October 5th, 2023 – GOP politics in the Texas Legislature as another special session nears

[0:00:00 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.

[0:00:30 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 this morning by Josh Blank, the research director for the Texas politics project. Fresh off a triumphant speech at one of the major trade associations in the state. How are you this morning, Josh? Well,

[0:00:54 Joshua Blank]  with a, with an intro like that, I’m feeling great.

[0:00:57 Jim Henson]  You opened for Lisa Craven,

[0:01:00 Joshua Blank]  the biggest opening act of my life easily.

[0:01:03 Jim Henson]  There you go. That’s a good, that’s an Easter egg for today. Well, since recording last week, a lot has happened in politics. you know, interestingly enough, a lot has happened in state politics, not as high visibility as what we’ve seen nationally. And you know, were it not for the historic ouster of Kevin mccarthy as Speaker of the House and the resulting paralysis of Congress and in the aftermath of that, what we have learned this week in Texas politics about, you know, which is more specific information about the coming special session would be unambiguously front and center. And we do have a little more information about the looming special session than we did last week since Governor Abbott has now notified the leadership that the session will commence Monday October 9th very soon in the window that we figured, everybody was assuming at 1 p.m. it’s very specific, it’s very specific and you know, which is appropriate and yet not complete demonstrating that he knows how to leave legislators and those of us who care hanging on his decisions as of now, we still don’t know what specific items he’s going to put on the call. And we discussed in the last podcast that he signaled in addition to to school vouchers, which has always been the object of this session that we can expect at least one immigration border security related item. The hook for that being the, the Colony Ridge Development north of Houston. And, and we talked about that last week. The governor had made reference to it already. It had been kind of a cause celebre right wing press it’s now broken into the mainstream press and, you know, it’s a real rabbit hole at this point. But what is actually going on in that development, we have to say is that this moment can be charitably described as not factually clear.

[0:02:51 Joshua Blank]  Yeah, I mean, what’s notable at the mainstream press jumping into this is that all of a sudden, like, you know, the people who like develop that property and, you know, like actually are like involved directly, like started getting asked about it, you know, and again, I’m not trying to, I know,

[0:03:05 Jim Henson]  I know,

[0:03:07 Joshua Blank]  yeah, we still don’t know a lot of details, but I mean, I would, I would say this is, it’s looking a lot more like many low income developments on the outskirts of urban areas in Texas or the sort of the ex urban kind of rural, you know, dividing line where, you know, essentially a lot of people who can’t afford to live in the urban core or even in its nearest suburbs tend to tend to look for housing. And in Texas, when you’re talking about people, you know, again, who are of lower socio-economic status, you’re usually talking about a lot of Hispanic people, you know, and that is just within the census data, that’s just with, you know, economic

[0:03:38 Jim Henson]  demographic, a

[0:03:38 Joshua Blank]  demographic fact. And so, you know, you see this place where, you know, a lot of Hispanic people seem to be, you know, buying properties and,

[0:03:45 Jim Henson]  and and, you know, are, like, are being marketed to being marketed

[0:03:48 Joshua Blank]  to appear. But beyond that, that doesn’t seem to necessarily see in and of itself that would not be news. Right.

[0:03:54 Jim Henson]  Yeah, certainly not unique, shall we say? Right.

[0:03:57 Joshua Blank]  But we’ll see, you know, that’s all I can say about it. I mean, it’s interesting just in the sense that, you know, again, from sort of the outside looking in when I see the outside, I mean, you know, someone who reads a lot of news and kind of looks at these things, you know, you know, it is looking more and more just kind of like nothing. But it’s interesting the extent to which and how quickly it became this, this, this, like, huge thing so much so that, like, it might be on the special session call.

[0:04:21 Jim Henson]  Well, and I think what’s, you know, to me what’s interesting about this, if you look at the long history of housing, demographic patterns in housing and the way that real estate development has worked in some circumstances in the history of the state, this may not be nothing but it may actually, if you were to really dig into it, I think what you find is that it’s something very different than its entry point. We don’t know yet. We’ll see, you know, we’ll see, but it’s

[0:04:48 Joshua Blank]  that we might come back to

[0:04:49 Jim Henson]  it. Yeah. You know. Well, it’s looking almost certainly like we will but, you know, we’ll see how this all shakes out. So given all that, we’re not going to the mccarthy situation. But knowing that now the special session will be starting between this podcast and the next, you know, we want to set the table a little bit. I think inevitably this will lead us back to how the mccarthy story and the turmoil and the GOP that that story is rooted in is providing a powerful frame or yet another frame for thinking about the special session in Texas, both structurally but also tactically on the ground. Given the parallel, the messaging that we’re seeing, the

[0:05:25 Joshua Blank]  parallels are really remarkable. Yeah, the parallels

[0:05:27 Jim Henson]  are remarkable and, and but as as with a lot of national state politics, parallels, particularly involving Texas, I think there’s a real tendency to want to do the compare and leave out some of the contrast of that exercise. So

[0:05:42 Joshua Blank]  I guess I was right after I said that I almost like, oh, I shouldn’t have said that because there are many parallels. There are also many parallels that people are drawing that are also not

[0:05:49 Jim Henson]  valid. I had the line and here are my notes for later I was saying, you know, but yeah, I mean, like so many other things, you know, that what you think is similar and what you, what you’re emphasizing is similarities and what you might be flagging as differences, probably in a lot of cases are gonna play to the comparative advantage of the person, the interests of the people making the comparison or the contrast. So, let’s, let’s, let’s talk a little bit about the session. We’ll circle back and, you know, I guess we should also say, and, and we’ll incorporate this as we go along, you know, also breaking news. Right. As you know, we were getting ready to do the podcast. It’s late morning on, on Thursday. Right. Yeah. On Thursday, the Comptroller released an updated kind of, you know, revenue message for the legislature, letting them know how his preview estimate looked. And of course, the news was good long story short and I, and I, I was going through this document right before we came up here and I think there are gonna be some, some gray areas in there or some, some talking about, you know, the comparative advantage of the person doing the speaking, there’s going to be, you know, about 18.2 billion extra, you know, above, above the, you know, his last projection for the next biennium. Now that, you know, having that out there is obviously gonna play in could very well play into this session. But I think if you really read in the details of the report and again, it’s several, you know, 20 pages and it came out about 15 minutes before you were supposed to start here. But it looks to me also, the other thing to notice here is something that is consistent with less it’s not bad news but you know, less good news that the Comptroller and everyone else has been saying through the last session, which is the amount of revenue is down, right? In other words, the big excess that was generated and that got folded into this budget. Now there’s still more money, money everywhere. But overall the picture is there’s less, you know, that, that the revenue number has declined as I read this report preliminarily. So we’ll go back and, and think that through and almost certainly revisit that later in even more time to read everything. So could use a little more staff here

[0:07:59 Joshua Blank]  to read for

[0:07:59 Jim Henson]  us. So, and, you know, be handing me something right now right now in real time. So let’s talk about what’s, what’s on the table. So let’s start, of course, with vouchers, which is the big discussion. We’re, you know, very close to getting a piece out on vouchers. It looks, you know, drills down pretty deep into that and we’ll probably get that out and save a lot of the detail in that for next week. I think since if we go back to our regular schedule next week, which we probably should, we be recording like the day after they come in. So we’ll see.

[0:08:31 Joshua Blank]  so at which point what the senate will have passed its voucher bill and, or something?

[0:08:36 Jim Henson]  Yes. Well, yes, the Senate, yeah, the Senate will be passing their bill, in a way. That’s fun. You know. That’s funny. Not in a way, that’s funny. That’s funny. But in a way, you know, in a way where we are now, that’s a good place to start that the negotiating fluidity this time is, is very interesting or not. Or trying to make a judgment about that, that in fact, the Senate might not be moving as precipitously as we think, although that certainly has been their

[0:09:03 Joshua Blank]  style. Yeah. I mean, it certainly, I mean, it goes back to where we were just a second ago. It sort of depends on what’s on the call even. Right. I mean, if, if, if the call is primarily focused, let’s say, on the subject of a voucher plan on the one hand, and let’s say something having to do with immigration and border security on the other and period, let’s just say, and we’re just talking about, you know, voucher program. Yeah. I think the Senate can, can move ahead and very quickly, probably revise, at least as a starting point. What it worked on during the session is, is even a starting point for negotiations. You know, if you start to, if, if, you know, I think one of the things that people are wondering about and considering is whether the call is a little bit more expansive in the public education space. And specifically, I think what a lot of people are wondering about is, you know, about either, you know, some kind of increase financing considerations, maybe around teacher pay, maybe more generally. Which is why I, again, you’re raising the revised budget estimate is important, sort of thinking about this too. And, you know, that would certainly change the dynamics. I think it would certainly change the speed at which the Senate would move on the voucher bill. Not that it’s gonna, you know, slow them down much, but it would make, bring new considerations,

[0:10:05 Jim Henson]  abstract, you know, to abstract out a point there. I mean, what I’d say is that and I don’t want to try to second guess what the governor is going to do in any specific kind of way. But I think one would expect that there will be an explicit unavoidable call to deal with vouchers a little more in line with, you know, the specificity that we’ve seen the governor use in recent calls and then also a more general call that will define what the negotiating space is going to be, whether it includes, you know, I, you know, I’m trying hard not to start doing what I said. I just said I wasn’t going to do but I mean, I would be looking for something that is something of a, you know, a kind of shopping list of what the items that are on the table are a semi specified, a specified list, but one that hits several things that is also like, ok, here’s the bargaining chips.

[0:10:55 Joshua Blank]  Yeah, and it’ll be, I mean, even that in and of itself again, without getting into specifics, we just don’t know, you know, that’ll give you, you’ll give us all a good sense about what, you know about what kind of bargaining we’re talking about. This will kind of get into the coalitional politics a little bit. But, but who, who are you swing the pot for will depend on what, what are the other kind of add ons that might be, might be discussed here. And it’s funny because, I mean, right now, you know, again, I think there is a lot of speculation. It seems that, you know, teacher pay might get kind of thrown into the mix on this. There’s a lot of reasons why that makes sense both for the negotiating perspective, but also just, I think for the actual, just sort of raw politics going into the next election cycle and we can get into that. But, you know, in some ways, even though that kind of seems obvious there’s part of me just sitting here and we’re just guessing and specking whatever it says. Boy, you know, that doesn’t really sound like Abbott. When you think about the last few calls he’s made sort of like, you know, the emergency items he signified. You know, I mean, he’s been, he’s been pretty down the line. I’ll just say, sort of say, you know, de facto strong conservative when he sort of makes these big public pronouncements because once he does it. He’s kind of, you know, he sort of has to step aside to some extent.

[0:11:53 Jim Henson]  I mean, it’s, you know, I, I guess what I’m envisioning there again to try to not do to do what I just said, I was like, you know, I mean, I could envision a paragraph in the call that is, you know, improvements to the public education system that include parental rights, continued attention to, you know, school safety following up on the bill passed in the previous session, curriculum reform. Well, I mean, I think a school choice would probably sit by itself and then addition and it would be like an additional paragraph and that’s what I meant by putting the items on the table and, you know, it probably looks not that I’m drawing a causal line here, but it probably looks a little like the list of things that we’ve been polling on it with a, with a turn towards what, you know, with, you know, with a turn towards, you know, some of the, you know, binding concepts for conservatives and Republicans like parental rights, but also a nod to teachers. Yeah. It’s funny because, I mean,

[0:12:47 Joshua Blank]  along the lines of what you’re saying. No. And I totally agree with you and again, we’re just gonna see but it’s funny, you know, when you lay it out that way, you know, again, I think the, the sort of focus has been on whether or not teacher pay is gonna be thrown there and teacher pay in and of itself is something that,, you know, I think you could see shifting the democratic position a little bit in terms of how they would negotiate a bill like that at least, might fracture them a little bit and bring some votes over. What’s interesting to me though. I mean, I think you’re right. I mean, there is, there is and we sort of, we’re writing about in this piece we’re writing, we’re writing about this. I mean, basically just to lay it out a little bit of it. The fact is, is, you know, parental rights,, curriculum concerns and general sort of negative attitudes towards public education among Republicans is kind of, it’s kind of become its own, sort of, you know, set of issues right now and it’s, it’s, it’s a pretty good set of issues for them. Now, the thing is, is that, you know, when they try to link vouchers to this broader push for parental rights, and, you know, curriculum changes and we said at the time we were talking about this during the session, like, it really just made things a lot more complicated on all fronts. And so I wonder, you know, I don’t, I wonder how, you know, an expansive call, you know, if it’s too expansive or, you know, quote unquote, too expansive or whatever, you know, I don’t know if that ends up, you know, providing bargaining chips or just sand,

[0:13:54 Jim Henson]  you know. Well, I mean, yeah, I mean, it’s an open question but I mean, I think I can’t help but flag that and this is kind of a, you know, like a pundit check or whatever, you know, consistency check. It’s gonna sound, this is gonna sound like a humble bragging. I don’t mean it this way. But I mean, I think you could probably go back in this podcast really? To 2021 2022 probably 2022 for sure. It’s been clear all along that after a period where the voucher issue seemed kind of stuck and people, you know, and, and, you know, key players were not, you know, including the governor, we’re not looking to spend a lot of political capital on it. It would be very hard to dissuade me that once we started seeing some of the things that we’ve talked about in this piece and other pieces, the fallout of COVID learning loss, the fights over kids being in classrooms and not, you know, the fights between parents and superintendents and teachers, you know, that whole embro, that kind of fueled Glenn Yan’s gubernatorial campaign in Virginia in 2021 that this was going to become a vehicle for the resuscitation of vouchers.

[0:14:57 Joshua Blank]  Yeah. I mean, and that was, I mean, it, it’s funny, I don’t, it doesn’t matter but, I mean, intentional or not. Right. I mean, that’s what sort of fun and I was gonna say, you know, you could throw onto that fire, you know, concerns over de I it

[0:15:11 Jim Henson]  was pretty clear that, you know, even as it was going on, I mean, and I think we commented on the time meetings were being held, public events were being held, messaging was being assembled, that was slotting, you know, the resuscitation of the voucher.

[0:15:25 Joshua Blank]  Yeah, I think, I think I joked when we were talking about it that the only thing that would make liberal Democrats in favor of vouchers is COVID because once you start having, you know, parents, you know, ripping masks off teachers and screaming at people, it was like, you can see some Democrats being like, you know, what, go ahead.

[0:15:40 Jim Henson]  So there’s that as the backdrop. But I mean, I think, you know, where we were, you know, I think it’s

[0:15:46 Joshua Blank]  important, it’s important that point you made though, which is, I think it’s important to say, you know, I think for people who listen to a podcast like this, who’ve been following Texas politics for a while, it can feel like, wait a minute, haven’t we been talking like what’s different now? This is part of what’s different, the underlying public opinion environment. You know, I think that the overall degrade degradation of attitudes towards institutions including public schools and especially among Republicans creates, you know, a, a potential not but a potential environment of attitudes that actually makes, you know, you know, again, the more receptive or, or the overall audience for vouchers broader

[0:16:18 Jim Henson]  and, and, and, and just creates political opportunities even with, you know, within elite circles to sort of tap into that. And I think, you know, you know, as, as we say in the piece and, you know, again, we’re doing, let me again do something. I said I wasn’t gonna do, I mean, it’s one thing to be able to tap into that, It’s another thing to reach critical mass in and of itself, but to circle back, that’s why I expect that. I don’t think it’s lost on anybody in the legislature, including Democrats. And we’re seeing a few, you know, stories in the, in recent days and this is always kind of percolating of some Democrats flirting with the possibility of a trade off on vouchers. So the story, I can’t, you know, I apologize to the reporter on the story and I don’t remember who wrote it. the story in the San Antonio Express news about representative Gervin Hawkins sort of publicly signaling, you know, hey, maybe there’s a deal to be made and on the other end of that in the Republican Party, we’ve talked about it, you know, we’ve talked about it in here. It’s always been a question of, there’s always been the question of what can you do? What can one do who wants to promote a voucher bill to peel off some of the, the no votes in the Republican caucus, particularly among rural Republicans. And it’s a variation of the same thing and that’s what, and that’s sort of why I think I expect that the governor will make sure that however he does it, that he allows for bargaining space for both of those kind of things to happen, to peel off some Democrats and to peel off some of those rural Republicans and kind of see if they can’t reach critical mass

[0:17:57 Joshua Blank]  with carrot or

[0:17:58 Jim Henson]  stick. Right. Right. And, and, and look, I mean, we can’t underestimate, you know, look, we get off the table but right now we expect, you know, as we, as our little back and forth to begin is we like to voucher bill to have no problem getting out of the Senate question is what are the details, you know, how far is it from something that might realistically it’s a, it’s a big if get out of the house, you know, and the House of course, has been the, has been quote unquote the problem. So there were 24 Republican votes for the Herrero amendment in the last session, regular session, which was, which is the heat check for, you know, it’s, yeah, it’s, it’s an, it’s an amendment which, you know, basically banned the use, you know, loosely speaking of public funds for private education, 24 Republican votes for the Rare amendment and then 10 Republicans who voted present. Bold

[0:18:47 Joshua Blank]  move. Among

[0:18:48 Jim Henson]  those, we have to, I think underline that one of those was education chair, Brad Buckley. Now I was, you know, when I saw this, I was revisiting this. If you go back and remember at the time Buckley presented that vote as a gesture towards neutrality because he was overseeing the committee that was supposed to out of which any kind of voucher bill would come. You know, there was a voucher bill in process at that moment. So it created space for him and actually some of the others on this, on this, on this list of the 10 republicans who pnb the deal to say, hey, we’re just, you know, we’re just trying to maintain neutrality. Let’s see what the bill looks like, et cetera, et cetera. So, but if you have the, the 10 to the 24 pretty big chunk of Republicans to move. Now, obviously, you know, I i it’s fair to argue that the presidents probably have less distance to move than the No, I think it’s fair, but it is a pretty big, it is a pretty big and there are some and there are interesting figures in there when you think about the internal personal and as ever, you know, speaker politics of the House, I mean, among those 24 you’ve got both Darby and clarity. Clarity having been somebody who was, you know, a speaker candidate at one point, he’s been a guest on the, on the podcast. You also have two members that are not coming back. And so, you know, probably don’t give two fudges about the, that’s, that’s my PG version about who, what kind of threats are made and that would be for price. And John and John Rainey. So I, you know, the politics of this get complicated pretty quickly. Right? And, and that’s why I think, you know, the, the more negotiating space they have in terms of offering carrots, the better off they are. But you mentioned the sticks and we don’t want to leave this thing because the, the application of the stick has actually changed a little bit given, you know what we talked about in here last week. And I think even the week before and that is Governor Abbott’s message about, you know, the two special sessions and then we’ll let the primary voters sort it out. You know, it seems like some people are want to take that as a direct threat from Abbott that he would somehow put his thumb on the scales in those primary elections, you know, and this comes after Governor Abbott’s, you know, very focused pressure. Speaking of sticks on members in the veto messages of when he met, you know, he veed a lot of bills and in several of those, you know, he sent messages saying, you know, this is fine, but it’s not as important as school choice. So maybe we should revisit this afterwards in an article by Alex Samuels in Texas Monthly, that came out this week that you’re quoted in also a little closer to the direct topic anyway, although not as articulate as you, they talked to both Ernest Bales and Travis Clardy who reflected in interesting ways about the governor putting pressure directly on them. And I would urge people if you haven’t seen that to read, to read Alex’s article. And, you know, I mean, there’s a lot of, you know, tea leaves to read in what representatives Clarine Bales have to

[0:22:09 Joshua Blank]  say, well, it’s tough because, you know, I think going back over time, Abbott’s has been pretty inconsistent in terms of follow through with respect to threats he makes or, you know, sort of statements of potential support going through from a Perma legislative session to an election cycle. However, one of the other things in terms of direct, I mean, direct threats but, you know, waving a stick around, I guess, well, you know, during this, during the regular session, while this, you know, debate on vouchers was going on. Abbott did go to the districts of some of these rural members, rural Republican members and basically campaigned for vouchers on their turf, you know. So,

[0:22:41 Jim Henson]  I mean, he preach at religious schools and,

[0:22:43 Joshua Blank]  yeah, and I mean, you know, I just, you know, I have to imagine we talked about it at some point. I’m sure on this podcast, but it’s not the sort of thing that, you know, is likely to be, you know, taken well by those members. Now whether your response to that is, you know, well, flip this guy to use the PG version again or, or whether the message is, oh damn. You know, this is, this is serious. I’m gonna need to deal with this in a more real, you know, more realistic way we have to see. But, you know, Abbott has made at least, you know, threats and maybe even some movements at this point that he is going to be a little bit more aggressive with those people who don’t want to fall in

[0:23:12 Jim Henson]  line. And I, you know, I have, you know, sort of maybe there’s a, well, there’s just a lot of, yeah, I mean, there’s just a lot of, you know, I mean, Governor Abbott can be difficult to predict. I think in some ways he can be kind of easy to predict in other ways he can be very difficult to predict. And in this case, what is the substance of this threat about primaries? Really mean, I find it hard to imagine that it means he would actively back challengers to seated incumbents, republican incumbents in the house.

[0:23:46 Joshua Blank]  Why? So why do you think that, I mean, I have a reason why I think

[0:23:49 Jim Henson]  that, well, because we know first, you know, precedent, you know, and b it has such a, such a halo effect on other members at a time when, you know, the governor hasn’t, at times allied himself with speaker P in the House, you know, as balancing behavior if you will to put a very polite term on it, you know, versus Dan Patrick and, and, and his influence over the Senate. And, you know, the basic fact that, you know, the assumption, the operative operating assumption is that Patrick has, you know, Patrick has himself plus his institution, right, as kind of his, you know, a part of his base of power. Now that said, you know, the governor, as I recall in the last midterm cycle was pretty involved in house races and in supporting incumbents and in the campaign, you know, there, there was a lot of, you know, particularly given that, you know, Governor Abbott was on the ballot, there was a lot of synergy. I hate, I don’t want to use the word synergy. There, there was a degree of coordinate and, and the, and the governor’s campaign was keeping a close eye on house campaigns as well, you know, in, in the guise of consulting some money

[0:24:59 Joshua Blank]  et cetera, it raises a good point too, which is to say, you know, the the stick in this case could be as much about, you know, supporting primary challengers to incumbent representatives. But that has a lot of, you know, hazards see more broadly. But the other side is it could also be withholding

[0:25:13 Jim Henson]  where I was going and holding the

[0:25:15 Joshua Blank]  infrastructure support that Abbott has really invested a ton into over his time

[0:25:19 Jim Henson]  as a withholding of support would send a similar message and be a little, I mean, you know, look, the insiders would, you know, sort of flock on that. But even, you know, but even that, I mean, you’re likely to wind up helping, you know, II, I just think they’re gonna have to, you know, that, that’s gonna be such a case by case analysis if they’re careful about it because in some cases you’re gonna wind up helping people that are likely to be pretty hostile to you, you know, depending on, on how things shake out. So, so I think, you know, that is, you know, that is very, you know, and that, and that brings us really to, you know, the convers conversation, we started a little bit, you know, before we came in here and that is, you know, what, what does this all look like for Dave feeling at this point? Because, you know, to my mind and this reflects conversations I’ve had with people in the, you know, in the, directly in the business to some degree. I mean, the acquittal of Paxton by the Senate or whatever you want to call it, their failure to convict. Not that I’m saying it’s their fault, but ultimately is a setback for dae feeling. I mean, that, you know, I mean, we’ve talked about that a lot in here if you go back to what it all looked like at the end of May and early June, you know, there was a lot of heavy gavel pounding and, you know, head nodding among the boys in the house frankly about how they had really stuck it to the, to the Senate by impeaching Paxton and, and the play to just, you know, to, to adjourn immediately after the beginning of the first special season. Yeah, I felt very much like, you know, you know, Dan Patrick’s not pushing us around. Right. And we’ve, you know, we’re showing that we’ve got some, some fight in us. Well, it’s kind of blown up in their face at this point. Not completely, but for that strategy to have been maximized, you know, ultimately, and I think we’re seeing this in pretty stark terms right now, the house, you know, they needed, you know, they also needed to succeed, not just in moving the impeachment to the Senate, but actually convincing the Senate to remove Paxton. You know,

[0:27:25 Joshua Blank]  I’m just thinking about this now and hearing you talk about it, it does make me think, you know what I mean? And we’ll kind of get a little bit further down the line here and we’ll get it a little bit deeper. But, I mean, it is interesting in the sense that, you know, I mean, I agree with your analysis, I’m getting there. I mean, I agree with your analysis. It certainly did not help Dae feeling really, you know, the house, you know, in a lot of ways, the fact that the, how the PAC and trial finished in the Senate at the same time, there’s almost a parallel there with the voucher piece to this, which is, you know, to the extent that the house you know, in May decides to be, you know, basically impeach his pacs and puts this flaming bag on their doorstep and says, here deal with this ha

[0:27:58 Jim Henson]  ha and then does their own little snoopy?

[0:28:01 Joshua Blank]  See you later, you know, what did the Senate says? You know, we’re not going to get pushed around by you. I mean, look, there’s a lot of other things going on here, but you could, that could be one, you know, interpretation you could take from this. You know, we don’t care, you know, how many of you, I think that’s

[0:28:12 Jim Henson]  certainly fair interpretation, particularly among, you know, the core of Patrick supporters in the Republican caucus, right

[0:28:20 Joshua Blank]  at the same time, you know, when it comes to vouchers, I mean, one of the big issues with vouchers and, and the lieutenant governors, you know, really strong support of them in particular. And I always think, you know, the thing about vouchers and Lieutenant, I mean, this is a legacy policy for him. This is important to him personally. I don’t think that’s like a big stretch given how involved he’s been in this issue since before he was a lieutenant governor. This is a big issue for him. And yet, you know, where he has, you know, tended to both, you know, I think trip up but also in many ways, unify the house on his own is when he tries to push the house around and to the, to the extent that, you know, the same thing is going to say, no, you’re going to pass my voucher bill. You know, I do think that, you know, F’s in a weaker position than he was, but I also wonder if the combination of a familiar dynamic, plus honestly, the way the trial ended with the lieutenant governor, not just criticizing the speaker, but really the whole house for conduct that they uniformly almost agreed with, say for about 25 members. You know, does that not, you know, reinforce the dynamic of kind of acrimony and sort of, you know, lessen the desire to work together, you know.

[0:29:22 Jim Henson]  Yeah, you know, ultimately the team house feeling.

[0:29:26 Joshua Blank]  Yeah. Well, that’s the thing I keep, you know, and I keep saying this to people too. It’s like, you know, if you look back over the last few speakers, we’ve been very different speakers. You know, one of the things that does unify them is their willingness to stand up for the House, specifically, not even against the Senate but against the lieutenant governor. And so does that is that dynamic weakened because they didn’t, you know, quote unquote win on the Paxton vote like, well, I, I, you know, I mean, again, I think it just remains to be seen. I’m not sure.

[0:29:49 Jim Henson]  Well, I mean, again, I think what we’re, you know, what we’re both looking at here, I mean, what really comes out is there are, again, this oversimplifies a little bit, but, you know, if you’re a house member and for the house, collectively there are competing frames right there is the very strong frame which I think you’re emphasizing, which I think is right to do, you know, of the House versus the Senate as a function of the house, you know, the House versus Patrick and Von versus Patrick. And, you know, and if you’re a longtime house member, you know, I mean, this isn’t your first rodeo if you were there for, you know, any of the Strauss period, I mean, there is an argument that this feels like an institutional thing, like whoever speaker, we’re always having to like stand up to the lieutenant governor trying to run the legislature and dominate the agenda, right? Which is, you know, fair game. I mean, that’s what, you know, an effective lieutenant governor uses his or her power to dominate the agenda. So I’m not picking on the lieutenant governor in that sense at all. But I mean, so there is that, but then, you know, I guess what I’m emphasizing here is balancing that is, you know, the ever present. What about me, dynamic of individual house members who are looking at, I mean, this is why I found Alex Samuel’s piece and the interviews with, with Bales and clarity. So inside, you know, fascinating and interesting data if you will, because you know, everyone’s also making their own calculations and, and how much you’re, you know, up to this point. What I think both Strauss and, and, and to some degree f have been able to do is align self-interest with collective interest and institutional loyalty alignment, et cetera. And I, you know, so I guess the question is, and this also applies to feeling is how does this change the calculation? How does this, you know, change the relative weight of those frames and the ability of the speaker to say, look sticking up for the house is sticking up for you. And that’s what I’m doing and I’m doing a good job and if you’re an individual and I know that there are individuals that think this from private conversations, you know, you may, you can, you can really be amenable to that. Yeah, we’re the house and the Lieutenant governor and the senators trying to push us around et cetera. But also think, but I, you know, I don’t know that the speaker has done the best effective job of doing that or has picked the right battles and you could make the critique and I’m not, you know, but I mean, look, the critique is out there, let’s put it that way. But these battles were incorrectly chosen and now the House is in a worse position than they were before the Paxton impeachment. Now, the reason that it’s important to think about that is at the individual level to me is that you do only have a, you know, 100 and 50 members, 80 something members of the House of the Republican caucus. As always, there are some of those members whose analysis of this is colored by, you know, you know, and I, I would have done this differently and would have done a better job, of course. And so, you know, and so I think of course that’s there. But I think, you know, I, I guess the more as I kind of parse it out, the more finely grained point here, I guess, or fine grain point of where I was trying to get to thinking about F’s calculation and the calculation of the members is that all things being equal, the failure of the Paxton play to remove him and then create a situation in which Paxton is free to seek vengeance and to fire up his allies. I don’t think there’s, you know, you have to really stretch to make an analysis as it says that, yeah, that’s OK. You guys are just as well off as you were before.

[0:33:38 Joshua Blank]  Yeah. No. And I think, and I think, you know, f in particular is gonna be the easiest example of this. I mean, you know, obviously we talk a lot about public opinion towards F, you know, and mo mostly noting the fact that, you know, he’s only, he slowly is inching up kind of in, in, in his sort of public persona because the speaker of the House is not elected statewide, people tend not to pay that much attention to the elector, you know, to the legislative process. And so, you know, but I’ll bet you in our next poll, there are more people who have a view of f, than did before. And that’s going to be mostly because he’s been characterized negatively by, you know, presumably allies within the Republican Party and so fellow partisans. Yeah. So, I mean, that’s gonna weaken, you know, it’s interesting, you’re talking about this, I mean, I’m just going to throw some things out there and get your reaction to it because, I mean, one of the things, you know, it’s hard not to make the comparison to sort of previous speakers. And one of the things I was sort of always, you know, I started watching this and sort of things were explained to me about, you know, let’s say a lot of the conflict that, you know, some conservatives have with stress. I’m setting aside, I’m talking just solely about some policy here. We’re not going to talk about how the house was run or any of that kind of stuff, all that stuff, it’s related, it’s loosely related what I’m gonna talk about here. But so, but for example, you know, when people would say, hey, why won’t the Texas House bring up fill in the blank super conservative abortion bill or super conservative, let’s say, you know, gun legislation or something like that. And they say the speaker is bottling this up. Now, I think to some extent that was, that was true. But my, but what I heard from most people was, well, yeah, that’s because, you know, there’s a lot of Republicans who, if they were forced to take a vote on this would have to vote for it, but don’t want to be forced to take a vote on it. And the speaker then takes the arrows. It’s kind

[0:35:06 Jim Henson]  of, yeah, it’s the classic model of how the speaker protecting his members. And so

[0:35:10 Joshua Blank]  you can imagine something like that. You’ve got something here that’s like a, it’s a policy that Republicans ostensibly, you know, voters ostensibly want, if members were forced to go on the record voting for it, they’d probably vote for it. But they don’t really want the political exposure of voting of saying like, you know, giving guns to four year olds or whatever. I’m just making stuff up. But you know what I mean? Right. This one is an interesting one to me because, you know, in this case, because of the Herrero amendment and again, what I’m gonna say right now is just forget, you know, what else is on the table, what all the other bargaining we’re just talking about this one issue, you know, the house has indicated that the majority of its members are not going to vote for this policy, at least just on its just as just on its own as is from what we’ve seen so far. And the question becomes, you know, what can the speaker do about that? Right. I mean, what is, what is the speaker’s role in that? Now, you see, we know that when we talk, you know, we think about Lieutenant Governor Patrick, he has, you know, getting full control over the chamber, we talk about this. He said, you know, prove otherwise that he’s not going to get what he wants when he wants something. And, and so, I mean, in some ways, I think part of the difficulty is that, you know, he criticizes feeling a lot of the time for basically not exerting the same kind of power over the house that he has over the Senate is if that were a real possibility when it’s not the same thing, right. Patrick would like to say wise feelings, hired, you know, from the house members. So basically, you know, represent their interests to your point. And so I’m just, you know, trying to imagine here, you know, I mean, I don’t know what the likelihood that, you know, f remains speaker going into the next session and, and there’s all kinds of discussions about that could be a separate podcast. But even if you know, f wanted to put his fingers on the scale to help Patrick an Abbott pass this policy, which you never help when you say it out loud. Sounds crazy. Given the fact that, you know, he’s being called a drunk by various people in the same constellation of, of the, you know, interest group universe that are supporting Paxton have, you know, given Patrick a lot of money, right? They’re calling for his ouster, they’re calling him a drunk. But let’s say he still wanted to help make this policy. Maybe he even supported, you know, the voucher policy, you know, does he have enough fingers to, to tip the scales for enough members and the tools to do so that if they were just to vote their districts and what they perceive as their interest, could he get to a majority? And I think that’s, I, I sort of feel like the answer from what we’ve seen historically is no. And that’s the starting point and it makes it sort of a different issue in some ways, like, I don’t know what it is, you know, again on its own that f could do because really what he has to do is, yeah, I mean, the fact that there’s, you know, full democratic opposition, say maybe one or two votes as currently stands for a voucher program is just a set piece of this. The issue is that he doesn’t have all of his members and that’s not him. Right. I mean, there’s nothing, there’s nothing about this that says to me that he could go and threaten them the way that Patrick could presumably threaten senators. It’s basically kind of out of his hands, I think. I mean, what

[0:37:50 Jim Henson]  do you think? I mean, I think he probably, I mean, look, he does not, there’s also a different kind of issue. The House is not as, you know, the House or Republicans in the House are not as subservient to the speaker as the Republican senators as a whole are to Patrick. So I would totally agree with that. You know, I mean, I think, you know, the speaker is not gonna have necessarily determinative influence. But if the speaker and the people closest to him and his allies say, you know, the key committee chairs, you know, his other, you know, his other, you know, allies, there are people that are backing him in the house decide that it’s time to make a deal on this. It will make it easier because, you know, you’re, you know, and again, this really goes back to my point about the call, you know, some of this will depend on what the governor gives them to bargain with. And this is also where, you know, if you wanted to do something that deferred implementation of this at a point when you could use that money that the Comptroller just awarded them, you know, that may be, you know, there are the pieces of a compromise. I mean, I think your point’s well taken and I’m not, you know, I, I guess, you know, the way I’ve been thinking about it just in the last couple of days is just to try to get out of the frame. That sort of sees this outcome is completely, you know, kind of prewired, you know, because this is definitely like, again, one kind of frame, it’s a very elite kind of centered frame if you want to think about it from a, you know, slightly academic, like, what are your, you know, what, what are the premises here? But, you know, a lot of this is gonna depend on just F’s level of threat perception and some of that we may, you know, we may get some more information of that about that in the, in the, in the early days of the special session next week, which is, it’s nice that we’re gonna record the day after and this will bring us back to the mccarthy scenario in a moment, although I’m gonna put a pin in it, but just a, just a light pin. But I mean, in terms of some of the politics that have driven a lot of things, it’s not, you know, but it’s kind of a necessary if not sufficient explanation for a lot of things that have happened in the last few years. If you look at the, the unstable relationship and the alliances between Patrick Abbott and Flan, part of what made F em in the house emboldened back, you know, in the regular session towards the end, I think, was a sense that they were aligning with the governor against Patrick, the failure of the Paxton conviction, which almost certainly the governor would have been ok with and kind of the reinvigoration of Patrick’s offensive against the house at the time that vouchers are on the table And Patrick and, and the governor has increased his commitment to vouchers moves, you know, our little, you know, if we think about our rotating orbs and the gravity right now it moves Patrick and, and Abbott into closer alignment and alignment is too strong a word. But it certainly seems at this moment that their interests are more aligned on this than they have been in part because, you know, and, and it’s not because it’s not an act of Cooper, I don’t think it’s that, you know, if, if the governor, if the lieutenant governor is not going to give up on vouchers and is gonna make it, you know, something that they’re gonna keep pushing, then the governor does not want to be left out of that kind of full stop, I think. And so, you know, that increases the incentives for feeling, to do something to re, you know, to, to, to change that gravity. Now again, I’m totally with you on, you know, just that’s why we sort of counted the votes. It’s, it’s a lot of people to move but there are, as we’ve said, all along, there are a lot of levers to switch but people to play here in the, in the public education realm, writ large. And that’s what the, that’s what voucher opponents have been worried about all along that at some point, you know, through some variety of carrots and sticks to use to fit the classic analogy all drawn in here that, you know, some members would just be faced with a deal, they couldn’t refuse.

[0:42:07 Joshua Blank]  Yeah. And what I guess what I’m wondering is, and, and, you know, I’m sure I’m probably, you know, wrong. I’m not taking a strong stand. I’m just thinking out loud. I’m sure someone would tell me I’m wrong about this. I’m wondering how I’m wondering about Flan’s ability to even really affect that conversation much. And I know that’s probably crazy, but I just, I’m sitting here thinking to myself, yeah, I hear all that but also, like, you know, when they appoint Buckley as the head of that committee, the voucher proponents were, were pretty happy, not because he was, you know, Mr Voucher, but because he wasn’t hostile and that was a big move. So, I mean, they put someone to lead that committee who was definitely very open to a voucher proposal, really wanted the House not to take the vote on Herrera Amendment. His argument being, let me go back to the committee. Let me present you with something that you can vote on specifically. Let’s not, not blanket say no. But then again, that’s my point, you know, but the votes were what they were, right, the vote came up on it. Now, I do think that this also raises another piece of complexity. I feel like I should get out in this too, which is the fact that, you know, Buckley said, hey, let me go back and make something like, why don’t you vote on that? But here’s the other issue here, which is the coalition interests who were really pushing for vouchers outside of the elite interests in the institutions, the lieutenant governor, the governor, you know, sort of, let’s say, you know, potentially, you know, homeschool parents, you know, people who want to send their kids to private school, special education, you know, parent, whatever, whoever the, you know, one thing that’s always made this issue so difficult beyond the politics of it is that there’s not clearly a legislative vehicle that brings all of those groups along.

[0:43:32 Jim Henson]  No, the pro voucher group is, you know, there’s a degree of heterogeneity in there and different interests. I mean, a trusted advisor was pointing to me recently that and, and, you know, this has been evident in the discussion that the more secular, I shouldn’t say more secular, you know, I just put it, you know, more basically, if you look at the pricing differentials in private schools, some of the private schools need a lot less, including the private, including the Catholic schools than do the pricier private schools if you will, in terms of what, you know, how much the voucher would be, who gets to use it, et cetera. There’s a lot of play in there just to illustrate as an example.

[0:44:13 Joshua Blank]  I always think, you know, it’s like, you know, would private schools be willing to take, you know, a p, you know, basically a public, you know, some voucher money to take an enrollment. Yeah. Would they, if they were required to enroll that student? No, would they, if they were required to meet all kinds of federal guidelines around public dollars? No. You know, I mean, I mean, it’s just like anything else is the details in this are actually very consequential and it’s important to note, I think, you know, during the regular session, the bills that they talked about wouldn’t have done anything for homeschooling parents who I think we think of as being a pretty big part of the, the push within the Republican coalition for these policies. Now

[0:44:44 Jim Henson]  again, there was some materials purchases or something in that

[0:44:47 Joshua Blank]  there was, I mean, I was thinking, and this is just an aside, I’m just thinking about the politics of this. I mean, imagine they do set up an es a account given the fact that every, you know, that so much education is online right now. I mean, the exposure of how many, you know, parents are going to be buying, like techno technology purchases, like large TV S and computers for their kids to learn at home. It’s like, you know, the oversight of a program like that is a little bit nightmarish.

[0:45:06 Jim Henson]  Well, you know, and cleaning that up then, you know, speaks to, oh, time for a good vendor bill. So, you know, I mean, you know, there, there’s, I mean, I think you can, you can kind of turn that either way. So I was just

[0:45:18 Joshua Blank]  gonna say, I mean, I think to me, I mean, the thing that I kind of think is interesting, you know, just from where I’m sitting that is really interesting about this is, you know, I mean, the, the institutional politics between the big three and the big players, you know, puts f in a tough spot, I think in a lot of ways, somewhat unfairly. I mean, I think he’s probably been, I mean, I don’t get the impression that he can send me a note. you know, I just figure, I don’t get the impression from anything. I’ve seen that feeling has a strong obvious position on vouchers at this point.

[0:45:45 Jim Henson]  Ok. And separate from his read or the will of the

[0:45:48 Joshua Blank]  caucus from his read of the will of the caucus. But again,

[0:45:51 Jim Henson]  the will of his coalition, I should say.

[0:45:53 Joshua Blank]  But again, he doesn’t, I mean, again, like, right as of right now. You know, again, setting aside the details or what other kind of swers can be put in or what kind of sticks can be threatened. You know, he doesn’t have the votes to pass it. And so it’s going to require either something fundamentally to change or he’s going to have to somehow exert some kind of power. And honestly the house has not been into its speaker using, I mean, this is the whole thing, right? If you think about where did you know, where did Greg Bonning go? Right. Right. It’s like the other b sorry, the one who’s gone, where did Speaker Bon and Go,

[0:46:24 Jim Henson]  Greg Bond is not gone, which is not irrelevant.

[0:46:26 Joshua Blank]  But where did Speaker Bon and go? And part of that was, you know, he was kind of who he was and he was a little too heavy handed with people among other things and that kind of extrapolated out, mistakes were made, you know, if F starts kind of throwing his weight around in the sort of way that’s forcing members to take votes, they don’t want to take, he’s not gonna be speaker for that much longer, which is something that, you know, but which is something again, we just saw at the national level. But this is the whole point though is, you’ve got sort of groups of, of, of, I think, you know, we talked about a lot of dissident republican elites who are saying no, we don’t care what the votes are. We don’t care what the numbers look like. This is what we want. And if you don’t get this, this is a fail what that led to at the, you know, the national level was essentially chaos, right? And we ended up deposing the speaker of the Congress for the first time ever. I don’t really think there’s a lot of difference here in terms of the underlying dynamics that we’re talking about in terms of the coalitional politics. And especially, I think, you know, the demands of the most right wing members to basically say no, this is what the voters want, even though you may have a bunch of other members to say not my voters.

[0:47:27 Jim Henson]  Yeah. And yeah, and just generally evidence to the contrary or, you know, a lot of qualifications to that claim as we’ve been winning out in this piece we’re writing, I think. But, you know, I, I guess what I, I mean, one interesting aspect of that is, you know, probably does the speaker believe and I think he would, it would be fair and one could make the argument that no matter what he does those dissident forces. I mean, if for some reason he were to say, ok, I think a tactical retreat here, the best tactical retreat I can achieve here is, is, is the right play and he figures out a way to do it for your point about just set aside your point. For the moment, whether he could or not. What does that get him? It gets him back closer to Abbott, probably. But it doesn’t really do anything to, you know, I mean, all that’s gonna happen is that the distance? And they say, see, he caved, we’ve said all along he was weak, blah, blah, blah, you know, and again, in that sense, the mccarthy, you know, situation is somewhat similar, but let’s talk about that a little bit because we’ll end with this since we’ve been going on for a while. But I did say that, you know, we’ve come back a little bit to national Republican politics and, and I think, you know, what you did there, you know, is interesting because that’s what a lot of people are doing right now. It’s kind of like, here’s the analogy, right? I mean, look at what’s going on up there and, you know, it’s a little bit of a Rorschach and as I’ve been sort of, you know, thinking about it on one hand, you could say, see if you’re a critic feeling is just like mccarthy, he’s, you know, all he really wants to do is stay speaker, he doesn’t really believe in anything, you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Now, I’m not saying that that’s fair. I mean, not even saying it’s not fair, but we’re already hearing that, right? And we’re also seeing this taking advantage of, you know, in terms of kind of more niche, communications and politics. I mean, you know, I think one of the distant groups, I think it’s, you know, empower Texans or whatever their follow up, you know, I think they’re still called. I think they’re, you know, I mean, they’ve got a video out that’s sort of almost like a little explainer about how to, you know, what happened in the National House and how it might be done given the current rules in the Texas House. So obviously, that’s not great for f and it’s, you know, just, it’s fodder for his opponents. I was thinking on the other hand, there’s an obvious retort from pin and his allies on all this, which is like, this is just another example of why we don’t wanna be like Washington DC. We don’t wanna be like Washington, you know, even Washington Republicans in Texas, we know how to run our things and I have every confidence that the governor is gonna call us into a special session and, you know, at least us on the house side, we are willing to have an open conversation about this. It’s the absence of that ability to govern. We, we are not, we know how to govern in Texas and what you are seeing and, and what we can’t do is let the same kind of mischief that we’ve seen paralyze the Republicans in the US House happen in the Texas House and, you know, by God, I’m not gonna let that happen, you know, et cetera. So I think, you know, there’s an interesting kind of and look, one might argue, you know, in terms of this comp compare and contrast. And we’ve done this in here a lot on this very matter. There are reasons that there are, you know, there are clearly some commonalities here in terms of factional politics and the way and, and the view of institutions that we see on, I think the far right at both the national and the state level. On the other hand, you know, the lack of party competition in the state right now is a big difference and makes the negotiating space on the politics of this plane out very different, you know, I mean, I, I don’t have it all parsed out probably better in some ways, worse in others, right? And I think, you know, that’s been one of the major overarching questions that we’ve been kind of contemplating for the last few years. But in this specific sense, I mean, II, I think it’s a pretty easy message for republicans who don’t want to blow the process up and don’t want to, you know, give in to what they will portray as the brinksmanship and the, you know, my way or the highway politics of a minority faction in the party in terms of, you know, wanting to put vouchers at the top of the priority list. Again, not saying that, you know, you can’t ask a poll question as we’ve illustrated, you know, that will show closely divided public opinion on, on a voucher or a voucher like program and even in some cases, majority or plurality support, you know, in other cases, less than that and that those numbers could move a lot that speaks to a lot of things we’ll probably talk about next week. But I think when you think about where the national context is, there’s a real strong argument for saying that there’s a real opportunity for incumbent State Republicans to stand up and say, yeah, that’s going on. That is not what we’re doing and anybody that wants us to be like that is crazy. Look at what’s going on out there and frankly, the timing of the session is gonna be interesting because the whole time that they are trying to govern to some extent in this special session, things are going to be melting, continue to melt down and be tumultuous at the national level. And that the end of the special session will come right before the next deadline for a for a for the budget and for another potential government shutdown.

[0:53:07 Joshua Blank]  Yeah, I mean, the only person who I think wins in all of this is Abbott. Right? And I think he’s been smart about this and this is, I think one of the ways that, you know, I think he, he protects himself and, you know, texas’ reputation, whether internally or outside or whatever you know, to, to those criticisms that this is just the same thing as what’s going on. The National is what he’s already said, which is we’ll do two special sessions, then we’ll call it. And that’s to say I’m giving you two chances if you can do it great. If you don’t, I’m going to blame you. And if you do it, I’m gonna take credit for it and it’s going to be amazing. And so Abbott’s in a good position. But if he, I mean, people have asked me this before, you know, this, this came up during the, the property tax reduction debate and about how, you know, is there a point at which this starts to hurt Republicans like, yeah, I mean, look, if they come back, you know, for multiple special sessions, I mean, more than just the two, but they just kept coming back because Republicans couldn’t come together and agree on how to cut property taxes. That looks bad. And so at some point, Abbott’s got to pull the plug on that same thing with this. I mean, to the extent that he calls them back and you’ve got these Republican majorities, most members and they just can’t do what he wants. He starts to look weak at some point. They start to look more and more dysfunctional. He’s fine with them looking dysfunctional. I think, I don’t think that’s a problem for him. Not at all. But, yeah, because, yeah, exactly. But, I mean, that’s also even just, there’s already something built into the process to make sure that they’re not gonna look it a send them home

[0:54:20 Jim Henson]  and to tease the coming point. I mean, I think Abbott, you know, it’s a smart plate. I mean, some of it is like, you know, like, what else are you gonna do? You’re not gonna have a third special session at Christmas, whatever or presumably you’re not. But it also implicitly factors in, you know, it’s interesting, the property tax comparison is an interesting one. The property tax promise is objectively, I think in most political calculations, more important than the voucher prop promise. Now, the voucher people will tell you that I’m, you know, I’m sure we’ll hate that and we’ll say no, that’s not right. And then

[0:54:54 Joshua Blank]  as next people describe, we’ll say, where are you

[0:54:56 Jim Henson]  is, you know, but, you know, our numbers suggest that look, property taxes are a lot more silent to people than vouchers

[0:55:03 Joshua Blank]  are a persistent

[0:55:05 Jim Henson]  problem, right? Or perceived as a persistent problem. And so, and to the extent that there’s a problem since your vouchers are not really seen as the primary solution unless you really narrowly define it as vouchers per S

[0:55:18 Joshua Blank]  E I want, maybe we can end there because I think that’s such a great way to put this and I just hadn’t really put it that way, but it kind of brings back where we started, which is you know, the sort of the underlying public opinion environment has really shifted a lot in the last few years and to the extent that there is a lot of energy in Republican circles, even, you know, among just rank and file Republican party, talking about parents with kids in public school or even with any connection to have issue with the way public schools are being run. Right now. The question you have to ask yourself is, are vouchers the solutions to that, that problem. Do people see vouchers as the solution to that problem? And so far that connection has not been

[0:55:51 Jim Henson]  made, we just don’t, yeah, there’s no evidence in our polling that that’s the case. That doesn’t mean that there are, you know, and again, on the other side, you know, the our polling does also emphasize that there are pockets of people for whom this is, this is an issue, but it’s relatively narrow and it brings us back to the same old place. We wind up a lot of times the people to whom it’s most important are, are going to be Republican primary voters. It’s not that there’s a charge here because there is a charge here. But calibrating just where that charge is, is kind of, you know, the big issue on the table I think, and we will be seen a lot of parsing of that in the next month, the 30 days starting this coming Monday. So with that, thanks again to Josh for being here today. Good conversation. Thanks again to our excellent production team in the DEV studio in the College of Liberal Arts at UT Austin. We didn’t make a lot of reference to data today, but you’ll find keep an eye out for this education piece that we’re talking about, that we keep threatening it’s coming soon. You can find that and much, much more including all of our data and thousands, if not tens of thousands of downloadable graphics for your teaching presentation handout use at Texas politics dot U Texas dot edu. So thank you for listening. 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