Welcome to Party Politics, where we prepare you for your next political conversation.

I'm Jeronimo Cortina, a political science professor at the University of Houston.

And I'm Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor, also here at the University of Houston.

Thanks for hanging out, talking politics on a crazy busy week, really two weeks, Jeronimo.

Obviously we are on primary eve.

Yep, Texans are voting and we're going to break down all of the different storylines and there's a bunch of things happening.

I'm always worried in a primary that like there won't be enough to talk about, but boy, are there a lot of things to talk about.

So we're going to get to all of these things when we get a chance to dig in a little bit deeper.

But there's a bunch of national stuff happening too.

But we want to get to because all kinds of different controversies, all kinds of different conundrums that Washington's facing.

Surprise, surprise.

Another surprise is that there is a shutdown looming.

Just when you thought you like again, just when you thought that this was going to be like of the past, we are currently in the middle of the fiscal year for 2024 and Congress is still not yet approved in your spending bills.

Basically, the goal here is that they have to get either final passage of these bills or some kind of continued resolution is going to push them, you know, a little bit further down, literally kicking the can down the road to try to get this passed in the near term.

So there's a lot of things that are happening here.

Right.

Obviously, the big kind of four sat down with the vice president and the president and tried to negotiate kind of some kind of deal here.

I don't know if you saw the footage of this, but I want you to Google search.

If you didn't like the president in the Oval Office, the fire they had raging was so hot, it was like 1812 level fire.

So is it too soon?

So much fire.

But that definitely was indicative of how kind of tense the meeting was, because obviously everyone has their own opinions about what to do.

The real hold up here is the House right now.

Mike Johnson, The speaker has to placate his very far right wing base.

And the numbers, the votes maybe aren't there for this.

So give me a sense of sort of your take on the way that this is sort of shaping up.

Well, I mean, the first thing is that after the meeting, Speaker Johnson said that we will address these in a timely matter manner.

And the problem is that, you know, these thing kicks in Saturday 12:01 a.m..

So the timely manner is like, no.

And you had, you know, a lot of time before that.

It's like when your car says it needs gas, you're like, I'll get to this in a timely manner.

Exactly.

There's an expiring like.

Amount and there's a light blinking, right?

It's like you have one mile to go with gas.

But anyways, and the other thing is, you know, it's a very curious statement that he said that the first priority of the country is our border and making sure it's secured.

Yeah.

And it's like, wait, what?

Like you had the opportunity to pass the largest and most, you know, strict immigration bill in the history.

You know, that's modern history.

Yeah.

Because if we go to it they do of different things.

But only you remember that, right?

The most the stricter bill ever.

Yeah.

You let it go because former President Trump said don't Yeah and now you're saying well our priority support is like why do you want.

I don't want.

It.

Yeah.

Like how much can they sort of push this argument that this is still a Biden problem.

We'll talk in a minute about the president going to the border.

But that's something that the Republicans have to be kind of careful of.

yeah, they want a bunch of stuff here that they're probably not going to get.

And I think that for Speaker Johnson, that, you know, his job is on the line.

Like, if you want another C.R.

continuing resolution, then they're probably not going to stay with him for much longer.

So, yeah, they want some policy wins and he's not delivering and.

He has about a two seat majority right now in the House.

It's like really tense.

Yeah, he didn't say much at that meeting.

He was a very close mouth, but he probably is just literally like, you know, thinking, I mean, the.

Areas where I want him to do.

It was the fire.

It's too hot.

Yeah.

Crank it up and like, you know, let them sweat.

Maybe that's their home field advantage.

Right?

Yeah.

So we'll see how this goes.

Obviously, this is still in flux.

And as time of this recording, you know, they haven't passed anything.

But it could be the government goes into shutdown right at a time where we've got like, you know, an excess of voting happening.

Texas is one thing which we'll talk about in a minute.

But South Carolina voted this week.

Michigan voted this week.

Quick rundown.

Basically, Trump trounces Nikki Haley in South Carolina.

He reported that night that the campaign ends tonight, the primary ends tonight, even though, of course, he won't officially clinch the nomination for a few more months.

Looking at the demographics, he wins big two thirds among voters who were white and didn't go to college.

Three quarters of those without a college degree went for Trump.

83% are sort of angry about the sort of federal government, including thinking that the country is on the wrong track.

Who he lost, though, is interesting.

He lost a bunch of supporters from sort of college educated voters, those women voters.

How do you see this?

I know that you've been sort of interested in seeing how far this can go.

Now, Nikki Haley gets 40% in her home state, which is pretty good for somebody who is really running on fumes.

That's a pretty good outcome.

But like, is the writing on the wall here for her?

Is this it?

I mean, yeah, I think that yes.

And and especially when you look also at Michigan, right?

Yeah.

But same results.

Same similar result.

You know, I think that, you know, it's Trump is running like he owns the Republican Party and in part he does, right.

but all these other I mean since Iowa, right he has not won 99.9% of the vote.

Yeah, he has won 50, 60, etc., etc..

So that tells me.

Right, that 40% of Republicans do not like President Trump.

It's a great point.

And one thing is the primary I primary are primarily.

Hey, well yeah, yeah, yeah that out.

Primaries are mostly, you know, partizan.

I mean that's the nature of the primary, right?

So looking forward to November, it's like Right is not looking good.

That's her.

Point.

Right.

You want to say basically that the you know the party needs to find it exactly leader who can unify its own party but also try to get sort of more than the public to support that Trump's put his brand on the RNC.

It's not even the RNC in some ways anymore.

It's like the party of Trump.

Right.

Right.

Gold plated it as everything.

So the question I have and wrote down here in all caps is, is his base large enough to win the presidency?

And I think a lot of people are looking at this and saying, no, it's really not.

Yeah, unless there's some other kind of dynamic here that we aren't seeing, that problem is really definitely something that they're going to have to face.

And Nikki Haley, of course, faces a different problem.

She's running out of money.

The Koch brothers, who had sort of funded her run, have said that they're not going to fund anything more.

You know, she's trying to play for the long haul here.

Right.

Basically kind of take the position that maybe something happens to Trump in the meantime, like there's an implosion of his candidacy.

So she's the one left standing.

Or maybe it's the case she's playing for 2028, right?

Where if Trump loses the general, then she can come in and say, okay, well, like I told you so, you know, I'm not.

Sure that's true.

Right?

So maybe that's a possibility, but it's still a really long game.

And as a result, I think she's really struggling here.

Joe Biden struggling sort of as well in Michigan.

He wins by a fairly handy margin, 81 to 13%, but the 13% indicated they were uncommitted.

And I guess the way that this works is that you've got about a hundred thousand voters who indicated they support the party generally, but don't about Joe Biden.

So the thinking is that this is a lot of young people who are unhappy about what Joe Biden is doing.

It's a lot of people who are mad about the president's handling of the Israel or Hamas situation.

So how do you see this for Joe Biden?

I mean, I wouldn't be too worried because at the end when you're in the general election.

Right, you have, I mean, a choice.

Are you going to vote for these candidate or these candidate or do not vote.

A welcome home?

So the most important thing is if those are not very happy, yeah, will vote for Joe Biden's side.

But the same rule or the same scenario would apply for Trump.

So the question is, you know, if both are going to be canceling each other in the general election.

Yeah, and we don't know that yet.

Yeah, it's normal for people in Michigan to have uncommitted votes that happens to happen to Barack Obama back in his second year.

And, you know, it's I guess, you know.

It's a common.

Thing.

It's a position.

Right.

Right.

And the issue that, you know, Michigan voters, especially those that were protesting the White House position on Israel, Hamas are, you know, a small percentage.

Right.

Of the big tent of the Democratic Party.

Yeah.

So we'll see.

We'll see.

But, I mean, I would be concerned, but I would not be, you know, raising five alarms.

Gotcha.

Gotcha.

Yeah.

I think that the real problem for him, the real concern for him isn't the uncommitted votes.

It's the fact that the turnout was a lot lower for the term Democratic primary than for the Republican primary.

Now, of course, it's a lot more competitive Republicans, but the number drop is pretty significant.

So 40% change and that's a pretty big one when, you know, as President Joe Biden has been struggling to kind of get that unity in the party and just to develop that and see that they're going to need to put it put this the long haul, one of the things that they've tried to do is to go on offense.

So this week, actually two things are important that happened.

And one is that Joe Biden is going to come to the border, which Republicans have been chastising him for not doing for, you know, months.

Right.

But it actually turns out that Donald Trump is going to be at the border at the same time, he's going to be an Eagle Pass.

So there'll be different cities in the border.

Right.

But still, both here in Texas, on the border.

The other is that the president, after eating or while eating actually like a big scoop of ice cream, said that the nation is very close to brokering a cease fire between Israel and Hamas.

Now, of course, at the time that we're recording this, it's not a done deal and it may not be a done deal until after even next week.

But that's still progress in something that, like we said, is the kind of a real blindspot for the president.

So to me, like this shows that the president wants to really shift things now that Trump is the official nominee.

Now they know kind of what they're firing at.

They can be more committed to this one.

They will talk about next week.

too, in addition to the chaos of the primary in Texas, is that the president's going to give State of the Union speech.

It'll have a bit of a Texas flavor.

So that's a nice preview.

But that's another kind of opportunity for the president to kind of push the envelope a little bit.

So I'm thinking that this is a real kind of shift in terms of the strategy of 2024. absolutely.

And the important thing here is that I think that now the Biden administration and Joe Biden are going to go on the offensive side.

And that's going to be important, right, Because what Biden is trying to do at the border is just flipping the script, Right.

And flipping the script in 2024.

And he's going to be saying, well, you know what, we want to solve this thing.

But they didn't because he wants to win.

Right.

And tried to flip the script in that way and try to change public opinion a little bit.

I don't know if it's going to be too little too late, but at least, you know, he can have, you know, those 40% of the Republican Party that are voting for Haley to great point, saying, you know what?

Yeah, I don't like this guy.

I don't like this guy either.

But at least he's trying and, you know, whatever, maybe.

They sit it out or at the very least, it blunts the impact of that, because I think the Democrats are losing on the border issue.

But this might make it so that they don't lose by as much, which is a win still in politics, it's all zero sum, right?

It's all about kind of where you are position wise.

And so it seems to me like that's a an opportunity for him to be able to kind of least neutralize some of the negativity that might result.

So we'll see how that plays out.

But that's interesting.

And of course, again, Texas is in the center of it.

All right.

We exactly like to be there because Texas is the most important state.

Also in the.

Union.

And we're having a primary.

So let's talk about that.

This is party politics.

I'm Brandon.

This is Jeronimo.

We are obviously in the thick of early voting and the primary is next week.

We'll run it all down and next week's show.

But just to give us some sense of the perspective here, the number of registered voters in Texas for the primary is 17.9 million, which is a pretty big increase since 2018.

That's 2.1 million new voters.

That's a vote.

Share the size of the state of Mississippi.

That is now up for grabs in Texas.

It's like a whole new state in a way.

And so all these candidates are really having to some quite in some cases, sort of introduce themselves again, like Ted Cruz has got 2 million more new people since he was elected the last time.

And that growth is really impressive, but also changes the dynamic of how the race is going to come out.

Looking at the numbers specifically, it looks to me like, again, just like in Michigan, the enthusiasm from Democrats is pretty low.

So like Derek Ryan, who is sort of a data guru on this stuff, used to work for the Republican Party and crunches numbers on early voting, has done some interesting match ups.

And what he says is that basically the committed Democrats, people who are less likely to vote and have voted in the last three Democratic primaries or last four Democratic primaries are turning out at a rate that's about 10% lower than they did in 2020 or 2022.

So the enthusiasm for Democrats is way low.

Yeah, exactly what the numbers will look like.

We don't know at the end, but like at the time of this recording, that's a pretty big gap here.

And I think the fact that you have the same kind of old match ups is not really inspiring people.

And so you don't see that turnout increase as much.

The average age of the primary voter is for the Democrats 62 and for the Republicans 64.

So very old electorate turnout as we predicted and then usually as it happens, correct?

Yeah, No, absolutely.

But I mean, there's I don't disagree with that, but there's a couple of things.

And the first one is that, as you said, we have new electorate, basically.

Number two is that you.

Have a new old electorate, a.

New holding factor is that you have more competitive races on the Republican Party.

Right.

And having those competitive races, given the Abbott, Paxton, Trump endorsements, the civil war of the Republican Party in Texas, you know, makes people more enthused to go out and vote.

But also, you know, looking at those numbers.

Yes, I mean, the differences are important, but not very different.

For example, in Harris County, difference in early voting so far, you know, it's about a point 15% between Democrats and Republicans.

Not too much to look at, I don't know.

But, you know, it's not significantly, you know, worrisome.

Yeah.

And then the important part is when you look at early voting, you know, in the RGV, Rio Grande Valley, right, that is the, you know, past election was all it's Republican it's the battleground.

Yeah, yeah, etc..

I mean, Democrats turn out their has increase and it's in some cases like for example when you look at Starr County, it's almost eight percentage points, you know, above what Republicans are right when you look at the county next to it.

That is not part of RGV region per se in support of county.

It's 24% higher for Democrats.

So you're also talking about a low number of people, right?

Well, yes, but more.

People live in my neighborhood and live in these communities.

Right?

I agree.

I agree.

But that's indication that, you know, things are shifting once again.

And what happened last election is not necessarily going to happen.

And in this election is a great point.

And there's a lot of churn.

And I think you're exactly right that there are pockets of of enthusiasm.

Right.

Because, again, with the primary, it's not always the case that you've got the right of statewide, although we do have a statewide Democratic primary, which on paper is competitive, but in practice really isn't.

And we can talk about that.

Exactly.

but we also see like a lot of primary candidates.

And so Republicans have been more able to harness that enthusiasm because they just have more candidates running right now.

And so, like you said, the endorsement kind of war has become a recipe for getting those some voters to come out to vote this cycle.

16 House Republicans are facing multiple candidates in their primaries.

This rarely happens.

In fact, this is the most of any state cycle in sense since 2022 where it broke the record of 11.

The good news for these candidates is that if you're an incumbent, you typically win either in the sort of general or in a runoff.

But we're going to have a lot of runoffs and that's where they're more vulnerable.

So like statistically, over time, they're likely to win about 70% of those races.

But in 30% they're not.

And that's really where people like Paxton and Abbott and Patrick are looking to make some changes.

Right.

Right.

And that might mean a very different character for the House than it was.

The other thing is that there is a lot of money being spent, right?

So in the first 25 days of the year, the kind of the campaign finance reform reported that basically about $8 million was spent, Greg Abbott has spent $6 million.

Right.

You got Texans for Lawsuit Reform gave more than $6 million.

Tim Dunn alone.

The mega-donor from from east from west Texas has put $8 million in.

So Texas politics is really dominated by a few very, very rich voices.

And that's not going to change in time real soon.

But this campaign finance laws don't exist here.

Exactly.

And so that's really, I think, the real substantial change.

But I want to ask you about this in the context of the endorsement battle.

Right.

Like every candidate now at the statewide level is trying to carve off their own piece.

The Republican Party is trying to get their own kind of agenda on the on the on the list.

And I think voters are confused right now.

We go with what Trump wants or what Abbott wants or what Patrick wants.

Sometimes they align, right?

But not always.

So how do you see this like kind of fray kind of playing out?

Well, I mean, it's it's a vendetta, right?

Yeah.

And they said it.

Yeah.

I mean, he's not that I'm putting words in their mouths.

They said that they're going to get rid of the members are not supporting their agenda.

And as you say that gives the optics of having that divided Republican Party.

There is no unity in terms of we're going to support X, Y or Z.

It's like I'm supporting this one.

You're opposing this one as well.

At the same time, then there's alignment and then there is complete dis alignment.

I think that the most important issue would be for Governor Abbott, right?

I mean, the past, when he has endorsed certain candidates, have not won, you know, diminishes.

But right now he has put, you know, a lot of political capital and a lot of money right, on school vouchers.

And he's going after those members.

Whether they win or lose, it's a very risky proposition for Governor Abbott, because if he loses, right.

Yeah, I think school vouchers are going to have a little bit more of a complicated comeback in the next session.

Yeah, for the members.

To like willing to like not willing to really kind of meet him halfway on this.

Right.

And even if he has people who support him and that policy, it might be the case that Republicans are a little bit more trepidatious about moving in that direction.

that's a nice word.

You like that?

Yeah, The word of the week.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I pull it off my every day.

yeah.

I can see.

It's working the.

Calendar, but that they.

Write the word of the day.

Yeah, trepidation.

But I do think that this infighting is creating kind of loyalty to people instead of to policies.

And that's interesting because we really haven't had that, although it's inevitable in a way in Texas politics, because you have these, you know, statewide elected officials who all have their own power sources.

Right.

We've talked about this all kinds of different ways.

So it's kind of inevitable in a way, but we really haven't had it before.

And so now to me, what's interesting is that it's people aren't really concerned about like what's on the menu.

They're concerned about who's cooking the meal.

And so they're really following the people instead of the policies, which is very different from things that have been in the past.

So that's a really, I think, important kind of difference.

But I think you're right about Governor Abbott.

The voucher thing is confusing to me.

You could make the case that, you know, he's following a national trend.

You can make the case that he's, you know, taking big money from people like Jeff Yass, who gave him a huge chunk of money.

Outside the state.

And I know you're cynical, you're cynical on this.

And so and I am to to a degree, too.

But perhaps it's the case that, you know, one of these things is the reason.

But whatever the reason this is for him, like the end of the poker game, he's all in on this.

But as you said, I think this is really risky.

The other question, though, is that, you know, the risk side, yes, he risks him kind of hurting himself in the next session.

But if he wins, he gets half of these candidates elected or.

Yeah.

Or in the, you know, kind of better off the incumbents he endorsed, then that puts him into a much firmer position.

Now, Dan Patrick's endorsing people.

Ken Paxton's endorsing people.

But like Abbott, is the only one who has the real kind of ability to set the agenda and then to kind of follow through with it.

So, yeah, I think that's a real kind of I mean.

As you say, he wins a number of those.

I mean, he's going to be if the glasses empty, half empty or half full.

Right.

But, you know, Governor Abbott is one of the smartest modern, you know, politicians, right?

He pivots in a very, very clever way every time.

You know.

And when you look at his career, you know, he has people that many times and this is one of the occasion.

But as you say, he has said all the chips in and this could go one way or the other.

Yeah.

I don't see, you know, Paxton or in this case, Patrick coming out, you know, if if he's, you know, injured politically speaking.

Right.

Right.

To try to come up and replace that leadership, I don't see it.

As you said, he has ironclad Patrick has it in the in the in the Senate.

No question about another very smart politician.

Whether you agree with him or not.

And then obviously, you know, the one that has all the chips in, but not as many as Abbott and perhaps might lose.

Is Paxton right?

Yeah, he is in a situation that it's, you know, here goes everything.

Let's see what happens.

He's playing with house money though, because his money is all from like basically Tim Don and from right of the Wilks brothers.

Like it's all that conservative money and he's not able to raise on his own.

And that's different from Abbott who really can and from Patrick, who also to some degree really can.

But I think this is the beginning of this new kind of divisive era.

Yeah.

I want to ask you about two things and they're kind of related.

We saw Rick Perry go to Beaumont and talk to crowds there about Dade Phelan, kind of basically charting out of territory.

The suggested that like Abbott's wrong, Trump is wrong.

We need Dade Phelan.

Will Phelan survive, number one.

And number two is Rick Perry persuasive enough in this?

I will set out because I obviously have a book coming out on Rick Perry, right.

Which I make the case that, you know, he was that politician who's able to understand the arc of the Republican Party, but it changed a lot since he even became a Republican in the late eighties.

So how do you see this playing out?

Because he's, you know, Phelan is the other kind of member of the big three in real jeopardy here.

Yeah, Well, I think, you know, we're talking about Jefferson County, right?

Where sits and on turnout so far in the early voting is just about in the Republican side.

You're talking about 6200 votes, right?

It's very slow.

Yeah.

And when turnout tends to be slow, I think that it will benefit the incumbent.

Yeah.

And the other thing is, I think that Phelan has a good standing with his district.

And that's what matters.

That's what matters.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Things do not matter whatsoever at this stage of the game, but.

A run off would be really embarrassing for him.

And he's got two candidates who are running against him, so that might happen.

He spent a bunch of money to try to hold the line, but he's fighting not one but two Texas billionaires.

Yeah, that's.

A tough spot to be in.

And obviously, they're calling him a "rino" and every other ugly name of the book.

But, you know, I do think that he's been so persuasive and so helpful for members.

He's given, like, you know, multiple million dollars of his own sort of campaign money to try to help things.

And so I feel like he'll survive.

But it may be really tight.

And that definitely is going to weaken him relative to the other sort of members of the big three.

Well, sure.

But again, the question here is, once again, new electorate, right?

Yeah, Some of these races are very competitive.

We don't know what's going to happen in the in the general election.

So those are going to be extremely important things to look at.

I think he's going to survive.

Yeah, even if he goes to a runoff.

Interesting.

Okay.

I'll ask you one last thing.

And that's about the courts.

So we've had Donald Trump and Ken Paxton on a crusade to unseat several members of the Criminal Court of Appeals.

The main thrust is basically that they didn't give Ken Paxton the powers he wanted to be able to prosecute vote fraud.

And so they've got a target on their backs.

What do you make of the kind of attack on the judiciary like this?

I mean, obviously they're politicians.

We run partizan elections in Texas, but they've been receiving all kinds of different kind of anger from this.

Well, I think it's it's it's very bad.

One of the things that I have never understood these this issue of having, you know, judicial quote unquote, partizan elections.

Right.

It's very off to me.

Opens it up to these kinds of problems.

Right.

Big money trying to unseat, even though they're as conservative as just about anybody other.

And then questions, you know, you know, the justice that is blind.

He's blind.

But you were running as a Democrat.

You were running as a Republican.

But I don't know.

We'll see.

It's very interesting and perhaps we can discuss it in the next couple of weeks.

Here it is.

But for these week, Brandon, that's it for today.

I'm Jeronimo Cortina.

And I'm Brandon Rottinghaus.

The conversation keeps up next week.