successful politicians are political entrepreneurs.

Um, Figuring out, you know, how to align themselves, you know, I’m kind of envisioning a, you know, it’s like a three body problem, right? Or, you know, you’re in there between these three fields of interest. How do you define yourself? You know, as you’ve been saying, you know, who’s the most pure conservative, right?

What is it to be a Republican? What do, you know, the opinion leaders, the most important signal senders in my party think? And how all of the actors are navigating that. Yeah. Right. And, you know, with, you know, as you were talking about Trump and we, and we were talking about people responding to this and this whole trajectory of the PT party, I’m thinking of people like Steve Bannon.

Yeah. Right. Uh, the conservative, you know, former Trump aide and, and Trump ally out ultimately pardoned by Trump, um, after being convicted, um, for fraud, I believe. Um, You know, one of the things about Trump and MAGA in relation to what’s going on and has been going on for a long time on the ground in Texas is that you have these huge personages in this media environment.

That provide opportunities for people mm hmm, and they see it and they make you know and again the good political entrepreneurs You know they gamble, but they make judgments about How this helps them and what you know how this alignment? You know what the cost benefit analysis is and I think Trump has you know really?

Change the cost benefit analysis in the way that has helped what we were, you know, those formerly known as dissidents.

[00:45:32] Josh Blank: Yeah. You know, I was gonna say, it’s interesting, you know, in some ways he’s like skewed the market like dramatically. And you see this both in terms of fundraising, right? Like, and people talk about this a lot about, you know, sort of Trump sort of hoovering up of Republican dollars, but he is also, you know, he hoovers up attention, right?

I mean, when you think about like who are the, the opinion leaders in the Republican party, you know. If there were more potential names, you might have listed before this last presidential primary campaign in which he essentially, you know, I would say significantly hurt the brands of most of them. Right.

Which is sort of the cost of tangling with Trump.

[00:46:05] Jim Henson: Yeah. That’s Jeb Bush.

[00:46:06] Josh Blank: Yeah. And that’s the thing. But that’s the thing. I mean, all these guys, you know, all these people that have been sort of his, his sort of, you know, the counterpoint of essentially, you know, evaporated into the, you know, into the atmosphere in a lot of cases.

And so there are fewer, you know, sort of clear counterweights. I mean, the biggest stories I think you almost see sort of you follow politics real close like us and people listen to this. I mean, the biggest, you know, quote unquote stories in some ways are like, well, you know, how did Mike McCall get Johnson to like actually like move Ukraine funny?

And it’s because someone like Mike McCall, you know, is just such an odd figure almost in terms of like, where in terms of the relative weight of the factions within the Republican Party now, and it’s just so subtle. Shifted into sort of the Trump MAGA direction that that’s right. You know, what do you need besides a Trump endorsement?

[00:46:50] Jim Henson: Well, and, and, you know, well, and I think, you know, the, the, the answer to that without you, that’s interesting to me, you know, as I’m kind of expressing imperfectly here, I think is the degree to which that just injects energy into some areas of the base. And there are people around it and I left that are able to recognize that.

Yeah. Yeah. And have the decks, the political dexterity, flexibility, if you want lack of principle or lack of

[00:47:20] Josh Blank: record, sometimes lack,

[00:47:21] Jim Henson: lack of record or lack of ideological, you know, mooring, you know, to just, or, or are so ideologically more than, you know, I mean, look, there are people. In texas that have been waiting decades for a trump.

Yeah, that’s right And so I don’t want to like downplay that And that’s something I left out of that original formulation is also among those people Are people? With a lot of money. Yeah who have been spending some of that money But clearly there’s some people now that see an opportunity and they’re jumping on it

[00:47:50] Josh Blank: That’s one of my other sort of takeaways from this is, you know, I was looking at the at the Campaign finance numbers yesterday, just kind of seeing where people ended up and, you know, and if you just looked at the campaign finance numbers yesterday, and if you were the sort of person who would say, well, all that matters is money, right?

Well, you know, you turn out that it wasn’t. You’d be wrong in this case, right? Most of these incumbents, you know, who lost. Raised tons of money. Justin Hollis raised 1. 4 million, spent almost twice as much as Katrina Pearson of their own money. Now there’s other money coming in. I want to be clear about that, but it’s not like Texas’s campaign finance laws are so strict that like this is, you know, the people are being limited.

You know, Kempel spent 1. 7 million to 433, 000 for Schoolcraft. Um, you know, if you were just looking at this, you’d say, you know, Frederick Fraser had 626, 000 I mean, there was some pretty big disparities here. So one way to say, you know, so one takeaway is, you know, the money is. is part of the equation.

It’s not the whole point. But the other thing I was thinking was, you know, if I were part of, if I were a, let’s just say a West Texas oil billionaire and I was trying to make political investments, these are pretty good investments. I mean, ultimately, because you’re, I mean, to your point, because this energy is out there and because that’s kind of what I mean, because it’s reinforcing, you guys say you’ve got Donald Trump, you’ve got Greg Abbott, you’ve got Ken Paxson.

And now if I just throw in half as much money as this very well heeled incumbent is going to raise. You know, we probably have a pretty good chance to get 55 percent of the vote and you know what

[00:49:15] Jim Henson: you’d be right good investment And that’s the kind of pitch that you know A lot of people are out there making to these to these investors or they’re they’re seen on their own Some of them are you know, just ready to get involved.

So so, you know, what are we looking forward to for one thing? I’m looking forward to not Having to track this for a while. Yeah, there’s that. I would say I’m, I’m pretty happy about that. And you know, we’re going to now, I think what will be interesting now is to see what the next phase looks like as we move into the general election, you know, and we wind up seeing, you know, a nominal, but, you know, meaningful coming together, quote unquote, among Republicans.

In other words, a bunch of this will remain now, you know, people will be trying to mute all this, you know. For the next, where are we? May end of May for about the next, you know, five and a half months. And then we’ll have the election and then we will have a speaker’s race and then we’ll have a very contentious session.

And for those of you, and that’s the, you know, I mean, I don’t think it’s hard for me to imagine no matter who is elected speaker in less. You know, the, the, the Dan Patrick forces just, you know, pull off some kind of coup by getting a much more, you know, Patrick friendly, uh, speaker elected. And I think that’s kind of hard to imagine.

Now there’s a matter of degree there.

[00:50:44] Josh Blank: I was like, yeah, the marriage is a matter of

[00:50:45] Jim Henson: degree in that, you know, I mean, it’d

[00:50:46] Josh Blank: be hard to find someone that, you know,

[00:50:49] Jim Henson: some will make the argument that, you know, Why do we have to be so dug into this ancient house, you know, Senate, if we all got along, you know, we could really run the place without friction and have fewer special sessions.

Now, I think the past has shown just how hard that is to achieve.

[00:51:08] Josh Blank: Yeah.

[00:51:08] Jim Henson: Um, but I think what the, what the mood and nature and the orientation of the houses towards the governor and the Senate By the time January rolls around is going to be, you know, it’s kind of the most Important question at the intersection of institutions and politics

[00:51:26] Josh Blank: Yeah, I think you know, there’s a there’s a widespread it seems seems to be from my impressionistic assessment a Relatively widespread assessment in the body that the speaker feeling did not do a great job handling the politics of last session Now, I think you can hold that opinion and then that could lead you to say me What would be great is a, is a speaker who is a better relationship with the Lieutenant Governor, so we’re not messed up in that.

But you could also get to a different conclusion, which is to say, actually, we just need someone who handles the politics better. We need to keep fighting

[00:51:59] Jim Henson: those bastards. And with better politics.

[00:52:01] Josh Blank: And with better politics. Yeah.

[00:52:02] Jim Henson: And, and, you know, that will be, I suspect that will have to be part of the feeling pitch behind the scenes is, you know, we’ve learned.

Yeah. And we’ve learned in this way, we’ve learned not how to cooperate, but how to fight. Right. More effectively. And sorry about, you know.

[00:52:22] Josh Blank: Yeah. Sorry about your friends.

[00:52:23] Jim Henson: Sorry about the guys that lost. Um, on that note, thanks, Josh. Uh, you know, uncharacteristically hot take ish discussion. Hopefully we didn’t, you know, I didn’t make too many mistakes.

I’m sure you didn’t make any. Um, I

[00:52:36] Josh Blank: won’t remember if I did.

[00:52:37] Jim Henson: I want to, yeah, that’s, that’s the way to go. So thank you for being here as always. Thanks again to our excellent production team in the dev studio and the college of liberal arts here at the university of Texas at Austin, we made some references, some polling data you can find.

Some of the things we referenced today, including things like job approval ratings for all of the leaders we’ve talked about, which is kind of interesting context to look at this, if not definitely material to the outcomes, all of that data and more at texaspolitics. utexas. edu. So most of all, thank you for listening, and we’ll be back soon with another Second Reading Podcast.

The Second Reading Podcast is a production of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.