September 25th, 2024 – Public opinion and other context for the Speaker Race in the Texas House of Representatives

Jim Henson: Welcome to the Second Reading Podcast from the University of Texas at Austin.

Voiceover: 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.

Voiceover: At what point must a female senator Raise her hand or her voice to be recognized over the male colleagues in the room.

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, joined again today by Josh Blank, Research Director for the Texas Politics Project. Top of the morning, Josh. Top of the morning to you. So we are coming to you a little day or so early this week, I guess, for scheduling reasons.

Jim Henson: Today, we thought we’d do. you know, a little bit of a drill down into one of the, the big topics that’s preoccupying the, the Capitol crew in Texas right now. And if you’re a national politics person, you know, I hope you don’t just tune out right away, but you know, this probably has some larger implications.

Jim Henson: But if you’re in, you know, the, the world of the Capitol right now, or following Texas politics very closely, and it, and it does require certainly Very closely is one of the themes today What you’re looking at is the unfolding speakers race in in the texas house of representatives What we thought we’d do is look at some of the data we have on the texas speaker and related issues Um, this could take us a few places.

Jim Henson: Uh, we’ll see how far we get but um, let’s let’s dive down on this So, you know, we kind of start in terms of thinking about Public opinion related to the Speaker of the House. And, with, uh, you know, the nugget of historical conventional wisdom that, all things being equal, you know, the more a Speaker is a matter of public discussion and is known to the public, the less good it is, um, for his standing and for his politics.

Jim Henson: And, you know, this is an artifact of, of As I’ve called conventional wisdom, you know, that, that goes back to a different era. Um, you know, people I know associate it really generally, and I’ve mentioned this the podcast before. I’m speaking at school with Pete Laney, I think is the person you’re most likely to probably see that attributed to now, you know, if we were to ask a former speaker Laney about that, he might tell us where he got it.

Jim Henson: It might’ve been a previous speaker, but, uh, we’ll set that aside for now. Now, um, you know, And that the more a speaker is known generally, and I was looking at some of our past data, we don’t have a lot of data on this, but again, roughly speaking, the more you’re, you know, the more you become known, it’s generally, if you become well known, it’s generally not that good for your public opinion standing.

Jim Henson: Now, you know, you can think about the causality that a couple of different ways. So, you know, and it, and it certainly in the case of the current speaker, You know, becoming more well known and becoming a subject of public discussion, you know, has not been good for his numbers to, you know, spoiler alert.

Josh Blank: Yeah, it’s interesting. I mean, hearing you talk about it, and I mean, we’ve talked about, you know, the laney rule before and this notion about public opinion and the speaker. And I’ve never really thought about, you know, the mechanics of it so much as because it hasn’t really been an issue. Um, and, and obviously now it’s becoming more of an issue, but what’s interesting about that is, is that.

Josh Blank: It’s not even so much that, you know, their statewide numbers become a problem directly. It’s indirectly. It’s because, you know, if the speaker becomes that well known, they become an issue either way. And if you think about it, I’m just thinking out loud now, you know, in a house of, you know, the generally you see, you know, even at the, at the end of the process, usually pretty far, you know, wide bipartisan support for whoever the speaker is, at least in the final voting tally.

Josh Blank: About

Jim Henson: the process you mean of selecting the speaker. Yeah, of selecting the

Josh Blank: speaker within the house, you know, I mean, at least the ones I’ve seen most often, it’s not been like a close vote. But it’s usually, you know. pretty much everybody selecting somebody. Now, what that sort of speaks to is at a certain point, you know, when the speaker becomes well known, that can become a problematic vote for some people or lots of people, right?

Josh Blank: If it’s the speaker becomes an object of, you know, whatever evaluation, right?

Jim Henson: I mean, I think there’s still, you know, as we’ll see a question of how broad that is, you know, it’s, it’s interesting because at that point, I mean, you know, the question is, is, is how much of this is there? psychology and intragroup dynamics and how much of it is a matter of public politics.

Jim Henson: And I think the intersection of that in this is really

Josh Blank: what’s interesting and kind of tricky about this. You know, we talk about the fact that the, you know, the speaker’s race is, is a race for, you know, one person to be hired by the rest of the house. You know, essentially to, to distribute power, right, you know, and that’s, that’s a big deal, right?

Josh Blank: Right. It’s a huge deal. Yeah,

Jim Henson: which is what makes it such an internal thing and why figuring out these ex, the external facing element is very interesting.

Josh Blank: And, and tricky, right?

Jim Henson: Right. So,

Josh Blank: so let’s, let’s look at the external facing. So if we look at the,

Jim Henson: yeah, if we look at the overall trend lines, you know, and a look at the overall trend lines really provides at least some grounding for this kind of discussion and that, you know, the idea that when the speaker.

Jim Henson: became a subject of a, uh, you know, a new level of sustained direct and public criticism during the last session, you know, his job approval ratings dipped and his disapproval climbed. I mean, right. You know, you know, that, you know, all allow all again, allowing for, you know, A steady share of between about a fifth and a quarter, um, who had no view of him.

Jim Henson: And if you’re listening to this on a podcast platform, by the time this is up at the Texas politics project website at texaspolitics. utexas. edu, we’ll post, uh, the date, a lot of the data we’re talking about in particular, this trend data. So you can. have a look at that and if you want to, you know, do that and go listen there or look while you’re listening, uh, just follow the, to the, the link to the blog section of the website and it’ll be near this.

Jim Henson: The podcast with the data will be near the top of that.

Josh Blank: Right. So trendline

Jim Henson: is pretty clear, right?

Josh Blank: Yeah. I mean, if we look, you know, where we are right now, just to give us where we were in August, you know, 21%. of Texas voters said they approved of the job that Speaker Phelan is doing, 27 percent disapproved, 52 percent couldn’t provide an opinion either way, either said they neither had an opinion or just, you know, didn’t know, right?

Josh Blank: Uh, we look at Republicans, right, and this is really the key, you know, one of the key groups here for this whole issue, right, 27 percent held a favorable view, 21 percent held an unfavorable view, again, about half no opinion. But on net positive, uh, just to be clear here, it’s not as though the speaker has generated a bunch of goodwill among Democrats because the House impeached feeling no again, and we’ll get to what nobody cares, but it’s seven Democrats 17 approve of the job.

Josh Blank: He’s doing 34 percent disapproved. 49 don’t know, and a lot of that probably has to do just with with knowing the partisanship of the House. Even, you know, I’m not even sure that that’s necessarily even I think that’s probably an overstatement of democratic knowledge of who Phelan is to be quite. Yeah, I

Jim Henson: mean, generally, if you look at our, you know, a lot of these approval numbers, if you know, particularly people like Phelan and other other actors, a little, you know, less in the public eye than say, the governor and the president, even the lieutenant governor.

Jim Henson: I think there’s a good argument. This would actually be a good piece to, you know, to suggest, as you say, that You know, you ask Democrats about state government 20 plus years into the Republican monopoly of governance and state elected offices and both chambers of the legislature, if you’re a Democrat, you know, you’ve probably developed a reflex that just says, yeah, I just don’t approve of those guys.

Josh Blank: Yeah. Uh, yeah, exactly. And that’s sort of like, you know, not crazy or surprising, you know, and I think, and then, you know, something honestly related to that is we’re seeing that increasingly among independents too, right? Because it’s not like they like Democrats, but Democrats aren’t really the object of their attention most of the time in Texas.

Jim Henson: And I, and I think it’s, you know, and so it’s interesting to look at that trend line figure and see the clear, you know, a clear sign of when things got much tougher for feeling.

Josh Blank: Yeah, absolutely. You

Jim Henson: know, I mean, that, that trend line is pretty clear over the last. I mean, among Republican voters, his net job approval, you know, the difference between his approval and disapproval closes remarkably just between April and June of 2023.

Jim Henson: It goes from plus among, again, among Republicans, it goes from plus 30 to just plus six. And I remember when we saw that, we wondered if it would stay, if it was, you know, if that was just going to be a glitch and it was going to go back up. But it, you know, it, it’s. We’ve wavered a little bit since then, but it’s not gone back into, you know, a net positive rating of him of double figures since, since that, that June of 2023 poll.

Jim Henson: Now that seems not that long ago, but you know, we’ve done, we’ve got, you know, eight polls since then. Something like that. Right. And so, you know, the timing of that drop, obviously, again, April, between April and June of 2023, you know, coincides with deepening public hostility in the relationship, uh, between the speaker and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, in which that.

Jim Henson: The hostility of that, and part of this as we’ll get to is an artifact of, of media, the media environment, but that hostility is, you know, very public and very direct in a way that even during the worst days of the, the Strauss speakership, and by the worst days, I mean, you know, the most conflictive, the most conflict between then Speaker Strauss and Lieutenant Governor Patrick.

Jim Henson: Even in the worst. period of that, um, was not as open. And then, you know, that, that negativity escalates with the impeachment of attorney general Paxson in the House. And then what many see as the lieutenant governor’s engineering of Paxson’s exoneration in the Senate. And so, you know, So, amidst all of this then, putting further pressure on these numbers, um, Phelan’s opponents fund a very serious primary challenge back in his house district, which Phelan barely beats back.

Jim Henson: Now, We could still say to that, but, and yet,

Josh Blank: right. And yet, and yet he did, right? I mean, ultimately, and that’s, that’s, you know, the other issue here, which is, and yet most people aren’t paying attention to this. I mean, as you’re going through all that, I’m thinking to myself about the change in these numbers.

Josh Blank: And one of the questions I can’t answer, but I can decompose is like, well, what, what led to those changes? Right. And I don’t know the exact distribution of this, but I can decompose it and say, some of that is. You know, the most attentive Republicans watching what’s going on, looking at the impeachment, looking at the way that Patrick has aligned against Phelan.

Josh Blank: And maybe prior to that, given, again, multiple, or at least I’ll say two specifically, very conservative legislative sessions, right, which produced a ton of conservative legislation, and then you see this drop. So some of that drop is going to be the attentive Republicans. Some of that is going to be actually people who have.

Josh Blank: Never heard of Phelan at all, but now this is the first thing they’re hearing about him. Is that he, you know, fill in the blank, you know, I’m putting this in quotes in italics, you know, orchestrated the impeachment of Paxton, or he, you know, stood in the way of vouchers or whatever, and the thing that, you know, I think we talked about this at various points in time, but I’ll point it out again, and, you know, other than, than Phelan sort of, you know, standing up for himself, there’s really no Yeah.

Josh Blank: There wasn’t a whole organized allied group to give the opposite message. Yeah. You know, at that point, especially during the impeachment, you know, trial, there weren’t a bunch of, you know, there wasn’t a bunch of money being spent to say actually these are valid claims or actually most of the house voted.

Josh Blank: And so, you know, this is, we talked about a lot, the information environment in which, you know, again, people who were developing an opinion about feeling that they maybe didn’t have before was going to be really negative. And I think that’s something that we kind of see here.

Jim Henson: And as we commented at the time, and, and, you know, I think we were commenting about this.

Jim Henson: As I recall, at least on the podcast, mainly in response to fluctuations in views of the Paxton impeachment, views of Paxton at the time, you know, is because we know, as we say in here all the time, that on issues that voters don’t, or issues, or in this case, people that voters don’t have well developed opinions about.

Jim Henson: They look to partisan, you know, for cues to their partisan opinion leaders and elected officials. And this was a very conflictive time if you were looking to more well known Republican elected officials for cues on what you should think about this.

Josh Blank: Yeah. And if you think about it, if you’re feeling, you’re like, I’ve got Rick Perry.

Josh Blank: Yeah, right. You know, which is, I mean, which was about, obviously, the most probably well known person he could really mobilize to his cause. And

Jim Henson: the, you know, as we’ll, as you know, we’ll get to a little bit later, but still, or we’ll explore a little bit later, feeling, you know, the governor, you know, who would have been somebody who’s weighing in could have been probably just have a decisive influence on people.

Jim Henson: The governor kind of stayed out of it and was, and, you know, at least publicly and was very, you know, quiet and kind of above, tried to be above the fray. In terms of the Paxton impeachment and the fighting between Phelan and, and Patrick in the, during the regular session of that year, and, you know, while the governor has been more restrained in, and, uh, diplomatic, strategic, I think, in, in, in the ensuing months or ensuing year or so since then.

Jim Henson: Um, you know, the silence, I think, spoke volumes is one way of saying that. And there were, and clearly there were indications behind the scenes in terms of the governor’s, you know, uh, uh, relatively unprecedented, uh, intervention in house races and over the voucher issue, et cetera. So, but still given all that.

Jim Henson: You know, we, the data that we had about the runoff and about the, and about Phelan’s challenge in the primary suggests that for all of this, people were still, were not, I mean, most people were not following this.

Josh Blank: Yeah, right. And in April of this year, when we asked people how much they’d heard about the runoff election in the district of Representative Dade Phelan, Speaker of the Texas House, and yes, we put all that information in there on purpose so that we could say, you know, whatever, whatever you’ve heard about, you know, Whether it’s the speaker’s, you know, speaker’s race, whether it’s about date feeling, whatever it is, we’re trying to get that in there.

Josh Blank: Only 14 percent of Texas voters said they heard a lot about the runoff election, including only 13 percent of Republicans, 16 percent of self identified conservatives, and at the high end, 26 percent of those who said they’re extremely conservative. So that’s, You know, the target audience, I think, within primaries, but that speaks to the point here.

Josh Blank: Significantly less Texans overall. In June 2024, after the results of that, we had, well, how much have you heard about the results of the runoff election in the District of Representative Dave Phelan, Speaker of the Texas House? Again, only 14 percent said a lot. Again, only 13 percent of Republicans said a lot, only 13 percent of conservatives, only 20 percent of extreme conservatives.

Josh Blank: I like that that went down because it wasn’t actually the outcome. I think that, you know, there’s a little motivated reason here about what kind of news you pay attention to. Right?

Jim Henson: But I mean, but you know, what, what strikes me about that is that, you know, that number among extreme conservatives went down, but also how consistent those two numbers are.

Josh Blank: Yeah. Very consistent. You

Jim Henson: know, which, you know, is an interesting kind of thing. Thumbnail.

Josh Blank: Yeah.

Jim Henson: You know, for what, you know, this, these kinds of politics and, and on the other side, it’s just worth noting that, you know, we’re not hiding the ball here or anything, you know, in that April 24 poll, in the April 24 poll about just the runoff, the existence or that the runoff was taking place.

Jim Henson: Fifteen, 57 percent said they’d heard not much or nothing and a quarter and very similar numbers in the following, you know, as you would imagine, it’s the front end numbers were similar. The, the similar, you know, very similar numbers in June. I think 59 percent say not, they’re not, they haven’t heard very much or nothing at all.

Jim Henson: In both polls, about a quarter say they’ve heard nothing at all.

Josh Blank: This is a great chat Schneider moment. Maybe we’ll come back to it, but I’ll, I’ll wait and see if there’s a point for it.

Jim Henson: You know, so I, all this brings us to, you know, one of the. The points here, I think that is, you know, absent a clear scandal or other, you know, I massive external factor that really, you know, just draws attention.

Jim Henson: It would have to be pretty cataclysmic, I think. You know, um, a speaker’s race does come down, as you were saying, to politics in the chamber. And I think we can argue that some of these external politics have seeped in more and I’ll talk about, you know, kind of some hypotheses on that. But you know, I think it’s, I think, and you may already, you know, I think feelings numbers such as they are, you know, are unlikely to have.

Jim Henson: I mean, I’m not saying that nobody’s going to mention it or, or they, you know, they won’t be in some ways misrepresented, which I want to get to, which they have, but it’s not like anybody’s going to stand up and go, look. Dadefield’s, you know, net approval numbers have really gotten bad since the last session.

Jim Henson: We need a new speaker. That’s not really the argument that’s out there.

Josh Blank: Yeah. I mean, I think the question, this is where I was going back to, you know, I said before about the mechanics of this and I think, you know, given what we’re seeing about the internal politics and how this is really about, you know, power dynamics and, and, you know, all kinds of coalitional and inter coalitional politics.

Josh Blank: But I think, you know, and again, I’m not a member, so I’m not trying to speak, you know, as if I were. Um, But I’m just, you know, thinking to myself, if I were in that position, where would these numbers matter? You know, where would feelings numbers make a difference in my decision? And the question becomes, you know, what’s supporting or opposing feeling have an impact on me and my next election?

Josh Blank: That’s really the fundamental question. You know, does supporting feeling mean it’s going to be harder for me to win a Republican primary the next time around? Right. And to the extent that feeling remains, you know, below the radar. You know, for the most part, it’s less of a factor. Now, the issue is, is that, you know There’s this intensity question, right, which is to say, well, yeah, you know, it’s not that, you know, information about this is, you know, randomly distributed across the electorate.

Josh Blank: It’s probably the case that the messages that are negative about feeling, and I think we probably see this here, you know, they’re most prevalent amongst the most sort of conservative, most engaged kind of voters who are really paying attention to this kind of stuff. Those are also the people that we think tend to have like, you know, an influence in the primary.

Josh Blank: So it’s not necessarily the, and I think, you know, maybe this is a way in which, you know, the lane rule would be updated. And so there might be some caveats as we move ahead, given all the things, you know, we’re talking about changing the environment. Um, but it almost seems like it’s not so much about, you know, more than half of the, half the public knowing he’s kind of a thumbnail, like rule, maybe it’s kind of a sketch idea.

Josh Blank: Like once you get past there and part of that, if anything, is because it implies something else, which is if more than the general public, the registered voter pool has an opinion about you as speaker, it’s very likely that the most engaged partisans on both sides, they

Jim Henson: Yeah.

Josh Blank: And that’s maybe where the problem starts to come in when, when feelings leadership itself becomes an issue for another member, then it, then the politics of it go outside of what we think of is really inside baseball, inside the building, distribution of power, of agenda control.

Josh Blank: All of a sudden, then it goes to this other thing. And that’s where I think it’s, it’s difficult as a speaker to maneuver.

Jim Henson: Yeah. I mean, yeah. I mean, I, I totally agree that I, you know, the, the calculation of self interest on members and. You know, at the top of that or close to the top of that is, you know, how much trouble is this going to cause me, you know, in my next election and under the circumstances, it’s, it is going to be mostly a matter of primary

Josh Blank: policy.

Josh Blank: And usually the answer is no, right? I mean, just if you take a normal, if we just say like, hey, it’s an open speakers race, it could be any one of these guys. Literally nobody in Texas besides some people in their district have any idea who they are, like thoughts about them. Well, then it can be totally, it can totally, I mean, again, the alternative here is useful.

Josh Blank: Then it can totally come down to the internal politics, you know, what are you offering me? What, what is this going to do for me and my voters, my, you know, my constituents, you know, the party, maybe secondarily.

Jim Henson: Yeah, I mean, you know, so I mean, there’s, you know, there’s nothing in here that really helps Phelan per se.

Jim Henson: There’s nothing he can use for leverage. You can’t say the public has rallied around him. You know, the best he can do is to say, look, you know, this looks like more or less business as usual in terms of what polling, you know, this was the discussion to be had looks like around the speaker that, but you know, what’s going on here isn’t about me.

Jim Henson: It’s about You know, disgruntled outs, jockeying for power and authoritarian lieutenant governor, the ambitions of others, you know, there’s a lot of other things that are going to take pride of place other than him trying to claim any kind of, you know, mandate or not. Now his opponents, you know, as I was alluding to a minute ago, can say, and they have said frequently on social media and in their messaging that, you know, he doesn’t have high levels of support from his own partisans.

Jim Henson: Now, This is a little dishonest in the sense that speakers never do. Right, exactly. Given the kind of numbers we’re talking about, but you know, even given that there’s really not a lot here for his opponents to draw on, at least not if they’re going to be, you know, reasonably intellectually honest or even just straightforwardly honest about it.

Josh Blank: Yeah, which I would say in this case, you know, matters more, you know, probably matters more than it does, In normal public politics, right? In some ways, because the this is an argument that’s being made, uh, to the voters about this is an argument to be made to other members, right? You’re saying no, his public persona is a problem for you.

Josh Blank: Ultimately, you have to convince that member that that’s true. And that’s actually a pretty heavy lift, I think. Yeah, I think so,

Jim Henson: too. I mean, you know, Although again, you know, I don’t know if you mentioned it before the podcast or now, you know, there’s a, you know, motivated reasoning will do a lot of lifting in this.

Jim Henson: Yeah, well, no, I mean, look. On everybody’s part, but in the scenario you’re talking about.

Josh Blank: Yeah, well, and look, and I don’t want to, I mean, we don’t need to get into the details, or I don’t know if we’re going to get into these kind of details, but I mean, but that, that statement is, is true. True until it’s not, but which is a great way to cover myself, but by which I mean, um, you know, it’s easy.

Josh Blank: It’s a, it’s a heavy lift to say that, you know, public attitude towards the speaker are, you know, are going to affect you personally as a member having said that, you know, we’ve, we’ll kind of talk about this, maybe, you know, to the extent that, you know, there’s ideas out there that are All of the Democrats might align with some of the Republicans for, you know, either a feeling, you know, speak another feeling speakership or even somebody else, you know, I think that’s where this would be a tested because at that point, all of a sudden you’re, you know, if you’re, you know, one of these minority of Republicans who go along with, with the Democrats, I’m not saying it’s going to happen.

Josh Blank: I don’t think this is, but let’s say they did all of a sudden your support of the speaker, regardless of what people thought about it does become an issue in your next election because you aligned with the Democrats. But that’s actually the point. Again, it’s not necessarily because Oh, you aligned with a rhino speaker or whatever, anything like that, that people are going to say it’s because no, you voted with all the Democrats.

Josh Blank: That’s actually what’s going to be the thing that becomes the issue here. So even that kind of actually furthers this idea that’s not really the speaker’s persona itself so much as if the support of whoever this person is becomes an issue. Because honestly, to my mind, if the, if the candidates, if the ultimate ending candidates become, you know, a choice between representative cook, let’s say, and somebody named not named Phelan, who’s also a Republican.

Josh Blank: I don’t think the outcome of that vote is going to make any difference in any Republican’s primary. Like elections unless like one of those members is like overtly anti vouchers or overtly like anti campaign or something. Something that would just already disqualify them some way of being in that position to begin with.

Jim Henson: I think. Yeah. I think, you know, I think in, there’s a lot of stuff, right? I’m trying to follow all the elements of that scenario, but I, you know, sure. Yeah. I think, thank you. Um, you know, I mean, but I think it’s, you know, so, so, you know, what do we make of this? I mean, we, you know, so you’ve kind of broached the, the race now.

Jim Henson: Sorry. No, no, no. It’s good. We wanted to, I mean, I wanted to go there. I mean, you know. This does sort of, you know, speak to a few current events, I mean, or more recent developments in this, the meeting last week at the county line, in which, you know, a group of, you know, it’s a little unclear, you know, what the nature of the representation here was, you know, some staff members were there, representing offices, representing their elected officials.

Jim Henson: Some of the elected officials were there, but some of the elected officials to be were at this meeting. I’ve seen different numbers. Well, I, the number, the count varied. Initially it was going to be like 25. Later on, somebody was saying that there were as many as, you know, depending on how you count it, as many as, 50

Josh Blank: huge crowd sizes in the

Jim Henson: realm of 50 votes, you know, and I, I, again, I’m sure we could get email on this about how, you know, we know what the facts are, but I’m not sure we do.

Josh Blank: We don’t know. And there’s a lot of reason for people involved to say the numbers were larger than they were. Yeah. So that’s all. So I said, I heard the same numbers you originally 20, but that was before the meeting happened. What happened? I think when the meeting

Jim Henson: was happening, you know, people were saying that there were more than 25.

Jim Henson: But again, like What counted as representation, I think, is still a little bit vague, uh, in my mind. Um, and happy to hear more about this from listeners. Um, but, you know, to the extent that his opponents have succeeded in clearing the field, coalescing a group of feeling opponents around Representative David Cook, who you mentioned earlier, you know, Nominally, it does seem like Phelan’s position appears weakened.

Jim Henson: I mean, you were kind of talking about this a little bit before the podcast.

Josh Blank: Yeah, I think that’s right. I mean, if you, if you look at, you know, and I know this, people can have various arguments about this, but you look at sort of the ideological distribution of house members, right? And it’s, it’s useful. I mean, ultimately I want to just say at the outset, there, there are, there are no, there are.

Josh Blank: No moderate, you know, house Republicans. I mean, everybody, this is all relative flavors of conservatism. So I’m not calling anybody a moderate here in this left, right continuum, not causing anybody’s a liberal. Just wanted for, you know, for stall any emails. But if you look, actually, you know, you look at the candidates who coalesced around cooking, you look at where cook is, cook is really right in the middle of the ideological distribution of the Republican caucus, at least per public votes.

Josh Blank: And if you look at the Uh, candidates, the prior candidates who supported him, they actually came from pretty far across the ideological spectrum with Shelby Slauson sort of furthest to the right. James Frank, furthest to the left. Again, all on the right, we’re on the right here, right?

Jim Henson: Furthest to the less right.

Josh Blank: Yeah, further to the less right. So, so one, you know, there’s, That’s, you know, at least on its face is kind of plausible to the extent you think like, you know, someone like Slauson or Oliverson, the idea that like, you know, they are coming with them holding some number of votes. Otherwise, you know, they wouldn’t necessarily have put their name in the ring to begin with if they didn’t have some support that they could potentially at least, you know, carry with them or move.

Josh Blank: We’ll see. We’ll see. But if that’s the idea, then the, then the, again, this is also, you know, we don’t know, but the idea is then there are some votes coming from different parts of the GOP coalition. And then what we also know is based on the primaries, if you look at that same distribution of representatives, a lot of the members who were removed via the primary process or who retired because of, you know, threats or other reasons, came from the left hand side of that spectrum.

Josh Blank: So all of this is to say, you know. If you’re saying, you know, where was speaker feeling before, and we’ve talked about this before this week, you’d say, Hey, he’s still probably, you know, the highest likelihood person of being speaker, you know, doesn’t mean 90%. It just means the highest likelihood probability has that probability gone down, you know, probably, you know, significantly for me in the last, you know, week or two.

Josh Blank: Yeah, I would say so. Now, it doesn’t mean it’s down to zero or he’s not, you know, a significant possibility in here, but it’s looking a little bit down. Yeah. More challenging to find his way back to my mind tempted to

Jim Henson: ask you what the number was, if it’s not zero, if it’s more than 50%, you know, or less than 50.

Jim Henson: No,

Josh Blank: it was never more than 50%. I mean, my thinking was, is that, you know, part of it is, you know, you looked at the people who are already out there and I’m not saying they had high probabilities, but they take some probability. And then you’ve got to figure there’s some share of the probability that goes to the unnamed person who’s ultimately likely to be the actual next speaker who we just don’t know who that is.

Josh Blank: Right. And that’s, It’s probably one of the highest probability outcomes, but if we talk about the named people, you know, my thinking was Phelan was probably in somewhere in the 20 to 30 percent probability range. Like again, the plurality choice, you know, and then I think now, you know, I think that’s more like, you know, 15, 20 percent maybe, I mean, you know, I think, I

Jim Henson: think he’s still in better position than that myself just because I don’t, unless, you know, somehow we find out that David Cook turns out to be a better alternative to Democrats.

Jim Henson: Yeah. Um, so, but.

Josh Blank: Yeah, I just don’t know how the caucus rules are going to play out on this, right? So, I mean, my understanding just, you know, for the people who pay attention here is that, you know, Essentially the GOP caucus has passed rule It says that, you know, essentially you’re going to need a super majority support in the caucus To basically be the speaker candidate if somebody gets super majority in the caucus The idea is is that, you know, even if you oppose that person as republican You’re supposed to support them in the public vote.

Jim Henson: Yeah

Josh Blank: supposed to supposed to and again, but but Honestly, but this is how I mean, I guess I game this out part of this is to say yes supposed to and I agree but like if you’re sitting there as part of the You know Two fifths, let’s say, of Republicans who aren’t necessarily behind or haven’t just agreed to, you know, a consensus candidate, you know, the one thing you guarantee if you join up with the Democrats to support feeling or anybody else is you’re gonna get primary challenge next time.

Josh Blank: And I think that that was a very, very costly proposition this time around that is going to be on members minds. And, you know, I think we’ve have some recent examples. We don’t have to go to the podcast, but there are a lot of recent examples where there are some Republicans who have reticence about going along with the group, but then faced with the reality that the group is going that way, don’t want the trouble.

Josh Blank: Right. And I, you know, I sort of think that if the. If close to that number within the caucus can, can agree on somebody, which is a big F, I think that becomes a real, real challenge. I just don’t see how that person is feeling right now, especially on this main thing, which is the democratic committee chair issue.

Josh Blank: You know, feeling could, could switch on that and say, no, I’m not going to give any democrat committee chairs either. And that would be a big switch and would be, I think, useful to him at this point. But as of right now, if this is about the distribution of power and worrying about your next primary, you know, whether or not you’re going to get primary challenge next time, you one person who, you know, if you vote for him.

Josh Blank: You’re not going to get primary choice because you didn’t support Phelan, first of all. And this person is already saying, I’ve got more committee chairs to give out. So what’s the pitch on the other side?

Jim Henson: Yeah, no. Well, I think there is a pitch and the pitch is, you know, you can turn some of those people.

Jim Henson: I’m asking. I’m curious. I mean, you can turn some of those people once it becomes inevitable. I mean, if you look at kind of the, you know, the internal qualitative history of these house races. There’s always this moment that we’re, we’re in right now where people are kind of making the self interested calculations you’re doing and, you know, whatever else, you know, particular members drop into that, their feelings about the Senate, their feelings about Lieutenant Governor Patrick in this case.

Jim Henson: That’s a

Josh Blank: tricky, extra factor, right?

Jim Henson: Which I think is, you know, again, uh, you know, we talked about any, a hard factor to weigh. It

Josh Blank: is very hard to weigh. Because

Jim Henson: it’s not, you know, it’s not as red, it’s not as concrete and readable, readily recognizable as. Okay. One’s anxiety about a primary challenge, but it’s, but it’s there in a, in a kind of, you know, inchoate sort of way, but, but it’s there and

Josh Blank: there’s not a straight line, obviously, between those attitudes and what it manifests even,

Jim Henson: you know, and, and, you know, you know, part of the factor here, I think, is going to be how bad does Dade feel and want to be speaker and.

Jim Henson: On the other hand, you know, you know, how much will the Democratic caucus hang together in his favor? Now we don’t, we don’t know the answer to either of those, you know, historically, and, and this was in the, the key caveat here is that this was in a much less ideologically sorted and polarized political system.

Jim Henson: But historically, you know, it is at the end of the day, a race to 76 to get in the chair. Right. Right. And then you get in the chair and you sort those other problems out once you’re in the chair. And I don’t disagree with you that, you know, it’s a disruptive fight in the caucus and at the primary level.

Jim Henson: The question is, what if, Say, what if the Bidens are going to come out and talk about the quota game, um, and say, you know, you know, I have to vote for you. I can’t do this.

Jim Henson: Some of the opposition in conjunction with offering the kinds of things you mentioned, like more committee chairs. So, for example, if you said, look, what I’m going to, you go to the Democrats and say, I’m not going to, and again, I don’t know if this is going on or not, but, you know, you know, I am not going to commit to no committee chair, no Democratic committee chairs, but I am going to commit to to a reduction in this, into phasing this model out under my remaining speakership, which means there will be fewer Democratic committee chairs next time.

Jim Henson: And your option, you know, your option is fewer or none. Right. And how many Democrats can you bring along with that and reduce the number, and reduce the number of votes you need from your own caucus. But in doing that, you also increase the number of chairs you have to distribute. And it’s that fungibility that I think is the key factor here in terms of thinking about, you know, and what happened, what’s happened in the past is when you get to 76, you know, and this goes to your point about how these races are often consensual.

Jim Henson: Once it once it looks like somebody’s going to win people want to jump on board I mean there are you know tales in some of the video that we’ve got from to go back a ways the speaker race in which billy clayton succeeded, um, uh price daniel jr in the early early to mid 70s, 74, I guess, um, in which, you know, there are tales of literally, you know, they’re having the caucus meetings in the, in the Driscoll and the word is circulating that they’re at 76 and people are, you know, running towards the elevator where the then, you know, where Clayton’s team was going, wait, wait, we want to be on board.

Jim Henson: And people are, and the doors are closing and they’re going kind of well, you know. Too late. Yeah, you know, you know, but but that’s why I say it really does kind of hinge on you know How how badly does does does Phelan really want this and I think look all the signs that we’re seeing now, you know, particularly You know, um him bringing in people like mike toomey and and rick perry is that you know They’re going to the mats All right, the mat, they’re going to the mattresses to use the godfather term.

Jim Henson: Right. I mean, they are going to, you know, they, they want to retain the speakership and they are going to do this, you know, whatever the longer game is. And you may still be right that the longer game may be bad. I mean, I think you are right. That longer game could wind up being bad for some of these members, unless the session happens.

Jim Henson: They get together, they win the speakership. The Democrats are kind of locked into it and, you know, feeling men’s some fences in some ways.

Josh Blank: Yeah, this is really, I mean.

Jim Henson: Now that may or may not be possible at this point, but I mean there are ways to maybe try to alleviate some of that pressure going forward.

Jim Henson: And if you really game this out, some of this is going to depend on what the political environment looks like in The 2026 election, and that, in fact, is going to be strongly influenced by who wins the presidential race. So we’ve gone from like the most interior of Texas, you know, institutional politics to the big picture, you know, the big context of that election does matter a lot.

Josh Blank: Yeah, that’s all really interesting. I mean, I think the thing that, you know, you’ve, you’ve convinced me of here is, you know, the importance of Phelan’s commitment to the, To to the speakership, you know and winning. I mean that really is is is a fun I mean, you know if you think about there’s so much that is sort of unknowable and behind the scenes and all that stuff but if you think about one factor that really does tell you like, you know, whether you know Whether and if so how messy this could turn It’s phelan’s willingness to basically engage the democrats in a deal and see who we can get to come along and then the question Becomes there’s two sort of things that fall out of that for me.

Josh Blank: Yeah, one is you know to your point, you know You And I think this speaks to some, some changes in the environment questions, you know, so one is, you know, so you get to 76 and the writings on the wall and then the question becomes, how many of the other Republicans fall in with that? And I’d say, you know, I don’t want to be on the outside looking at to your point.

Josh Blank: I don’t want to be outside the elevator at this point. There’s still a bunch of, there’s still a bunch of committees to go around past seven, you know, given how many Democrats there are, how many Republicans you need. There’s still a bunch of other committees to chair, a bunch of work to be done. The

Jim Henson: speaker can do a lot of things for people.

Josh Blank: Yeah. And so, so the question becomes, you know, one

Jim Henson: for his voters,

Josh Blank: one, how quickly are the, are the sort of the non feeling Republicans, you know, scared off? That’s sort of one question to me or scared into line. And that’s an interesting, just an interesting thought. Scared

Jim Henson: or incentivized. Yeah. I mean, fear is a type of incentive, I guess.

Jim Henson: Yeah, yeah. Sure. You know, positive and negative incentives.

Josh Blank: Yeah, it doesn’t matter. Yeah, that’s right. And to make this clear, like, it doesn’t matter. I mean, they’re both there. The mix is there. You know, for an individual at a point in time, it’ll be what it’s going to be. So that’s interesting. The other thing I think is interesting about that whole dynamic is, you know, I wonder what feeling standing with the Democrats does look like here.

Josh Blank: You know, and again, we’re not talking about statewide polling. We’re talking about within the caucus, you know, I mean, if you think about it, yes, I mean, there is a sort of, you know, the enemy of my enemies is my friend kind of mentality here that could win the day and obviously feeling would be, you know, significantly better deal to Democrats and almost anybody else who’s going to win the gavel.

Josh Blank: You know, based on the dynamics we’re talking about here, unless there’s something totally different, right? Um, but at the same time, I can’t help but think, you know, this is the speaker who did deliver two of the most conservative, you know, Texas legislative sessions in history, as many people will sort of attest to.

Josh Blank: Uh, you know, this is a speaker who did, you know, sort of, you know, kind of famously say with his purple glasses, I’m done bashing on, you know, the gays and the lesbians and all that stuff. And then kind of oversaw a pretty continuous bashing on LGBTQ people. And so, you know. I, again, I don’t think it’s one of those things where one of the things that probably benefits feeling is what we were talking about here, which is that, you know, his low profile among democratic voters and the fact that he’s not going to be an issue for democratic house members, you know, in terms of who they voted for in the speaker’s race, you know, that’s not going to be something that’s going to come up in their primary election next time.

Josh Blank: So like, I don’t see that as, as necessarily a thing, but I do wonder to what extent, you know, when he says, Hey, I’ve got a deal for you, how well that’s received among, you know, sort of democratic decision makers. So, you know, I

Jim Henson: mean, Well, you know,

Josh Blank: other than to say it’s better than anything else you’re gonna get, and that’s going to be, that’s going to

Jim Henson: depend on the deal, right?

Jim Henson: And that’s going to, you know, entail some bargaining. So I

Josh Blank: was going to say, I mean, just as a transition to some other points, you just want to close out with, I mean, but this is harder now, right? I mean, I think part of what’s interesting is like, this is all, you know, in some ways, you know, we can talk about this and these old saws.

Josh Blank: And I think about, you know, kind of the people that I started learning about Texas politics from and a lot of them were going to be retiring. And you know, this idea that this is so, you know, Internal and opaque and all this kind of stuff and yet at the same time like, you know, at least in my experience I mean, this is one of the most sort of public in a lot of ways, you know, races, at least I’ve seen, you know, recently, and I don’t mean again, this is all still taking place behind the scene, but the amount of attention paid to it, it does seem like some fundamental changes in the environment have taken.

Jim Henson: Yeah. I mean, I was just going to, yeah. I mean, I think that’s a good transition to close it out. I mean, I was just going to say, you know, there’s a few things, I mean, having You know, regaled with a story about the seventies, you know, I don’t want to seem too locked into that, you know, and mentioned, you know, having mentioned Billy Clayton and Pete Laney in the same podcast about speakerships, you know, I mean, all of this does point to like, you know, interesting questions about.

Jim Henson: And I think the outcome of this is going to be very material to this, um, about the degree to which the context and the, the structural institutional factors around, you know, the selection of the speaker has changed. And, you know, a few of those clearly, you know, and we’ve kind of had occasion that this is already kind of We bumped up against this in the discussion, you know, media changes look in the longer term, you know, the media environment, you know, I mean, to use the race I was talking about before the, the Billy Clayton, the speaker is to produce Billy Clayton, um, as speaker, you know, the media environment, very different, you know, and I think, you know, we leap right, you know, to, to social media now, and I think that’s fair.

Jim Henson: I mean, You know, much of this fight has taken place over social media, and a lot of the heat came from social media, and that’s been going on for a little while. I mean, the most vicious fighting over the last three speakers, Strauss, Bonin, now Phelan, really metastasized and was fed over social media, particularly Twitter.

Jim Henson: And you know, that seeps into the coverage. And then the other, you know, piece of this, which is kind of the intermediate piece, which I think it’s missed. I mean, the social media thing everybody’s talking about now, but I think. The intermediate piece, and we were talking about this beforehand and I kind of, you know, this kind of occurred to me as I was working on lectures for the intro class a few years ago, you know, and in the longer term, I think you have the, the rise of a kind of more specialized political media is really important to understanding this, you know, in the longer term, I mean, you know, this, we’re seeing this at the national level too.

Jim Henson: I mean, you know, ground zero for this is like, you know, the creation of Politico. Right. But then in Texas, we’ve seen our own, there were always things like, you know, Ross Ramsey’s Texas Weekly, uh, Harvey Kronberg’s Quorum Report, you know, these, you know, these very focused that began really essentially as newsletters.

Jim Henson: Has really, you know, metastasized and, not metastasized is the wrong word, has really evolved. I mean, and it’s, and it’s, and it’s spread. I mean, there’s just more attention to inside baseball. You’ve got, you know, you’ve got the Texas Tribune and, you know, particularly when the Tribune started, I think honestly, they’ve, you know, they’re not as attentive to this stuff as they used to be or not as focused on it.

Jim Henson: You know, it’s up to them mission wise, but but a lot of attention to inside baseball In very specialized media outlets, you know, you’ve got the texas tribune. You’ve got the texan You know now you’ve got the what the new left Sort of thing cricket not not crooked. It’ll come to me in a second And I apologize to the people running that that now I can’t remember what it’s called.

Jim Henson: It’s just I don’t have it in my notes um, we’ll we’ll put a link to you guys in the You In the, in the, in the podcast post, you know, all of that just fed attention to things that were, they’re very internal into the internal baseball. And like the social media, it’s not that, you know, everybody is now reading those things, but political reporters at the, at the more general outlets are reading that stuff and they see them as their competition.

Jim Henson: And it’s funny, That’s awesome. Oh, my pleasure. So, uh, I think it’s interesting to hear that, uh, when you talk about the story about Somebody really had a big point in the literature and the stories, but you’ve got to

Josh Blank: have every person share their own story and their own opinion on it. But it’s a very, I guess, a huge issue.

Josh Blank: And it’s a huge issue that, you know, I don’t think is strongly connected to the side of politics. The interest of that kind of thing is, I think it’s important to engage the community in a way that people are engaged. We knew where and when the meeting was before it happened and then there were people there.

Josh Blank: I mean, it was just sort of, I mean, it was like, is this, I mean, not to say it’s an open secret because it’s not a secret. I mean, it’s just sort of, this information is like readily available. And to your point, you know, it may not be covered by the, the major dailies per se, but all those reporters, they know this is going on.

Josh Blank: Well, what

Jim Henson: happens is that it gets, you know, when it’s just at the rumor stage or the speculative stage, it gets covered in the niche outlets and on social media. But that That triggers coverage once once it blooms if you will it becomes a more conventional confirmed story It gets picked up in the mainstream outlets, you know, and then of course there’s you know You know the factor that we bring into everything but because it matters.

Jim Henson: Um, you know when you’ve got more ideologically sorted parties in a state with, you know, that’s had a one party governance pattern for the last 20 years, um, the conflicts within the Republican Party, like this one, just makes the politics around the speakership more pronounced. Like, as you were, you know, parsing out, like, well, Well, there’s this faction of Republicans and how many is that?

Jim Henson: And, you know, and we look at that stuff all the time. I mean, that just gets more pronounced. And again, to go back, that’s not unlike what that, that is not unlike what we saw during the period of democratic nominates, but. There was more ideological breadth in the Democratic Party of the 60s and 70s than there is in the, in the Republican Party post 2000.

Josh Blank: But it doesn’t mean that the fights over agenda control are any less vicious or If anything, maybe more. Yeah, that’s right. They’re even more consequential in some ways, right? People are

Jim Henson: looking for, you know, are looking more broad, you know, uh, more thoroughly for ways of distinguishing themselves on an ideological basis.

Jim Henson: For scraps,

Josh Blank: really.

Jim Henson: Yeah. Yeah. And, and making this, you know, You know, the argument that we’re seeing, which is, you know, who is the true conservative, right? And that was not the kind of, that was not the kind of campaign theme that you saw in those speakers fights inside the Democratic Party in the 50s, 60s, 70s, right?

Jim Henson: Even into the 80s to some degree. I mean, it was there, you know, and the upshot was that what you usually got, speaking of, you know, Billy Clayton and Pete Laney was a more moderate to conservative, rural, democratic member. This dynamic is a little more, it’s a little more, you know, the word that came to mind, I’m just going to use it, but it’s a little more ideologically inbred.

Jim Henson: You know, to your point, I mean, making the distinction between

Josh Blank: I like that analogy.

Jim Henson: You know, would anybody look at You know, if you set aside the personalities involved and Dan Patrick and Dade feeling, you know, whatever, and you look, I mean, and we see this from the outside when we look at, see national media looking in, would anybody really look at what’s been going on in the Texas legislature, you know, from a broad ideological perspective or even a, you know, snug, snug in the Overton window, would you go, you know, man.

Jim Henson: They’re not really very conservative there in Texas, are they? You

Josh Blank: know, it’s funny. What’s going

Jim Henson: on? That must be Dade Phelan’s fault. I mean, one of the

Josh Blank: most frustrating calls I got, you know, in the lead up to the primary was from a national outlet where the reporter said, so my understanding is that Abbott is funding a lot of primary challengers against Republicans in his own party because they’re moderates.

Josh Blank: And I was like, Well, buddy, let me just say, I was like, I think that’s what he would like you to believe. Yes. But, but, but that goes to the point is like, there are no moderates, like, you know, John Kempel, not a moderate. Like, let’s just, you know, you take a step back and just say, look, to be fair,

Jim Henson: there are, you know, you know, there are gradations here

Josh Blank: and they’re different and they’re different dimensions of, you know, ideology, right?

Josh Blank: But

Jim Henson: adopting the language of, you know,

Josh Blank: Yeah. I mean. One

Jim Henson: factor or another doesn’t really. And the point

Josh Blank: here is moderate is meant to be pejorative, right? That’s

Jim Henson: exactly right. That’s the point. So let’s, you know. That is a good point. We

Josh Blank: don’t, it doesn’t matter. I mean, I’m not, you know, it’s meant, it’s intended as a pejorative in this case.

Jim Henson: And then lest we hear from, you know, some of our, you know, some of our other listeners, we should also add to this, obviously, you know, the ability. to inject money and visi and via this money visibility into a speaker’s fight as a result of first speaker candidates having to register with the secretary of state, which is a relatively new adaptation, you know, from, you know, this century.

Jim Henson: And the fact that it’s been, you know, verified or, you know, legally sort of confirmed that you can spend money on running for speaker as long as you follow some rules, um, has also changed the dynamics of these races. You know, this kind of goes back to something like, you know, I was going to slightly disagree with you earlier and just, you know, I’ll flag it now, which is the, you know, the idea that, You know, going into like the meeting on Friday, you know, everybody came in with some votes.

Jim Henson: Well, maybe, maybe, yeah, right. Because there’s a lot of, you know, there’s an additional incentive now to simply become a candidate to burnish your, your own political profile and to make you and to position yourself for something else that might not be speaker. Yeah. You know, like, you know, the Senate seat in your, we’re not going to single anybody out, like the Senate seat in your district or, and let us also, you know, remember that by all indications with the magnitude of this on each side being shaped by the outcome of the presidential election, 2020, the 2026 primaries here at the statewide level, Are going to have a lot of participants or certainly at this point, there are a lot of people thinking about moving on up,

Josh Blank: right?

Josh Blank: I think that’s exactly right. And I think politics is one of these, you know, the most unusual places where, you know, ultimately any reason to actually ask your donors for money. Is a good reason, right? If you’re in the conversation, if you have a reason to again, ask your donors, go meet new donors, go talk to expand your political network because you’re looking for to maybe move beyond what’s maybe a district level role to a statewide role, whether that’s in the speaker’s race or something beyond is really, you know, it’s an opportunity.

Josh Blank: And so I think that’s right here, which is to some extent that all speaks to some extent why not everybody who jumps in a speaker’s race is serious about being a speaker.

Jim Henson: Yeah, right. Yeah, that’s exactly what I meant. Yeah. So, um, so with that, that’s a lot of data and, you know, a little bit of a theory of the case, even, um, thanks to Josh for joining and all the prep on this.

Jim Henson: Uh, as always, thanks to our excellent production team and the dev studio here in the College of Liberal Arts at UT Austin, who during the recording of this podcast demonstrated a remarkable ability to handle a crisis and stay on their feet. Again, uh, we talked about a lot of data in this podcast. Um, and, uh, If you haven’t already gone there, try Texas politics dot u texas.edu.

Jim Henson: We’ll have this podcast embedded in a post in our blog section that will have a lot of the illuminative, uh, uh, data we used on this, particularly this trend data on the speaker stuff, which is I think very interesting, even if you’re not that into data. Um, so most of all, thanks to you for listening and we’ll be back soon with another second reading podcast.

Jim Henson: The second reading podcast is a production of the Texas Politics Project. At the University of Texas at Austin.