Why don't you fix it already? Welcome. to The Texas Take, the number one politics podcast in the great state. I'm Scott Braddock. He's Jeremy Wallace. His work, of course, is at HoustonChronicle.com 24-7. You can also find the inside story on Texas politics at QuorumReport.com. Jeremy. I feel fantastic. Two weeks in a row of me just at 110%. People almost might not be able to take it, but we've got a lot to get to. So we're going to roll through. And it's, believe me, this is a jam-packed show.
Are you ready? Yeah. Fire it up. Let's go. Evan, are you ready? I mean, he looks ready. He's giving me the thumbs up. All right. Dan Patrick raided a smoke shop. Well, he didn't quite rate it, but we'll get to what he did do. He's cracking down on THC. And people hate it. Jeremy, can you imagine that? People don't like this. There's questions about John Cornyn running again. We'll get to that. And on this edition of the show.
An original rap diss track, which only in Texas politics would we be able to pull this off. But first, these were the words of a Republican this week about the abortion restrictions in Texas. And this really struck me. too many women have died. That's a direct quote. I didn't change one word of that. And this has to do with the strict crackdown on abortion, the total ban that we have in Texas. People say near total ban. It's pretty much a total ban, right? The exceptions are unclear.
And here you have Republican leadership admitting that another reason to bring this up, you saw this, Jeremy, it was first reported out of Houston, that a woman arrested in Waller County is accused of performing illegal abortions. So how can you have this going on? where Republican leadership says the ban that we have isn't clear. And at the same time, we're prosecuting somebody over it, right? This is where we've gotten with abortion politics in this state. And you now have...
a powerful Senate Republican and a powerful House Republican both saying that we need to clean this up, that we need to do a better job of this. We need to tell doctors and hospitals what they're allowed to do, which you would have thought they would have done that originally.
Right. When they were passing all this. But as you know, there was a hot debate about it over the last year when the legislature was not in session. And now that they are in session, House administration chairman Charlie Guerin. appearing at a press conference, said that he now is carrying what he called the most important bill of his career. And listen to this, Jeremy, he had a message for Governor Abbott about it. It's an honor to carry the life of the mother bill.
There's too many women have suffered. Too many have died. If one has died, it's too many and more have. And I have friends who's... lives can no longer conceive because of the problems they went through with their first pregnancy and the delay that doctors faced.
in addressing the problems. This bill will clarify, and it's the most important, in my 24 years here, this is the most important bill that I've ever carried, and I'm going to work on it. We're going to get it to the finish line. I told the governor, I said, Governor, If I ever make you mad this session and you have to veto something, you can veto everything else. Would you leave this one alive?
Now, what were you going to say, Jeremy? It's interesting, by the way, Garen is a hard no on school vouchers. So I can imagine that the governor won't agree with him about that. And I was reminded just this last couple of weeks that you remember the governor vetoed some.
pieces of legislation a couple of years ago that had nothing to do with the reason he was vetoing those things. He was mad at Republican legislators about property taxes and about his school voucher deal. But you do have some of the top folks. in Republican leadership in both the House and Senate saying that they've got to do something on this.
Yeah, right. During the debate originally on the abortion laws, and I don't think we can stress this enough, the Texas abortion law has no exception to rape and incest. The only exception...
and this is where we're getting to, is on the life of the mother. But what does that mean is what... has been been the struggle for ob gyns and the hospitals that they work in you know it's like that is where the problem is it's like even if an ob gyn said i think the law is clear the hospital is going to say not in our hospital because we don't want to get sued
by you know dan patrick and all these other people you know so we would prefer you know not to do that then and you can see where like the legal part of the thing was going to get locked up and so you know as garen's pointing out there it says like there's clearly a confusion somewhere
out there, even though there are people who were originally pushing that law, including Senator Brian Hughes back when he was first doing it, thought the law was going to be clear enough the way they had written it clearly. That has not been the case. And now everybody is kind of reassessing, well, is there a place to go with this?
And to your point, clearly it's not clear now. Some folks might find it interesting that I will give the little governor, Dan Patrick, some credit on this. He earlier this year brought this up himself. He wasn't even asked about the clarification of the law. He was just asked about abortion in general.
and what might be discussed during this legislative session. He was on WFAA television in Dallas-Fort Worth. And listen to how he threads the needle on this. He says, Jeremy, to your point, he says that he thinks, he, Dan Patrick, thinks that the law is pretty clear, but...
he allows for the idea that others might not agree. I do think that we need to clarify any language so that doctors are not in fear of... being penalized if if they think the life of the mother is at risk i think it's clear but i'm also open to the idea that some doctors don't see it that way some hospitals don't think that way we don't want to stand in the way of that but we're not going to open it up
so that abortion is prevalent again in the state, but no mother's life should be at risk. And so if there's clarity on that, I know we're working with some people on language that hopefully... clarify that so they did go ahead and file that legislation the life of the mother act is what they're calling it so we have top leaders in the house and senate in agreement that leaves one person as the question mark
Jeremy, earlier in the year, you spoke to Governor Abbott. It was a wide-ranging interview. Remind us when this was. This was when he did a few interviews. It was related to some event, and now I'm trying to remember what it was. It was right after he delivered that state of the state address. Yeah. So that was at the beginning of February. And so, yeah, that was when we were talking about all this. Right. So abortion came up in that interview.
And Abbott, very often, you know, sometimes he talks very clearly and with certitude and you can tell exactly what he means. Other times, the man is a living cipher. We passed this legislation with the... full intention that the life of the mother be protected. And to be honest, looking at the law and looking at the situations that some of these mothers have been in.
Some mothers have either been denied what they were rightfully entitled to or didn't accept what they were rightfully entitled to. What I know is this also. There have been hundreds of abortions that have been provided under this law. So there are plenty of doctors and plenty of mothers that have been able to.
get an abortion that saved their lives and protect their health and safety. Jeremy, in listening to that, and I know he has said a few other things about this as well, but in listening to that and trying to figure out where he might go with this, I could see it either way. that he might agree with Dan Patrick and with Charlie Guerin about it and say, hey, you know what, I'll sign this into law. There are two things that make me think that he might not. One.
Could be potential presidential politics, and we can talk about that, right? If you're going to run in a presidential primary, which he might, it's always a possibility if you're the governor of Texas, the only higher office than that.
is president of the United States. And all these guys, as you know, ever since George Bush did it, they all think, well, if he did it, anybody can do it. But the other thing is that not only is he Catholic, He's also, people forget this, he's the first Catholic governor of Texas.
And I can tell you that there are concerns, and I was talking about this with some Republican activists just the other day, who do believe that the state has gone too far on this issue. And remember, it was on this show. that I first reported out that there were some Senate Republicans in Austin who were concerned, and this was about two years ago, they had basically said privately,
that they thought maybe we went too far with all of this. And this was in the midst of campaigns where Democrats are really attacking them on the abortion issue. But with Abbott, it can be political, but it could also just be his heartfelt belief. that what we have now is just fine, and that protecting the life of the unborn is in a lot of ways more important than protecting the mother. That's the way some people see it. Yeah, I'd be more confident of a change in the law if this was two years.
previous. And what I mean is that because this is the last regular legislative session for the next round of primaries in the state of Texas, this is when, like, if you pass this now, you're basically making this a potential for somebody who wants to get to the right of somebody in a primary right just on this issue i know it seems you know you know like there's not a lot of gap there but there's always a way to kind of exploit this issue it's this is one issue that drives is a
one, you know, those one vote and one issue voters, this is one of the top ones, right? You know, it's like, I'm always going to vote for the most pro-life guy that's out there. Right. And so, and I think that's where like, you know, Abbott, you know.
Depending on who you are, what you heard in that interview with me is that you could hear it two ways. You could hear he's saying that I don't think we need to change this law. Stop it. Or you could take it as, oh, but he gives a little bit of a crack there, so maybe he is open to it.
Which explains why I was asking him about it in the first place, because as Guerin kind of almost alludes to at the beginning of that, you end up in this situation like nobody wants to carry this bill if the governor is going to veto it and make it an issue in the primary season. Like nobody wants to be associated with that. And so you can see Karen say, look, okay.
We got to get this like, you know, we got to be in line here. This is a reasonable thing. I'm going to stick with Patrick on this one. Let's all kind of gather together and kind of do this. And nobody get so political that we just want to turn this one little adjustment.
Because that's all it really is. It's really just an adjustment. It's like this law is already putting so much stress on so many women. I always sit there thinking about people, oh, well, they can go to other states or something like that if they need to get this care. It's like, have you been around a woman who's eight months pregnant, nine months pregnant?
You don't want to be putting a woman nine months pregnant on a plane somewhere to go get a medical emergency. Or before that, the people who are the most immediately impacted and impacted. in the most significant ways with these laws are people who can't afford a plane ticket in the first place, right? And so, yeah, so I do think that a key here is if the leadership all holds together. then it would be a lot harder.
for a Republican challenger in a primary to try to accuse every Republican in state government of being too liberal about this, right? They would have to be saying that the person they're challenging, for example, for a Texas House seat, they'd have to be saying... that they were liberal on this, but so were Dan Patrick. So was Greg Abbott. So was Brian Hughes. So was Charlie Guerin. That's a real stretch. But as you said, if the governor vetoes it,
And these Republicans have already voted that way. Oh, Katie, bar the door. You're going to have all of these candidates saying that they're all too liberal when it comes to abortion and they're not pro-life. Yeah. Taylor Goldenstein at the Houston Chronicle and I were talking about this. And I think by having Brian Hughes, you know, the guy who was the author of the original heartbeat, you know, Bill, right. And it's like to have him on the bill sends a signal that.
OK. All right. So if the guy who wrote the bill is going to be with. you know, cleaning it up a little bit, then maybe it's okay to be associated with it. So I think that might be the best signal yet. You know, beyond what Patrick said, beyond what Abbott said, I think Hughes demonstrating that he's willing to put his neck.
out there for a potential future primary and change his own law, I think that gives a little bit more cover to everybody to be able to talk about this more freely and openly about, look, is this some legitimate way that we can adjust this and yet still hold on to
our pro-life cred. That's where we want to be. And I think that the rhetoric you're going to hear from the Republicans on this as we go through the session, as this makes its way through the process, what they're going to say over and over again is, and this isn't quite right, but what they're going to say is, We're not changing the law. We're just clarifying the law. You're going to hear Hughes is going to say that on the floor of the Senate when they lay this out.
when they start the debate. Believe me, that's the way that that's going to go. So we'll keep an eye on that. And it's, I mean, it is critical. I've heard from a lot of our listeners about this. They want to know, and just in general, people say, where are we with this abortion stuff? Because...
It doesn't seem clear to folks exactly what is allowed and what's not allowed. And people are just concerned about their own rights and the rights of other people. Did you see that the lieutenant governor is on another side mission? I've been calling them his side missions. Remember, he went and we talked about it here on the show, sort of comparing him to the old 1970s and 80s Marvin Zindler reports where he's a consumer protection reporter and he's just trying.
to look out for you. It would have been like he was the reporter on Channel 11 or Channel 13 in Houston years ago. We should mention that he is a broadcast professional. You know, Dan Patrick. Actually... In this latest video, he's slipping a little bit. I thought the one about the Texas lottery was a little better produced. Evan, I think, agrees with me about that, I think. And he's the production guru around here.
We do get a lot of compliments on how great this show sounds. That is the great Evan Scherer at work. Don't let it go to your head, Evan. I won't allow it to. But did you see that Patrick, he didn't raid a smoke shop, but he did go visit one.
He wanted to point out that you can purchase THC-infused products in Texas even though we don't really have... A marijuana legalization effort that's been approved in this state like they have had in places like Oklahoma and in Arkansas and New Mexico, et cetera. Jeremy and I were at a press conference at the Texas Capitol this week where Patrick had this warning for people who are running these smoke shops. It's just a matter of time that someone is going to bring.
lawsuits against your business on the civil side where their families have been harmed. We're going to ban your stories. We're going to ban your stories. Before we leave here for good whether it's in May or July or August whenever session is over We in the Senate and I believe in the House will stand together
During that news conference, Jeremy, he mentioned that he had released a video that morning of he himself going to one of these smoke shops and checking things out. You remember I asked him, where can I see the video? And Patrick said, well, it's on my Twitter feed. So let's do it. Let's pull up his Twitter feed here, Evan. Do you have Dan Patrick's Twitter there? There's a video that you'll see right at the top of his Twitter feed.
And what Patrick is doing is it's almost like an undercover report. He has the face of the person behind the counter. It's all blurred out to protect the innocent or whatever. And Patrick is claiming that you have these stores all over Texas where – Kids are buying these products they're not supposed to be able to get. Recently, I visited several of these smoke shops to see what they're selling. All said they weren't selling to kids, but a lot of other people have a different opinion.
The city right now, I'm trying to fight it because I think of the same reason you brought up. Because some kids just go buy things and they end up, something happens to them, the parents are worried. So I don't know, I think it's a big problem like everywhere these days. It's not only in America, you know.
Kids are very curious. They see everything on social media. In that video, Patrick showed what looked like THC infused with candy being sold here in Texas. And he talked with a guy who worked at the shop and he was asking him questions about. how strong that stuff really is, Jeremy. In one shop I visited, they were openly selling packages of gummies and other things that looked like candy with 750 milligrams. That's powerful.
So how would I know what's strong and not strong? So there's the milligrams. If you look at the package, so it tells you like how many milligrams it has in Bergamese. Okay. So this one has like, I think, 750 milligram burgundy. So that's strong. That's strong. Yeah, that's the strongest one we have. I mean, how strong would that be? So I always recommend people just take half.
Now, just a pro tip for the lieutenant governor. If a friend of yours gives you what's supposed to be an infused cookie and they say you should only eat half, that's what you should do. The whole joke about the edibles, Evan, is that the minute you start to badmouth it and say this isn't doing anything, that's when it kicks in. That's when it works. So back to that press conference. During the...
exchange that Senator Charles Perry, who's carrying this legislation, and Patrick, they were both having an exchange with reporters there. Jeremy and I were asking questions. The Senator Perry, he brought up this poll. that had been released that morning about, and I'll just cut right to the quick on this, Jeremy. The poll basically says that everybody hates what Patrick and Perry are doing, right? The poll says that 68% of Texas voters...
support keeping THC products legal, but with strict regulations that people don't want kids getting them. So Patrick does have some point on that as far as just keeping it out of the hands of children. But get this, it also says that among GOP voters... Legal THC support is at 57%, only about...
30% of Republican voters, these would be people who are voting in those same Republican primaries we were just talking about on the abortion issue. Only 29 to 30% of Texas Republican voters say that this stuff ought to be. Now, Perry had said that a scumbag in the media was the one to release this poll. But what he didn't tell you is that – and who cares who he's talking about, honestly? Evan, don't give me that look. But he said that a bottom dweller –
I think it's bottom feeder, not bottom dweller. Anyway, it said a bottom dweller had reported this poll out. And so I asked him about the pole. I wanted to know which one he was talking about. I want to make sure he was talking about the one that I just read from, which, as you'll hear here, this kind of sounds, it's about a minute long, this audio that you're going to hear, Jeremy. It sounds kind of like a train wreck because...
I wasn't going to let them get away with just saying that this was put out by some scumbag. I was trying to get this point across, that the poll was conducted by a respected Republican pollster who is the pollster... employed by Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick. Listen to this. Okay, next question. I saw a poll today by one of your colleagues. I affectionately refer to him as a bottom dweller.
He said 68% support THC in Texas. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know the source of the poll. It came from one of your reporters is the way it was reported. I can tell you this. I can appreciate that, but the guy's wrong. I don't care who does the poll. I don't care in the poll. Here's the thing. If that's what the poll says, it doesn't.
Of course I do. So we're going to turn this conversation from the lives that were lost to who did the poll. I'm just telling you the poll probably did not have. I did bring the poll up. But what I clarified, if you're honest, I said synthetic THC was not polled. Yes, it was.
It was. That's different. That's different. The average person in this room, the average person in this room, I'm not going to argue with you, the average person in this room and people who are listening do not understand the distinction between THC and synthetic.
And you can poll it and anybody would say THC. There are majority of people out there that like the idea of THC. So I'll just leave it with that. I appreciate it. So there is a point to be made here on the policy side of it, Jeremy, which is he's admitting. that the vast majority of people do agree that THC products ought to be legal. Did you hear him make the distinction between the synthetic products that are out there?
like Delta-8 and whatever else, versus these naturally occurring THC products. He was saying that the real problem is with those that are synthetic. But here's the deal. Jeremy, his bill bans all of it. He's trying to make it sound like, oh, we're just cracking down on the products that have caused all these problems for these families. But he's cracking down on everything. And I have talked to...
some experts in this area of the law. This is not me saying it. People who study this all the time have said that it would be very difficult for Perry and Patrick to accomplish what they say they're trying to do, which is to try to crack down on these things completely, but also keep the... compassionate use program that we have. And remember, when this bill...
that Perry's pushing when it was heard in a committee, we heard from this mother who has a young son who has seizures. And she had said, look, if you're going to get rid of all of this, you're really going to screw my family because it's the only way that her son is able to function. is to be able to get this kind of treatment. My son deserves a shot at life, too. He didn't have a choice. He was three when he started having these severe seizures, and it's not fair.
It's not fair for him to relapse and potentially lose his cognitive abilities, potentially lose his life. Those other kids were given a shot. My son deserves a shot at life. So you had talked to some of the mothers who were at the press conference, Jeremy, who had horrible experiences in their family with one kind of product. This woman's talking about a different kind of product that helps her son.
In fairness, there are emotional stories on both sides of this, right, and on all sides of it. But I think where the Senate is maybe going wrong and where the House may not go along with them is, number one, As I pointed out, the vast majority of Texans do not agree with this across-the-board crackdown. And number two, did you hear Patrick say,
that he thinks the House will go along with them. He said, we're going to do this in the Senate. He said, and I believe that the House is going to do this as well. But there's already legislation filed in the House that may go a little bit different direction. Yeah, and I would encourage – look, this –
Topic can be kind of confusing for a lot of people. You know, it's like you think of all the mess that we have. Like, what's CDB oil? What's marijuana? What's hemp? What's canine? What's THC? Yeah, all that stuff. All these acronyms, yeah.
One of the things – people should – check out the stuff that Isaac Yu has done for the Express News and the Houston Chronicle. Like he just did a whole piece kind of breaking down what each one of these things are and how we got to this point, right? And it shows how over the last –
24 months particularly, there's just been a proliferation of retailers who are selling THC as they've kind of adjusted to the changes in the hemp laws, right? And depending on who you talk to, it's like some people say, look, You know, Charles Perry, who you had earlier, would say that these companies are exploiting the hemp laws to sell this product that is damaging to some people. Others will tell you, no, no, no, no, this just isn't banned. This was never.
banned by the state there's nothing that says they can't do this so but really you know check out the stuff that isaac's done on this stuff you know he's really kind of focused on it and it gave me a much clearer sense as to what is the difference between canine thc yeah
You know, the CDB shops, all that. Like, what's what? You know, it's like, and so I think that's a good tutorial for everybody to kind of start working through all this stuff. Sure. You know, I wonder if Senator Perry, being a legislator from West Texas, from Lubbock,
same as the speaker, Dustin Burroughs, both of them from Lubbock County. If Perry might be participating in this, you know, as the author of the bill, in some ways to gain some leverage on a different issue. And there was some chatter about this at the Capitol this week, you know. But Perry is the one who is pushing, I think wisely pushing.
to give him some credit on this, the water infrastructure plan where they want to spend billions of extra dollars on trying to make sure that certain parts of Texas, which are just arid, which are just dry, that they can get water. There's been some talk about the idea.
That under the farm bill that was signed by President Trump and under this water infrastructure plan that could be passed by the legislature here in the next couple of months, if all of that is sort of coming together, then the perfect cash crop.
for West Texas is hemp, right? And so it may be that as this hemp legislation moves through the House and the Senate, and the water infrastructure bill makes its way through the House and Senate as well, that they may come to some different agreement about exactly what to do on this THC stuff because you'd be screwing a lot of farmers out there in West Texas to tell them that you can't grow this now after this has been.
something that has been in the mix, both nationally and here at the state level. And I saw one conservative talk show host from Houston who was criticizing Dan Patrick and saying, hey, listen, Trump is all for people being able to grow hemp. He signed that bill. And then was questioning whether Patrick was anti-MAGA, which I'm sure Patrick appreciated seeing that out there on social media. So we'll keep an eye on this as well as we move forward. Speaking of Trump.
Did you see this, Jeremy? He signed an executive order, which doesn't really shut down the Department of Education, but moves things in that direction. And did you see who was on hand for it? I saw it on their social media feeds, the pictures of Governor Abbott. there at the White House, and Attorney General Paxton and Dan Patrick, who we were just talking about. They were all there. I guess that was, what, did they do that in the East Room?
at the White House where they signed this deal. Here was Trump announcing what he was getting ready to do. In a few moments, I will sign an executive order to begin eliminating the Federal Department of Education once and for all. And it sounds strange, doesn't it? Department of Education, we're going to eliminate it. And everybody knows it's right.
And the Democrats know it's right. And I hope they're going to be voting for it because ultimately it may come before them. But everybody knows it's right. Interesting acknowledgement there that this will actually have to go to Congress, Jeremy. What were you going to say? Yeah, I was going to say, look, obviously Abbott and Patrick and Paxton got the invite. Just to be clear, though, like Republican governors from around the nation.
were called to be up there for this so they could make the case that, oh, thank you for giving this control back to the states. So they were part of the props, so to speak, for the White House. folks know the full story there. Well, I like that you're pointing that out because it was funny to watch all of these guys from Texas just looking like tourists on their social media. You know, they don't have a bunch of pictures with Trump. It's Dan Patrick at the White House.
by himself or him with or abbott by himself or the three of them together taking a selfie with patrick and paxton uh and uh and abbott but that's it You know, it wasn't like some big glad-handing thing with the president. Although somebody said, I think this is right, that Trump did give some acknowledgement to the fact that Paxton was there. And get this, Paxton and Patrick apparently got a shout-out, but not Abbott.
Oh, I know. Now I'm back here and our education was also front and center at the Texas Capitol again. And I was giving Jeremy a hard time this week saying, you know, last week we went yard. We talked a lot about school vouchers.
To the point where Jeremy was talked out about it. And it's going to come up again, of course, as we go through the... legislative session it's the number one priority of the governor how could it not i had somebody say to me scott are you obsessed with that topic i said i cover politics for a living in texas it's the governor's top priority no i'm just covering the news
I'd rather we never had to talk about it, honestly, because it's such a horrible idea. But back in the Texas House, the lawmakers there were honoring Senator Ted Cruz. He was on the floor of the house, right? And you had the education chairman, Brad Buckley, in the house. He was leading the tribute to Cruz and listened to – again, I thought we were done with this topic for at least a week, but –
We're not. Listen to what he was talking about. He said that Cruz is a real leader on this issue. Senator Cruz believes school choice is the civil rights issue of the 21st century and has been a leading advocate for school choice in the Senate. Now, Cruz said a version of that as well. When he was speaking, Jeremy, was it during a press conference? He said something about this being a civil rights issue.
Yeah, there was a little side press conference that I originally wasn't invited to, but I kind of invited myself and kind of slipped in. That's how you do it. That's how you do it. You get in there. Yeah, so you can ask the question. So he has said this before, but I'm glad that you had him talk a little bit more about it. Patrick has said this.
And Abbott may have said a version of it. Cruz was really the OG on this to say that it, and he's been saying this for years, that it is the civil rights issue of our time. I will remind people that it's my position that the civil rights issue of our time. is civil rights. But after he said it again, during that news conference, Jeremy wanted to know exactly what he meant.
And he asked him about, you know, the historical perspective on that. We see an enormous imbalance. We see an enormous inequity when it comes to education. Some kids. Kids of families that have resources, that have wealth. They can get a great education. Because, you know, if your parents have wealth...
They tend to do one of two things. They live in a neighborhood where they've got a great public school because they can afford to buy a home in a neighborhood with expensive homes and great public schools. Or if the public school is not great, if the parents have wealth,
They pay for tuition to go to a private school. And so the kids of the rich have always had school choice. What this bill is about is giving low-income kids the same ability to choose an excellent education that the rich have always had. He said that this is, in a lot of ways, like the watershed moment of the landmark Supreme Court case, Brown v. Board of Education. What was he talking about?
Yeah, right. Well, when he first started talking about being the civil rights issue of our time, my first thought was like, what does he mean by that? Right. And so one of the things I wanted to make sure that I got to was like, you know, what do you think about Brown versus Board of Education?
Are you criticizing that? In this era of politics, everything's kind of... under question as you know it's like you know who knows what's you know being challenged at this point and there actually are some people who have been criticizing brown versus board of education saying it did not it was not a constitutional decision and so when i was there I want to make sure –
Cruz believe that it is, you know, that it was still the right decision? And he absolutely said so. Yeah, he completely verified in our exchange that like he's, you know, absolutely believes that, you know, Brown versus Board of Education was the right decision.
And then he explained what you just heard there. Well, and he said that, tell me if I'm wrong. He said that Brown versus Board of Education was correcting inequities that we had in education. And he's saying that vouchers would do that now. That there are a lot of people who would be helped by this program who don't have access, as he said in what you just heard, his answer. He's saying that the wealthy always have.
you know, that access. But it's a lot of poor and minority kids who just can't get into a private school and that the school voucher program would fix that. The problem with that is... that, as we have reported here, the legislation in front of the Texas House and Senate would not do that. I mean, when they have what they call, and Abbott has pushed for this,
universal eligibility for the voucher. That means anybody of any income level could get it. And even though they claim that they would prioritize low-income kids, remember what it says in the Senate bill about that, Jeremy? Let me go back to it. What does it say here? Oh, low income in the legislation is defined as up to and including up to 500% above the poverty line, which in Texas.
is around $170,000 a year for a family. So that's not exactly helping poor kids out of failing schools. And I would also point this out. And I know Senator Cruz knows this. He's talking about Brown versus Board of Education. The original. School voucher proposal in Texas was a direct reaction to Brown versus Board of Education. Back in the day, right after that decision was made. When was it, Jeremy? You're the historian. 1954.
The very next legislative session, lawmakers were presented with the report from a committee that had been put together by then-Governor Alan Shivers, who had asked this question, how can Texas... address this idea that we have to integrate the schools. And the report came back with an idea for this, for tax dollars to be used for tuition for private schools.
And let me read to you directly from the report. We recommend, this is the quote, we recommend that the legislature give serious consideration to some sort of tuition grant plan, whereby a parent who does not wish to place his child Listen to this part.
only upon affidavit that the child was being withdrawn from the public schools due to the parents' dislike of integration. What that means is, under the original school voucher proposal, After Brown v. Board of Education, the way you would get the voucher is the parent had to sign an affidavit that said that the reason they were asking for the school voucher was because they didn't like that their kids were going to have to go to school with black children.
That's what it was. So I'm sure that Senator Cruz knows this history, although I will say this in fairness to some of these folks who were pushing school vouchers. When I've told a bunch of them about this, and we've covered this on the show before, we have pointed out this history, they didn't know anything about that. Yeah. And do you know, you remember, I'm reporting from San Antonio today. Do you know that when that was proposed in the Texas Senate...
And they don't have the same rules anymore in the Texas Senate, as you know, with Lieutenant Governor Patrick changing everything up. But at that time, the bill was passed through the Texas House and over to the Texas Senate. and it was filibustered. Do you know which senator filibustered it and killed it? Nope. I gave you a clue by telling you where I am. Henry B. Gonzalez filibustered the bill, and they killed that racist, horrible proposal.
Now, I'm not saying that people who support this now are all racist. That's not the point. The point is that the net effect of having a policy... that would benefit people only in those wealthier neighborhoods which is actually what this would do rather than what senator cruz said will just lead to more of the same Yeah, and here, where Cruz, I thought, was on Mark, it's like he's both good and bad on this issue, right? The smart part is he's right. Parents have always had the...
ability, not just on the private school part, which I could see where he was going, but if you're a family of wealth, you could always pack up and move to wherever the best school you thought is. And he rightfully... points out that people who don't have means to do that can't do that. They get what they're going to get. And so to me, it was almost an argument. So that's why you should really kind of help every public school, particularly in those inner cities. So people have that.
of having a good education without having to move or without having instead. send their kid to a private school. You know, I get, he was going in a different direction on the thing, but, but I think, you know, I think there's still truth in it. And it made me think when he was explaining it, it's like, you know, yeah, there's some truth in that. You know, it's like, cause like, and going back, not to belabor.
this, but if you're a kid living in Pasadena, you're not going to go all the way to St. John. for school. You're not going to have enough money, and you don't have the time to get there. Even worse, since you're hanging out in Henry B. Gonzalez's old backyard, and I would point out that the kid on the south side is never going to go to San Antonio.
Christian School, that school that Abbott had that rally a couple weeks ago, that's going to be like an hour drive to get to that school to begin with. The transportation cost immediately is prohibitive to anybody who lives on the south side of San Antonio.
I think that kind of hits to the point of like you can give somebody $10,000, but if it doesn't cover the tuition and can't get them to the school in any reasonable time, have you really provided a choice to the family in the south side of San Antonio? I've said it before. You're making the right point. I've said it before. If there was actual legislation, an actual proposal to do that, to get poor kids out of failing schools, it wouldn't even be controversial.
If there was a bill to do that, a proposal to do that, it wouldn't be this big fight. But that's not what these things do. Well, and I think an important point, I'm going to pull back my old Florida history here because I did spend a lot of time there. The one thing that nobody here in this state talks about with the school choice part, what... What they did in Florida was when they opened School Choice up, they made the school districts pay for the transportation too.
So it wasn't on the parent. So if you did want to send your kid to a charter school on the other side of town, the school district had to pay for the transportation. You know, people in this state aren't talking about that part at all. The Republicans who want.
you know, expanded school choice, you know, they bring up Florida all the time, but they don't say, well, Florida picked up the bill for every parent to cover the cost of transportation. We don't do that here in the state of Texas, and that's not being proposed. That's been brought up by one of the Republicans who's against this, Senator Robert Nichols from East Texas, who said if you covered the cost of transportation, that would go a long way to erasing his opposition.
to what Patrick is trying to push here and what Cruz is trying to push. And you can see why Jeb Bush was successful in Florida with this by putting that part into the legislation. Because like East Texas, Florida is kind of like that, right? There's parts of Florida where you get very rule. and it's hard to get from one place to the next. And Bush knew that you had to have some sort of component in there to get the kids to the school.
And the transportation is easier in Florida, I'll just point out, because you could fit almost all of Florida into East Texas, right? I mean, we just have such geographic diversity. You know, one of the guys who's gotten so famous over all of this, I mean, he's just really gone through the strategy.
as far as I can tell. One of the real bright stars who was also taking selfies at the White House with Trump is our old buddy Corey DeAngelis. I always have to remind people exactly who he is because... No, he's not as famous as he thinks. But he's that guy who runs around pushing school vouchers and getting small crowds in small rooms. around the country to go along with this little this little slogan it's time for texas to fund students
Ah, systems. Now, Corey has taken his fame to another level, Jeremy. Just this week, he came out and endorsed someone for a statewide campaign in Texas, which I think was interesting. You had the candidate really proud of the fact that Corey DeAngelo...
is endorsing them. It's Don Huffines who's now running for Texas Comptroller. The Comptroller now... was selected as the new chancellor of the texas a m system glenn hager so we have an opening there and it speaks to what the next year in texas politics will be like right we're going to have some uh republican primaries
you know, at the statewide level that are going to get pretty hot. But it was interesting to me that here you have Corey, who is, and this could only happen in Texas. Here you have Corey, who is a former gay porn star. turned school voucher advocate, turned political endorser, and really weighing in on these races. And he was in a – I'm going to try to keep this as G-rated as possible.
Jeremy. But as you know, I always tell folks that politics in Texas and around the country now should probably have a parental advisory. So I'll try to just keep it to double entendre with this. Did you know that in some places like Puerto Rico, for example, if you're listening to music on the radio like bad bunny or something like that that they don't just bleep or censor the curse words that they censor the double entendre did you know that
That would be terrible. Well, it's interesting. They don't appreciate that kind of wordplay in the same way that we do, I guess. But with this, I'll just say it this way. When Corey DeAngelis was in gay porn, one of the scenes that he starred in had to do with men racing each other to finish first. I'm going to leave it right at that. And...
And when he endorsed Don Huffines, there was some mockery of him based on that endorsing Huffines with that as his history. And so there was one young Republican activist. who wrote a long social media post filled with double entendre about why the Corey DeAngelis endorsement is so potent. And that got turned into a rap diss track against Corey. They're making fun of Corey, given his history and his just blatant hypocrisy trying to act like he's a right-wing guy.
when he's formerly a gay porn star. And I thought it was actually pretty clever. Go ahead, Evan. No surprise that he is jumping into this honestly. Huffings runs a hard race and no one loves a good hard race with the boys more than at DeAngelis Cory. No way this race isn't a photo finish though. Tapes will no doubt be pulled, but to really understand how important this endorsement is and why it could make the difference, you have to understand the man behind it. He is a true patriot.
knows how to shake things up. A team player on the right who will take a beating to any Aztec tie-cledge member on his left. All he wants in return is a happy ending for those who matter most. Our children. You know, if the Don Huffines campaign doesn't use this song, I can't help them, Jeremy. Only in Texas. Lyrics by Zach the Kid Maxwell.
By the way, and my friend John Aiken throwing down the track on that. So Huff Hines, I have to remind people who he is as well, right? Yeah, please. Because he hasn't been successful at the statewide level. He's already running some digital ads for Comptroller, and he's playing off national themes, of course. Listen to this. As your Texas Comptroller, I will doge Texas.
I will audit our government to improve efficiency and root out waste and fraud. I will fight to return the savings to Texas taxpayers. when he lost to the Democrat, the commercials that he ran at that time were very similar. He was sort of doged before it was a thing, Jeremy. He had a commercial. I was trying to find it. I couldn't find it, but everything's in this mind. It's a steel trap, right? There was this commercial...
That he ran in Dallas, Fort Worth TV ad where he was he had a flamethrower and he was lighting government documents on fire. He was cutting the waste, fraud and abuse. So he was the Doge guy before. it was even a thing before Elon Musk came along talking about all this stuff. He's also the one folks might remember this.
who likes to start a lot of his messages with some version of Hello Patriots. Hey, welcome Patriots. Hello Patriots. Hello Patriots. Hello Patriots. Hello Patriots. Hey Patriots. Hey Patriots. Hello, Patriot. Hello, fellow Liberty lovers. One of my favorites that Huffines released a video, it was him on, I think he was in the Capitol Extension.
out in the underground area of the Capitol, Jeremy. And he was talking about a meeting that he had had with the Texas Eagle Forum, which is a big conservative group, the Eagle Forum nationally. And in Texas, he said something about meeting with the Eagle Forum. And then he said, you know those Eagles?
Those are my favorites. You might also recall when he ran for governor against Greg Abbott. I think this commercial ran during the Super Bowl that year. Florida is kicking our butt. It's embarrassing. They're beating us with their leadership and they're winning Super Bowls. I'm Don Huffines. When I'm your Republican governor, Texas will stop the illegal invasion at our border. And I'm not asking permission from the federal government. Now, why does this guy matter?
for a few reasons. Number one, as we have reported here, Jeremy, remember it was Huffines who was really pushing governor abbott on the issue of the border which is what's made him famous there was a uh what was it a new yorker article just this week about uh you know the unchecked i think the the title was something like the unchecked power of greg abbott and a lot of it was centered on His...
Operation Lone Star, the Efforts on the Border, the reporter, I'm probably screwing up his name, I think it was Jonathan Blitzer, this guy had said that the reason that the national press wanted to cover Abbott was because when they would talk to the department, of Homeland Security officials, you know, in background conversations when they were, I think they were doing a profile on Mayorkas, you know, when he was the DHS secretary.
And those who were close to the Biden administration's homeland security apparatus, they kept bringing Greg Abbott up. They kept saying, you know, more than Trump, the person who we have had to deal with from a policy perspective. is greg abbott well huffines was the one who appeared on tucker carlson's show you know years ago and we covered it here on this show at the time
And Huffines and Allen West, who was also running for governor that year, they had really pushed Abbott on cracking down on border security. And remember, we reported it right here, Jeremy. They would say it on Fox News Channel or the Tucker Carlson Show, and then Abbott would do it. it and then want to go on Fox and talk about it as far as putting more troops there, spending more money there, and all of that.
Yeah, and we have the receipts in this case because you can go back to the stuff that we talked about on the show. But you could make the case that Huffines, even though he wasn't successful against Greg Abbott, that primary showed like – how much influence he ultimately ended up having. Because remember, what we know of today as Operation Lone Star started after Don Huffine started talking about running for governor and started going on all these TV shows saying,
Greg Abbott wasn't doing enough. And specifically, Huffine said I would put more troops on the border and I would stop commercial traffic coming from Mexico into the United States to show Mexico they shouldn't do this. Well, what did Abbott do as part of Operation Lone Star? He did both those things. He sent 10,000 people to the border, both troops and DPS officers, and then he shut down traffic.
coming across from commercial trucking when he did that inspection program. People will probably remember that that was all happening like – as a result of Huffines and Allen West kind of putting a lot of pressure on the governor. So as much as people might want to think, well, Huffines, he lost that primary big, but the ideas and some of the concepts he had kind of lived on.
in greg abbott and so i would not sleep on the guy and plus he does have 10 million dollars that he can burn apparently as much money as he wants yeah i think he and his brother i might be I might be a little off with this, but I mean, the Huffines is a very wealthy family, business family from Dallas, Fort Worth. The folks in Dallas, Fort Worth know the Huffines auto dealerships. And one of the reasons that he had a leg up, Jeremy, in that Senate race years ago, 10 years ago when he won.
a seat in the Texas Senate was because almost everybody in Dallas has, Huffines has it on the back of their car. People already knew the name. I mean, he was going to spend millions of dollars on the race and he already had name ID because he was one of the Huffines brothers. I think that... Between him and his brother, Philip, just expendable cash, they might have approaching $200 million.
So there's a, I mean, to your point about how influential a person can be, that's a big reason that you walk in the room with all of this money to burn. So we're going to have primaries around here. Did you see that? Ken Paxton was in Washington. We mentioned that he was there for the Department of Education stuff, but he was also there to talk to, interesting, he was there to talk to some maybe more traditional media.
in Washington, sort of the inside the beltway kind of media about running against John Cornyn. When you saw that, I wonder what you thought, because to me, I thought there's not a lot new here as far as what he's saying exactly. But it was interesting who he was saying it to.
Right. Oh, yeah, I might run against corn and I haven't quite made up my mind. It gets reported in places like Politico and Axios and whatever else. A lot of our listeners will know who that is, but other people will say, what are you talking about? Those are the those are the inside the Beltway publications. The people there always look at this stuff. And he was saying, you know, I need $20 million. I think he's just putting out a huge number because...
He would like to raise more like 10. But what did you think when you saw it? I thought not much news there, but it's being reported in a different way and in a way that maybe makes it more serious that he's going to challenge John Cornyn. Yeah, and I took it in a totally different way, right? Originally, he was talking about needing to raise $10 million, and by the end of March, he was going to have some sort of decision. But now, in this interview with Punchbowl News...
Go ahead and look them up. I had to go dig them out. I know a few people who work there, so I was able to eventually find it. Yeah, yeah. Don't make fun of them too much. Yeah, exactly. paxton's saying now is that he's 20 million and he needs a few months to make a decision and so to me he's moving kind of the goalposts further down the line uh and i think it speaks to a little bit kind of something we talked about last week you know it's like it sounds great to go after John Cornyn on paper.
initially, but then he's thinking, oh, I do need a lot of money. I would need Donald Trump's support, and it's a statewide office, and no incumbent U.S. senator in Texas has lost a race in their primary since 1970. That's a lot of like just hard data. that you have to kind of absorb to make that dive to go after a sitting incumbent. We talked about some other people who are kicking the tires on, you know, maybe going...
into a race for the U.S. Senate, but nobody really wants to take on a sitting incumbent in John Cornyn, who is a massive fundraiser. The guy has always had money. Jeremy, let me throw a couple of flies in the ointment, if you will. Number one, yes, an incumbent senator hasn't lost their primary, their primary since, when did you say, the 70s? 1970. But the top vote getter in Texas history at the time.
In 2010, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison did lose a Republican primary. She was running for governor. Right. So it was she wasn't running for the Senate, but she was it's the same voters. And she was running against Rick Perry, who at that time did what? He ran to her right. At that time, there were, I mean, I think the quote-unquote establishment Republicans who were supporting Senator Hutchison. And remember, Rick Perry.
was always so wily and always kind of ahead of the game and figuring out what was going to happen in Republican politics and in politics in general. Remember, he was a Democrat. who then became a Republican. He could see that was starting to happen in the state. Then he was the first, I think the first, I know he was the first governor, one of the very first major Republican figures in America to really embrace the Tea Party and get out ahead of that.
He was the one standing on the south steps of the Texas Capitol while they're waving Confederate flags, and he was screaming about states' rights and making noise about how, oh, there's no reason to dissolve the United States. But if Washington keeps doing the stuff they're doing, so I do think that race can be instructive in what happens.
coming up with Cornyn if Paxton decides to go after him. Two, is it because obviously Paxton will run to the right of Cornyn. Did you see this morning, I think it was this morning or yesterday, Cornyn put out a tweet that was just a picture of him. It was a selfie, a picture of himself reading a book. It was Trump's book, The Art of the Deal. And Cornyn says, I recommend reading this. This is somebody who all of these right wing, and I wouldn't even say right wing, these Trump.
Trump fan club Republicans, I'll just put it that way, the MAGA folks, have decided that they hate Cornyn. And that also, I mean, is, you can compare that to what happened with Hutchison and Rick Perry years ago. The other thing is... And I think you're right about him moving the goalposts as far as his decision, because he had said, oh, I need a few more weeks. At some point earlier this year, Paxton said, I need a few more weeks.
And then in these interviews in Washington, he said, oh, I need a few more months. He does need to get started soon, but I would say he starts in a different position. So for example, we've talked a lot about how Beto O'Rourke, he did – I think one thing that he did right and you agree in his campaign is he started running early. Paxton is a statewide incumbent. He doesn't have the same – pressure on that as much. Like every Republican voter knows who he is.
Right. He doesn't have to introduce himself again like someone like Huffines or Allen West, who they might not be as familiar with. And if you look at all internal Republican polling that I've seen for years in Texas. Patrick, you know, Abbott, Patrick, Paxton, all Republican voters know who they are. Same is true for Cornyn, right? And the problem with Cornyn now is that he's a known quantity to the MAGA folks and they don't like him.
Right. That that's a big problem for him now on the $20 million number. I'm not sure if it's as much of moving the goalposts as it is. Maybe in one instance, he was saying what he actually needs. And in the other one, he's trying to. have a you know a higher negotiating position and like hey i need 20 so really what he's trying to do is get 10.
And people around here think that you need $40 million or $80 million to run statewide the way that Beto O'Rourke had to do to even be competitive. But in a Republican primary, you hit a saturation point where I would say with really the amount of money that you need – and you can look at the – the big spends by Patrick, Paxton, Abbott, all of them, and they've spent different numbers because they have different resources. What you really need to win a Republican primary in Texas is more like...
$6, $7, $8 million maybe, depending on how hot the race gets. So it's very different. But I want to point out something that you pointed to on your social media was that Cornyn says he's running. He's been kind of coy about that. I think putting out the Trump... book picture is easy enough of an announcement. But who was it? Johnny Moe, John Moritz over at the Austin American Statesman. Where was this? Y'all were at an event.
in my neighborhood up at Wally's Burger. All the Republicans do their stuff at Wally Burger in Austin. It's the place to go. And so he was just doing a roundtable kind of thing, a business thing, right? Is that what it was? Yeah, he was doing a thing where he was just clearly trying to push into the Trump stuff and say, look, I'm all for the Trump tax cuts. I agree with Trump on almost everything out there.
see he's trying to run as no no i really do like trump y'all it's like and so you know he's there talking about that stuff and and like and you know johnny mo and myself as well it's like we were sitting there going like Well, you know, like Trump has – Korn has made all the right –
It gestures to make it look like he's running, but is he really? That's the question I've been getting from some people. Could he pull out of this? I'm assuming you're running for re-election. No, I am. John, I am running for re-election. I've run in a lot of elections. and I've always had a primary and fortunately always been successful. At my last primary in 2020, I won by 76% of the vote. Now, he was running against some people who had no name ID.
They were not statewide. I mean, zero. I mean, he and Abbott have built up so much political capital. with with texas republican voters that when they get challenged by and this was as i said it's true for the governor and for senator cornyn they would have primaries where there's six seven eight people running against them and it wouldn't matter because you know they still
smoke all of them with 70% or whatever it was that he said. Same thing for Abbott, who Abbott spent more than Cornyn in those races, as I recall. I'd have to go back and look at it. Abbott just has unlimited resources. And of course, Cornyn is also a huge fundraiser. This would be one for the history books, but if Paxton gets into it, I also think, as we mentioned, was it last week we were talking about Wes Hunt making noise about this?
I will repeat this. A lot of those other Republicans who are maybe kind of testing the waters, if it ends up being a Paxton versus Cornyn thing, a lot of those, especially congressmen like a Wes Hunt. or a Dan Crenshaw or somebody like that, who Crenshaw has also been mentioned for this. I think Crenshaw probably wouldn't get into a race like that unless Cornyn was retiring for sure.
I think that's the kind of lay of the land on that. But I think a lot of those who have two-year terms, one thing that means, dear listener, is if they have a two-year term, if they don't win, they're not in public office anymore.
Correct. In politics, we call that up or out. And that's a hard calculation for some of these guys to make. So I think if Paxton gets in, you'll see a lot of those other people just drop out and stay where they're at. But if Cornyn was to, you know, I mean, this has happened before, if he was to later say. yeah, I made a different decision, I'm not running, then this would just be a wide open race.
Yeah, and important to remember, like, you know, two years ago, or in Paxton's last reelect, he ended up spending about, what, $7 million over that, and he did not win his primary outright. there was a runoff. So he did not get 50% of the vote of the Republican Party for his reelection. And so that's part of the calculation in this too. This is not a slam dunk. And what also makes this different is like, you know, he, you know. This is like he would give up his attorney general seat.
in order to do this. Because the cycles are the same in this one. This isn't like when Rick Perry was running for president, he did not have to also run for re-election for governor in the same year. This, you can't do that. So in this case, if Paxson makes his decision, he better win because if he loses, he's out as attorney general and a senator.
Yeah, so the two phrases we use, dear listener, for those is if it's an out-of-cycle race where you can just run and there's no consequence, you can stay in the office, we call that a free ride. They can run and it's a free ride. Remember when Royce West, he ran for a state senator from Dallas. He ran for U.S. Senate. He didn't win that primary, but it didn't matter. He wasn't up for reelection. If it's in cycle.
And you're going to lose the office that you're in if you go for it. We call that up or out, which I mentioned. So free ride, up or out. And of course, the other thing that we should stress here, if we didn't say it already, is... Who gets the Trump endorsement? If Trump endorses Paxton and Cornyn is still running, Katie, bar the door. This is a completely different race, right, as far as what's going to happen. And, you know, we'll see.
you know, what the potency of the Trump endorsement is going forward. I mean, that's, I think it's still a little bit of an open question. He's taken on a lot of, taken a lot of water, you know, just here in the beginning of this second Trump administration. So while they... We'll battle it out on the Republican side, and there will be all kinds of crazy stuff to tell you about with that. This is, as Jeremy likes to say that I say, this is a primary state.
And the Republican primary is the election of consequence. But what are the Democrats up to? I decided to check on this, Jeremy. I wrote kind of a deep dive on this at quorumreport.com this week. And you love the headline.
With the party at a crossroads, and I should have said nationally and at the state, Texas Democrats are preparing to choose a new chairman. They have not chosen a new chairman for more than a decade. You know, Gilberto Hinojosa has been there a long time. I was trying to remember. Who the chair was before that. It was Boyd Ritchie. Oh, wow. You remember Boyd? No. Some of our listeners will, actually. But Hinojosa has been the chairman for a generation of Democrats, right?
And you've got a few people running for this, eight people. Last month, I attended a forum of the candidates in Dallas-Fort Worth. It was up in Grand Prairie. And it seems that everyone that everybody I talked to, as far as the crowd that was there, Jeremy, they like this guy, Kendall Scudder. He's been a candidate for a few things. He ran for the Texas Senate against Bob Hall.
That didn't work out. Kendall Scudder brings sort of an East Texas folksiness infused with progressive politics, and he gets the base fired up. People like him. And then you have a few other people running. who are maybe more into the nuts and bolts of running a political organization. Harris County, a former Democratic chair there, who I'll mention in just a little bit, and Patsy Woods Martin.
who has run Annie's List and some of these other organizations that raise money for Democrats. Between the two, Lily Schechter, who is that former Harris County chair that I mentioned, and Woods Martin, between the two, they've probably raised, I don't know. something on the order of $150 million for Democrats. Schechter raised $5 million just for Democrats in Houston, which is an impressive feat, right? But as I pointed out this week,
When it comes to chairman's races, I love a chairman's race. I'm used to covering them on the Republican side because they've had a lot of turnover over there. When it comes to a chairman's race, to be effective in the job, you need to really be a workhorse. Right? But to get the job, you have to be a bit of a show horse. And it's amazing to me how many people just can't pull off both. You know? I mean, people either have one skill or the other.
They can't just be the workhorse and then sometimes just turn on the show horse thing. So in these races, the show pony always has a leg up, right? So that would be in this case – and this is – by the way, some people will think that's saying something ugly about the guy. I say it's just –
an accurate assessment. Scudder is a good showman. He gets the crowd fired up. I'll give you an example from the event I attended in Grand Prairie. He was asked about Greg Abbott's school voucher program. And you would think... that any Democrat could just knock that question out of the park, right, for a Democratic crowd. They should be able to just, you know, get the crowd on their feet. Well, he certainly did that. Listen to how he talked about that and listen to the crowd reaction.
There is a concerted effort by billionaires to pry that opportunity out of the hands of working people. And our party moves forward whenever we bear hug the idea that it is the working people of this country standing up against the billionaires. and the banks. We are at our best as a party when we are protecting poor people from billions in banks. On that same question, Lily Schechter, who again, a prolific fundraiser on the same question, Jeremy.
She just told us – I'm not even going to play it for you. She just told a story about how Democrats in Houston were able to defeat the Houston Independent School District bond initiative. They said this is an Abbott thing, and it's a very specific issue in Houston.
The way that that all went down, right? It was a specific situation. What she didn't say is, you know, when we get organized as Democrats, we can beat Greg Abbott. That's all she really needed to say and then tell the story, but she didn't even say that. She just talked about how they beat the HISD bond. and how they organized to do that the the reaction in the crowd was sort of confusion jeremy you you might have thought
A Democrat in Dallas who wouldn't know anything about the Houston school district bond issue might have heard her answer and thought that she's a Democrat who's against money for schools. That's how bad it was. But what she did speak about –
that she had that she was better about was the fact that you know democrats need to raise money and when she was asked how much the democratic party needs to raise every election cycle so basically every 24 months how much they would need to raise to be competitive with republicans well she's at about $40 million.
which sounds right to me. Listen to this. I think that people like Ben O'Rourke and Colin Allred have raised massive amounts of money, and that's amazing. But what they've done differently is they've raised it for the campaign cycle leading up to the GMTV effort. I think we actually can raise...
a little bit less money than they do because you do year-round organizing if you spend the money year in your day in and day out you actually don't have to stockpile a ton of money at the end because you're building up an army throughout the state
up to the election cycle and keeping them after the election cycle so you have you have an electorate that stays engaged because you have democratic uh workers that are working on the democratic party that are covering the entire state working year round and so i think that changes Jeremy, I spoke with some of the members of the State Democratic Executive Committee who will make this decision next weekend. It's a small group of people who vote on this, not unlike...
the way that Sylvester Turner was chosen by the precinct chairs in Harris County for that congressional seat that's now open. And of course, we'll cover that race as it unfolds. There was some more developments on that, but we'll get to it later. But when I talked to some of those executive...
committee members. It was interesting. One of them said, look, hey, we have to have somebody who can raise money, period. Now, this is an establishment Democrat. The word establishment sometimes gets thrown around in a pejorative way. I would say what it means is someone who's helped build the Democratic Party. for years said what we need is someone who can you know put together an organization
And this is an interesting insight, I think, into the thinking of democratic activists in the state. Someone who didn't agree with that said this, quote, We're tired of raising all this money as Democrats, but having to sell out our values to do it and not having a plan for once we have it. This was an SDEC member I granted them.
anonymity for the story at quorumreport.com, Jeremy, just because I wanted an idea of their internal deliberations. They don't want to go bad-mouthing each other in public on this because there's a small group of them. But that person pointed to the campaign of Colin Allred as a perfect example. And they said, quote, All Red raised a ton of money and then just lit it on fire, close quote. And so what that tells me...
is that you now have at least a full generation, a generation and a half, maybe two generations of Texas Democrats who don't believe, and maybe I could see why they would think this. I don't necessarily agree, but I can see why they would think this. They don't believe that being able to have resources for a campaign is the most important thing. And here's why they would think that. Because they've now seen, go back 10 years, Wendy Davis, $40 million spent on her behalf, right?
to come in 21 points behind Greg Abbott. Then just last year, how much money was spent by Colin Allreda, his campaign, and other groups? Millions and millions of dollars, right? A mountain of money. And it didn't matter. They still fell way short. The only exception... was the Beto O'Rourke campaign for Senate, but not for governor, right? He raised a lot of money for governor too, but it was only the Senate race where they came close. And so I can see why.
Some Democrats would now think that that's not the most important thing, that maybe we need to be focused on firing up the base, meeting people where they're at and all of that. I would argue that you've got to have the fundamentals. You've got to have a good candidate.
You've got to have a clear message, and you have to have money to be able to make sure people even notice the first two things, right? But this is the fight they're having, Jeremy, and it's very likely. I'll just – You know I don't make predictions, but it's very likely that the candidate who's not running on fundraising prowess, the person who instead fires up the base of the Democratic Party, it's very likely that person is going to win the chairman's race next weekend.
Yeah, a few years ago, I would have told you Lily Schechter would have been a shoo-in. for a position like this, just because like she had these, she had these great connections and was able to get like people like Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton to events in Houston in a way that like that kind of access and that kind of fundraising powers, like, like she.
brings a lot to the table and like you know now that that you know who knows if that's an asset or not in this era of wherever the democrats are right now but additionally i just kind of There's also this home court advantage thing that always comes up in Texas, right? You saw that really kind of in the Colin Oliver race. He thought he was pretty well known because he was hanging out in Dallas, but you get to Houston and not a soul.
Even on election day, people were still asking me, who's the guy running against Cruz? It's like you don't want to hear that question on October 25th, right before an election, right? And so Schechter clearly has a Houston home court advantage.
Clearly, you know, like bring up HISD in Dallas, you know, or in the DFW region is not going to do much good. Right. It's like, and so like, well, they didn't even know what she was talking about. Exactly. And I get your point. Yeah. And that's what the state is.
Like, you know, Hinojosa leaned into it for the longest of times. You know, coming from the valley, he would lean on this, like, you know, understanding of this solid blue Democratic area. Like, you know, I could deliver the vote, of course. This last time, that didn't happen. So there's always a home court advantage in this stuff. It's hard to tell how it's going to play all out.
Yeah, so we'll keep an eye on it. It is interesting. It's one of those things that's kind of under the radar. When we would cover those Republican chairmen's races, people might say, what does it matter? But it does set the tone for the party. And that's why you go to these conventions and you figure out what's going on with it. And I do think that that fundraising question, it's a serious one. I mean, the Democrats just don't have money.
outside of some of these different candidates that Schechter mentioned, but what they have not had is a, any, I mean, on the Republican side, this is where it gets kind of twisted up on the Republican side. The Republican Party of Texas as an entity, as far as fundraising, has been a joke for most of the time that I've covered it. I mean, we're talking at least two decades here.
where it's other republican groups that fill in the gaps right the associated republicans of texas texans for lawsuit reform etc i mean some of those groups have as much as for They have the number that Schechter mentioned. I mean she could have been looking at the Ethics Commission reports for Texans for lawsuit reform when she said that we should have $40 million in the bank. That's what they have.
Right? It's not the Texas Democratic Party or the Republican Party of Texas. It's these other groups. So unless the Democrats are going to get some of these other groups in Texas that are going to have a whole lot of money. then they kind of have to do it through their party apparatus in a way that Republicans have not had to do, right? Because their candidates have a lot of money and those other groups have a lot of money. Let's get to the up and down of the week.
Each and every weekday in his newsletter, Jeremy brings you the up and down of the day. And here on the show, we do up and down of the week. And this week, Jeremy, your up was actually mentioned on the House floor and the Senate floor. Yeah, right. It's like Minnie Fisher Cunningham, the women's suffragist leader from 1917 and 1918. All she did was get women the right to vote two years before the 19th Amendment passed.
the House and the Senate this week after listening to our show decided to pay tribute to her. Senator Carol Alvarado talked about Cunningham during this tribute. We don't talk enough about Minnie Fisher.
here in Austin or even in this building. But we should. She changed our state and our politics forever. She is up there with some other Texas trailblazers we all know respect and love like barbara jordan and ann richards members join me in recognizing many on her birthday today march the 19th huh like the 19th amendment Yeah. And what's interesting about all that is like so Alvarado clearly is a big listener of our show, but she's able to pass a resolution.
in the name of minnie fisher cunningham something that hasn't been done since uh 1954 was our 1955 excuse me was the last time we had you know something like that passed so it's like it's nice to pay tribute to the woman after all these So she's the up of the week. 100%. Who was the down? The down, I'm going to go wide shot here. It's going to be these smoke shops. You know, it's like, you know, after everything you heard from Dan Patrick. He's going wild on it.
Yeah, I'm not saying like, you know, Dan Patrick doesn't get his way on everything, but I can't imagine it's going to be good for business when, you know, a guy like Dan Patrick is going to say, we're going to ban your stores. You know, it's clearly going to be a rough stretch of the list.
legislature uh right now from here until uh the the signee die you know whether or not what changes are made and how they're made and how it affects everybody because it's not just smoke shops you know i should expand that out you know you can find thc products in a lot of stores right now any liquor store you go into you go to a brew pub
And they have THC-infused drinks now. That's going to affect a lot of the Texas industry. But right now, I put them as my down of the week. It's just been a rough little week publicity-wise.
That's right. All right. You can check out the Up and the Down every weekday in Jeremy's newsletter. To get to it, just click the link. It's the top post on his... x page jeremy s wallace you can follow me on twitter as well if you want you know if it's something that you would care to do if any does anybody really want to see what i'm saying on there you can look
It's just my name, at Scott Braddock. You should be a subscriber at quorumreport.com and houstonchronicle.com, and we'll see you next time.