November 16th, 2022 – 2022 Midterm Elections Recap

[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. Must a female senator raise her hand or her voice to be recognized over the male colleagues in the room?

[00:00:34] 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, back today with Joshua Blank, research director of the Texas Politics Project. Good morning. Good late morning, Josh. Good late morning to you after morning. Well, as the results from the national election have become a little more settled, I mean, as we record this on Thursday afternoon, I think there’s still a handful of house races out at the national [00:01:00] level.

[00:01:00] Jim Henson: But the expectation is that the Republicans, uh, will take over the house. Uh, Democrats have already kinda locked down the, the Senate, even with the runoff coming. I thought what we could do today is kind of engage, at least as a point of departure. One of the. He said that yes, we are promising an aggressive podcast in advance.

[00:01:22] Jim Henson: If you didn’t read that leading indicator. Ah, um, you know, both of us gotten calls and, you know, there’s stuff out there, you know, reading, like looking at kind of a contrast between the national election results and the environment and Texas now. Say from the very beginning, a little bit of a straw man.

[00:01:40] Jim Henson: It’s a lot of, I mean this, but, but we are hearing this, right? Like why is it looking like this nationally? But Texas seems so different.

[00:01:46] Josh Blank: Yeah, and I mean, just real quick, I mean, there’s sort of like a, a meta answer, which is that, you know, more than one thing can be true at the same time. Yeah. And in general, I think one of the difficult things, especially after an election, and this is not, I think people, all kinds of people do this for all kinds of different reasons, but there’s [00:02:00] a tendency to wanna draw a straight line between one point and an.

[00:02:04] Josh Blank: Yeah, and say, well, this is what it was, or this wasn’t it, or whatever. And the reality of course is like, you know, life is complicated. A lot of factors can be going on at the same time. And then what that means is that sometimes you can make these observations that can be contradictory to each other, yet they can still both be true depending on what it is you’re actually looking at here.

[00:02:22] Josh Blank: And I think that’s sort of, you know, this kind of, yeah, weird space, you know, in sort of the kind of, you know, national environment discussion, what happened there? And then squaring that away with Texas, you know, on its surface there’s like, there’s definitely some, some

[00:02:33] Jim Henson: conflict. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, I mean, I think specifically what we’re hearing is, you know, the other piece of this is how much expectations of, you know, varying, you know, groundedness, you know, right.

[00:02:43] Jim Henson: Actually helped, you know, front load this. But I mean, you know, the bottom line here I think is that, You know, the, the big narrative nationally has been, we are anticipating the red wave. Nationally, it didn’t happen, right? And yet in Texas, republicans won everywhere. And I think that’s the setup for, you know, [00:03:00] Republican hegemony held pretty.

[00:03:02] Jim Henson: So let’s, let’s unpack that a little bit. So, I mean, like, You know, look, there are some contrasts here and you know, I mean, by putting these out there, you know, this is not an endorsement of these, it’s kind of just the setup, right? Mm-hmm. , but you know, so people looked at the close partisan division nationally, which in a, in a sense meant no red wave.

[00:03:21] Jim Henson: Right in this, among other things, uh, versus just the study, g o p dominance in Texas. Another aspect of this, you know, is kind of the abortion seems to motivate and mobilize Democrats in the country or in parts of the country. We’re already back, you know, Already qualifying and seemingly did not to that extent in Texas.

[00:03:43] Jim Henson: Now that’s a, a little bit of an open question, you know, another would be, you know, the, the idea that people are looking at, you know, pretty high turnout in many parts of the country versus, you know, we were talking about this earlier and we, and we kind of dug this out last week, not low [00:04:00] turnout in Texas, but moderate turnout comparatively.

[00:04:03] Jim Henson: Turn out where, where Texas

[00:04:04] Josh Blank: usually

[00:04:04] Jim Henson: ends up and Yeah. And where Texas usually ends up relative to other, to other states. So, you know, I mean, I I I guess the, the brewer under the saddle here is for today is, you know, this seems a little bit myopic. Yeah. Right. I mean, and I, and I think part of this is simply that the, you know, in addition to your point about people want to sort of make things mono causal in.

[00:04:27] Jim Henson: Kind of simple terms. Mm-hmm. , um, and it’s hard to get out of those narratives. And I, you know, I, I think in terms of media discussions, it’s an easy setup. It’s a little bit of a straw man, kind of what we’re doing to some degree, I guess. But, but we’re being honest about it. Well, at least we’re, yeah. At least we’re just using, yeah.

[00:04:41] Jim Henson: We’re being honest that we’re using it as a setup, you know, in some ways the objects of comparison to my mind are just wrong. Yeah. Right. In that, you know, people were going, Hey, look, it’s a closely divided chambers of con or in Congress and. You know, we’ve got these high turnout competitive states. How come Texas doesn’t look like that?

[00:04:59] Jim Henson: [00:05:00] Or how come only some districts look like that? But all of that is very different than talking about Texas. Yeah, that’s

[00:05:05] Josh Blank: right. And I mean, I think it’s, it’s the two things, right, what you said, and it’s the other thing you said, which, and it’s also this idea of sometimes stated off implicit expectations.

[00:05:12] Josh Blank: And, and just as aside, you know, part of it is if there was an expectation of, of a red wave that didn’t materialize. That doesn’t mean that there was a blue wave either. Right, right. And that’s the first thing is that, you know, to the extent that you, you know, I think if you were in Texas and you were sort of trying to deal with, on the one hand, you know, especially if you were a Democrat in Texas, I would say in particular, trying to deal with, on the one hand, you know, national coverage over the last few days that has left Democrats feeling.

[00:05:35] Josh Blank: Pretty okay about themselves, but then looking at the same saying you have a Beto loss by 11 points. Yeah. You know, part of it’s saying, well wait, how does this square, how did the same, you know, we we’re common, you know, we say this all the time and I think it’s valid here and it still is valid here. You know, Texas is part of the US right?

[00:05:50] Josh Blank: Right. And so ultimately, but that would lead, should I think, lead a smart listener to say, well, yeah, but if Texas is part of the us why didn’t we. In Texas what we saw elsewhere, and I would say we did see in Texas what we [00:06:00] saw everywhere else, right? Which is we saw, and this is actually true, if you look back at the 2020 election, people pointed out in 2020, Joe Biden wins the election.

[00:06:07] Josh Blank: Usually the president’s party gets, you know, big majorities usually on the president’s coattails, and people point out, well that didn’t really happen this election, really, we kind of came out of it with a pretty similarly divided clo, you know, Congress, a pretty closely divided political system, and ultimately 2022 looked.

[00:06:24] Josh Blank: Like that, right? Yeah. I mean, ultimately Democrats can be happy that they didn’t get slaughtered everywhere. But really what we saw was, you know, I would say instead of continuity, we talk about like change versus continuity is the way we talk about it a lot. But I mean, really we saw less so than continuity, but a preference for the status quo versus the alternative.

[00:06:40] Josh Blank: And what that means is that in states that tended to be democratic states or states were trending democratic. If they were democratic incumbents, they seemed to do okay. If there were Republican incumbents, it states that are Republican or trending in the Republican. They seem to do pretty okay. And Texas is no different than that, right?

[00:06:56] Josh Blank: I mean, it’s in a lot of ways. Yeah. And,

[00:06:58] Jim Henson: and, and, and. Yeah, [00:07:00] I mean I, you know, there was kind of a steady state at work here and you know, and I think the other thing we also have to remember is that there’s kind of a, you know, there’s a problem of kind of totalizing the election returns at the national level, particularly in a midterm election.

[00:07:15] Jim Henson: You know, in fact there are states, other states that looked a bit like Texas to, you know, they have different trajectories, but I mean, it was a very big Republican night, uh, across the board in Florida. Right. Very, very big Republican night across the board in Ohio. Mm-hmm. . Um, and those are not, Trivial examples.

[00:07:34] Jim Henson: Those are actually pretty good comparative cases right in their own ways now. I think both got more media attention because there has been change going on in those states. Both had been seen as swing states. Yeah. And as you know, there had been a lot of competition. I mean, I. You know, I used to joke in giving talks when people would say, do you think the future of Texas is gonna, is gonna look like California because it’s inevitably gonna [00:08:00] turn blue and the demographics and all that, that we beat to death in here.

[00:08:04] Jim Henson: You know? And I had a punchline that would say, look, I don’t, you know, I don’t think that Texas is gonna look like California. I think it’s gonna look more like Florida. Yeah. Now that is, I can’t use that joke anymore now that Florida has turned. But it does sort of un underline the point that. You know, in both of these states, I mean, and I think we mentioned this last week, you know, we saw, uh, you know, governor DeSantis, you know, win Miami-Dade.

[00:08:28] Jim Henson: Mm-hmm. . I think people, the interpretation of that is a whole other issue about gets us into like, you know, Latinos and, and what’s been going on in Florida. But nonetheless, there are big examples of, you know, the fact. It’s a closely divided country and you know, a lot of what we saw was, you know, was not earth shakingly, you know,

[00:08:47] Josh Blank: new, right.

[00:08:48] Josh Blank: Yeah. Well, and I mean, the other thing is, I mean, you can’t, I mean, this is sort of an aside, but you can’t really discount the, I mean, you can’t really discount the effect that redistricting also played on this. You know, I think there was an idea going into the redistricting process, both in Texas [00:09:00] and elsewhere, that, you know, this would lead to sort of wild, you know, deviations, you know, in terms of the outcomes, you know, off of whatever would say like, Off of the margins of victories in the state as opposed to, you know, tiny ones.

[00:09:12] Josh Blank: And when people came back and started looking at this, they said, well actually this probably is gonna act, you know, I think a lot of people say, this actually probably helps democrats a little bit more than I think people generally tended to anticipate the redistricting process. And that’s the thing is that what you ended up finding was in a lot of states, the ultimate consequence of redistricting was to solidify the position of incumbents in most places.

[00:09:33] Josh Blank: And so it’s not surprising to see an election. Incumbents do incredibly well. I think I saw by last count, you know, the reelection rate for incumbent representatives to Congress so far, uh, with, you know, again, race is still outstanding, so the denominator’s still not, you know, still bigger, right? Still doesn’t compete yet, was like 97 point a half percent.

[00:09:51] Josh Blank: It’s like, you know, which again is like, it’s that high, right? And so really, you know, you can’t. Have a ton of change, you know, under that kind of set of [00:10:00] conditions. Right, right.

[00:10:01] Jim Henson: And, and, and, and, you know, and I, and I think again, that, yeah, Texas looks that way. It’s very similar to, you know, to other places where we see that dynamic.

[00:10:10] Jim Henson: And I, you know, it really does raise the, the point of, you know, and we had talked about it in different ways going into the election, but as we digest what just happened, one of the things. Has really occurred to me is that the approach the majority took to redistricting in Texas, in the legislature in particular this time in terms of, you know, the largely protecting incumbents of both parties.

[00:10:35] Jim Henson: Mm-hmm. . and you know, Democrats fared worse than Republicans, et cetera. Yeah. It not only stabilized the pattern in the way that you would expect to partisan advantage, you know it, we’d have to look at this, and this may or may not be empirically demonstrable, but I suspect that it also contributed to the lack of the perception of competitiveness that hurt the overall [00:11:00] mobilization effort for

[00:11:01] Josh Blank: Democrats.

[00:11:02] Josh Blank: I agree with that and, and again, I, I mean, one, we have to look at the data to, to be. More certain about a statement like that. But on the other side of it, you know, I, I got a question from a reporter about turn out in Williamson County, right, as an interesting example, and I went and they were saying, you know, turn out Williamson County was very high.

[00:11:16] Josh Blank: It was above the statewide average. I think it was about 10 points higher than the average statewide, which is yeah, pretty big. Yeah, I saw that. You know, she was sort of asking why, and I went back to look in, there’s a couple things. One, Williamson County is a high turnout county. I mean, just setting aside, they’re always above the statewide average and it’s actually been

[00:11:30] Jim Henson: increasing ethnic composition, level of education, competitiveness, and that’s exactly right.

[00:11:35] Jim Henson: Competitiveness, asterisk.

[00:11:37] Josh Blank: And that’s the thing that I was focusing on, was to say, look, you know, what do we know about Williams County? Well, one, we know that, you know, up in, up in Round Rock, they were having. Big school board races, which were drawing a lot of people into that process. Right. We also know they had one of the few open, uh, and competitive statehouse seats in 52 Tall Rico’s old seat that was withdrawn.

[00:11:53] Jim Henson: Right. Say Redrew is a Republican seat and was competitive and tall, Rico moved into another seat. Right? Yeah.

[00:11:57] Josh Blank: And then people are also pointing out there saying, oh, and look, [00:12:00] Abbott won this county. You know, just barely that Biden and O’Rourke had won in the previous election. Now, one thing I like to point out is he barely won it.

[00:12:06] Josh Blank: Biden barely won it. O’Rourke barely won it. Abbott won it by a bunch more actually, than he did in 2018, and he won by a lot more than that, uh, in 2014. But this is the point. This is a prototypical county where both parties are competing heavily for voters. It’s highly populated. Williamson County is one of the fastest growing counties in the country.

[00:12:26] Josh Blank: Right. And so what you’re seeing is you’re seeing a place where there is competition, right? There’s competition in the State House, there’s competition in the school boards, and you’ve got the two statewide candidates likely. I mean, I think when you go back, you like probably spending a good amount of money and mobilization efforts to get the large number of voters who live in these areas turned out.

[00:12:42] Josh Blank: But in

[00:12:43] Jim Henson: conjunction with that, I mean to the, you know, to go to the point I was making is kind of like, you know, so what you’re seeing as an example of there is. Bottom up. Right. You know, sort of impetus that’s for

[00:12:53] Josh Blank: turnout. Yeah. And the thing, what I was gonna say is, you know, and really if you’re gonna say, well, how many other sort of counties in the state would really [00:13:00] match, you know, kinda the characteristics you’re talking about and say, you know, I could probably count it on two hands or less, right.

[00:13:04] Josh Blank: Out of 254

[00:13:05] Jim Henson: counties. Well, and as we, and as we said going in since we were looking at, you know, we were emphasizing the school board races, but also the legislative seats in that area. , you know, you gotta really stretch to say that there were 10 leg competitive legislative races. Yeah, absolutely. In chambers, right?

[00:13:20] Jim Henson: Absolutely. Yeah. And so, you know, I mean the point I was, you know, so I had been kind of kicking around was how much that took a lot of, you know, so, so the Republican re, you know, the redistricting Mass Republicans, you had helped them in two different ways. Obviously it helped them in the obvious ways that maps help you, but it also helped them in diffusing competition.

[00:13:38] Jim Henson: Mm-hmm. down. Well, you know, we’ll have to look at that a little bit more, I think. And yeah, well, you know, look at some of the ballot roll off, you know, compare ballot roll off in some of those races,

[00:13:45] Josh Blank: something like that. And I’m totally shooting from the hips here, so I may regret those, but I’ll just say, you know, I mean, I’ve got, I got some questions in the aftermath.

[00:13:51] Josh Blank: I never, I didn’t end up answering for very, I mean, don’t know why. I don’t remember. I, I think it was too late in the day or something, and then I was after the deadline. But there were some questions [00:14:00] floating around about like, well, you know, what about the votes that may not get counted in Harris County?

[00:14:05] Josh Blank: Yeah. Is like, you know, would that make a big difference? Now the first thing to say is, Just hard stop. No, the gap is so big it’s not gonna make a difference. But if you’re thinking about, you know, if I’m thinking about the overall impact of various factors and Texas has turned out this election and trying to allot mount it, I would, you know, again, or even trying to rank order the importance of them in terms of, you know, explanation, you know, the institutional sort of midterm stuff, you know, non-residential, election year, all that business is probably at the top.

[00:14:33] Josh Blank: I would probably put, you know, the lack of competition in, you know, probably exacerbated by redistricting, above voting rules. And that might be a little controversial. Yeah. But when I think about, you know, again, the, the marginal impacts that voting rules really generally tend to have on people versus, you know, amongst those people who are really in the mix’s, potential voters, whether or not there’s something to vote for of con.

[00:14:57] Josh Blank: That to me is gonna be a much bigger

[00:14:59] Jim Henson: impact. No, [00:15:00] I think that’s, you know, that’s kind of where I’m headed. Yeah, I think that’s right. Um, or at least potentially. Right. You know, we need to look at that a little more closely, I think. Right. I agree. And there’s probably, there might be a little bit of an asterisk in those Harris County votes depending on some of where those votes are and where, you know, some of those local

[00:15:15] Josh Blank: races.

[00:15:16] Josh Blank: Well, you know, you mentioned something, so, I mean, the thing about the Harris County votes is, yeah, I mean, they’re more likely to. An impact because they’re more likely to be lopsidedly democratic. Um, but then you brought up something else too, which was, you know, you’re talking about the role that abortion played in the election in some parts of the state and, and the role that it seemingly did not play in Texas.

[00:15:34] Josh Blank: And I mean, I think this is a little bit of a repetition, but I mean, I think that’s again, I think that’s an oversimplification in the sense that if your, if your thought was abortion is going to mean Democrats are going to win in Texas, then yes. Right. Your expectation is missed. But the thing is, is, you know, this is just important to recognize is, and I think, you know, this is something that probably was sort of, it’s like one of those things, like a lot of things, it becomes a clearer, you know Yeah.

[00:15:55] Josh Blank: In hindsight, like everything once thing actually happens. Yeah. But yeah. But I mean, this is, this is [00:16:00] what we didn’t. We did not see large, uh, subsets of certain voters switching party allegiances due to abortion. Due to abortion. We did not see significant shifts in the composition of the electorate that would be, you know, reflective of, let’s say, voters voting at vastly different rates or significantly different rates from prior elections due to abortion.

[00:16:27] Josh Blank: Yeah, and I think the issue here is just, you know, and it’s real simple, which, You know, if you take, if you think about voters who are either very pro-life or very pro-choice, Their vote was pretty much guaranteed. I mean, those voters have, you know, uh, you know, if their main issue is abortion and either abortion access or prohibition, they have two parties and they know to vote for.

[00:16:46] Josh Blank: Right. And they vote for those

[00:16:47] Jim Henson: parties. And, and, and if it’s not your main issue, then it was probably overwhelmed by partisanship or other issues. Right. And partisan partisanship in your voting

[00:16:57] Josh Blank: habits. And if, and if it was your main issue and you weren’t a [00:17:00] partisan voter, let’s say you’re someone who’s not really heavily.

[00:17:03] Josh Blank: Integrated engaged in the system, but abortion brought you out. Well, what I would say is that regardless of what the split is, it’s not gonna be nine to one pro-choice Democrats, you know, pro-choice. Now, Democrats turning out, it’s gonna be something like probably on this state. Maybe six to four. Right.

[00:17:22] Josh Blank: Which means that, you know, and it’s important to say like out of 10, right? Part of it’s like, yeah. So for maybe every 10 voters you add maybe the Democratics gain two. And really, when you say, well, yeah, but wouldn’t that be a lot? And it’s like, remember what we just said before? We’re talking about a real marginal number of people.

[00:17:37] Josh Blank: We’re probably adding to the electorate because of the abortion issue, right? And so it’s not that it, it fizzled, it’s just that I think more than anything, it probably re. The partisan dynamics that we already see

[00:17:47] Jim Henson: here. And Yeah. And, and yeah. I mean, and I, you know, I mean, and we did talk about this a little bit beforehand.

[00:17:52] Jim Henson: People were kind of overestimating what, you know, what the ceiling was on, you know, how many people, how many people were gonna [00:18:00] vote based on the, you know, the salience of this on both sides.

[00:18:02] Josh Blank: Yeah. And I think, and I honestly think that the, the interpretation of the, the really mostly exit polling in other states and in other democratic leaning states tends to over, I.

[00:18:11] Josh Blank: That data, not because we don’t think that data is super reliable. That’s a separate discussion, right, which we always kind of put a pin in. But because you know, if you think about it, what were Democrats talking about since the summer they’ve been talking about abortion. And when you ask in a democratic state where a majority of the voters are Democrat, what their main issues going to be or is, it’s not surprising to find that it’s the issue that Democrats were talking the most about, emphasizing the most.

[00:18:35] Josh Blank: But that doesn’t mean that abortion. One, Pennsylvania for Democrats. Right? Right. And that’s the thing, again, it gets very easy to sort of say, you know, again, draw that straight line. And we wanna say, well, there’s a straight line between the abortion decision and Democratic turned out a Democratic success in Pennsylvania.

[00:18:51] Josh Blank: And you could say, well, maybe. But also, I mean, the flip side is like, you know, how much did this add to what we would expect as a baseline turnout level? And you’d say it’s [00:19:00] probably a little bit, it probably helped. Yeah. But then part of the problem becomes, you know, it’s not that it’s a problem making that interpretation, but it’s then when you start saying, well, why didn’t this thing happen in Texas?

[00:19:08] Josh Blank: Like, I’m not sure it happened in Pennsylvania. Like, let’s just, right. You know, let’s, and if it did, it’s, it’s a, it was a marginal effect. And so, you know, to the extent it did or did not happen in Texas, we’re talking. A fraction of a marginal effect happening here that may or may not have happened somewhere else.

[00:19:22] Josh Blank: And so I think that’s where these things start to get pretty

[00:19:24] Jim Henson: confused pretty quickly. Right? I mean, yeah, the entanglement of those agenda items and just the sheer force of partisanship right now. Pretty hard to disentangle. Yeah, I

[00:19:34] Josh Blank: mean almost, I’m gonna say almost impossible, you know,

[00:19:36] Jim Henson: so. So I think that, you know, as we look at these things and you know what’s similar, what’s different, you know, as we were saying at the beginning, it’s really, I think, kind of more useful to think.

[00:19:46] Jim Henson: Particularly as we move past the election, which hopefully we will be doing soon. Please. You know, it’s kind of more useful to think about how Texas fits into the overall constellation of national politics, which I think is [00:20:00] reflected in all these things we’re saying about what’s constitutive, you know, what the limits to the contrast and, and the limits.

[00:20:06] Jim Henson: Just how you conceptualize, you know, thinking about Texas on one hand, in the country, on the. You know, I think as this all settles and as we just look at what’s happened just in the week since the election, you know, my expectation is that the state will continue to provide a kind of ballast for the, the National Republican Party as we turn immediately, not surprisingly, but even more immediately than usual, I think.

[00:20:30] Jim Henson: Yeah. Given the Trump announcement yesterday, um, you know, for the National Republican Party, both in presidential politics and in Congress. What I mean by that is, , you know, Texas is still going to be a key piece of the electoral college strategy. Mm-hmm. of whoever runs for, for president, it’s still likely to be a pretty reliable piece.

[00:20:51] Jim Henson: Mm-hmm. , you know, whatever we see, as we’ve talked about in the, the decreasing margins in presidential races, you know, and in Congress. [00:21:00] I think that just leads us back to where we live most of the time. You know, which is, You know, within the Republican coalition, if you wanna call it that, the fractious Republican Coalition in the state, we’re already seeing the internal factional battles playing out at the moment.

[00:21:17] Jim Henson: And, you know, this is obviously happening nationally. You can’t pick up a right. Yeah. You know, you can’t open your inbox if you get the political newsletters without talking about, you know, the maneuvering in, in the US house over McCarthy’s leadership. Right. Uh, the, the brewing. You know, I think challenge is too strong a word, but the complaining about Mitch McConnell, the fact that, uh, Senator Scott is going to challenge him, uh, the two Texas senators are actually sort of maneuvering in that.

[00:21:47] Jim Henson: And I think both are sort of support, are both are supporting a delay in the vote for the, for the next majority

[00:21:53] Josh Blank: leader. Although I wouldn’t be surprised to see those two split

[00:21:56] Jim Henson: eventually gets that eventually. I think that’s right. I mean, I. [00:22:00] But I mean, both of those are interesting questions. Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, in terms of the Corning cruise thing right now, you know, we’re seeing the same kind of combination of, you know, factional, personal ideological fights breaking out in nationally, but particularly in the state right now.

[00:22:16] Jim Henson: And that we’re then waiting to see how they play out in the legislation in the, in the legislative session.

[00:22:22] Josh Blank: Yeah. I mean, it’s really remarkable, you know, I mean, to, to put it that I can, you didn’t put it that way in front of me. Before we talked about this, and it is really remarkable to look at it and say, you know, you’re seeing the same dynamics play out among Republicans, both at the national level where, you know, the, the, the sort of seeming impetus for that is, you know, the underperformance.

[00:22:42] Josh Blank: Yeah. Right. So on the one hand, you know, you’ve got these questions about, you know, Trump’s role in the party and, you know, you’ve got Rick Scott, who everybody was, you know, very lot of Ramones were very unhappy with during much of the campaign season. Now, Challenging McConnell and, and it’s interesting, you know, again, in the wake of, I mean, it’s not surprising in the wake of [00:23:00] sort of underperformance, especially more so losses, but underperformance to see sort of a certain amount of finger pointing going on.

[00:23:06] Josh Blank: But yet in Texas, you’re seeing. Almost the same thing, but there’s not about the finger pointing. Right. It’s not about we underperformed or, you know. Right. I mean the same factional issues. And I wonder, I’m kind almost

[00:23:17] Jim Henson: asking this, although there was a tiny bit of underperformance, carping by some of the usual suspects, but go ahead.

[00:23:22] Jim Henson: Well,

[00:23:22] Josh Blank: yeah, no, I mean, well, but I mean that’s also clearly also functional towards the argument more generally about, you know, changing and, and leadership and sort of agenda control at the state level, I guess. Interesting to me in all of this in some ways is the fact that, I wonder how much of this is a reflection of kinda the ossification of the overall political system in some way.

[00:23:41] Josh Blank: I mean, it’s been, I mean, and again, it may overdoing it because I think we see this in Texas every time. I mean we’re gonna kinda get it, but much of what we’re seeing in the movement right now and the potential conflicts between, especially Republicans within the caucus over who, where you know where power is going to lay.

[00:23:56] Josh Blank: In the legislature. You know, that happens every time. It’s interesting to see [00:24:00] it also taking place at the national level, but it also kind of raises to me this idea of, you know, if politics are as ossified as they are, then really this is where the battle takes place.

[00:24:08] Jim Henson: Yeah, right. Well, and I think that’s why, you know, it’s interesting, you know, that’s why I’m eager to pivot to the legislature, right?

[00:24:13] Jim Henson: Mm-hmm. , because I think at, at least, you know, from the perspective of, of what we’re looking at in the next few months, in the next, you know, six months, If not a little bit longer than that is, you know, as, as you say, some of the, the, the litigation of the, of the same issues. But then, you know, the perpetual question of, and I, and I think we, this came up a little bit last week, how do the players interpret the elections with the overlay of, you know, how are some of the ongoing fights that we’ve now seen going on in contention and, and rivalries play out?

[00:24:50] Jim Henson: In a, in a slightly changed terrain. Right. So, you know, the leadership will be the same, right?

[00:24:57] Josh Blank: Almost, almost certainly. Right? I mean, the [00:25:00] speaker of the house, I mean,

[00:25:00] Jim Henson: is Yeah. I mean, he’s, I’m willing to say the leadership will be the same. Okay. Just checking, making sure. Yeah. Um, and we can, you know, that’s, you know, we can come back to that.

[00:25:08] Jim Henson: I, well, I do wanna come back to that. I mean, I think that, that fits in this discussion. Right, right. You know, so we will, you know, barring, you know, something really, really, really surprising. Right. You know, Dave Fielden will be the speaker again. Mm-hmm. , uh, despite this challenge from, uh, uh, Tony Tinderholt, which I think we mentioned last week in just happened, and, you know, the, the discussion of the agenda is strikingly familiar mm-hmm.

[00:25:32] Jim Henson: right? In terms of, you know, I mean exhibit A, this. You know, uh, governor Abbott didn’t take him very long to double down again on Operation Lone Star and the border. You know, he sent letters this week to county judges and across the state and to dps, the leaders of the dps and the Texas National Guard.

[00:25:53] Jim Henson: You know, essentially reminding them that Operation Loan Star was going to continue and, and that it was more urgent in the wake of a [00:26:00] federal judge this week blocking the, the implementation of Article 42

[00:26:05] Josh Blank: expulsions and, and, and izing the invasion rhetoric into

[00:26:09] Jim Henson: Right. You know. Well, what was interesting is that, yeah, I mean, I, you know, and I, and I think there was some confusion out there because I.

[00:26:16] Jim Henson: You know, and I just sorted this out fairly recently. I mean, people were circulating the proclamation from July, right? Right now. And, and the letters invoked that proclamation. So though, so even though the headlines were Governor Abbott formally declares invasion, this is not, yeah. The kind of invocation of you of constitutional authority that a lot on the far right have been asking him to make, even though he gets some of the credit for that.

[00:26:42] Jim Henson: Well, I was gonna say, I

[00:26:42] Josh Blank: mean, and I remember talking to someone about this in July, and part of this was to say, yeah, I mean, you know it, it’s not, It’s not what the people who want it, who want it to be sort of the idea of like, you know, a, a real, a real invasion. What that could potentially mean from a

[00:26:57] Jim Henson: legal, you know Yeah.

[00:26:58] Jim Henson: And challenge to

[00:26:59] Josh Blank: national authority. [00:27:00] But it also is a, again, another reminder of, of Abbott’s. Willingness to play ball with

[00:27:06] Jim Henson: those people? Well, I mean, I think, yeah, yeah. Willingness is even, you know, you know, yeah. I mean the, yeah, the strategy of making sure that nobody, you know, nobody of any prominence is gonna get to the right of him on this.

[00:27:18] Jim Henson: Right. I mean, and you know, the through line, you know, is, is still pretty evident here from the polling we’re always talking about here with immigration and border security. But also, you know, we were talking about the sciences of abortion and the exit polls. Immigration was pretty salient. Immigration and board of security were still pretty salient to Republican voters, uh, in the exit polls with all the caveats on the exit polls.

[00:27:41] Jim Henson: So, you know, as we go into the session, you know, this factional, you know, the, the surface of this kind of factional contention, you know, is evident in the, you know, familiar leadership dynamics. I mean, you raised the question of whether. You know, anointing Dave Felan in a way too, too soon. And, you know, I’m perfectly [00:28:00] willing to say yes.

[00:28:00] Jim Henson: Dave, Dave Feland has not formally been elected speaker yet, but I, you know, the challenge from the right, and, and several people have written about this, including credit, where credit is due. Scott Braddock and Quorum Report. I mean, if you look back at what the. The challenges to the speaker were, you know, I mean, I’ve complained year after year.

[00:28:20] Jim Henson: Yeah. About people always making too much of them. Mm-hmm. , you know, most of them have not made it to the floor. Yeah. To my mind, I mean, I think you have to read this. Not as a realistic intent on Tony Tinder, Holt’s part, or the part of any of his ideological fellow travelers that Tony Tinderholt will ever be speaker.

[00:28:38] Jim Henson: It’s more about raising the, is, you know, the issue of, you know, ideological conservative orientation. And you know, one or two particular issues in this case, the issue of are there gonna be democratic chairs? Yeah. Named by the speaker. It’s kind, you know, I think Dave Feelin has already committed to this.

[00:28:56] Jim Henson: We talked about this last week. Yeah. I mean, you know, the number of Democrats that you have, [00:29:00] chairing committees is a highly fungible thing that enables the speaker to. You know, maintain, you know, a, a democratic backstop against, you know, f uh, uh, factionalism in his caucus, but while, you know, deciding where he is going to put democratic chairs and for what reason and how many.

[00:29:20] Jim Henson: Yeah. And you know, that’s pretty, to my mind, that’s just pretty straightforward. I, I think it’s the raising of the issue and the heat check that it invites among the right. And whether, you know, Tinderholt will make the mistake that Scott Turner did, you know, a few sessions back, force this to the floor and put people on the spot who are.

[00:29:43] Jim Henson: Blackballed is maybe a little bit of a strong term, but are at a disadvantage when it comes to committee assignments and advancing bills once the, you know, the session actually starts. Yeah, that’s

[00:29:54] Josh Blank: what I was thinking. You’re sort of on a fine line there between sort of extracting some concessions from what was always gonna be the [00:30:00] leadership versus putting yourself and your allies on the outs for an entire session.

[00:30:03] Josh Blank: Yeah. And, and so, and most people, and most people don’t choose the

[00:30:06] Jim Henson: latter. I mean, and, and so then similarly then, you know, you look at the, the Senate, you know, you’ve got. You know, Dan Patrick. Uh, elected by a much larger, you know, much wider margin than he was last time. Uh, very secure in the Senate. No surprises.

[00:30:23] Jim Henson: I mean, they would’ve liked to have, you know, flipped the Luci seat to a, to a literal Republican, shall we say. Um, and they did not just, you know, they, they’ve not succeeded in doing that. There’s probably gonna be a recount in that race, but I don’t think that’s gonna, probably not gonna change it. As we were saying, again, as we were saying last week, you know, and so you.

[00:30:43] Jim Henson: Patrick there, you know, in this kind of situation with, with felan, with the governor in this position, you know, transmitting, you know, trying to, trying to transmit an agenda that, again, very familiar. Mm-hmm. , um, setting the stage though for, you know, [00:31:00] what is still I think a very undetermined sense of where the pride of place is gonna be on the agenda in this session.

[00:31:07] Jim Henson: There’s a lot of talk right now of issues that. Broadly speaking, kind of developmental Republican issues. You know, top of the heat, property taxes, education, chapter three 13 incentives bubbling under. Here is also some discussion of infrastructure and you know, this perpetual problem of also perpetual problem of managing to the state’s rapid growth.

[00:31:31] Jim Henson: You know, on the other side to over, you know, slightly oversimplify, you’ve got abortion, guns, LGBTQ issues. How much continuity will there be from the agenda that was so successful in the very fractious part on partisan terms, uh, uh, 2021 session. And I think all of that again looks. Like a Texas variation on a national theme.

[00:31:58] Josh Blank: Yeah. And then the truth is, I [00:32:00] mean, you know, the more you talk about the, the less I care about the national theme and the more I’m thinking more about these internal dynamics. And it does make you wonder, you know, I mean, if you think about watching this session multiple times, you know, what we’re starting with was, yeah.

[00:32:10] Josh Blank: There’s always a speaker challenge or somewhere, right? Whether formal or informal. Somebody always crops up. Yeah. And, and I under, you know, it’s just one of those things. There is so much drama to speculate on, and usually almost none of it

[00:32:22] Jim Henson: actually happens. Well, and again, we’ve talked about this and I, I can’t remember if I talked about this last week or not.

[00:32:26] Jim Henson: I know I’ve done this in class before, but you know, I mean, I think the underappreciated piece of this is the, the change in the law a few years back that made it so that if you’re gonna be a speaker candidate, you know, after register with the Secretary of State, right. To my mind, that’s a on one. Meant as a good transparency measure.

[00:32:44] Jim Henson: It’s got that, on the other hand, it’s an invitation to, you know, display behavior. Yeah. Whether you think you’re gonna win or not. And you know, I, so, you know, that’s at work there, I think. And, um,

[00:32:57] Josh Blank: so I mean, that’s interesting, right? I mean, I mean, I think more [00:33:00] broadly, you know, you kind of, I mean, if you think about the last session, I mean, one of the things, you know, we’re coming off the presidential.

[00:33:06] Josh Blank: Election cycle. You know, I’m curious to see whether Abbott’s hand is strengthened, you know, kind of coming after a cycle in which he just won by 11 points and spent a ton of money on how people interpret that in the process. You know, he’s sort, yeah. He’s kind of had, I would say, mixed success in his ability to move his agenda through the legislature.

[00:33:23] Josh Blank: You know, same thing for Patrick. I mean, Patrick’s agenda I think is, is. You know, over time is getting more and more focused. I mean, if not focused on a, like a clear kind of unifying set, but in the sense that as he achieves more of the things that he wanted to set out to achieve, I think the list is getting a little bit more targeted.

[00:33:37] Josh Blank: Right. And the amount of effort he’s putting into the things he cares about, I think is gonna be higher. You know, at the house. You know, it is him. I mean, I don’t disagree that there’s no reason to think until it’s about to happen, that feel it is not gonna be speaker. Right. Yeah. I mean, it’d be that kind of thing, but I’m curious to see.

[00:33:53] Josh Blank: What does he look like in his second session? I mean, there’s certainly some management problems in the house last session Yeah. That were [00:34:00] problematic and, you know, gave the Democrats a lot of openings to, to, to scuttle the process. You know, do they clean that up? What does that look like? And all those things are kind of intermixing in a way that’s, you know, It’s pretty interesting.

[00:34:13] Josh Blank: But again, to your point, still within an overall environment that looks fairly familiar,

[00:34:18] Jim Henson: fairly familiar. Well, and I think the other thing you’ll want to, you know, want to add into that is, you know, with, with the position of the speaker, you know, that was a first term and a first term that, you know, arose out of a lot of chaos with the collapse of the bond and speakership.

[00:34:32] Jim Henson: Right. And, you know, this is, You know, this is not a speakership that had been strategized for a long time. Right. Right. And that, and that, that affected that. And I think, you know, you know, the, the ill will between the speaker and the lieutenant governor right now, which is accentuating, you know, the traditional rivalry tension that exists at times between the house and the Senate.

[00:34:55] Jim Henson: The operative question. You know, the main question here is like how [00:35:00] operative is a situation that has seemed to be, I think, without too much debate that the speaker and the governor are closer than either of them, is to the lieutenant Governor. Right. And the lieutenant governor is able to leverage, you know, his, you know, uh, His control of the Senate.

[00:35:22] Jim Henson: It doesn’t seem that Patrick’s control of the Senate is going to decrease. Um, you know, there could be a little bit of a lame duck factor theoretically in the abstract, but I don’t see it, right.

[00:35:33] Josh Blank: Not, not this session, I don’t

[00:35:35] Jim Henson: think on the, on the house, on the side of the house. And the governor, you know, feeling is in a, you know, is, is in a stronger position in the house.

[00:35:45] Jim Henson: At least structurally. And again, there’s the management strategy, the execution. We’ll see how they execute in terms of leadership. But the other piece of that is that feeling was very involved in. The elections and they put a lot of money into [00:36:00] the elections and a lot of resources and, you know, exercised a leadership role in there.

[00:36:05] Jim Henson: That was a little bit similar to the leadership role that the governor’s campaign played to my mind in 2020. Yeah. When there was a vacuum. Right. You know, really it, you know, in the, in the house. because of the unpleasantness. You know, I think that winds up helping feeling whether he, you know, they, they’re able, his team and his leadership team is able to man to, to manage.

[00:36:28] Jim Henson: That is another question. There will be a lot of new faces. A lot of those new faces though. We’ll have some allegiance to the current speaker based on campaign relationships. And so I think, you know, watching, you know, the gravity of all of those actors has shifted subtly in different ways. But you know, we’re not gonna see what that looks like probably until things really get going.

[00:36:53] Jim Henson: You know, the, the bill filing, the early bill filing was not too telling. That’ll look pretty familiar [00:37:00] too, in terms, and it’s usually not a particularly good leading indicator anyway, but it does give you a sense of what. You know, certain people are interested in and you know, and look, it’s not a surprise, but it is, you know, we were talking about having evidence earlier.

[00:37:15] Jim Henson: Yeah. You know, if you look at the kind of bills that people like Representative Slaton file. Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. Things like this, you know, I mean, what is that? The emphasis on, you know, further action on the LGBTQ front. Um, you know, more ratcheting down of the electoral system, you know, in those kinds of, in addition to people’s traditional, you know, business as usual bills.

[00:37:37] Jim Henson: There’s a little bit to be seen there. I don’t think it’s, you know, so I think the other thing, you know, the next big thing we’re really kind of waiting for, that we’re gonna have to wait for is a lot for a while and is fu will fuel a lot of the internal speculation is what the committee chair assignments look like in both chambers, but, Particularly since feeling is a bigger question mark, particularly in the

[00:37:59] Josh Blank: house.[00:38:00]

[00:38:00] Josh Blank: Yeah. And that the thing that I was thinking you were gonna say is probably secondary would be like, so what are you gonna do with that budget surplus? Yeah. Well,

[00:38:06] Jim Henson: I mean, I think that that’s a big, you know, you know, I mean, and that’s, yeah. I, you know, that’s gonna be the substance, right? That’s not a leading indicator.

[00:38:14] Jim Henson: That’s, that’s gonna be the. Right. Or one of the things. So with that, uh, thanks to Josh for being here. Thanks to our excellent production team in the dev studio in the College of Liberal Arts at UT Austin. Remember, you can find some of the data we referenced today, but lots of other data, uh, at the Texas Politics Project website.

[00:38:36] Jim Henson: That’s Texas politics dot u texas.edu. Thank you for listening. We’ll be back soon with. Second Reading podcast.

[00:38:45] Outro: The second reading podcast is a production of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.[00:39:00]