<Music> Welcome to Party Politics where we prepare you for your next political conversation.

I'm Jeronimo Cortina.

And I'm Brandon Rottinghaus.

We're professors of political science here at the University of Houston.

And obviously we are getting into a lot of details here, putting our degrees to good work indeed, including our computer skills to good work.

This week, Washington is considering how to regulate if and if to regulate AI.

So they're confronting like what is been described by a lot of AI companies as the foreseeing doom of AI.

Do you think things are overblown on this, or do you think that this is something that is regulateable?

Second question is, can Congress do anything about this that will move the needle?

Well, Congress can do a lot about it if Congress wants and if they have the will.

Right.

But what worries me is that this is not a group of, you know, people against.

Doomsday AI, right?

These are the three most important CEOs of Tropic AI.

You have OpenAI's and then you can have X AI.

So you have Elon Musk, Dario Amodei and then you have Sam Altman all coming together saying, hey, by the.

Way.

We should slow down because this thing is really taken off very, very, very fast.

And we need some sort of regulation.

Right.

Them flagging this is, I think, by itself alarming.

And the fact that there's, I think, an inflection point for the public where you're seeing a lot of people who are really worried about the prospect of AI definitely percolating from a political perspective.

So I think what you're seeing here is really this moment that, politically speaking, it's become a real potential problem.

You know, no more, you know, conflicting political opportunities than like, Bernie Sanders and, and, and Steve Bannon have come together and say, we have to do something about this.

The only thing that was missing there was both of them singing kumbaya.

Right, with like a banjo like, yeah.

Breaking into false.

No, I think like, yeah.

A guitar and both of them singing, you know, we're on this together or something.

Like that.

That's right.

Yeah.

I think that it definitely is a signal that there's something happening here politically.

And like I said, I mean, I think the public is really worried for sure.

It's the case that there's been a job displacement issue like this could definitely matriculate into something more complicated down the road.

You're also seeing, I think a lot of industries really pull back in terms of hiring, because they're not sure exactly what this will all look like.

So the rate of unemployment is higher for recent college grads than for everybody else.

So there's definitely something happening in the economy.

You're also seeing the concern about data centers become a real issue.

This is something that definitely is playing out in Texas.

And, you know, certainly has been a kind of complicated story nationwide.

So, yeah, that they're willing to prioritize safety and slow opportunities over growth is really interesting to me.

So this is a real thing.

But it's not only that right.

It's, it's the whole process right it's issues about data centers, issues about water issues about power issues about jobs, and then issues about letting AI or ChatGPT create a bioweapon and destroy the world or something like that.

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

Just like you've seen Terminator two, right?

Right, exactly.

So the whole idea is that the conversation needs to be holistic in all these special aspects, because AI is good.

It has done a lot of stuff.

For example, on the medical side, reading thousands and thousands of imaging that can help doctors become more efficient, et cetera, etc.

and it has also automated some issues or processes, for example, answering email, that kind of stuff.

So it's good, but we just have to sit down and think about it.

Yeah.

The math problem that sort of vexed mathematicians for centuries was solved last week by AI.

Yeah, like Good Will Hunting style.

Like just plug it all in and it also calculates it and does.

But I thought that Good Will Hunting was real, that he solved the actual mathematic question.

He did.

For if it was made today, it would be using AI.

So that's the that's where things are.

Even Matt Damon would be out of a job.

That's true.

Yeah.

There you go.

Scripts can be written by yeah AI.

That's correct.

There's definitely a lot of this happening from a an economic point of view from a, an employment point of view.

And so a lot of younger people are really skeptical of this.

And there's a significant majority who really worried about what this is going to look like.

So this is a definite like real thing.

And Congress has to think about it.

But they also have to think about the trade off.

Right.

Because you want to make sure that US is sort of a global leader in this.

Sure.

The complication here is like President Trump says, basically we can't fall behind here, so we can't basically pump the brakes because it could be a real international liability for the US.

But then you've got people, you know, a bipartisan faction like, you know, Ted Cruz, who's not a fan of regulation, saying we need to do something here.

Some of the progressives, especially people like Bernie Sanders, like who mentioned, but also Greg Casar from Austin, is pressing for these kinds of changes.

So we're seeing a kind of Texas flavor to this, which is odd because it's been a place that's sort of, you know, allergic to these kinds of regulations.

But here we are probably pushing this in an interesting way forward.

So we'll see how that plays out.

But honestly, Congress is pretty busy these days.

Obviously the elections one thing, but they just have a kind of short horizon here for the time that they meet that is already filled up with a lot of things.

The likelihood of this happenin.

Yeah.

Really low.

So it's going to be next Congress if ever.

And then the robots will be in charge.

So like we'll have to vote for them I guess.

Vote for robot right?

Yeah.

That's it.

Well, one thing that the robots are not in charge of yet is the legal determinations that have been proffered about the election, two big ones.

The first is on mail balloting at the US Supreme Court.

The second, here in Texas, is about the Texas Supreme Court investigating whether or not Galveston can change its precincts after the primary and before the general election.

Let's talk first about mail balloting for people who have been following the saga.

It's been back and forth a lot.

The short story is this the Supreme Court basically allowed for the mail balloting process to continue as it was initially proposed.

The president had attempted to make some changes to that, and have the US Postal Service essentially be the kind of arbiter of whether ballot should go out.

They had to meet certain criteria, including whether it matched what was legitimate on state level list of voters, the court said.

Basically two things.

Number one, we're not sure the USPS has the capacity to do this, the power to do this, authority to do this.

And the second is that it's too close to the election.

We can't change things right now.

Well, I mean.

That and Alabama, North Carolina, Wisconsin and then Hawaii, Oregon, Washington.

I mean, they're starting already.

I mean, in Alabama, voting already started North Carolina.

Same thing.

So you cannot change the rules of the game, you know, in the second quarter.

I mean that that's that's about it.

And the most complicated thing is that we had a couple of weeks ago, this whistleblower from the USPS, like, yeah, this is not working.

We're not going to have it ready.

And yes, the, the even though that there is no vote desegregation the Supreme Court, it seems that the conservative justices signal with these but two that said no, we're not going to do it.

So also created a bunch of problems with the Trump administration.

Trump said that these were not the people that he interviewed.

You've not been doing what I told you to do.

So so he's like, okay.

Well, that's a different problem, and certainly one that we've confronted before when it comes to the courts independence from politics.

And this is a sticky issue for political science and for observers of the Court.

But definitely it was the case that the Court said, we're not sure about this.

They like granted the stay.

And so as it is, we're going to see mail balloting go forward, which is important because, like you said, a lot of ballots have gone out and like a third of the states vote in this way.

And so we basically changing it would be a serious issue.

But what's more concerning to me is just how it is that you're seeing a lot of this sort of negative talk about the way this process works.

Right?

It certainly has been something that Donald Trump has talked about a lot, unproven allegations about voter fraud and things like that.

These are all like spiraling into this moment where there's a lot of lack of faith in elections and election officials.

So there has to be something done to kind of prioritize that, right?

Make that more prominent.

And so some states are going to basically advertise the fact that this is safe and it's flexible.

And in some places like North Carolina have said, this is like, you know, tracking an Amazon package, like we can make this work.

And so there are ways to be able to convince the public this is legitimate.

And if they want to make changes, then that can do that later after the election.

But as it is now, it's too complicated to make these changes in the near term.

Let's shift gears and talk about Texas, because what was happening in Galveston was really interesting.

That is, they were basically going to make changes to where people's precincts were.

So you might live in one precinct and then at a different precinct between when the primary happened and when the general election happened.

The Texas Supreme Court says, yeah, not going to happen.

So what do you make of this?

And how does it sort of index into how we think about the way that courts affect elections?

Well, I mean, first of all, in Galveston was like what happened in other places, right?

And both Democrats and Republicans trying to get advantage of mid-decade redistricting, which the Texas Supreme Court said, like, sure, you can do that kind of stuff.

And to gain political advantage, I guess that in case of some counties, county judges do not hide the fact that that's what they're trying to do, which is, I guess, normalized nowadays.

Right?

That's a different discussion.

But the Texas Supreme Court says, like, you can do redistricting.

Fine, but you cannot do it in the middle of the game.

Once again, it's like, what are you people thinking?

And the Texas Supreme Court says, well, these races, serious constitutional concerns about what you are doing.

So absolutely not.

This is the fairly common sense thing.

Yeah.

You don't want to make these changes in between.

The fights aren't going to be over because this will definitely continue.

And redistricting will certainly be an issue that the Ledge will consider.

Maybe if they take it up.

Honestly, one of the only things they consider, because it tends to be the case that redistricting eats up so much political bandwidth.

So we'll talk about like what that looks like for the spring and the new 90th.

Yeah, meeting of the Texas Legislature in future episodes.

But for sure, for now, it's the case that things are basically kind of staying the course.

So that's interesting, but it does highlight the fact that this is going to be an issue in the future.

So we'll talk more about that.

One thing that would, I think, benefit a candidate and politician like Ted Cruz is to have a hearing about the Cruz curse.

You know, this is the kind of Zeit Geist around.

It's a sporting event.

Ted Cruz, if he shows up at your sporting event, then your team will lose.

It's a running joke, and I don't know if there's any mathematical or scientific way to prove that he is in fact causing this, but he shows up at the University of Texas Ohio State football game, University of Texas wins and last minute historic fashion.

And the curse is broken.

Question mark.

What do you think?

I mean, if you're an empiricist, the answer to that question is yes.

Okay, but.

What if you're a theorist?

A theories would say that no, that was just a blimp in the universe and that the curse may continue.

But I think.

You need like more data.

More data points.

Exactly.

To make a causal argument.

Well, one thing is definitely true.

Empirically speaking, people were not happy that Ted Cruz was there.

He got booed.

Lots of chance against him.

These are college kids.

It's Austin like.

It's not surprising he faced this kind of dissatisfaction with him being there.

But part of the reason he was there is to talk about something that is politically relevant.

And that is new legislation that he's considering called the Save College Sports Act.

And essentially it would do lots of different things, but regulate the kind of environment around the NIL and about transfers and about coaching changes, just a whole host of things.

It's a really interesting bill.

And his approach is to say that we have to do something because basically it's like the Wild West out there.

We can't let this continue, he says.

This is on the five yard line, ready to get passage.

Some people are pushing back saying that we should punt it until next session.

Sorry for all the football analogies.

That's on the brain.

Right.

So the question here is like, do you think this is going to pass?

And what does it mean for Ted Cruz politically that this goes forward?

Well, I mean, politically, he's going to get into the national conversation whether people agree or do not agree with this thing.

And and I think that indirectly, we may have to start a conversation in terms of college sports.

I think that college sports for the past years, not that I oppose it or anything like that, they're great and whatnot, but they come with a cost, right?

Not only to institutions, but also a cost to students.

And as we know, these are student athletes.

So the first word is student, not athlete.

They're not athlete students, their student athletes.

So as universities, we have the role and the responsibility to try to help them one way or the other plan for their future.

So these are important issues that we have to do.

And NIL And all these changes are like semi employees of the university but without, for example, significant, I guess benefits that an employer would get from a university.

So I think it's important to have this conversation and you know, take it from there and see what happens.

And that's kind of what Congress is doing, is considering this again, Congress is pressed for time.

We're running up against deadlines and obviously a break for midterm elections.

And so I don't think this will get passed anytime real soon.

But it's very possible that this starts that conversation.

Like you said, I think in terms of impacts for Ted Cruz, which is sort of relevant for us as a politics podcast that talks about Texas and national government, there's no doubt Ted Cruz is think about running for president and what he needs is a signature issue to.

Be there.

You go on on this potentially is that he also needs something that's going to separate him from the rest of the field, who are kind of Trump affiliates, and this may give him that additional credibility.

Speaking of credibility, it's a bipartisan bill.

They've got least 70 votes in the Senate, which these days are really hard to get on anything.

So the fact that it's moving in that direction, I think, gives him another kind of feather in his cap to say that he's moving in this direction.

Now, what's funny to me is that the kind of reputation here is lagged, right.

The UT students probably more liberal, and it's Austin, so more liberal.

But the booing here, I think, underscores the fact that Ted Cruz doesn't have a great reputation.

And the fact that he's been so competitive his whole career means that there's no, like, willingness to let him sort of speak the truth here.

Take the win.

Yeah, exactly.

Pass it to the five yard line.

Go to the one.

That's good.

Yeah.

I thought you were gonna make, like a baton analogy or something, but like.

Yeah.

No, totally.

Like, this is the problem that he confronts where he's sort of undermined the kind of moment where he could be this bipartisan leader.

And the problem for him is how to build that back.

This is one step in that direction.

So I think that this could be we'll see.

Kind of jumping point for his presidential candidacy.

We'll see.

As you know, my friend is coming sooner than he is indeed talking about all elections all the time.

We'll talk about the mayor's election in just a minute.

So we're just, like never ending, right?

Yeah.

It's the sort of.

Yeah, cornerstone of what we do.

Speaking of elections, let's talk about Texas and a race that typically doesn't get a lot of attention.

And that's for railroad commissioner.

Now, most people don't know much about what the railroad commission does.

There's an assumption that they regulate railroads.

Nope.

Which they used to do but don't anymore.

So what they do is basically regulate the gas and energy industries in the state.

It's a really important position, very powerful.

There are three of them are elected statewide.

There's one person who's the chair.

This has become kind of flashpoint, which I want to talk about in different context in a second.

But one of the candidates running for a seat is Bo French, who is the former chair of the Republican Party in Tarrant County.

He is a history of making extremely racist and off putting comments.

During that time, he's called for the deportation of Native Americans.

He's referred to the Afghan asylum seekers in negative ways.

I'm not even going to say it.

He's talked about Jasmine Crockett in ways that are extremely ugly.

Lots of bad things are coming out of his X account.

And in occasion, you see Republicans pushing back.

This time he went, it seems too far, he tweeted out, speaking of the UT game, a picture of a bunch of students celebrating, and he suggested that there needs to be some HB, H1-B reform because all of the students in the picture looked to be South Asian, and this just piqued of his concern.

So there's a lot of pushback on this.

There's also a lot of defense of this.

So what do you make of the politics of both French's comments, like in this moment, but also in general for what it means for election and for like, you know, the Republican ticket?

I mean, I guess for the Republic overall.

Because it's like you're all painted with the same brush, right?

I mean, that's it.

I mean, there's not going to be any difference.

It's a Republican.

Then you see Republicans, then that's it.

Because to make that difference, that would entail that you have been doing your homework in terms of analyzing every single policy and issue position of each candidate.

That's not going to happen.

But that's one issue, right?

The other issue is that there's going to be certain part of the electorate that says, yes, absolutely, 100% were behind you, right?

Which is very sad.

But on the other hand, I think that you have all the majority part of the electorate, whether Republicans or Democrats, that really condemn these things.

Right?

Because it doesn't necessarily not necessarily.

It does not reflect Texas values.

And I think that that is a key point in terms of this election.

Why?

Because when you look at the campaign promises and political speeches from both sides, Governor Abbott does it Gina Hinojosa does it, everybody does it.

It's one of the common denominator is Texas values.

Right.

So that has been imprinted every single time on our minds.

And when we see this type of comments is that no like we don't.

People do not necessarily feel as part of our state identity.

Yeah.

He's reacting to something that has been, I think, simmering for a long time.

And the Republican circles, and especially among people who are like very online and these sort of very hard core activists, it doesn't reflect the broader trends, I think, in the broader beliefs of most people.

But he's certainly not speaking to them.

Right.

He's talking to this very core group of conservatives who support him.

And if you look at the comments on any of these things you've seen, basically that's the case.

Yeah, but they're going to vote anyways.

So yeah.

Like, yeah.

And then the question for me is like, is that enough to get him elected?

I don't know.

The thing is that in the past it probably was right now Republicans are used to a certain level of turnout.

If they get those numbers, then basically every statewide official is going to win.

Now, if they don't get those numbers as is trending in that direction, then it's a real problem for him and frankly, for everybody.

So the concern is basically that Bo French's comments are going to drag down the entire ticket, which is very realistic.

So it really gives us a test of kind of how far the Republican Party can go, what that boundary looks like.

Now, most statewide officials have come out and said, you need to take that down.

You know, this is not.

And he doubled.

Down and then he doubled down.

Yeah.

Fundraising off of it and essentially saying, well, this is how I feel.

And, you know, kind of basically hugging the Republican Party line, saying, these are all the things we want to do to be able to regulate what we think is this problem.

And this, I think, might not land with people in a good way, even it might not land with Republicans in a good way.

Karl Rove, none other than literally the architect of Texas's efforts to turn Texas red, has said he will not vote for Republican in this race.

Ted, I'm just shocked by this because Karl Rove is like, literally the brain power behind the way that Texas turned red in the 1990s, right?

Every effort, right, to get Texas statewide officials, Rick Perry from George W Bush, they're all indebted to Karl Rove for this.

And the fact that he is basically saying, I'm not voting for a Republican is like pretty big news.

So Republicans are saying it doesn't matter.

It's Rove has been drifting from the party for a long time.

But that is the problem, right?

It's those Rove Republicans who look at this and say, enough is enough.

And I think that it does have that potential to kind of hurt down ballot.

So that's the real question, I think.

And so I've made this case to people before.

Everyone talks about the Senate race.

Yeah.

Okay.

We see this is a national issue.

This story became National too by the way.

But I think this is a better test of kind of how far people will go in this because it gives people a flavor for whether or not they're going to tolerate this kind of activity.

Are they going to go so far as to say, I not only condemn you, but I'm not going to vote for you.

I'm voting for a different party.

Yeah, but no, I think that yes.

That's.

The question.

No, no, no.

Sure.

I mean, it's a fair question, but those are going to be those that have their destiny completely tied to Bo French in the sense of Partizan destiny.

Right.

So those are, you know, very few people.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And they're not going to condemn.

And the real question here is right, if that is going to say, well, I think it's too much, and I think that there is a point beyond polarization where people say, yeah, maybe this is too ugly.

Too much.

Yeah.

Well, and the kind of primary style of politics may not work in a general election, although it has.

And so the question here is like, will that pay off to pivot just slightly to a different issue?

There's a lot of money flowing into Texas.

Yes.

This is especially true for Ken Paxton, who basically now is the recipient of this like, you know, kind of full million.

Yeah, like $50 million worth of just like, you know, kind of inundation.

And this is going to make a big difference because now it basically puts him even with how much money Talarico is spending and that kind of ads that are coming out of the candidates are, I think, really inventive.

So we've seen a ad in Spanish this week talking to some of his former students.

I thought that was a good ad.

It was an ad about Ken Paxton's corruption being a problem with respect to Adam Hoffman, who was accused of being a child predator.

And he's basically given a pretty light sentence.

He and Gina Hinojosa got an ad about a very personal story about her seeking, you know, kind of medical help for ailment for her unborn kid who eventually ends up dying sadly.

And it's a kind of subtext story about abortion.

Dan Patrick has an ad out about about Vicki Goodwin talking about sort of her kind of politics, which he considers extreme.

What do we make of all this?

Are these going to move the needle here?

And.

I mean, I don't know.

I mean, I think that at this stage people are already made their minds, why?

Because of the context in which we are, once again, it's the economic context.

Gas prices, supermarket prices, cost of living, so on and so forth.

So I think that people already know the answer to what they're going to do is sad story, whether you're Republican or Democrat.

Is a sad story from candidate X going to move you, or is it going to be the happy story from candidate Y?

I mean, I think that they have made already the I guess, the issues that they worry about, people know it and it's just trying to get to a little bit, I guess those undecided independents.

Yeah.

That's true.

Right now, Democrats seem like they're still in persuasion mode and Republicans have shifted to mobilization mode.

So we're seeing some interesting changes there.

Last two things.

Number one, Ken Paxton has a serious advantage legally because he can sue people.

And sometimes those lawsuits yield things like money.

For Meta.

We talked about a couple of years ago this time, eggs, eggs 7 million eggs.

Seven distributed because of settlement based upon overpricing.

Is this going to move the needle?

I mean, would you be persuaded if a bunch of eggs showed up to vote for Ken Paxton?

Well, I mean, they're going I mean, good for him and good for those people, but they're going to major hubs, right?

They're going to the Houston Food Bank or the North Texas Food Bank, and then to more regional food banks, which is great.

I think that, you know, just pass them along.

I don't think he's going to have a significant impact on, on, on, on voters.

But I think it could if they played this well and all the lawsuit stuff, they could run ads forever just on that stuff.

And so I feel like they could make a good case here, but they haven't.

In fact, it was just a blip.

It was like a press release.

Last question, Chris Hollins has said some pretty nasty things about John Whitmire lumping him in with basically Donald Trump.

Is he going to run for mayor?

Oh, he has hinted right that.

He's just ready to run for mayor.

Yeah.

So we just have to wait and see when he declares it.

And he basically said, the day for change is coming.

So he pointed stuff.

He's not raising money like he is running for mayor, but he's talking like it.

Yep.

But, that's going to be something that we're going to keep an eye on it.

That's it for this week.

I'm Jeronimo Cortina and I'm Brandon Rottinghaus.

The conversation keeps up next week.

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