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 Rotting also a political science professor here at U-h.

Welcome to party politics.

Exciting news right.

Lots to say and do this week.

We're swamped, frankly, with stuff.

We are blessed with an abundance of political topics.

We're gonna try to get to.

Them all.

On of abundance of politics.

So true, so true.

So we're going to try to get to it all.

But obviously we're going to have to, you know, kind of hit the high points.

The first thing that's important this week is another contender in the Texas Senate race, a Democrat in this case, state Representative James Talarico from Austin, has been telegraphing this for a while.

But now he made it official.

And, you know, it really does reshape the race here.

So give me your sense of kind of how this is sort of a sort of a new world in terms of democratic politics for what's going to happen in this primary.

Well, I think that one of the things that Talarico has, and I think that our friends at the Texas Tribune really capture it, is that he's a great communicator.

He can tell a story and get into it.

And really project a very clear message.

And lack of messaging has been the problem with Democrats, not only here in Texas, but at the national level.

Yeah.

And the other thing, I've watched he's, I guess, one of the campaign videos, like I'm running that kind of stuff.

In front of the Baptist church.

And like in the pickup when he was up there, like standing in a pickup truck, I think.

Yeah.

I didn't pay a lot of attention on the on the imagery, but on, on the words.

And he's using, believe it or not, a lot of the wording that President Trump use during his campaign is interesting.

Yeah.

So it's again, once again he's the big guy against the little guy.

He's not left.

And right is the billionaires where the system is broke.

Yeah aka let's drain the swamp.

Yeah.

Etc.

etc..

So I think that that has a very good, it's a good sounding board.

Yeah.

To get started.

And also he got points, you know, going to Joe Rogan.

Sorry.

Yeah.

Betters podcast itself.

Yeah.

Rogan may have a couple more viewers than us.

Right.

Like we're catching up quickly.

He's plateaued.

We're catching up.

No, you're right.

I mean, Talarico is famous, right?

The Joe Rogan thing, for sure.

I mean, and then if you combine that with, kind of, you know, you did, like, 25 news interviews and, like, 24 hours after the quorum break, helped the Democrats raise money, help them increase their profile.

So he's a superstar in the party.

And there's definitely, you know, I think, a real shake up of this race.

You know, he's 36 years old.

He's got this great economic populist rhetoric that combines with the sort of, you know, religious overtones.

He's went to seminary so he can speak that language.

And anybody who watch the Joe Rogan interview knows that that's true.

So that's pretty persuasive.

Also persuasive is that he banked $1 million the first, you know, day of fundraising.

So that's pretty good.

Caveat here is that it's going to cost about $80 million for this to actually go overall.

And he's going to have to win the primary for.

So about a third of that going to have to be used to beat Colin already, which is going to be a pretty, you know, challenging prospect at this point.

So, I mean, I think this is a definite kind of welcome moment for the Democratic Party.

They needed somebody who's young who can shake things up.

He's got like a million and a half TikTok followers just a little bit fewer than you do.

Right.

You're about 2 million.

So he's like, he's catching up to 2.52.5.

But yeah, sorry, 2.5.

But yeah I know he's catching up to you.

And so that's a real, I think kind of way that he can communicate the message.

Right is one thing.

But having the audience pay attention.

But again, audience is not everything, right?

O'Rourke had a big audience and didn't get it done.

And so there is, I think, still some kind of groundwork here.

That's not quite, kind of finalized yet.

And this will still be a pretty competitive race regardless.

Right.

And that guy comes from the party, right?

I mean, it cannot come from the from the candidates, just per se.

But the Democratic Party in Texas needs to have the ground work done in such a way that is not only the message board, that is just basically getting people out to go, going and knocking on doors, etc., etc.

A campaign infrastructure cannot do that alone.

If you're just listening to this, you can see the giant smirk on my face, which is to indicate that I think that that is an improbable outcome, right?

That the Democratic Party does not have an infrastructure right.

They have Beto O'Rourke, who's basically their infrastructure.

Everything else is going to have to be manufactured by somebody else.

And as it is now, that doesn't exist.

So I think that's a major problem for any Democrat running, but especially for Talarico, who's going to run against Allred and.

All right.

Allred ran.

Right.

He ran, you know, 2 to 5% better in every county and across the state than Harris did.

And that's a good thing for for Allred.

But obviously doesn't mean that it's going to necessarily kind of, you know, translate into this race.

But he's got a bit of a head start here.

So I think that's one issue.

But to me, like the problem for Talarico the problem for Tallarico is that people don't know who he is, right?

Joe Rogan kind of made him famous nationally.

Right.

But in Texas, it's still ambiguous.

And so his support is really wide, but I think very thin.

So if you look at the polling, 50% of people don't know who he is and 17% of people either have no favorable opinion or no unfavorable opinion of him.

So combined together, like 70% of people don't know who he is.

The Democrats who are polled suggest that they have a favorable opinion of him, but now is favorable.

Is Colin Allred Allred's numbers or something in the order of about 6,070% where Talarico is in the 30.

So he'll catch up for sure.

But that's a real potential problem.

Here's another kind of problem for Talarico, and that is that he talks big about the quorum break and how he fought for Texas.

He fought for the Democratic Party, he fought for voters.

But in 21, he was one of the first Democrats to come back from that quorum broke.

And people like Annamaria Ramos and Jasmine Crockett, who another potential contender basically at that time said, you know, we're a team.

You shouldn't be coming back, right?

You violated kind of this unspoken agreement that we had.

So what do you do?

And that definitely is going to come up in a primary fight.

So I think this is still very much an open race despite the fact that, you know, we sort of see this.

Oh yeah.

Popularity from.

Right, right, right.

Right.

From, from Talarico.

And I think it's still, you know, the Democrats aren't sold on either person, right?

No.

And I think, I mean, the bottom line is that it changes the dynamics and it changes in terms of how in this case, Allred.

Or potentially O'Rourke or, any other contender like Joaquin Castro are going to think about, you know, having an extra person attempting to run.

So I think he's just a calculus.

And then we'll see.

We're still kind of, early ish.

Yeah.

It's still it's so early.

Yeah.

So we just passed kind of Labor Day and that's traditional time when campaigns start off.

But the other thing to note is that the primary obviously has got to win.

But the general is kind of what the Republicans are getting ready.

Right.

They know how to beat Colin Allred.

They already did it once.

Right now the question is how do they beat Talarico?

You're starting to see some hints about how that comes out.

Talarico has said some things that if taken out of context, might be problematic.

For instance, he says the following that God is binary.

It looks like he's talking about sort of the transgender rights, but it obviously wasn't exactly what he was saying.

Out of context, though, it could be.

Absolutely.

He also talks about the kind of respecting the people of Gaza he talks about, not supporting Chuck Schumer, for majority leader.

You know, he talks about the need to have, kind of more equity when it comes to, you know, sports sort of in particular, having women playing men sports, right, or having kind of people who are transgender play in sports.

So there's a lot of, I think, problematic elements that make him look a lot like Beto O'Rourke from a more modern perspective and could create an issue for him to persuade, like the independents and Republicans, that he needs to be able to win Texas.

Well, I mean, yeah, he needs young voters.

Yeah.

And I think that young voters might be more likely to align to a position that is clear in terms of where he stands in terms of, all these red meat social issues.

Yeah.

Then I'll read that tends to be more to the moderate, side.

Yeah.

Right.

So you are basically trying to, hold two different types of voters.

Yeah.

Right.

So this is all about coalition.

Exactly.

It's all about turnout.

Right.

Exactly.

So if he gets young voters, let's say 35 under.

Yeah.

He might get a chance.

Yeah.

And if you look at the distribution of like where Gen Z lives Texas is one of the brightest places.

So that's a possibility.

But I think it still remains that it remains potential until like it can.

Oh absolutely.

Now keep in mind right to work out really close in 2018.

So it definitely is the case that there was this promise.

And I think the Talarico presents some of that same promise, given the way he can communicate and given what he says.

Oh yeah.

And there's a lot of high ceiling here.

Yeah.

But there's also a really low floor.

Democrats haven't won in Texas since, you know, Jimmy Carter, right, was in office and but a long time my friend.

So just if you think about the trajectory, it's a real challenge.

And so people like Colin Allred have seen this up close and personal.

And they think they figured out the model.

They figure it out.

Like how to run a race in Texas, right?

Yeah.

I can see you smirking on that too.

It's like, probably not right.

I mean, if they would if they picked it up, they would have done it by now, but they didn't.

I mean, he lost eight points, right?

I mean, he said points too much.

Too little.

Yeah.

What, you were just.

Enough in all three bears, I don't.

Know, I mean, I need once again, these, campaigns run their campaign.

And it seems to me that, the DNC and the Texas Democratic Party need to put their money where their mouth is.

Yeah, and that's the end of story.

And obviously that complicates because, in in 26, we're going to have other senatorial races that Democrats are gonna say, oh, do I put money here or there?

So that's a great point.

We talked about this last week.

Right, right.

It's a bigger map than just Texas.

Yes, right.

We tend to be very Texas centric.

Of course, you know, we live here in the greatest state.

But the problem is of course, yeah.

The Democrats have got to think about the whole map.

And every dollar you spend on Texas, it means you can't spend on Iowa or Maine or Georgia where the races are potentially more competitive.

So we're going to see how this plays out.

It's possible to the Talarico is a good enough candidate that if he wins the primary and proceeds the general, that he's able to basically make the Republicans play defense.

Right.

The Republicans are already doing this because they're not sure who's going to win the Paxton versus Cornyn race.

And that primary can be, you know, the winner of the primary.

He's going to win wounded.

Yes.

He's not going to be a lot.

So wounded winner.

So well done.

Yeah I don't know.

We'll see.

We'll see.

It's a long way between yeah man.

And of course lots of politics as we love to get into.

But let's talk about some legislative politics next.

The special session, the second called special session in Texas, ended.

Obviously there's a lot of things that changed over the course of those two sessions.

Give me your kind of, you know, bullet point, high picture notes of kind of what happened in the session and what we take away from it.

No property taxes, no THC legislation.

Yes.

Congressional map.

Yes.

Penalties.

These are in pure chrome breath, bathroom bill and government buildings and schoolyards.

Manufacturing and distribution of abortion pills.

AG prosecute election related crimes making ivermectin, that treats livestock for parasites available to Texans without.

What is it called?

Prescription.

Scrapping the Star.

Test bill, Star tests in schools.

And we have also bipartisan bills, flood infrastructure disaster response and safety of cats.

Is that it?

There you.

Go.

But I think you make a good point with your, you know, kind of the end of the world as we know it live like level song lyrics.

There's a lot that happened, right?

Yeah.

And so I feel like Republicans should be pretty satisfied with, yeah, what went down.

But some of the things that didn't happen, I think are the ones that make them really unhappy.

So no THC reform.

Right.

Did mention, I think in your litany of the yes, I did as well as sort of no police, kind of communication reform, like records reform, which a lot of them wanted.

Property taxes are still basically where they were the state, and as we said last week, is going to vote on lowering them that are probably passed.

They always do.

So that won't probably be an issue.

But there was no additional efforts to make that happen.

So conservatives are crying about that.

And so there's a lot of things that didn't get done.

I think that, you know, could be a potential problem.

But look, if you're a Greg Abbott, if you're any member of the legislature, you look back at this set of, you know, sort of four month span and say, we did well, right.

I thought, oh, yeah.

Kind of conclusion, but there are some bigger implications, I think, to this, number one, Republican unity only go so far.

I mean, they were able to efficiently get the things done.

But there were some things that definitely have drawn a wedge between the kind of moderate Republicans, establishment Republicans, and the more insurgent conservative Republicans.

The other is that, like this has become a very national fight.

A lot of the issues you've talked about or national issues, yes, in various ways, that now mean Texas, is that right at the forefront of all of those things.

So to me, when I think about kind of winners and losers, I think there are two big winners.

The first winner is Greg Abbott.

He's able to very effectively kind of put together this set of wins, as we said, and I think as a result, you know, able to roll into reelection with the kind of prospect of basically claiming that he did exactly what he promised to do.

He got 100% of what he wanted in the special session or in the, in the regular section, and like 16 or so of 24 in the special sessions, which is really good.

Oh, yeah.

At this point, no Democrat has stepped up to run against him, so he's already in a pretty good spot.

The other winner is Donald Trump.

The way I think of it is that basically if Abbott is the quarterback, then Donald Trump is the coach, right?

He's able to basically create this new kind of right, you know, moment on redistricting, which has very serious bipartisan implications and sort of very clear, kind of battle lines drawn on.

But it's really I think, as I said, of kind of reflection of the national politics that have come from this.

The big losers, it seems to me, are Democrats.

Right?

I mean, the quorum break certainly made a stand in the way that they wanted to, but now the punishments that all forthcoming.

Right?

Yeah.

From legislation that, are in this are going to be really trash.

Oh yeah.

So basically some of them include things like, you know, you're not able to raise money, kind of while you're away from the legislature, there's already in the regular session, like a moratorium on fundraising, but now they've extended it to the special session.

If you're not in, in quorum, Seniority, the motion.

Yeah.

I mean, it's pretty, pretty bad, pretty harsh.

And one of the things that I wonder is, is once again, well, Republican unity was thanks to the Democrats.

Right?

Right.

So they were not united before they left, before they broke a quorum.

They break quorum.

Republicans unite.

Yeah.

And now is the police have a avalanche of punishment, right.

They're all in the same room together for, like, a month, and they, kind of figure out a way to get together on some things to punish that.

Where no Democrats.

And then it's like, how are we going to figure it out?

Do it like family therapy or couples therapy or something like that.

So they figure that out.

Yeah.

We don't know how long it's going to last, but right now we don't have session.

So we're going to have it, you know, until 27.

So we'll figure that out later.

Yeah.

But then the other thing is that these harsh punishment, create a floor for again, Partizan retribution or eventual Partizan retribution.

Right.

And when we talk about the nuclear option, we'll figure it out.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

What, what in my mind, what what could happen?

It's all about punishment, right?

Exactly.

Making your opponent kind of kneel to you.

It's.

So it's all about punishment.

Yeah.

So forget about getting deals.

Forget about getting things done.

Yeah.

It's about punishment.

And not really thinking about what actions can he bring in order to have better public policy that would help the state.

Yeah.

Is this the last quorum break we're going to see?

I mean, the punishments are so severe and the consequence is so grave that I don't know that the Democrats are willing to risk it again.

No, I don't think that they will.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

So once again, this I mean, the quorum break is a political tool, but it's also an institutional tool.

Right?

The goal of having quorum is that you have sufficient numbers of people.

It's a protection of kind of minority interests.

Right.

Not like democratic interests per se, but like minority interest.

Right?

Right, right.

So that's something that no longer exists in the same way.

And Texas has had a long, slow erosion of this.

You think about the two thirds.

Oh yeah.

In the Senate right.

Now it's a majority.

Rule.

Right.

We'll talk about this too.

As you know, with respect to the nuclear option in the US Senate.

And it's once again, is, the Founding fathers greatest fears and concerns of the tyranny of the majority.

Yeah.

You know, the.

Balance is critical, both federal and state law.

Absolutely.

In fact, the people in Texas, the framers were even more concerned about that than even the framers were.

Oh, absolutely.

That balances.

That's why they hated political parties.

Yeah, yeah.

You know what?

You know what they also hated?

They also hated strong executive power.

Yeah.

But we are in a world now where executives rule.

And oh, yeah, Greg Abbott in this particular moment, has expected to file an executive order that basically regulates DHC.

Yeah.

Now, keep in mind, as you mentioned, this didn't happen in the special session or in the regular session.

There's all kinds of different regulatory schemes that could have gone with, but they didn't end up getting any of them passed.

So what Greg Abbott's order apparently is going to do is to have an age check 21.

Plus there's going to be ID checking, distance from schools, labeling requirements, and increased fees.

So lots of things that are going to be in this.

Yeah.

So the question is sort of why I think that the answer is in part that this is what we're used to seeing.

Right?

The public demand sort of this kind of action.

And no longer is it the case that executives are willing to wait for the legislature to do this.

In fact, a lot of scholarly work on this suggests that we should exactly see this when Congress is dysfunctional and there's kind of ideological divides, then presidents will step in.

In this case, governors will step in.

We also know that sometimes they'll do so because they have a hint of what they think the legislature might do.

We talked last week about, like, the fact that there was legislation filed at nine, you know, massive to regulate THC.

Eventually they did this, but, it was something that like that they had to have the governor step in to do to jumpstart the process.

Right.

But but here, the only difference is that it's, intra war party.

I'm at war within the Republican Party as well.

That's predicted to like whenever there's ideological divides within the legislative chamber, their governors and presidents are more likely to issue these orders.

So it actually makes total sense he would do this.

Is it legal?

Can he do this?

I actually had several people texted me when this is coming up asking me, is this okay for him to do?

I think the short answer is we don't know, right?

Actually, they went through this in 2021 and after there was no kind of result on THC the, Health and Human Services tried to basically pass a ban.

Right?

They went to the courts.

The courts said, you can't do that.

It needs to be a legislative enterprise.

They're still litigating that question now here you've got Greg Abbott saying, okay, to HHS, see, here are the rules.

I want you to engage.

And essentially having a policy outcome that might be problematic in this way, too.

So the courts could basically say, sorry, no, go on this.

I think we don't know what will happen.

But one thing I do know is that that Governor Abbott has definitely reinvigorated a strong executive.

Now he's following Perry's lead, but he definitely has moved in the direction of looking more like a president.

Yeah, yeah.

Presidents are always pushing that envelope.

So we'll see what happens.

But there's a lot here that I think we're going to have to wait to see again.

THC continues to be a kind of, you know, kind of conundrum for, for the Texas legislature, right?

Yeah.

But let's talk about other battles that are being far.

Okay.

Present and future.

Right.

The Department of War.

The Department of War.

No more Department of Defense?

Nope.

The president has issued an executive order renaming the Department of Defense.

Yep.

The Department of War.

Tell me about this.

So just to highlight that we are, I guess.

Winners and.

Winners and ready to go to.

War.

One of my uncles has a T-shirt that reads, you know, back to back World war champions.

Oh, you've all seen this around, like, okay.

Yeah.

And Trump makes the same argument.

He says, basically, we win everything.

We win these wars.

Yeah.

Which I guess is sort of true in some generic.

Sure.

Although there are definitely conflicts that haven't gone as well as expected.

But what are the ramifications of this change?

I mean, is it going to cost money, money, right?

I mean, operationally, within the Pentagon or the new Department of War?

I don't think anything is going to change.

It's just, you know, issues regarding, name change.

Yeah.

Rebranding.

Now, now you have to rebrand the whole thing.

All over again.

That cost money.

I don't know if, that also creates problems with all their interagency, you know, DoD had a code for these for that now, so it's just going to cost, money.

But he's just, as you say, it's a political issue in terms of, of of, of focused just being, more aggressive military posture and, you know, aligning very well with, the Trump administration.

Yeah.

It's for domestic audience.

Yes.

Right.

Primarily it has no real tangible effect.

Remember the 1940s that the 1950s that they changed?

I was not born when.

This is just just after you were born.

Oh, okay.

Gotcha.

In the 50s.

Yeah.

They change the seal of the president.

Right angles had faced towards the arrows, and they moved it to face towards the scroll with the implication that basically, we're a peace nation.

We're not a war nation, but no more.

Yeah, well, you change that back.

Maybe they do.

Yeah.

That again.

I don't know if it's fine.

But again, yeah I know it's sort of obviously for domestic audiences which has some implications.

You say financially to have to remedy these things.

But as it is now, it's definitely something that plays to the politics of it.

But everything's political, including Supreme Court decisions.

This week, the Supreme Court handed down, at least a partial decision, right about the indiscriminate stops that are being made in Los Angeles in particular.

The order basically, it was unsigned, although Justice Kavanaugh chimed in on some things saying that, fact it's okay for Ice to be able to stop people based upon essentially ethnicity the way that they look.

So what do you make of where the court is headed on this?

Now, this is temporary, right?

Are they kind of telegraphing what they're going to do next?

I don't know, I mean, I don't know.

It's you have just sort of Justice Sotomayor and Kavanaugh, dictated in terms of the interpretation.

It's, as you say, it's a technicality.

It's a pause ruling.

It doesn't, to give time for this thing to the appeals, issue to be resolved.

But the issue here is to me is, I think the court and in this case, Justice Kavanaugh, he's committing an ecological fallacy.

Right.

And that's why it's very important for justices to take statistics class.

And so you're.

Offering to have them come.

Up solidly.

They can come to my class with.

Their robes.

With.

Yes, absolutely.

And I'll wear my, my mind.

Yes.

In your, the, the floppy.

So he's arguing that that basically there exists enough evidence when you consider someone that may be, doesn't speak English.

It's, Hispanic has is working low paying jobs like construction, etc., etc.

in the totality to say there might be something there.

Yeah.

Right.

So he's looking at these aggregate circumstances to make individual inferences, right?

Yeah.

He writes basically the 10% of the people in LA are potentially undocumented.

And so stopping people who look like this are definitely going to proceed with the policy goal that they have, right?

Yeah.

That's a, you know, problematic assertion.

You say that other justices push back and said, well, this is really, you know, just racial profiling and, absolutely.

Right.

I don't think they're hiding it now.

It's not even a question.

Oh, no, no, it's very clear.

Yeah.

But that that creates certain problems in terms of how we proceed, because then they can move to another group.

Right.

And allow these things at the end.

Once again, this is temporary ruling.

This just a pause.

Yeah.

But then when we go into the matter.

Right.

Yes.

These kind of arguments are problematic because given the aggregate, you cannot make these individual, differences.

Right?

Yes.

In terms of, accent, in terms of the type of, of job that you are performing.

Yeah.

And then the other issue is, if you're a U.S. citizen, right.

Do you carry your your papers?

Good point.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Because there are a lot of people who like may look like.

Exactly.

They think they're targeting.

Right.

Or incorrectly doing so.

So yeah.

Well, last thing to talk about is that, we've got, another Epstein flare up.

We haven't talked about this because it's so shady, but basically, the whole world is seeing this intensely creepy book page from Jeffrey Epstein's birthday book that appears to have a report from Donald Trump.

Trump white House says it's fake.

And or they're not worried about it.

I might take obviously.

Is that scandal so matter like they used to.

But this has been a big one.

Why isn't it hitting like it used to?

Well, he's, I mean, I think it's hitting right because everyone, in Congress from the Republican Party say I haven't seen it.

I don't know it.

I have no idea.

Yeah.

Like, I it's I think it's a different reaction to a different type of scandal because we weren't doing the Trump campaign.

President Trump said that he will release all this stuff.

Right?

And they happen.

Right.

So Congress is close to getting a release like mechanism so we could see it sooner than later.

But yeah, I think so far and losing on this.

It's going to be something that we're going to see in the next couple of weeks.

And certainly we will be paying attention to these and many other matters.

I'm Jeronimo Cortina.

And i'm Brandon Rottinghaus The conversation keeps up next week.