Jim Henson and Joshua Blank talk about how politics are shaping up as the House makes committee assignments, and the current Big Three position as the session shifts into a higher gear.
00;00;00;09 – 00;00;34;21
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;34;23 – 00;01;04;00
And welcome back to the Second Reading Podcast. I’m Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. Happy to be joined today by Josh plank, research director of the Texas Politics Project. Good morning Josh. Good morning. We’re talking the other day about me listening to other podcasts and one of the podcasts I’ve been listening to, which, you know, I don’t necessarily recommend and I won’t name it at this point, but it’s a one of those TV podcasts, and it’s these two guys in their late 30s, maybe early 40s.
00;01;04;02 – 00;01;20;02
Okay. You know, and the guy who hosts the podcast, and he usually has the guy that the other guy there, the always kind of gives him a big. And today I don’t I don’t want that. It’s a very well you know they they do like TV and you know you’ll be. Yeah I get it. Okay. And a little bit of sports you know.
00;01;20;04 – 00;01;33;26
Yeah I’m glad you don’t. I don’t care about the sport. Well, I’m glad you don’t do any of that. I like the TV thing. Okay? I just wanted to check and make sure, you know, this is planning. This is planning a more rousing theatrical introduction when you’re here. I’m here mostly, so I feel like it’s already too much.
00;01;33;28 – 00;01;48;27
So you just say that for the reset, for the real guests. Okay. All right, fair enough. But, as I was since I was introduced, I was thinking that should I be doing, like, giving Josh a little more, but it’s, you know, it’s pretty. It’s a little. Brody, my little low key. I don’t know if I want. Well, you know, it’s a little bro tastic.
00;01;48;27 – 00;02;25;02
Yeah. So it doesn’t fit. So, as you know, we’ve been kicking things around, and and we did a kind of a big picture, really big picture podcast last week on national and and state interactions and politics. Today it does seem like it’s about time to kind of check back in at a similar level, I think, or a similar level of discussion, at the emerging politics of the legislature as more of the pieces for the operation of the legislature in the session fall into place.
00;02;25;02 – 00;02;47;28
I mean, the the big piece, obviously, is the piece we’re always waiting for, you know, as we get into February, you know, and that is House committee assignments having been made there are in place. So today it’s kind of a take stock right. You know, where are we. How are things looking. Legislation is beginning to move. I saw a I’m not I’m sure it’s on line by now.
00;02;47;28 – 00;03;08;23
Although doesn’t legally have to be. But yeah, a huge number of committee hearings next week. Yeah, right. So the committees are, you know, the count the calendar is moving, chomping at the bit. Right. And, you know, and it’s time it’s, you know, it’s a time given the constitutional requirements etc.. But things are moving now. It’s just a lot.
00;03;08;25 – 00;03;24;09
You know, we’re we’re through the phase of your walking over there going, okay, legislatures and session. But there’s not a lot going on. Yeah. And we’ll get into this I think as we talk. But it’s one of those things where I mean, you know, you’re sort of forced into a lot of speculation early on. And it’s the sort of thing where, you know, you say, well, do committee assignments really like matters like, well, yeah.
00;03;24;10 – 00;03;45;09
Because ultimately, you know, you can imagine different scenarios or different committee assignments. It would send very different signals, potentially, you know, depending on who who’s a chair, who’s not chair. Yeah, I mean, you know, this is like some basic stuff. And I mean, I think, you know, you’re in the same place where it’s, you know, there’s it’s almost like, I don’t know, I guess it’s almost like a little bit of silly season up like up until this point, because there’s a lot of like, well, somebody filed a bill.
00;03;45;10 – 00;04;02;00
It’s like, yeah, a lot of people are filing bills. Yeah. I mean, I think it’s a, it’s a, it’s a function. I mean, I would say two comments on that one. Yeah. The function of media coverage of reporters kind of looking around for stories to write. Yeah. Or editors look, to be fair, editors looking for stories to assign to reporters who may or may not really want to write them.
00;04;02;11 – 00;04;17;17
You know, the part of it, the you know, I guess the other thing I was going to comment on is that obviously inside the process, there’s a reason everybody waits for committee assignment because it does matter a lot if you’re working in the process, even if that’s not entirely apparent to people, to civilians if you will.
00;04;17;17 – 00;04;34;01
And, you know, the, the people in the outside world, it’s like we’re it’s we’re actually getting into the discussion was like, there’s a lot of ways in which the speaker doesn’t have power and hasn’t have the ability to control the process in the House. But one of the ways in which the speaker does have a lot of power and his team has a lot of power is in these committee assignments, right.
00;04;34;01 – 00;04;55;10
And there are seniority assignments that people make request. But the speaker has a huge amount of discretion. So so that that gets us let’s just, you know, let’s just start with this as the starting point. How do how can we read the state of play in the House right now, which has been a matter of course, of intense speculation and, and intense politics over the last decade, really.
00;04;55;10 – 00;05;14;02
But, especially in the last couple of years, you know, the house has been the site of so much drama and so much conflict. So we start with these major tea leaves and the committee assignments. I don’t think there were a lot of I don’t think people saw a lot of big surprises here. I didn’t see anything that was super surprising.
00;05;14;04 – 00;05;42;29
You know, the people that were busted from committee chairs were the people we expected to see busted from committee chairs. I think the interesting chair assignments are those who opposed Phelan speakership wound up with chairs. But for the most part, I’m sorry that opposed the speakership, wound up with committee chairs, but for the most part were busted downward.
00;05;42;29 – 00;06;02;21
They weren’t completely busted. They weren’t removed from their chairmanships. But they have, you know, lesser they have lesser chairs. And other people were slotted in there, as the politics require. Yeah. I mean, it’s an interesting dynamic, I think, because, you know, and it really does speak to the, you know, I won’t say uniqueness of the house because it’s not the uniqueness of the house.
00;06;02;21 – 00;06;21;14
It’s the uniqueness of a large body that needs to come to majority. Conclusion. The nature of the thing. Yeah. The nature of the thing itself. And so I think, you know, on the one hand, it’s sort of not surprising because you sort of say, okay, you know, Burrows comes out of really what have been the consistent leadership circles in the House over the last decade plus.
00;06;21;14 – 00;06;35;16
Right. And so him bringing back in some of those people, not not all of them, but some of them back into the fold, into leadership positions is sort of doing two things. One, it reflects where he came from. It also reflects some of the criticisms of feel in elevating some people who maybe weren’t ready. I mean, we’ll get to this.
00;06;35;16 – 00;06;51;08
But he even admitted himself maybe that there were some people that he elevated to chairs. Maybe he shouldn’t have. Right? Yeah. But the one thing that sort of is sitting out there is a big kind of hedge against looking at this is like, well, you know, who you know, who got elevated and who got dinged is the fact that, you know, a lot of Republicans did not vote for Burrows.
00;06;51;10 – 00;07;07;21
And so ultimately there is a limit, you know, in addition to the seniority appointments, which are a big part of this, right, which did insulate a lot of people who, you know, I think there’s some people have to get name names or there are people who can go out, be pretty loud, be pretty kind of, you know, contrary to Burrows, and still get on some pretty good committees because they’ve got seniority appointments.
00;07;07;21 – 00;07;28;07
But also Burrows can’t just sit there and say, well, you know, you the majority of Republicans who didn’t vote for me for speaker, we’re just you’re just going to be on all are going to be on bad committees like one. That’s not possible, but two, it’s not functionally good politics. And I think that politics of that they were not going to be able to punish everybody that didn’t vote for the speaker.
00;07;28;07 – 00;07;55;19
Right. So it’s not surprising that to see something like real big drastic shifts in the dynamics, right? Yeah. And I, you know, Harvey Kornberg had a piece in the quorum report. Taking stock of the Burrow’s speakership that was included some some good insights. I thought, in terms of observing the return of some more senior members that had not been as central during the feeling speakership.
00;07;56;28 – 00;08;31;27
Here we can name some names. Charlie Geren back as chair of House administration, Todd Hunter moved from state affairs to calendars. A couple of good examples. Guerin, especially because Hunter had not wasn’t out of the fold and has characteristically, I think, managed this transition very well and finds himself with a another, good spot here, which is, you know, interesting and indicative of the chairman’s career to some extent, I think, and some people held in place Jeff Leach.
00;08;32;00 – 00;08;59;09
Yeah, a couple others. But I think the institutional piece of this is very interesting as a, as a resettling of the house. And we talked about this briefly also some of, of some of the things that have been getting a lot of attention internally mentioned in some of the press coverage, but it’s pretty inside baseball. The appointment of former Senator Bob Duncan as chief of staff, perhaps even more so in some ways, to my mind.
00;08;59;11 – 00;09;36;28
Sure. Tracy King, as, somebody refer to him as alleged director, I think he’s mainly in charge of member relations. You know, here’s somebody, you know, Tracy King is somebody both well-liked in the chamber, by and large, I think, and well respected as somebody who knows how to work the floor. Yeah. And in this age in which there seems to be a growing tendency of members to be more focused on what they’re doing on social media than what they’re doing on the floor, in a lot of cases, or at least the relative weight.
00;09;37;01 – 00;10;07;23
Yeah, of what we could politely call their communications efforts and their actual legislating, leans more towards the communicating, than toward the legislating. Tracy King is an interesting choice in that, in that respect. And I think, you know, you and I talked about this before we went to an event last week, week before, in which, Dave feeling was the something of an exit interview with Evan Smith at the LBJ school.
00;10;07;26 – 00;10;35;28
If we could kick this around. I thought he was reasonably frank. Yeah, I thought he was very about things. Yeah. And he did say when asked whether what he might do differently. Yeah. He talked about the small decisions rather than the big ones. And he mentioned committee chairs and committee assignments as things that you try and you give it a sort of, well, maybe this will work and we’ll give this a shot and then really regretting some of those decisions.
00;10;35;28 – 00;11;00;02
And I’m not speaking out of court. I mean, he said that in public. I don’t think the I think the event was recorded, if it is and there were reporters there, those but there were reporters there. So it was reported on. I thought that was an interesting comment on this theme of how important these things are, but also the politics of managing the house as an institution on a day to day level, and how complicated the politics can be.
00;11;00;05 – 00;11;18;14
Yeah. You know, I think it ties those two things together really well that we’re talking about here, though, in some sense, which is that I think, you know, after a year plus it or more or whatever, whatever period you want to put on it of of infighting among Republicans, it’s real easy to sort of come to this point and again, want to want to see who are the victors.
00;11;18;14 – 00;11;34;01
And again, which is sort of, I mean, obviously premature because of the fact we’re at the beginning of a legislative session. Right. And so we kind of we have to wait and see. So this idea of like sort of winners and losers and what does this mean for the GOP coalition and all that kind of business. But, you know, at the end of the day, right, when it comes down to it, it’s like we’ve talked about this on here before.
00;11;34;05 – 00;11;49;12
There’s a lot of criticism about like how the house was managed, right, how, you know, you know, who was put in chairs, whether they were ready to be chairs under feeling how the parliamentarians handled things. And essentially this was about the management of the House. And so I think in all of this, what you see this has been feeling was talking to us.
00;11;49;12 – 00;12;05;05
And yeah, you know, you know, the big thing, I mean, like, I don’t regret impeaching Paxton, even though that was this huge political thing that had a bunch of consequences. Don’t necessarily regret what happened on vouchers, but I regret some of my chair appointments. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Which is you know, which is kind of a remarkable thing when you, when you think about it.
00;12;05;05 – 00;12;22;11
But when you look at again what Burrows seems to be bringing to this and the idea of bringing in, you know, old hands of like the process, you know, capital letters, right? That tells you something about what’s going on here. And it does sort of speak to us, I think, when we talk about a lot, which is sort of.
00;12;22;13 – 00;12;40;29
Yeah, that I think, you know, the institutional standing, right, in terms of the fact of, you know, where the House sits vis-a-vis the lieutenant governor and the Senate and the governor, and whether they’re going to be in a position of subservience and reaction or whether they’re going to be something else, I want to see something else, because the opposite of that isn’t necessarily conflict or attack or on offense or whatever.
00;12;41;04 – 00;13;06;06
But essentially, I think one of the things that they don’t want is the criticism that they’re not getting off to work, that they’re not taking these issues seriously. They’re not bringing things up for a vote that is not being run well. They’re trying to get that done with. Yeah. And I think that speaks to also, this is one of the thing potentially things that strengthens the institution itself because you have so many new members now coming in who aren’t attached to essentially a smooth functioning process.
00;13;06;06 – 00;13;28;09
And you have people who have been there for a little bit who aren’t attached to a smooth functioning process. And this is really, I think, in a lot of ways, when I look at all I see, you’re really, you know, you’re not trying to go and settle scores, you’re trying to sort of say, we’re going to run this place efficiently and well, I think that is that was part of the message they were trying to convey going into this and with and what they want to convey going forward.
00;13;28;09 – 00;13;54;05
But they have baggage, right? Yeah. Dustin Burrows has baggage. I mean, less than. And this was another thing that I thought, Harvey Cronenberg integrated well or was wise to mention in his piece that let’s not forget that for all the talk about resettling and moving forward. And Burrows was a big part of the intraparty conflict that blew up the Dennis spawn and Speaker speakership.
00;13;54;05 – 00;14;23;13
Right. And, you know, wherever you land on the argument made, probably most prominently and most publicly by the lieutenant governor, that there is, well, to use the lieutenant governor’s word, and I would not use this myself, but a click or a group of people that are still tied to the ins and Burrows was part of that. And Burrows was very much, you know, on the ground at the meeting that ultimately led to the end of the of the Dennis spawn and speakership.
00;14;23;15 – 00;14;43;01
This is an interesting branch to grow from that route. So. So, yeah. And yet here we are. Yeah. As we think about the house, the mood and tone of the house, I think is still not quite settled. As somebody said, look, the mood and tone of the house is never settled. It’s the nature of the house, as you were saying.
00;14;43;03 – 00;15;05;20
But we are seeing what some of what the pattern is going to look like. We’re seeing some of the people that were opposed to the speakership. Now routinely now opposing it. The back mike, fairly routine motions like the motion to adjourn for longer than three days, things like this. You got objections and questions from the floor on that.
00;15;05;20 – 00;15;28;25
But it feels to me like thus far, yeah, that’s been pretty low key. Now, another big piece of that puzzle fell out today or overnight when we saw the school choice bill that’s going to be championed, presumably by the House Brad Buckley. That bill became public over overnight. As we sit here on Thursday morning. Long bill, I’ve not read it all.
00;15;28;25 – 00;15;52;10
It’s different than that. I suffice to say, it’s different than the House bill or different than the Senate bill. And that is going that is another big piece of the puzzle going forward in terms of both what the mood in the legislature is going to look like, what the relations between the House and the Senate are going to look like, and frankly, how fast that voucher, the voucher issue is going to ripen and move through the process.
00;15;52;10 – 00;16;14;29
And I, you know, I don’t know. Yeah, I don’t have any speculation on that at this point. But it does look at first glance like that bill is different enough from the Senate bill, that this bill will not move as fast as I think some people had hoped and thought it might, and that we’ve said all along that or I’d said, anyway, I don’t know that everybody agreed with this, but that there were political benefits.
00;16;14;29 – 00;16;35;07
And other people have said this. I mean, this came up in the last pat thing I did with a bunch of reporters that there was some political benefit that if you’re going to move voucher bill, move it fast, right. I don’t know that what I’ve seen of that bill so far. And I’m being careful because I haven’t gone through it all is is going to work in the service of that.
00;16;35;10 – 00;16;50;22
Yeah. And there’s a lot to be unpack there. And I don’t want to I don’t want to get over my skis on it. Yeah I mean I think the, I mean without getting over our skis, I mean, the main sort of difference that obviously brought us into this dynamic is the fact that it’s going to tie the voucher dollar amount to the amount going to kids in the public education system.
00;16;50;22 – 00;17;02;00
So essentially, if you want to increase the amount of the voucher, you’re going to have to increase the amount that you’re the basic allotment. Right. And so that’s a big deal. I mean just to just to say I mean, you know, and I think, you know, it’s sort of easy to I think it’d be easy on the outside.
00;17;02;00 – 00;17;14;27
I’ll bring this back to the house. And I know you don’t like every excuse. I don’t either. So I’ll bring it back quick. It’s easy to sort of understate, you know what that means, but I think they’ve tied that with an increase in the basic allotment, which would be, you know, you you’d say, well, this is a, you know, whatever you want to call it.
00;17;15;00 – 00;17;31;03
The Senate’s proposing a $10,000 voucher. The House is saying they want to increase the basic allotment by a couple hundred bucks. But the thing is, a couple hundred bucks times the number of public schools in Texas is a lot of money. Yeah. And so what that says to me, though, is that, you know, as much as the Senate can go and just move a bill that’s a straight voucher bill, say this has nothing to do with public education.
00;17;31;03 – 00;17;45;16
It’s not attached whatever. And just throw it to the house. It’s clear in this initial bill that they feel like they need to do something to be strengthening public ed while doing this, which tells you, again, there’s still a lot to go on. Yeah, I was thinking in political terms, this is much more public school friendly. Bill. Yes.
00;17;45;16 – 00;18;05;14
In an atmosphere in which everybody, I think feels like there’s going to be, you know, there’s going to be a choice bill or an essay bill of some sort. And there’s that inevitability floating around, I think, with this and I think, you know, and that’s, that’s I think that’s important because I think that is affecting the dynamics here, which is to the extent that the House is trying to, you know, run itself more efficiently, is trying to move on the priorities.
00;18;05;17 – 00;18;22;26
I think the other thing about this, and we’ll get to the other players here is, you know, I mean, one thing I’ve noticed about Abbott since he joined the governorship is each session he’s approached it a little bit differently. And his style and his approach and his tone, and in a way that really shows it like he’s learned, you know, something you can kind of look at it and say, okay, that that didn’t work this session, and now he’s doing this.
00;18;22;26 – 00;18;36;25
But that makes perfect sense if you look at it kind of over the arc of time. And I wonder if we’re not witnessing. So you can’t tell to results done. But I wonder if we’re not witnessing something similar with Patrick in this moment in that, you know, for Patrick sort of sitting there and kind of being authoritarian towards the House and saying, just pass the bill, here’s the bill.
00;18;36;25 – 00;18;51;23
It’s good. What’s your problem? Hasn’t worked capital six times. Whatever hasn’t work. And so maybe this is the time to, you know, let the House pass a bill. And we were talking with us yesterday. If the House can get a bill to the floor, it’s probably going to pass because it’s just not worth it, you know, to a lot of Republicans to oppose this.
00;18;51;26 – 00;19;07;06
And if they issue the impact of the primary, while it’s both it’s not worth it to the resistors and their their numbers are smaller and their numbers because of the interventions in the right, it makes the cost of being the one holdout or the two holdouts that much higher at the same time. If they get a bill to conference committee.
00;19;07;08 – 00;19;30;17
I think, you know, the the likelihood of that bill get passing when it comes back in whatever form, they can get it back in if they can, very high for the same reasons. And, but, but the only way that this has to happen sooner than later. But but that’s where it gets tricky, I think in terms of I don’t think anybody knows where that breaking point is now I know which is, you know, often the case, but particularly important here.
00;19;30;17 – 00;19;53;07
I would also say on that part of the over determination of this was a story. It’s a good round up today and it’s not very long, but it’s nice and pithy. Bar in the in Texas Tribune by James Polygon and just for sheer about the national influence is now seeping into now again amplified by Donald Trump’s.
00;19;53;09 – 00;20;16;16
Yeah intervention and all this and his where he’s at now whole. So a whole other subject. But it speaks to why there is this feeling of inevitability about it, despite the technical difficulties and these gray areas about where you can really land when the rubber meets the road. So all of this really does move us to where the governor is and all this.
00;20;16;19 – 00;20;37;28
So that’s the other kind of big check in, I think, for our taking stock is how is the governor positioning and all this. Now there’s been a lot of interest and I think for good reason in Abbott’s aggressiveness on social media recently, or the aggressiveness of Governor Abbott’s Twitter account. Anyway, whether it’s him or not, I don’t know.
00;20;38;15 – 00;20;55;29
And that’s not casting aspersion and lots of casting aspersions. Lots of politicians don’t run their own Twitter accounts that are very direct about it. I mean, that feeling when we went back to the feeling thing, feeling was very straight about going. And he obviously had a point that he was making here. Yeah, he was making a bigger point here.
00;20;55;29 – 00;21;33;01
But to the immediate point, he was saying, I don’t pay much attention to Twitter. I don’t operate my own account. So I don’t know. I don’t even know really what’s going on. That thing. Whatever. That’s a little bit stylized, but not too far from not far from how he how he handled that, that subject. But the focus of the Abbott aggressiveness has been that he was he spent a lot of time, I guess, earlier this week and late last week, being very sharp and pointed with Democrats that were opposed to vouchers that had and to voucher opposition on the Democratic side, singled out a couple of members for some kind of nasty comments, kind
00;21;33;01 – 00;21;46;22
of made fun of Mary Gonzalez’s. Yeah. No, I mean, I mean, look, he was being rude. I mean, like, towards them, it was pretty aggressive. I mean, it was a I mean, it wasn’t like, you know, I mean, sharp would be like, you know, your ideas are stupid. I mean, rude is like, you’re stupid, which is basically what it was.
00;21;46;22 – 00;22;10;29
So I think I think that’s fair and and but but I think it speaks to a couple of things about where we are in the trajectory. Probably the read of the politics. There was, you know, some speculation in some of the newsletters about the degree of coordination this might, signal among the big three who are now apparently having breakfast again, at least for now.
00;22;10;29 – 00;22;55;21
It’s cetera. And I you know, I don’t know that that’s here nor there as we were. We were talking earlier this week privately. There’s a certain amount of structural over determination at this point, and that clearly Abbott had a significant degree of success in his intervention at a fairly unprecedented scale in the modern period. Anyway, in the Republican era, in Republican primaries against seated Republican House members, it makes sense to pivot a little bit right now, given conditions, given institutional process, given timing towards just focusing mostly on hard core voucher opponents, on to make this more of a Partizan fight rather than an intra party fight, which has been the way it is really manifested
00;22;55;21 – 00;23;14;03
for the most part of the last 18 months, two years. And it allows him to kind of reposition himself as the leader of the party, you know, not publicly fighting with Republicans for the most part. And I think it does reflect, to some degree, Abbott’s strength right now what a waste a lot of ways to gauge that.
00;23;14;14 – 00;23;39;04
Part of it is this national profile piece that comes back to this not so much on this issue, but other things immigration and border, the border with the Trump administration. But domestically, you know, he is clearly in very good shape with his base and with the public. Yeah. When we look at, you know, the just the numbers from December, you know, among the overall all registered voters, 55% approve of the job Abbott’s done, only 34% disapproved.
00;23;39;04 – 00;24;04;03
I believe that was an all time high for him among Republicans. He was 83. Approve, eight disapprove. The only person even close to that we don’t have approval yet was favorability for Trump, which was 93 for among Republicans, 5439 overall. But if you look at the other big players, I mean, especially Patrick Abbott, again, 5534 approve disapprove. Patrick, 4127 among Republicans, 61 approve, eight disapprove, as opposed to Abbott has 83 approve.
00;24;04;05 – 00;24;23;21
So it, you know, stands out there above and beyond, even when we look at you of like someone like Ted Cruz weighing in on the voucher fight, you know, 78% of Republicans approve the job he’s doing, 10% disapprove. He’s at 49, 37. So Abbott has an a just a relatively very strong position somewhere between, let’s say, Trump and Cruz and the GOP orbit, which is pretty good.
00;24;23;23 – 00;24;40;05
I think. You know, the thing you were saying there that’s interesting is this idea of like, you know, dessert, you know, does there need to be an agreement or anything? Part of it is like, you know, it’s always good to remember, like, these guys are all pretty successful politicians, right? They don’t just sort of like I mean, I, you know, let me actually back up one step.
00;24;40;07 – 00;24;53;27
I think in the era that we’re in right now, it’s very easy to look at a politician’s actions and sort of view it through kind of the lens of Trump in a lot of ways, which is sort of it’s a shoot from the hip. Trust your instincts, you know, fight like hell and then, you know, see what happens, right?
00;24;53;27 – 00;25;12;28
Right. Most politicians are not like that. Most politicians are very calculated, very considerate. And one of the things, you know, you can say is that running around and stomping your feet and spending a bunch of money against people is a way to show power. But it doesn’t necessarily show strength, right. I think the point they’re at right now, everybody’s interests are aligned, right?
00;25;12;28 – 00;25;32;04
Patrick has always wanted to pass a voucher. Bill Abbott does not want to go into 2026, a midterm with Trump in the white House having a big fight going on amongst Republicans or looking like they’re ineffective, like they can’t, you know, again, achieve their goals in the legislature. But the thing is, is that it’s actually doesn’t require him to go in there, run around saying, like, you guys have to do this, you guys have to do that.
00;25;32;04 – 00;25;48;00
That’s a weak bill. Whatever. Everybody’s interests are aligned. So just let them let everybody just come into alignment together. And I think that’s kind of where we’re at at this point. And again Patrick’s been pretty quiet. We can talk about him too. But he hasn’t been out there trying to like hammer the house after at least after. We’ll get to this.
00;25;48;05 – 00;26;02;25
He’s been quiet in this in this lane. Yeah. And this lane. And I think part of that is like, you know, you don’t need to do anything right now. Everybody’s moving in the same direction. You can see that Burroughs has made that very clear. He showed up with Abbott to the to the school choice event at the end of that week of sort of tweets and missives.
00;26;02;25 – 00;26;17;26
He showed up at the school choice event and said, hey, you know, I’m for this. We’re going to do this. So nobody needs to, like, nobody’s to run out in front and try to be the guy who’s like, I did this for you at this point, right? Because nobody’s done anything yet. And there’ll be plenty of time to do that, plenty of time to do that.
00;26;17;26 – 00;26;50;28
I think you raised an interesting point here. That is good to remember that we’re not we’re not talking about rookies here. Right? Patrick and Abbott have now been both been in their offices for a decade. It was not their first office. Right. It’s always an interesting way of thinking about institutions. To think also about the degree to which experience helps people manage those institutions and manage their behavior and their strategy inside that.
00;26;51;00 – 00;27;15;00
And I think that probably contributes to this notion. You know, I word I shouldn’t use structural over determination, but that’s that’s what that really that’s part of that. People have a pretty shrewd understanding of the environment they’re functioning in what the institutional rhythms are, what the political rhythms are, and the successful ones that stay there manage that well.
00;27;15;00 – 00;27;31;04
And the ones that don’t wind up getting moved out in one way or another. Yeah. Against their will. Right. And I think, you know, and going over sort of you know, Abbott’s really sort of aggressive positioning last week. I agree with everything you say about, you know, the way it kind of repositions the fight, it repositions himself in the party.
00;27;31;06 – 00;27;44;26
Yeah. But also and this is where I will go back, you know, it does I mean, you know, it was hard not to look at sort of the, again, the pointed ness, borderline sort of rudeness of some of the comments like, well, you already said it was rude. What was I mean, you can’t go back to the borderline now.
00;27;44;27 – 00;28;09;23
Well, yeah. It’s true. Okay. The rudeness of it. Right. And not feel like it’s a little bit performative, right. Because, you know, there were a lot of people were like, oh, this isn’t like Abbott who’s, you know, I mean, there’s people saying, oh, who do you give a social media over to or whatever? It’s like, you know, in the world we’re in right now where, you know, one of the big values, at least to the person who matters most, was Donald Trump, is to have Republicans who are willing to go out and take the fight to people in the way that he would.
00;28;09;25 – 00;28;22;16
Abbott’s, you know, doing it right. And I think, you know, to the, you know, one other piece I’ll just mention, because you mentioned this before, you know, this idea that there’s this national pressure coming in. So one thing is like, you know, everybody’s got skin in the game. Now. Abbott’s going out. He’s putting the pressure on Trump’s come out Cruz is going to.
00;28;22;18 – 00;28;36;07
But I think part of that too. And this speaks back to the other piece of this. We were saying that, you know, the House bills a lot more public education friendly. There’s obviously more that needs to be done to bring people along. But absent those national voices, and given the polling that we’ve done, that just shows that most people are not really paying attention to vouchers.
00;28;36;09 – 00;28;51;01
Who are they hearing from in their district? Public school teachers, the district people and the people who are generally probably against vouchers. Right. Those are the people that they’ve always been hearing from. If you’re in a rural Republican district, right, you’re still hearing from them. It’s like those people disappeared or they’re not still saying, hey, this is going to hurt the school district.
00;28;51;03 – 00;29;08;22
And so in some ways, what I, what I hear and that is, yeah, these national voices have to come in to balance out the conversations that are going on right now. And again, that speaks, may I say like, yes, I do think there’s an inevitability around this, but it doesn’t mean there’s not a lot of noise. Also, at this point in time and like thing in the presence of Trump, the presence of Cruz doesn’t mean that this is like a done deal.
00;29;08;22 – 00;29;25;12
And I guess I’m not trying to take you against the person who actually made this argument, which I thought was stupid when I. I shouldn’t say that either. I don’t think it’s a good argument. I read it, but there’s a representative who made this argument that basically this show that they actually don’t have the votes. I don’t think that’s true, but I think it shows it’s not as much of an obvious slam dunk as maybe even I would have thought.
00;29;25;15 – 00;29;45;02
And so let’s try to look at this a little bit more now that we have a House bill. Yeah, I mean, I think it brings into line with the conventional almost the reflex excessive kind of just go to qualifier that’s been present for the last few months is it’s probably going to pass, but it’s still not going to be easy.
00;29;45;04 – 00;30;02;16
And we don’t know what the details are going to be. You know hard for that to be wrong. Yeah. But or you know, and unless something doesn’t pass. But what is it a long time ago and I still hold this is like last session. It was like, well what’s the vehicle going to look like? Because I think there’s a lot of conflict thinking about, you know, what the vehicle could look like.
00;30;02;23 – 00;30;19;18
And I think, you know, there’s probably a wider range of acceptable outcomes now because of the change in the makeup, because of the cost of opposition, so on and so forth. The vote count. The vote count. Yeah, just it’s changed. Having said that, it doesn’t mean that that question has been answered as to what the vehicle is that’s going to, you know, satisfy everybody enough.
00;30;19;20 – 00;30;40;19
You can’t pass any old damn thing. You can’t just pass any old damn thing. That’s right. You know. So let’s, let’s, let’s finish up by just talking then about the, the perpetual question over the last forever, really, but a pronouncement that is what is the state of play among the big three. And I mentioned this earlier, or referred to it.
00;30;40;21 – 00;31;21;04
You laid the groundwork for this, you know. Well, in terms of it’s been an interesting it’s been interesting to watch. Of course, the adjustment to a new speaker, the outcome of the speaker fight, the way that people weighed in or did not weigh in during the period of, of the quote unquote, speaker’s race. On one hand, it does seem, in part because Burroughs is known to have voted for vouchers in the past, but on the other hand, still wants to be the speaker and still seems to have some degree of interest in maintain ING the position of the House, vis-a-vis the Senate, and Vis-a-vis Dan Patrick.
00;31;21;10 – 00;31;46;02
But it does seem, all things being equal, that right now everybody’s playing reasonably nice. Yeah. And an interesting part of this has been Abbott’s been on the upswing. And again part of that is the normal rhythm of these things. The governor’s power rises and falls. So this is public power in particular. But his influence over the process rises and falls during a session.
00;31;46;04 – 00;32;24;18
The baseline of that is probably gone a little higher as the governor has gotten more powerful. But the governor in the governor’s office. So both Abbott in the office, and so I think it’s to be expected that Abbott is still looming large, amplified by the things we’ve talked about. And it has seemed that after being pretty vocal about opposing the speakership, the lieutenant governor has not been as aggressive towards as publicly aggressive toward the House, certainly towards the speaker, etc..
00;32;24;21 – 00;32;46;11
And we were talking a few days ago about the degree to which the governor had that, that was kind of noticeable in that way. Now, I don’t want to say, you know, he will hear from people, but saying that Dan Patrick gave it up or somehow weaker or anything like that, now this is the his public profile in attacking his public attacks on the House.
00;32;46;14 – 00;33;15;25
The volume had been turned down a bit. And that’s not to zero, because if you’re watching the floor action of the Senate right now and there’s not a lot going on, but if you do watch it, you know, you do see the Senate governor still routinely interjecting in the floor debate to say, excuse me, sir, I just want to add that we passed this four times, etc., etc., and the House chose not to do it, but the Senate has been on this, etc..
00;33;15;25 – 00;33;33;26
Right. And, you know, that’s to be expected, I think if you’re not expecting that from Lieutenant Governor Patrick, now you’re not paying attention. You know, one of the things Phelan said at the event that that really stood out to me was he pointed out the way that, you know, Patrick sort of last, you know, really open, you know, I think attack on the House and leadership was sort of right after Burrows was elected.
00;33;33;27 – 00;33;50;19
He criticized him and criticized the process and all that and feel his response to that, I thought, was pretty interesting because he said, look, give the guy a chance. You know, basically in a different context. Look, he’s more conservative than me. He’s the right guy for for right now. And, you know, give the guy a chance. And I think there’s actually something I mean, sort of a very, you know, plain kind of argument.
00;33;50;19 – 00;34;11;14
But actually, I do think there’s an aspect to it which say, like, okay, so Joe Strauss, the speaker, you were fighting with him. Great. Okay. Dennis Barnhardt Speaker you’re fighting with him. Great. You know, okay. You’re fighting with me. Great. Now, the new guy’s literally just elected five minutes ago. Who’s the problem? Yeah. And I think, you know, there’s a there’s a piece to that, which I think is pretty fair.
00;34;12;00 – 00;34;26;01
And I think at some point, you know, well-received among House members. Yeah. And well-received among House members. But I think the other thing, and I’ve said this before, too, you know, I think Patrick honestly cares about passing a voucher bill. I think he like like he’s not I mean, he’s made very clear in multiples, like he’s not going to be in office that much longer.
00;34;26;01 – 00;34;42;26
He only has so many more shots at this policy that he has literally championed. And we’re not assuming he’s not running again, even given that even another full term, it’s not. Yeah, it’s still not like he doesn’t have that many more bites, more than he’s going to serve in all likelihood. Right. And so he’s not going to get more bites of this apple.
00;34;42;26 – 00;34;57;09
And he tried to pass this as a senator. So this is like I think a real policy goal. On a certain point. It’s like, you know, okay, well you can you can try to be the winner of the fight or the loudest voice in the room or take all the credit, or you can pass the bill. Yeah. And I mean, and again, as we go back to where we were, he knows how the process works.
00;34;57;13 – 00;35;18;23
And. Yeah, and I think that when you’ve got the governor pushing so hard on this, yeah, you don’t need to. Maybe you can let that, you know, wait. You know and yeah. And again, as I was saying a few moments ago that all converges a couple of points. Yeah. Not his first rodeo by a long shot. Understands the rhythm of.
00;35;19;14 – 00;35;45;08
Who’s who has more relative influence at what point in the process. So I wouldn’t want to read too much into him back and and again to be utterly clear is that is if the, the lieutenant governor has become a shrinking violet or gone dark. This week he released this video casting suspicion on the recent big payout by the lottery, the circumstances surrounding it.
00;35;45;10 – 00;36;20;14
You know, I don’t have deep knowledge of this, but if you haven’t seen the people say this, you haven’t seen this five, ten minute video call. I would call it an investigation. It well, it reflected it was very much investigation in the sense of it looked like a local news investigative report. That in terms of to the governor going on site, to the location, the strange game store where this, this lottery ticket was, was sold.
00;36;20;14 – 00;36;40;02
That paid off hugely. You know what it was essentially at the store. So it’s it’s not it doesn’t it doesn’t look good. Nobody knows that anything illegal has happened. The situation does or the situation doesn’t look great. Yeah. It doesn’t look good. It doesn’t feel. It doesn’t. My apologies. Because this was carefully thought out, I’m sure on the lieutenant governor’s team’s part.
00;36;40;02 – 00;37;09;26
Lieutenant governor’s part. But I, to paraphrase, I think is about right. It he says in the the kind of wind up of this video of this video segment, it doesn’t look good and it doesn’t feel good, which I thought was, yeah, you know, whether you like the whatever you think about the issue, Lieutenant governor, pretty nicely done. And it was that whole segment is a good reminder of the lieutenant governor’s political skills, his media skills, his ability to use his toolkit fairly effectively.
00;37;09;26 – 00;37;39;16
Because a lot of people are talking about this and, you know, lottery commissions up for sunset. And there is also, you know, a pretty, very thinly veiled bank shot here. It’s it’s barely a bank shot. Yeah. On the big discussion over casino gambling. And, you know, this comes remember about a week and a half after maybe a week or so after the governor expressed some support for online gambling?
00;37;40;27 – 00;38;02;08
And now all of a sudden, we’re going, hey, this whole gambling thing, the thing we have seems a little fishy, right? Seems to need at least the tune up. Right. And he doesn’t mention the bigger issue at all in this video, but I think it would be impossible to think of this as not functioning and not happening in the context of that fight.
00;38;02;10 – 00;38;23;21
And the lieutenant governor’s, you know, very clear opposition to legalized gambling, gaming. I’m sorry. I’m like, I’m sort of off in a space. And I have a question you may or may not know the answer to, and I so I’ll just ask because right here in podcast, you know, I was just thinking, you know, is, is the sunset process in the renewal of the lottery an entry point for expanding gambling in the state?
00;38;23;21 – 00;38;40;27
Like, would it normally be a potential for that or now? Is it like too narrowly focused? Probably not. Okay, so is my sense. Yeah okay. I don’t think so. Yeah, I, I don’t think so. But is it maybe to your point there’s nothing it raises a lot of questions. Yeah. But look if you’re talking about the lottery, you know, you’re in the conceptual practical space, right.
00;38;40;27 – 00;38;55;25
For having people think about gambling I mean, no, you know, no it’s interest. I mean, you know, and I haven’t really I mean, you know, you’re a little bit more attuned to this, I think preternaturally than I am. I’m not a gambler. But there is a piece of this where I think, you know, your read of it is really interesting.
00;38;56;00 – 00;39;15;00
You know, this notion of like, you know, hey, we can’t even get like the legal, very narrowly defined version of this, right? But it’s also kind of weird to think like, you know, you know, here you are kind of saying, yeah, you gotta have you have to do the gymnastics here. Right? It’s like we’re going to renew this, this form of gambling, but we’re not going to expand this form of gambling.
00;39;15;00 – 00;39;29;24
And it’s like, well, how do we say that? We this is this one’s okay, but this one’s not. It’s like, well, yeah, this one was barely okay. And luckily we got into it. But we’re not in a space to start. And again, you’re just sort of raising and I say I’m using this word very specifically. You’re raising the costs to the people who want to be new entrants.
00;39;30;00 – 00;40;03;13
Yeah. And it’s just yeah, it’s just a it’s a, it’s just a, it’s a bad thing to have out there if you’re out there trying to talk about creating, you know, new legal controls and, you know, for new forms of gaming and gambling. And the lieutenant governor is pointing this out and and look to I do not disagree with the lieutenant governor on the fact that the way he portrayed that in just what seemed to be the facts on the ground now, look, you know, pretty funky, say at least and I’ll say your point, for those of you who haven’t watched it, go watch.
00;40;03;13 – 00;40;18;07
And then I would say think about other politicians in the state, not as a statewide, but other people who maybe aspire to be statewide and think about how many of them could pull that off. Yeah, that I think that’s a really good observation. That’s a good concrete way of summarizing my point about it, demonstrating his skills toolkit. Yeah.
00;40;18;07 – 00;40;33;24
I mean, that could have been very cringeworthy. Yeah. I mean, he didn’t he did it, you know. Well and it’s cringey but not for him. No, no, no, it was a great idea. You’re right. You know, it could be very cringe just in the sense of like, oh, what’s this guy up to? And it’s it can be cringing for different reasons about how you feel about the governor or the issue, whatever.
00;40;33;26 – 00;40;54;11
But it wasn’t cringing because of like, the execution. Yeah. Yeah. His you know, his discussion with the manager of the and it was look, it was very TV like. Yeah, it was, it was very TV news like. And well we don’t want to do, do a decompose the whole thing to into much detail. But there was a section of the video where he’s talking to this manager who’s obviously kind of, yeah.
00;40;54;13 – 00;41;10;23
Oh God. Having a, you know, not enjoying the conversation. And then they, you know, they cut to the a little ten minutes later cut away. And the lieutenant governor is not going. Yeah. You know, we wanted to go in the back and they would let us go look, but they wouldn’t let us record and they wouldn’t answer any questions.
00;41;10;23 – 00;41;32;15
I mean, that’s, that’s like a TV news report. So is there a big takeaway here. I think the big takeaway here is you know things are running. Yeah I think you know the game is the game is afoot. We’re absolutely through the preliminary phase. And we’re seeing I think especially what the house is going to shape up to be like.
00;41;32;17 – 00;41;56;06
And how that’s going to affect how the process moves moves forward. So thanks to Josh for being here on a very cold morning and in advance for the ride to the airport, giving a talk to the Texas Community College Teachers Association very early Friday morning. We’ll be in Houston for a day and looking forward to that and to talking to my friends and colleagues there.
00;41;56;08 – 00;42;21;16
Thanks to our excellent audio production team and the Dev studio, the College Liberal Arts here at UT Austin, who also, judging by the parking lot, yeah, made a journey that a lot of people did. Not today, in the cold. So thanks to you all for for being troopers. As always, you can find the data we refer to today and much more, at Texas Politics that you, Texas thought.
00;42;21;16 – 00;42;36;27
Edu. Thanks especially to all of you for listening. And we’ll be back again next week with another second reading podcast. The second reading podcast is a production of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.