September 8th, 2023 – What we learned from week 1 of the Paxton trial + a new UT/Texas Politics Project Poll

[00:00:00] Intro: Welcome to the second reading podcast from the University of Texas at Austin. The Republicans were in the Democratic party because there was only one party. So I tell people on a regular basis, there is still a land of opportunity in America. It’s called Texas. The problem is these departures from the constitution, they have become the norm. At what point must a female senator raise her hand or her voice to be recognized? Over the male colleagues in the room

[00:00:33] Jim Henson: And welcome back to the second reading podcast I’m, jim henson director of the texas politics project at the university of texas at austin Joined by josh blank research director for the texas politics project Welcome back on impeachment trial week josh.

Yeah. Happy friday Um, what a week i’m just gonna stop by saying that let’s start.

[00:00:55] Josh Blank: Let’s just start everything I mean, let’s just, let’s, I mean, it’s off script, but like, what a surreal week. And I mean, just as, you know, if like for us doing our work, this is going on, we’re paying attention to it. It’s like. I don’t know about you, but like, I am tired.

[00:01:06] Jim Henson: Well, at a, at a real, you know, and I’m, I’m hearing this from a bunch of other people. I mean, it’s, it’s hard to, you know, do your regular work. Yeah. Or just, you know, proceed with your regular life. Not that life is all work. But also know that for, you know, eight or nine hours a day, you want to be in front of the trial and trying to pay attention to it.

It’s just

[00:01:24] Josh Blank: going on. I mean, it’s like weird going to pick up my kids and be like, no, I’m not going to play this outside school at pickup. Like, there’s some lines I don’t want to cross yet.

[00:01:33] Jim Henson: Well, you know, yeah, I mean, I’ve found myself walking around with it. Oh, yeah.

[00:01:37] Josh Blank: I’ve had my headphones

[00:01:39] Jim Henson: Tissue, you know, like, you know when you’re in transit, so all right, so of course, you know, You know this if you’re listening to this, but as we’re recording this mid morning friday and missing a little bit of the trial i’m sweating It’s been the first week, uh, this is day four because of Labor Day of the impeachment trial of Ken, uh, suspended Attorney General Ken Paxton, uh, of course being tried in the Texas Senate.

We also released the rest of the latest University of Texas, Texas politics project poll, by the way, this week. Again, as most of you would probably know, uh, we kind of. Rush is too strong a word, but we moved with some alacrity to mm-hmm. , you know, get the results from that poll out last Friday before the trial started.

And so this morning after a a decent interval, we’ve released the remainder of the poll. You’ll find the documents in the usual places at Texas politics dot u texas.edu and there you’ll find. the usual, you know, all the, all the usual treats that come with this, um, summary sheet, extensive crosstab files, many, many graphics for top line results and, uh, uh, crosstabs, trend items that are updated for the major political leaders in the state and conditions in the state.

And again, tons and tons of downloadable graphics for your use in discussing, teaching, lecturing, uh, putting together presentations for your clients. So we’ll talk a little bit about that at the end of the podcast, and we’ll talk some more, of course, a lot about it in the, in the coming weeks. There’s a lot in the poll, but you know, it would be semi ridiculous to not start by talking about, uh, the Paxton trial.

We talked quite a bit in the last podcast about the Paxton related results from that poll. Um, and this week has been much more taken up as we’ve said by the thing itself, you know, I’ve kind of tried to stay out of the lawyer’s lane as much as I can, although it’s, you know, it’s hard not to get in law and order mode when you’re watching hours and hours of testimony and trying to parse out what the lawyer’s strategies are, what the witness strategies are, you know, how the judge is dealing, you know, um,

[00:03:54] Josh Blank: interpreting all this, especially when all the witnesses have been lawyers too.

[00:03:56] Jim Henson: Right. And, and, and the judge is the Lieutenant governor, but all that said, so, you know, let’s start a little more jam after a bunch of, with a few general things. After a bunch of uncertainty, we got a few somewhat. Clear indicators, indicators of what the state of the vote in the Senate is, as you know, everybody, a lot of people, I know, basically spending time kind of whipping the boat in the jury, and we got those indicators because the trial started, if you weren’t watching with.

A review of the mo, all of the motions filed by both sides, uh, defense motions, and then the, the responses by the prosecution. For the most part, there were a few prosecution initiated motions, and most of the motions filed by the Paxton Defense were an attempt to have the charges dismissed. So, you know, going into the trial, and I think we said this last week, You know, there was a possibility that this would have been a half a day of trial had, had the senators voted to dismiss the charges.

Um, you know, theoretically they could have dismissed some or all, as it turned out, they didn’t just, you know, none, none of the charges were dismissed, but the various votes gave us a sense, a preliminary sense. And it’s, it is reading tea leaves. I mean, I think we have to be, well, I have to talk a little bit about.

Over, you know, again, over interpreting these results, but one thing we definitely saw was. There seemed to be, you know, there were six votes in the Senate that were determined to, you know, that voted to dismiss everything. They voted for the dismissal of, uh, for every dismissal of motion. And then they were joined by varying number, anywhere from two to four more senators.

And I think they were joined by four more senators only on one vote. That’s right. Um, to my, to my recollection. Yep. And that gave us some benchmarks,

[00:05:52] Josh Blank: right? Right. Yeah. Because I mean, we know, I mean, you know, if you’ve been following this at all, you know, the two thirds to convict and two thirds to remove that’s 21 votes out of.

[00:06:00] Jim Henson: Two thirds of 30, because Senator Paxton is not going to be voting.

[00:06:04] Josh Blank: Right two thirds of the 30. Well, it’s two thirds of 31, but it’s of the 30 right, right, right

[00:06:10] Jim Henson: So just you know, she counts on the denominator as you made, you know, a lot of right several months ago

[00:06:14] Josh Blank: So that’s why it’s 21 votes, right? So the real question I mean first and foremost, I think as we’re watching this we’re thinking Okay.

Well first, you know, are there gonna be enough votes to just dismiss some or all of these charges and the answer is no So then then I think you know from our perspective is very This feels very comfortable political science until you say, okay, well now, now we’ve got some coalitions to look at, right?

And you’re right. I mean, basically there were 16 dispositive motions, which would basically have, you know, again, dismissed some or all the charges. So there’s six. So then I think, you know, a lot of the questions I’ve been getting asked, well, you know, are they going to get to 21? And I’m like, yeah, that’s not really how I’m thinking about it.

What I’m thinking about more so is how does Paxton get to 11? Right. Who are the 11 votes that he can count on to dismiss some or all of these charges, knowing that he’s starting at six? Now that’s an assumption. We’re assuming that the six who voted basically to dismiss all of the motion, basically every article of impeachment through every channel available to them will also vote to dismiss the charge when that

[00:07:08] Jim Henson: comes.

And more importantly, we’re assuming that just because you didn’t vote for dismissal, Doesn’t mean that you could be pre, you know, I mean, you still might be predisposed to not remove the attorney general, even if you think it should all be aired out

[00:07:23] Josh Blank: public. I think that’s the thing that I think, you know, I mean, look, you know, I, when I saw the, I said this to you at the time, you know, I think for the, for Paxson’s team, you know, the best case scenario would have been, they get 11 or more votes, you know, they get a majority to dismiss most of the charges, right.

Or something absent that, you know, you say, okay, well, you’d like to get 11. Right. Cause they only, they needed a majority on that. Right. So that wouldn’t get them there, but let’s say they get 11, that’d be the next best case scenario. This is probably the, you know, maybe the third best case scenario, which is, you know, I mean, to my mind, because you know what it is, I think, again, a lot of people are thinking about this in different sort of ways, but the idea is if you think you’ve got six to 10 votes, that tells you how many senators you need to convince.

Sure. Right. So ultimately there’s, you know, out of the body, the idea is you probably need to convince five senators to vote, you know, basically to, to dismiss these charges at this point now, convince pressure, whatever, we can talk about that. But I mean, that seems like, you know, I would say that’s not.

It’s not a Herculean task here, potentially. And I think, you know, what you said, I totally agree with, which is, you know, just because there were, you know, anywhere between 21 and 26 votes to move forward does not mean that there are that many votes to convict. And the truth is, I mean, we talked about this last week with respect to our data absent, you know, public opinion pushing in one direction or another.

On this stuff for Republicans. We’re still waiting to see if or when that happens. You know, it seems to me the easiest way to kind of get out of this. If you’re a Republican senator worried about a primary challenger would be to say, Look, you know, these are really serious charges. We thought about it really, really carefully.

We decided to go ahead with the trial. But now having heard that, I don’t think it’s enough to overturn the will of the voters.

[00:09:00] Jim Henson: So, right. I mean, I, you know, I think that, you know, there’s a million, you know, people are parsing that out in a lot of different ways. I mean, I think just the, you know, as you work through that in real time to some degree, it’s, it says a lot about just how much again, and another theme here, how much uncertainty there is out there because, you know, what the math, you know, how, how the senators are calculating those things, how we interpret those numbers.

I was thinking about, you know, how you sort of. Sort of, you know, first, second, third, you know, and I know this is, these are just rough. You know, I mean, I, I think there’s probably like so many things in this trial, there are probably reasons for optimism and reasons for concern on both sides. Yeah, definitely.

But also, you know, I mean, I, you know, I don’t know, as we move forward, there’ll be plenty of time to parse this again, but you know, who was surprising and who wasn’t. And I think at this level, at this point, we’re going to kind of wait on that. Yeah. But I mean, I think. Once we start getting into the second and third week and we start thinking in particular about those votes that moved back and forth a little bit, it’s going to be really interesting to think about that because, you know, in fact, that those are, that is where the swing votes

[00:10:11] Josh Blank: are.

Yeah, I mean, I think, I think the most, you know, sort of glass half empty. thing just about the votes was the fact on on motion 20, which was articles nine and 10, which those were the bribery counts. And that, and that was a six vote or a six votes to, to, to dismiss. And I thought, you know, if you think about really where the, where the meat of the substance might be in some of this, you know, the fact that on that one, he only got to six, I think that’d be the one I’d be worried.

[00:10:37] Jim Henson: And obviously they don’t have to convict on all of these to move into the vote, which will be a simple majority vote on whether to. Bar him from office or not. Right. So we saw that. I mean, I think another thing that was very interesting and we’re going to get to like the meaty thing, but another kind of interesting thing to see play out after all the speculation about this going into this and speculation that was fueled by.

The gag order because we’re not seeing a lot of direct arguments about this. Right. ’cause people were not supposed to talk about it. You know, it was interesting to see what the competing narratives mm-hmm. that each side was presenting to the jury and to the public. And we’ll put a pin in the jury and the public for us to come back to.

But you know, the prosecution argument looked about like we expected it, I think. Yeah. That, you know, but interesting to actually see it articulated. Mm-hmm. . You know, not just that Paxton did all these things and they were kind of rude things, but that Paxton violated the public trust in his efforts to help Nate Paul at the expense of the public.

And he used his power to push back when it was noticed by his otherwise loyal subordinates. I think that’s a, I think that captures about 90 percent of the narrative. That is laid out, particularly when you start thinking about what was in the opening statement that Andrew Murr gave.

[00:11:58] Josh Blank: Yeah. I mean, that’s the thing, you know, and again, I keep saying this, and maybe I’m just being a wet blanket, but it’s sort of like, yeah, we’ve heard this.

And, but I mean, the thing that I think that they were doing, that they’ve done so far, the prosecution is sort of focused on the trial is to remind, especially the jurors, but I think also the public that, you know, these were not, you know, these lawyers who were pushing back. You know, these were not rhinos.

These are not, you know, secret democrats. These are not like deep state bureaucrats. I mean, these are for the most part, you know, very conservative, often extremely christian, you know, basically loyalists both to the party and the office. And that was the one thing I would say, you know, I’ve I’ve I’ve sort of said like, yeah, I don’t, you know, in each of these dot.

Data dumps. I’m sorry. Okay. You know, I don’t know what’s new here, but the one thing I did think was new last time that they really, I think, honed in on in the trial phase is the number of times that, you know, these deputies raised objections, how often they would say, Hey, you know, and again, the defense will get to that, but the defense is obviously, Oh, you didn’t go tell him you were going to the FBI.

You know, what kind of loyalist are you? Kind of thing. But, but one of the things that they’ve been laying out somewhat meticulously is both these are not, you know, again, these are not the people they’ve been described as, number one.

[00:13:04] Jim Henson: Well, and that gets, yeah. And that gets to what, you know, I mean, in terms of what we saw and, and we saw much more directly from, from Tony Busby, what.

the defense argument was going to be, which part of it is the obvious thing is you kind of alluded to there, which is, you know, to attack every component of the defense argument from the witnesses to the reliability of the narrative, the existence of the facts, the interpretation of the facts. I think all of that, again, I’m stay, I didn’t want to get in the lawyer lane, but I think that’s all, you know, pretty much to be expected.

But I think What was also interesting is, to my mind, was how closely the explicit argument being put forth by the defense corresponds to some of the public arguments that we’ve seen, particularly in sort of niche communications and the occasional media interview by Paxton’s defenders, and that is that this was a self interested plot by, as you say, you know, These disloyal subjects,

[00:14:04] Josh Blank: disloyal, maybe even deep state bureaucrats,

[00:14:06] Jim Henson: whatever, and, and their connection to other elements in the political world that were conspiring against Ken Paxton and in its most rarefied form at the end of the.

Second day, I believe, the end of the first cross examination by Tony, of the first witness by Tony Busby, he came out and said it in his summing up of that cross, and he, you know, in which he was continual, you know, in which he repeated the term coup, which was, you know, Tactically succeeded. I mean, I’ve heard the term coup in media coverage now, you know, and said what, you know, basically what you guys were doing was staging a coup and you staged.

So what did you do? You went, you went and had a meeting with the people in the governor’s office, and then you had these communications with these other interest groups. And he tied. I remember how explicitly tied at the T. L. R. But he already laid the Texans for lawsuit reform, but he already laid the foundation for that.

So that’s you were doing. You guys were just staging a coup and a interesting in the directness of that and the inflammatory nature of the language and as I’ve said b the way it aligns with the argument of a faction of Paxton’s defenders. Yeah, I have questions and some doubts about how tactically sound that was in terms of appealing to the jurors.

Well, I mean, in a couple of different ways, we,

I

[00:15:30] Josh Blank: mean, there’s a really specific moment related to that where, you know, sort of came up about a specific political consultant and the witness and I’m sure this political consultant works for many of these and they’re like, let’s move on. It’s like, well, let’s not push this so far.

But yeah, I mean, I, you know, I agree. And it’s interesting to me because, you know, there’s sort of the split screen going on. I think one of the things that sort of is important to acknowledge, and we’re not lawyers, but it’s sort of just interesting in and of itself is sort of to remind oneself when watching this, you know, it’s not the defense’s job here to prove Ken Paxton is innocent beyond a reasonable doubt.

It’s not to prove that everything that he did was ethical, moral, legal. It’s just to sow doubt enough doubt. Right. In the narrative that the prosecution is presenting to allow senators, the room to let them off for this. And there’s, so you’re seeing a little bit of that going on and a little bit of this other thing going on.

And I think, you know, on the one hand, you know, for the prosecution, they have to lay to lay out this series of kind of complicated. We’ve talked about this before, but like, this is kind of complicated to describe in a short, you know, this isn’t, there’s not an elevator pitch to this in a lot of ways. So they’re laying out all these distinct events and saying, look, these look pretty connected and we can, we can connect them together for you.

And if you connect them, it looks troubling. And it’s easy enough for the defense say, well, let’s look at that first thing, you know, well, can’t the attorney general hire somebody, you know, kind of this or let’s just pick it up that part. And that’s a very, I think, you know, just basic. That’s a very good legal argument in front of a jury that maybe had no idea about this.

Let’s just say as an example. Right. But then to sort of. Wind it all up with this. And of course, you know, we all know that this was a coup by these disloyal employees aligned with TLR, the governor, George P. Bush, and, and whoever other kind of boogeyman enemies we can kind of come up with, you know, that’s a very public argument, but like, I don’t know how well that lands.

in the chamber with the people ultimately

[00:17:12] Jim Henson: making these decisions. I mean, I, you know, I mean what I’ve said to folks and I think, you know, is that, it, it lands best with the votes I think they already have. Yeah. You know, to the extent that there is, you know, kind of a combination in those six votes we were talking about of, you know, people that are frankly on, you know, on the far right of the Republican caucus in the Senate, and then also those that are up for, you know, some of those members are up for reelection in the next cycle.

So this is a very immediate. to them, you know, the way that that has been wound up and we’ll see if they come back to this. And I suspect they will not to tell your swing voters. And by the way, we, you know, the implication is the governor’s office and the governor were involved in this. Do you really want to sign off on that?

Even, even if you think I want to phrase this carefully, that it’s That one can make the argument that is certainly in the governor’s interest for the current attorney general to be deposed and for the governor to appoint his replacement, which is, you know, and we were all adults here that is, that would clearly be not a bad thing for Greg Abbott.

Sure. But do you also really want to put people on the record as saying, yeah, I believe that This was all, you know, a conspiracy and the, you know, Governor Abbott was aligned with the rhinos, you know, et cetera, et cetera,

[00:18:28] Josh Blank: right? Yeah, I mean, I feel like a similar way I feel about, you know, to the, you know, to the extent of the defense basically in some ways was, you know, I don’t really know how else to put it, but like, you know, Using its time to sort of justify the investigative demands of Nate Paul on the AG’s office.

I mean, it’s like, is this really what’s going on

[00:18:44] Jim Henson: here? Now, one thing I do want to mention that we’ve left out in terms of just the meat and potatoes, if you will, of the defense tactics here, we have to remember that the rules are giving. Right. The prosecution, a limited amount of time, they have 24 hours to present their case and present their witnesses.

And so we should expect what we’ve seen, which is the defense to very much stretch out their cross examinations and to burn as much of the prosecution’s clock as possible. Yeah. Absolutely.

[00:19:14] Josh Blank: So, I mean, but at the same flag that, I mean, that speaks to the fact that, you know, I think for the defense here in particular.

Given that look, you know, these are not jurors who are coming to this not having heard something about it who don’t have predispositions over the case. I mean, this is not a normal jury. Right? But it does sort of lay out, you know, some of the, I don’t know. I mean, just again, some of the challenges I think that the defense is facing because I’m filling out that time, right?

Ultimately, you know, I think a lot of them after the first day, I would say after really the Busby portion, you know, with material. But You know, a lot of it has been kind of very, I don’t want to say ho hum, but it has been kind of like, let’s pick apart, you know, every little piece of this and, and, you know, you can see the senators back there and I’m not naming names, you know, trying not to fall asleep sometimes.

I mean, this is, you know, there’s a certain

[00:19:58] Jim Henson: niggling this to it, right? Where you’re just kind of, you know, they’re, they’re just sort of poking and poking and poking and that, you know, that has, you know, was more effective than with the most recent witness, but not. Well, it’s also something that you’re right over time.

You’re not really, you know, are you really making progress with the jury here?

[00:20:16] Josh Blank: Yeah. And, you know, and look, and it’s not to say that it, it matters, but it doesn’t not matter. It doesn’t not matter in a real court of law to like, you know, are you making a good, you know, let’s say, are you. Making a useful impression on the judge.

Cause I mean, one of the things I think I noticed yesterday was, you know, at a certain point, like, you know, the Lieutenant governor was looking to get looking pretty irritated with the defense’s counsel with the way that they were objecting. Yeah. And with, you know, the fact that we’re interrupting a lot and, and, you know, and again, like, I’m not a lawyer, maybe that’s what they had to do.

You know, again, this is, you know, you’d bunch of lawyers may be watching this thing and yeah, well, you know, if I was part of this process, I’d be interrupting all the time too. Not commenting on that. Regardless, you know, it does seem like, you know, to the extent that like both sides have a well of goodwill, the defense’s strategy requires, I think, you know, probably spending that good capital, goodwill pretty

[00:21:04] Jim Henson: quickly and wanting to be careful to not overspend, at least theoretically, theoretically now, you know, as we’ve talked about this, we’ve already kind of gotten into the other point.

I kind of one of the subjects I wanted to Touch on in the trial and that is the centrality in a, in a very interesting way. I don’t even want to call it the centrality, the heavy presence of politics in this, right? And, and. Um, I think politics in a, I think in a, in a slightly different way than we’ve talked about it up to this point.

Um, I mean, you know, there’s a couple of overlapping meat, you know, conceptions here, but you know, we spent a lot of time, you know, much of the summer, frankly, discussing the inherently political nature of. This process, quote unquote, that is, you know, when I really underlined process in a kind of institutional and philosophical sense, again, the Federalist Papers and all of that, and, you know, and we saw that back and forth in the, in the, in the motions, um, you know, but after all that, the first week of this process has also revealed, you know, just how intrinsic Politics is to the arguments, to the subject of this and to how both sides are going to proceed.

I mean, there is just a lot of direct nods, invocation reference to, you know, what are essentially the kind of coalitional politics that we’ve seen inside the Republican party. Mhm. And that have, you know, that have really been driving a lot of politics in the state. I mean, there are a million examples, right?

I think, but you know, opening, you know, right. You can start with the opening statement of the prosecution and the witness and the witness introductions, you know, that are designed to establish conservative credentials, right? I mean, Andrew Murr’s opening statement very much, you know, painted Ken Paxton, not just as having Crossed ethical and ethical lines, but that he was, you know, he had disappointed the expectations of conservative Republicans in his behavior and, you know, and how he handled the office.

I mean, it was almost kind of It landed a little with a little bit of a thud, but it was notable when, you know, rusty hard and basically just ask material. Are you a rhino? Yeah, I mean, it’s gonna. Oh, we’re just gonna do that. Are we okay? Various elements that are being used to, you know, to color the events and the competing narratives.

I mean, I tweeted about this. We had a funny Twitter thing on this, but I mean, you know, all of a sudden you were you reminded that not reminded. I should reset that. Let me start again. Counselor. Um, yeah. Try again, judge. Try again. Yes. I’ll try again. The prosecution made a real effort in talking about, you know, the efforts to postpone the auction that to say, Hey, look, every Republican in the state was trying to open up and, and create more space for COVID.

Yeah. And it was an interesting return. And I think it was mature that then made the quip. It’s like, yeah, when I looked at this, it was like something Anthony Fauci would say, Whoa, it’s like all of a sudden we’re just back in that has

suffused so much of policy over the last few years. And it’s, it’s, it’s just very interesting to me, the, how that is just omnipresent as a tool for both sides in. But particularly because of the constellation of things, but particularly for the prosecution.

[00:24:28] Josh Blank: Yeah, I know. I mean, it’s sort of interesting that fact that, you know, if you were just sort of, if you were, you know, again, an alien who was transported here and you’re told about our system of government and it’s like, what have you learned over the last few days?

Like, well, it turns out that everybody in the higher echelons of the attorney general’s office in Texas is extremely conservative. Yeah. Seeks out to, you know, work in an extremely conservative manner and that that is like just the notice operandi of of the institution It was

[00:24:51] Jim Henson: it was a big day if you’re kind of a you know, federalist society conspiracy person.

Yeah for

[00:24:56] Josh Blank: sure Yeah, well then the flip side and then you’ve got you know The defense coming up in telling us, you know Telling the senators exactly how many votes can Paxton received in the last election and you know How much what a prolific fundraiser he is and you know how this is just one of many donations and right, you know I guess you’re all corrupt then huh?

Like I went again I don’t know if that’s the tact I would take, you

[00:25:17] Jim Henson: know, overly aggressive, I would say, but, you know, we’ll see. Yeah. I mean,

that’s

[00:25:20] Josh Blank: the, I mean, but that’s the really interesting thing to me, you know, in some ways, like, you know, uh, I haven’t seen, I haven’t gotten to see Tony Busby in a courtroom.

I’ve seen him in his other roles that he’s played, you know, more, more frequently, but I mean, one, I got to say, you know. Kind of impressive in a sense, you know, I mean, very central casting defense lawyer, like, you know, coming in, you know, he’s, he’s bringing the thunder, but, you know, there, there is part of me that is kind of like, you know, I mean, I think I wouldn’t be the first one that’s like, you know, how much of this is the Tony Busby show right now, you know, and is that really serving.

Ken Paxton versus someone who would take maybe a little bit more of a procedural tact on some of this stuff, right?

[00:25:57] Jim Henson: I mean, you know, there’s some brand burnishing going on here It feels like hard not to think about it that way because it’s so many exam other examples of that But I mean, but the way you know So so putting it that way and thinking about the way you pose that does kind of lead us then to the question, right?

I mean the Paul in the role of politics in The approach and the messaging and the way that it’s all being folded into these competing narratives And thinking about how, you know, the defense’s style is landing, you put it earlier, you put it, I think, good earlier that, I mean, there’s kind of an inherent split screen going on here in which In addition to the, you know, what has to be, you would think, the primary audience for this kind of a proceeding, and that is the jury.

Right. But because of, again, the inherently political nature of this, the jury is also attuned to the broader audience and how this is landing with the public, and, you know, more specifically, the

[00:26:51] Josh Blank: electorate. Yeah, and more, and really specifically, the Republican primary electorates. Right.

[00:26:54] Jim Henson: And so, I think, you know, there’s a, for me, it’s a constant effort to kind of say, okay, This I can see how this is going to land with an audience out there that is already predisposed to be skeptical of this process because they are more or less worried about a Republican being moved out of office.

But also, you know, at the same time that you’re thinking, you know, and it’s a very, you know, and I guess the nub of it is that, you know, you kind of alluded to this in terms of saying, you know, look how a group of politicians going to respond. To somebody going well, you know, you know that you can raise a lot of money and not get bought, right?

Right, you know I mean that lands very differently among the 31 senators and the 30 voting senators than it does with the public I think and you know and different segments of the public Well that raises a

[00:27:43] Josh Blank: really point and I think that raises a really interesting question that we’re just not gonna know the answer to for a little bit which is like How much and what of this is actually filtering through to the public?

I mean, you know, one of the interesting, you know, results that we found in our poll we talked about last week was how, you know, sort of the low percentage of people, about 30 percent or so, who say they’ve heard a lot about, you know, Ken Paxton’s legal problems, a little bit less have heard about the trial.

But that was part of a larger battery where we asked about a number of Things that were kind of going on at the time to see, and really it was really in some ways we’re interested individually why, you know, how much people are paying attention, but we were also really interested just to see, relatively speaking, where does the trial kind of land in terms of, you know, where people’s attention are.

And I mean, I think it’s kind of interesting is, you know, it’s kind of, it’s sort of near the bottom, right? So, you know, 31 percent said they’d heard a lot about the legal problems of Ken Paxton, 28 percent said they’d heard a lot about the impeachment and trial. Well, you know, the legal problems with Donald Trump, 69%, you know, Texas’s placement of buoys and barbed wire at the border, 45%.

Importantly, the legal problems of Hunter Biden, 44%. When we look at Republicans alone,

[00:28:45] Jim Henson: well, also, you know, we can’t not add the next item on that list. I don’t think overall we get to even say the problems of just us, Supreme court, justice, Clarence Thomas,

[00:28:53] Josh Blank: 35 percent more even on that, the sort of ongoing story, but, you know.

Two times the share of Republicans have heard a lot about Hunter Biden’s legal problems, and have heard a lot about Ken Paxson’s legal problems. Twice the number. So I mean, just, so I think, you know, it’s one of those things. So first and foremost, we have to say, okay, we don’t even know how much like people are paying attention.

It’s possible that with the beginning, with the commencement of the trial, the increased attention to the fact that it’s leading local news right now, I think that’s going to have some impact, at least on terms of people’s attention to this. But then the next piece of this is like, what if this gets through?

I mean, you and I are insane. I mean, like we’re sitting here, we’ve got our earbuds in, we’re walking around and surrounded, you know,

[00:29:27] Jim Henson: we’re surrounded by other insane by other insane people for much

[00:29:30] Josh Blank: of our day. Yeah, exactly. No, I mean, you all, I say this with the most affection I can possibly muster it for all of us, right?

I feel bad for us maybe. But the thing is, you know, we’re sitting here watching this argument talking about the split screen and then it’s interesting to kind of wake up the next day and look at kind of what the press sweep looks like. That from this, and it depends on where you look and, you know, to see what, what is getting picked up at.

I mean, your point, you know, the word coup is getting, you know, got thrown around. I mean, that made it through, but to the extent that like, you know, the defense is spending a certain portion of its time now, partially to burn time, but also in reality, in an effort to basically. Create a message for very conservative Republican primary voters about what’s going on here to then as a bank shot, put pressure back on, you know, those senators who may be concerned about a primary challenge next time around.

That’s a, I mean, it’s like, you know, someone who works in public opinion and communicates like that’s a pretty heavy lift.

[00:30:24] Jim Henson: Yeah. There’s a lot of fill, you know, you’re, you’re passing through a lot of

[00:30:27] Josh Blank: filters. And the other thing, you’re passing through a lot of filters. And I also suspect that the types of voters that we’re talking about who are already paying a lot of attention to this probably have their minds made up.

Yes, right. And

[00:30:37] Jim Henson: so, well, you know, look, our, the polling in this poll illustrated

[00:30:41] Josh Blank: that. Yeah, exactly. When you look at, when you look at the most conservative voters in the electorate, you know, it’s much more support for Ken Paxton. And then you look at sort of, you know, leading conservative versus sort of just, you know, somewhat conservative.

So the people who describe themselves as extremely conservative are significantly more supportive of packs and significantly more dubious of the charges. But I think those people, you know, for the most part, I don’t think the trial is, is likely to shift their views dramatically.

[00:31:02] Jim Henson: But, you know, but I think one of the other interesting things about that too, Josh, is that, even among, and it’s one of the things that makes it very hard for us to call and very hard, I think, for the senators.

I don’t feel sorry for them. They’re senators, but it, you know, for the Republican senators, there were not a trivial share of those extreme conservative or strong Republicans who are still reserving judgment. Yep. And that’s the, you know, that’s, I think, the huge. Problem, right? That is definitely the huge problem.

For the, for, if you’re trying to, you know, keep your eye and look again, inherently political process, you have elected officials, it’s baked into the process, they are going to be having an eye on their electorate. Absolutely. And there’s nothing, you know, again, there’s nothing quote unquote wrong

[00:31:43] Josh Blank: with that.

No, but again, it does come back to this whole notion of, you know, I would, you know, I don’t know. I mean, I mean, we’re just watching. I think it’s going to be interesting to say, I don’t know. I think it’s going to be interesting to see whether the defenses. Effort to shape, you know, a different narrative about what is going on, the extent to which that gains traction both within the Republican electorate, within the most conservative elements of the Republican electorate, and then within the broader, you know, the broader electorate, just out of curiosity.

But again, there’s sort of that piece of it. I mean, to me, like, that’s, that’s the difficulty with the strategies is for that to work. It’s going to have to have an effect on a pretty broad effect on the public, which is in turn going to put pressure on the senators. At the same time, without that effect, it just sort of might irritate the senators, you know, more than anything, which, and again, look, is that, is that relevant?

Yes, I think it is relevant. I mean,

[00:32:33] Jim Henson: and to the extent that the, the, and we’ll use this as a transition to talk for a few minutes before we go about the poll, but I, this is a very narrow casted message, but I’ve talked to a lot of reporters this week who are. Really want to get to the bottom of why people aren’t paying attention, why more people aren’t paying attention now, as we’ve said in here, I think we covered this pretty extensively last week, but just to add something to that, there are a lot of different parts of that, several of which we’ve mentioned today, but in the latest poll, which we published today, item 22 is the battery is the attention battery, if you will, with all those results that Josh has been talking about.

If you’re looking for a, you know, one Clear grounded explanation for that, you know, that that I often, you know, I think both of us probably tell reporters, look, it’s a very crowded environment out there for people’s attention. Q, do your results to Q 22 really illustrate that? That’s all the stuff you just read.

Yeah. And I think

[00:33:30] Josh Blank: an important thing to there’s, you know, and like, you know, it’s, it’s interesting to say this, but, you know. Maybe on that. I don’t, I mean, I don’t know whether more attention helps or hurts and who exactly, but I mean, but this is where, you know, Donald Trump’s continued presence over everything is kind of important.

I mean, just in the sense of, you know, if you turn on whether it’s Fox news, one America, MSNBC or whatever, you know, his legal problems have been front and center for everybody. And, you know, normally most opinion at it, you know, most of the things of opinion, we measure, we expect Democrats, Republicans look pretty different when we say how much have you heard about the legal problems of Donald Trump.

72 percent of Republicans say a lot, 72 percent of Democrats say a lot. So, you know, the idea that people are going to jump down into sort of state level squabbles, you know, for a lot of people, they just never do that anyway. Well, that’s the other, that’s another piece. And I mean, look, another thing we asked about people, how much attention they were just paying to the legislature.

And only 10 percent said they were paying a lot of legislature, which is pretty normal.

[00:34:19] Jim Henson: Right. So have a look at that. Let’s do a couple of, you know, a couple of things from the poll. So, you know, in terms of timing, We had asked over the last, you know, during the week while the Paxton trial was going in the back half of the week elsewhere in, in Austin, at least, uh, you know, uh, initially, uh, a federal, you know, the federal judge who had been hearing the federal government’s lawsuit against Texas.

You know, calling for them to remove the, the buoys that have been in the Rio Grande River for a couple of months now, I guess, ordered them removed. Now it’s been stays since then. Yeah, well, yeah, that, that order has been stayed in, you know, the last 24, you know, in another 24 hours since then, but we pulled on that and got interesting results.

I thought,

[00:35:04] Josh Blank: yeah, we saw, you know, Slim majority of Texans, uh, supportive of the, you know, basically the place and of these buoys and barbed wire at the borders, 52 support, 40 oppose, you know, this is one of the, this is a much more traditional result. 88 percent of Republicans said that they were in support of deploying these barriers.

74 percent of Democrats were opposed. Independents on balance look basically. Like the middle there, 51 support, 36 oppose. So this is one of those things where, you know, like a lot of things, especially having to do with the border, it’s, it’s incredibly divisive, but it’s incredibly popular with Republican voters.

[00:35:36] Jim Henson: And, and, you know, even though independents are in the middle and, you know, you know, as we say, I mean, the independence move, but generally in these areas, independents tend to look. More a little more like republicans as a group than like democrats. Yeah, I mean, I mean not exactly but you know a bit

[00:35:50] Josh Blank: more Yeah, and I mean to me some of that might be you know I don’t i’m unadvised about whether that has to do with the political predispositions of independence in the state of texas on the one hand or whether that has to do with the you know, basically Continued fumbling of this issue by democrats and sort of the fact that it is a one sided discussion I mean ultimately, you know, I think the thing about these policies is that you know, you may Agree or disagree with the humanitarianists of them.

You may agree or disagree about the effectiveness of them. But if you think that immigration is is a problem of some magnitude at all The state is doing things to seemingly deal with the migration issue And the response, you know of the federal government ultimately is well don’t do that Right. And the question could be, well, what are you doing?

And so I think that’s, you know, I think there’s a, there’s a, there’s an asymmetry here that advantages, you know, again, Republican, we talked about it a lot here. And so I think you see that here too. You know, we

[00:36:38] Jim Henson: have to go into too much, but also, you know, along those lines, and this has also been in the news this week because of the pushback against, frankly, the White House by Eric Adams in New York, who podcast.

Um, you know, you know, in terms of paying to bus for, you know, we asked about, right. You know, supporter opposition for paying to bus foreign migrants awaiting their asylum hearings to other parts of the country outside Texas support was 48 41 with, you know, similar amounts of partisan structure, I

[00:37:10] Josh Blank: think, Yeah, 77 percent of Republicans were in support.

69 percent of Democrats were opposed. And, you know, again, 50 percent of independents in support. So similar. Most of the again, I think the only issue that we only tested, I think, uh, Five different policies. The state’s engaging in right now. And the only one that really saw majority opposition and plurality and majority opposition was the practice of separating men from their families were apprehended crossing the border that had 55 percent opposition.

So that 55 percent of support among Republicans, but almost a third were opposed to that. And we’ve seen stuff like this in the past. You know, once you start kind of messing with the family structure, moving kids around, Okay. You start to get a little, it’s right. You

[00:37:49] Jim Henson: hit, yeah, I think you, you hit a, you get out of this, you know, what is generally a pretty big safe Harbor in this, in this policy area for Republicans.

Now the other, you know, I think the other kind of thing that, uh, result that we got that speaks very much to. debates we saw during the session and, you know, even though it’s kind of receded now because of the trial like everything else has, um, we had an interesting results in a public education battery where we, you know, asked, repeated in pretty close form a list of items that we’ve asked before asking in anticipation of the special session.

Asking how important it was for the legislature to address each of these following issues and we got I don’t know if we should call these surprising or not in some ways. They’re not very surprising, but the, you know, the extremes were a little surprising to me. Maybe. Yeah.

[00:38:42] Josh Blank: So, yeah, I mean, basically, you know, we designed this battery during the session in some ways because there’s so many Topics on the public ed agenda.

I mean, if you really think about, we don’t have to go through it all, but there are a lot of things that they were, you know, they were definitely gonna deal with and they were talking about trying to deal with. And so we asked about, I think, about eight of these to figure out, you know, sort of what is, you know, again, we’re not, we’re not asking people to make a choice versus just how important is it for them to address this?

And, you know, way out front of everything else was school safety. 60 percent of voters said it was extremely important for the legislature to continue addressing school safety. 61 percent of Republicans, 62 percent of Democrats, 60 percent of independents also is extremely important. So that was at the top of the list.

Then you jump down and there’s, you know, basically three that sort of saw about, you know, a little bit, you know, mid forties support in terms of or mid forties saying it was extremely important. Those include parental rights, teacher pay and retention and curriculum. Now, obviously these split more naturally partisan, you know, more republicans said curriculum and parental rights and democrats, more democrats, a teacher paying retention than republicans are basically inverse.

The real I think You know, in some ways, star of this, this battery was, was, was, was what came at the bottom, which was establishing basically a voucher educational savings account or some other type of school choice program in Texas. Only 26 percent of voters said that this was. Extremely important. So less than half who said the same about school safety.

What was also interesting about this now, you know, not surprisingly, Democrats very low. It was the lowest on their list. Only 17 percent of said it was extremely important, but only 34 percent of Republicans said this was extremely important. And you say, well, compared to what? Well, compared to the 65 percent who talked about parental rights, 60 percent who talked about who said the same curriculum, 61 percent who said the same school safety.

So it’s kind of a The middle to bottom of the Republican list of things that they thought the legislature should be focused on when it comes to public ed. Right. So, that’s just an interesting thing to put out there as we move our way

[00:40:30] Jim Henson: forward, you know. And I think it, look, it helps, I think, understand why this is such a fight.

Mm hmm in a state dominated by republicans, right, you know because despite the claims of Advocates for some kind of you know, one of the you know, whatever you want to call it some kind of a you know way of providing public money for You know, for parents to send their kids to private schools. There’s not a consensus among the Republican Party.

I mean, I think and to the extent that there is that we frequently find, you know, with broader measures, a majority saying, Yeah, I support that. I’m fine with that. But it’s, it’s

[00:41:08] Josh Blank: soft. Yeah. We call it, we call it soft support and part of it, you know, looking at soft because we’ve talked about some of these things, but you know, it’s soft because most people don’t have kids in school.

Most people have kids in school aren’t. Looking to send their kids somewhere else because most people who have kids in schools like their public schools big shocker here I mean like just throwing that out there,

[00:41:24] Jim Henson: you know, they may at the same time have expressed less satisfaction Systemically, but they’re look but they’re the things that are their proximate experiences are positive.

No,

[00:41:33] Josh Blank: that’s the thing I mean, you know, we did a large institutional favorability battery with a bunch of different, you know I mean both, you know state and local government the military the police The public schools as well as her business, labor unions, all these other things we did in this poll. It’s notable that when you ask Republicans, you know, they have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of public schools, uh, the plurality have an unfavorable opinion, uh, which I think, you know, in and of itself is like a minute to like step back and think about what’s going on here.

But, you know, when we ask parents and we about, about the public schools, they have significantly more positive opinions when we ask them about their own public schools. Overwhelmingly positive opinions. And that’s sort of where the, the dis, that’s one of the places that the disjuncture comes in here, which is that, you know, the most negative attitudes are coming from people who often are hearing about things for partisan sources about, you know, whatever kind of, you know, indoctrination is going on at the schools, but I don’t think that’s the experience of most people who are connected with it.

And if you ask them, but is this like the most important thing to you, the answer is gonna be no, it’s the border. You know, or something else. And so, or

[00:42:28] Jim Henson: within the public education realm, no, it’s school

[00:42:31] Josh Blank: safety. Yeah. Well, and the other piece of this is just the math of it. And we’ve talked about this a million times, but again, for a rural Republican legislator, you know, can your local school, one of the, or let’s say one of the local schools in your district, can that school accommodate five students formula funding, leaving the school district without losing a teacher and however many classes that teacher teaches and the answer is no.

And

[00:42:53] Jim Henson: added to that now is, you know, and this has been in the news Yeah, a big school, you know, I mean, legislators have heard this because this is not a new result. You know, it’s folded in with a lot of other politics around guns and school and, and mass shootings and those subjects. But you know, the legislature just passed a big school safety bill, but now there is, there are a lot of stories probably that people are seeing in local media where schools are now being required to provide, to increase school safety by.

Providing a school safety officer and they’re having trouble coming up with

[00:43:26] Josh Blank: money for it. Yeah. I mean, it’s really the definition of an unfunded mandate. I mean, and they said, well, we gave school safety, the school safety money that they distributed was like 30, 000 per campus. Is that enough money to hire?

It’s not an FTE. It’s not an FTE. There’s a good thing. We’re at the university. It’s not enough money to hire. Someone who this who is defined by statute as safe and competent to carry a gun around kids all day, right? You know at the 9, 000 plus campuses that you know The Texas has to now apparently stock with an armed guard, but he has not even Texas Texans doing it They pass on the local school district.

So that’s this is the thing here It’s you know, I mean what the stories have been is basically been schools can’t either can’t find people or just can’t afford it right, and so We’ll see how this plays out but I mean, you know, I I sort of I’m not looking forward in any way, shape or form to seeing what, you know, the aftermath is to the next shooting that’s gonna inevitably happen when there’s gonna be a lot of finger pointing about who did or didn’t do what, but also how serious of a response this was given that, you know, they’re not really funding this at the school

[00:44:30] Jim Henson: district level, right?

I think that’s right. And so if you are interested in this, and I know that there are many people that are, again, you can go to the website at texaspolitics. utexas. edu. If you go to the blog section in the polling section of the site, you’ll find a link to graphics of these results and to the summary.

Sheet that has all of this on it. This is a Q 28 on that sheet. There’s us. We’re going to be back next week. We’ll, you know, we’ve talked about inviting a couple of people in everybody’s schedules, kind of scrambled by the trial and, and the various things going on. Still a lot more to talk about in these polling results that we’ll keep.

We also have results on discrimination, uh, on. Our perceptions of, of group discrimination on business, uh, interventions in politics, our usual batch of approval ratings and, and conditions out there, economic, economic perceptions. So I urge you to go and have a look at that at the website. Um, thanks to Josh for being here.

Thanks very much to our crew here in the College of Liberal Arts Development Studio, and thanks to you for listening. And we’ll be back next week on some sort of schedule that accommodates all that’s going on in the world. We’ll talk more about the poll and we’ll keep track of the Paxton trial. So thanks for listening.

And we’ll be back soon. The

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