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

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

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

Thanks for hanging out and talking politics with us.

Well, this week we're going to take a bit of a divergence because we usually talk about sort of what's going on in the world that week.

But this week we're going to talk more about what's to come in the primary for the Republicans.

We've been talking about this for a couple of weeks in general.

We talked about the Democrats a few weeks before.

If you didn't see it, go back and take a look on YouTube because there's some great stuff there.

Of course.

Yeah.

As always.

Yes, mostly from our friend Doctor Cortina.

But I have a couple of observations for me.

You know, if you're into that kind of a thing.

But obviously the Republican side of the equation is really important because so many of these races are such that if you win the Republican primary, you're probably going to win the general.

But there's still some questions.

And so we'll kind of tease out what the primary means with respect to the general and the big picture kind of things about what's going on in the Republican Party politics in Texas, which is always exciting.

I had somebody tell me the other week that politics is boring, and I thought, you are not paying nearly close enough attention, because the watchword for Republicans going into the primary is chaos.

You've got the primaries having been affected by redistricting.

You've got Republican Party polling in bad shape.

You've got Republicans losing ground with independents, with Gen Z, with Latinos.

Trump's under water in Texas in terms of approval.

The Texas economy is in kind of grim shape.

Employment has stalled.

The percentage of unemployed is basically the same as it is at the national level, which for a long time was not the way Texas had its own kind of strong economic path.

It's still, to some degree does, but those things are eroding a little bit.

All of the major characters, all the major statewide officials, are essentially underwater in terms of approval.

They're struggling to some degree, maybe more than we've seen in the past.

But that doesn't mean they're going to lose these elections because there are a lot of them, and we'll talk about each of them as we go.

But given that context, I want to get your thoughts on kind of the big picture about what's happening in Republican Party politics and what it means for the primary.

Well, it's midterm elections.

So we had these situation in 2018.

Then we had the red tsunami that never, was so Nami, eventually.

And we're seeing that type of, tectonic realignment within the Texas Republican Party, but also being significantly shaped by national politics and aka by President Trump.

Great point.

So I think it's going to be very interesting to see, because in many of these races you have, a very unique mix of candidates.

Right?

What does that mean?

A very you, like me, put that diplomatically.

But you're right.

There are a lot of candidates running, and there's a bunch of divergent forms of ideology in terms of, oh, yeah, experience and sometimes that's what it's going to come down to for voters.

But I think you're exactly right.

National forces are driving this.

We talked last week about how Steve Bannon is coming to Texas.

That's a national right kind of MAGA movement epicenter.

You're seeing, obviously, you know, Donald Trump's weigh in on these races have a significant effect on who wins and who loses.

He's essentially endorsing basically every race except for the Senate race.

And in CD2, which is, Dan Crenshaw's race.

So there's basically a pretty strong Trump in particular, on Republican Party politics, you know, all the way up and down the ballot.

So I think this is going to be basically a pretty conservative primary.

You've got turnout for Republicans.

The conservative Republicans are juiced out by top of the ticket, features essentially the U.S.

Senate race.

And so I suspect you're going to see basically a pretty conservative turnout.

There's always this question about, well, you know, will the kind of more mainstream conservatives show up to vote?

Some of them might.

It'll certainly be competitive enough that you're going to see turnout increase.

But generally speaking, I think you can pretty much count on a conservative wing of the party coming out to vote by these different races.

So let's talk about some of these races, because there's a lot of interesting ones.

Let's start with the U.S.

Senate race.

We talk about this all the time.

Basically, John Cornyn hasn't close the deal.

Ken Paxton is still, to some degree the frontrunner here, even though he's got all the sort of ethical baggage.

The generational change is real, though, too, because you've got Wesley Hunt saying, look, let's move on from all of this.

I'm the choice.

What's going to happen here?

Who knows?

But but probably a runoff though, right.

Like yeah yeah, yeah for.

Sure by then.

You know it's maybe a bit of a toss up, but.

Right edge to Cornyn or edge to Paxton.

I don't know.

I mean the runoff is almost certain unless something weird happens.

Week more.

Weird things.

More weird.

Which may be the case, right?

But whoever wins, right.

He's going to be a, wounded candidate.

Yeah, and that could mean a lot of things for the general election.

Again, general election under President Trump 2018 to point on who knows?

Meacham the economy sluggishly, as you said, unemployment decent that, etc., etc.

it's going to be complicated.

To be a tough, tough road.

Yes.

Yeah.

I mean, obviously, I think in general, the edge still goes to Republicans in terms of turnout, in terms of numbers.

But there are still some moments here where you could see the Republican nominate somebody who maybe isn't quite the best candidate for general.

But the primary itself, like we're talking about here, does give us a flavor of kind of where the party is going.

And definitely the Senate race will be a test of the kind of MAGA movement versus establishment.

Right.

And so far the move has been winning.

Establishment candidates have not been successful.

I think you're seeing this happen here for John Cornyn.

He's too tied to the Beltway crowd.

And, Ken Paxton, despite all of the limitations of the kind of ethical boundaries the impeachment and some of the other investigations, he definitely has emerged from this unscathed.

So this will be obviously the marquee race.

This is a national level race.

We've talked about this all the time.

So there's definitely going to be some interesting features there.

But let's talk about some races that sort of look a little bit like that race, but that are down ballot a little bit.

Obviously Texas politics is the best politics and local politics is the most interesting.

And so let's talk about some of these races, including, first up, the attorney general race.

This has been a race that for the first time in a decade, there's going to be a new attorney general, which is pretty surprising.

Paxton's legacy, I think, defines the context of this race.

Basically, the ideological split within the candidates here is pretty prominent.

Trump's endorsement is going to be pretty significant here, and how people are able to convince the voters that they are or are not with Trump.

And obviously, money is going to shape this pretty significantly.

Polling right now has got Chip Roy ahead of the game, but he's not the only competitor.

Aaron Rietz, who's a Paxton aligned MAGA continuity candidate.

He had worked as the deputy AG for Donald Trump.

State Senator John Huffman is kind of the establishment candidate.

She's sort of frames her race as a public safety issue.

So Chip Roy, who's leaving Congress to run?

He's a Paxton skeptic, right?

He worked with Paxton and then resigned because of some of the unethical things he said were happening inside the office.

And then Maze Middleton, who's a culture war conservative, he's a kind of Dan Patrick acolyte.

I thought he might run for lieutenant governor down the road, but he's got millions of dollars of his own to pledge on this, and that's going to be pretty impactful.

So it's a pretty crowded field of very conservative candidates.

What's your take on the ag race?

Well, I mean, it's going to be who is able to put themselves in the position to say, the successor of Paxton's conservative legal approach, not of Paxton.

Yeah.

You know, yeah, I guess ethical issues, concerns, etc., etc.

but the legal strategy.

Right.

That has been, Eve a Democrat, breathes.

So, we're.

Taking you to court, bud, right?

Yeah, I know for sure.

So.

So that's that's a key point, right?

And as you said, you have, you know, these alignment of forces, right?

Where reads may have, the upper hand in claiming because he has been part of, deputy attorney general for Texas.

So he has been part of the team.

So he's maybe the one that he has been picked, but then you have the confluence of, big political powers.

Right.

And as you say, Lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, perhaps, supporting, Middle John, which goes against Paxton having control of that office, at least indirectly, would be very beneficial for the lieutenant governor.

And then obviously Chip Roy just saying like, yeah, you know, this is a disaster.

This is not how we should behave.

And obviously, Senator Hoffman, that brings I would say, perhaps a more, policy oriented.

Yeah, campaign.

Yeah.

More as a state woman.

Just.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, what we should be doing rather than fighting all or all these all these.

Yeah.

Like focusing on the things that the office does.

Well to prosecute, you know.

Yeah.

The only enforcement, public safety enforcement.

Yeah.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And to be a champion of that is something that I think would be a sellable point, especially to a general election crowd in a primary with conservatives, then it's maybe not quite as attractive because they're looking for something more looking for Paxton.

Plus, I think you're right, like the office needs to continue to do under their mind.

Like what Paxton was doing, except maybe a slightly different way.

Right.

You know, make sure you've got kind of some of this in-house right where you don't have to outsource some of these legal fights, you know, picking the right battles to, you know, engage in for Texas.

So, you know, depending on who the candidates are, there's a variety of approaches to this, right?

People like Huffman probably will be less inclined to do it.

But people like rights, probably more inclined to do it.

But kind of strong conservative credentials here are critical.

And you see people like.

Right.

Certainly with that as Middleton for sure.

As well.

He's seen as a kind of cultural warrior in the Senate.

So definitely you're going to see a lot of that.

The problem for rights, for instance, is that she's got low name ID, right?

He's kind of a newcomer to this, just making the case that he's kind of the most Trump adjacent candidate.

But people like Chip Roy are saying, well, look, I work with, you know, kind of Trump and, you know, this is sort of more my venue than yours.

So it's still a very kind of conservative race when it comes down to it.

And the question here will be about kind of how this continues.

The other is that this become a big issue in terms of policy stuff, like with respect to transgender politics, but also in terms of removing, you know, local districts, attorney.

And so or district attorney, attorneys, districts, local district attorneys, these people like rates have said, you know, they're going to remove people like Jose Garza from Travis County and Sean Tier here from Harris County, like on day one.

The law sort of lets them do that.

It's a little ambiguous in terms of how it actually works, but that's another kind of factor.

The definitely for, attorney general running for, you know, a can't run for attorney general on the Republican side is going to find some traction with.

So be pretty interesting.

Let's talk about another race.

People don't think about enough, but they should.

And that's the Texas controllers race.

This is a race that is an open seat because Glenn Hager, who was the controller, left to go work, at the chancellorship of Texas A&M.

The controller matters because they, of course, have sort of control over the purse strings.

They have to certify the budgets, which in Texas politics past has been contentious, whether it'll be contentious again, unknown.

But for sure that office has a significant amount of power.

The other thing is that they're in charge of administering this new billion dollar voucher program.

So lots of different, important elements of what the comptroller does.

The primary is attracting, like an unusually large sums of money, the people running who we'll talk about in the second round, raising and spending a bunch of money, you're seeing a lot of contributions come in from people who are aligned with the kind of things that the attorney general or the comptroller does.

So, Brant Ryan's tax firm, like, gave millions of dollars to candidates.

Because this is obviously something that is about their, kind of tax, you know, donation or their tax business.

So there's a lot of things going on here.

Main contenders include Kelly Hancock was a former state senator.

He's the incumbent because he resigned from the Senate.

Right.

Greg Abbott appointed him to this position.

He's clearly Abbott's favorite.

Christi Craddick, who is the, chair of the railroad commission and on Huffines who had run for governor before against Abbott.

Kind of an Abbott antagonist to some degree.

I think Abbott partially appointed Hancock so that he could kind of stick it to Huffines, but that's a little inside baseball.

The race is shaping up, though, to be pretty interesting as well.

Similar kind of dynamics to the others.

What do you make of this?

Well, I mean, as you say, all of these candidates have a lot of money, right?

For for, an office that is unusual to have that much money.

What's funny is that this office became kind of open, first of all, these state wide ones.

Right.

And Christy Craddick has been receiving money for a long time to run for a different statewide office.

And this is the one that popped up, right?

If I was rich, he can do what he wants.

Right?

Yeah, totally.

So there's a lot of money for that reason.

Yeah.

So, for example, Craddick has, $3.2 million in hand.

Hancock has around six and a half.

Fontes has a lot of money.

14, 15 million money.

Yeah.

Boom.

Here he would go.

And he's going to be very interesting because once again, you get, a different flavor in terms of endorsements, right.

As you said, perhaps, Kelly Hancock is the favorite of Governor Abbott, but then Huffines has, secure, endorsements by Santa Cruz by big, big run.

That's why me.

Yes.

And, then you have for example, Christy Craddick that, the energy sector is obviously, pushing hard for her and also the tax services.

Yeah, industry as.

Well, kind of more of the establishment kind of conservative donor base.

I guess.

So it's once again.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

It's it's, going to be determined who is more conservative for a position that is not political per se.

Right?

I mean, it's budget, it's numbers.

It's kind of obviously you can, make it, political, but.

Yeah, you can make anything political.

Yeah.

It's a rare occasion where a controller kind of migrates upwards to other state offices.

Right.

Typically AG is thought to be that like AG for as a joke stands not for attorney general, but for almost governor.

So everybody wants to be in that spot because then you can work your way up.

But for comptroller, it's really not seen as an office.

It's very political.

It became that to some degree under under, Glenn Hager.

And we'll certainly see that materialize under one of these candidates, especially if it's somebody like Huffines.

But we're still seeing this happen for Kelly Hancock.

Right.

The push back on Dei and some of the ways that, like private schools have engaged in that activity are certainly scrutinized by the current comptroller, Kelly Hancock.

And so that would be something that voters have to think about and what they want this to look like.

But Huffines is seen as the kind of grassroots populist.

Craddick is the big energy donor powerhouse, and Hancock is the kind of establishment, you know, kind of anti-de candidate.

So you're seeing some divergences there in terms of issues that the attorney or issues that the comptroller works on.

But basically, Hancock is sort of established himself as the kind of most kind of reliable conservative.

But Christy Karadzic is suggested, she's got a lot of experience, too, in terms.

Oh, yeah, administering and oversight in a large industry.

So there's something there.

Don Huffines just keeps throwing bombs.

He's willing to, I think, kind of move the political needle.

And I think he's done that.

I mean, he's getting credit for pushing Abbott to the right certainly in 22 and beyond.

And I think he's done a pretty fair job of that.

So definitely I think that'll be an issue.

Just as an aside, the candidate in the Democratic side is Sarah Eckhardt, who's a state senator from Austin, and she has kind of a free shot at this.

You don't have to give up her seat to be able to, you know, run for this.

But, that could be a pretty interesting race, too, with people with lots of experience, you know, kind of running for that.

Let's talk about the ad commissioner race again, an issue that most people don't think about that much.

But Texas has a huge agriculture industry.

It's, you know, billions of dollars across a variety of fields.

The incumbent is Sid Miller, who has got some baggage, but he has one thing going for him, and that's that he is self-styled the Trump man in Texas.

The challenger here is Nathan Sheets is a beef farmer, somebody who has pointed out, basically that there's lots of reforms that are needed.

The sort of number of farms shrinking in Texas is huge.

And he's saying this is a major problem that AG has to fix.

So he's focusing, I guess, who's saying he wants to do some common sense reform issues and maybe just move on from Sid Miller, who's got all kinds of baggage.

So what do you make of this race?

I mean, it's, she has, a very interesting, I guess, CV.

Right.

Fifth generation Texan, Navy veteran.

He runs, the honey company, Nates honey company, and he is producing himself as a agricultural entrepreneur.

Right.

So I think he's very interesting.

The way that he's pushing these, way of doing, I guess, or presenting himself for the office.

And obviously in a sector that, especially with the Trump administration, has changed dramatically.

Yeah.

Good point.

Yeah.

You have these on the one hand, the potential subsidies from the federal government that are going to go to agricultural producers and farmers, then you have international competition.

Then you have an industry that may be shaped by, immigration policy.

Right.

And also by, you know, the upcoming, I revolution within the sector.

So and the square worm coming across the border.

Yes, I get it like a like a one email per day from the ag Commission and from said Miller, saying danger.

Right.

Well, it's right, it's very real.

It is very problematic in addition.

Right.

We have water problems.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

So for agriculture you need water.

The problem is we don't have enough.

Exactly.

So I think it's going to be interesting.

And we're going to see if especially voters and those are really interested in these, Padilla office are going to decide to take a very different turn in the primary election.

Yeah.

I wonder if we talk about this a lot, but there's a lot of baggage that that you could pin on Miller.

That's a potential problem.

Like the Jesus shot, he got fined for the travel right to Oklahoma, which he eventually paid back the hemp licensing bribery scandal.

He had sent this letter right to UT, basically on behalf of associates daughter, where it produced favoritism concerns.

And I concern saying like she should be, you know, and kind of admitted, despite the kind of general narrative of that.

So there's a lot of vulnerabilities he's got.

And what she is saying is, like, we should just kind of focus on the core issues here.

But that's a troublesome in a primary, right?

I mean, he needs basically to position himself as an ethical reformer.

He needs to tie Miller to all these bad things that are happening.

There's a history of having this race become the race for attorney, right?

For AG, become like a referendum on, you know, policy, but also on competency.

So it's a potentially true this could happen.

He's actually raising a fair amount of money too.

So although typically we'd kind of assume that incumbents are in better shape, raising a lot of money as a challenger and having a kind of more narrow way to argue against your incumbent is probably a good thing.

So there are some options here, but Trump's involvement will definitely matter, right?

Oh, yeah.

The scandal resurfacing something other sort of in the closet that might drip out could be potentially useful.

Maybe an ag crisis.

That's why I follow the ag commission, because, like, anytime there's some kind of major issue here, it could be that it reflects badly on Miller and their ability to control these things.

So that's another possibility.

And again, really the ag race is about rural Texas.

That's where the votes are, right?

And lost the sheets have the time and money to be able to convert people in rural areas in Texas against Miller, it's hard to say.

There's enough time.

Like you look at the top of the ticket race, the Senate race.

Right.

It's taken a lot of time for Cornyn to bring down Paxton's numbers.

The same is going to be true here on a race that most people are not that attentive to.

So I don't know that a challenger position here is going to be that effective.

And that's probably why Miller's been able to hang on.

Sure.

But I think I think that, well, you have to attack, yes, these big pockets of rural Texans and basically, you know, beating livestock and grain associations throughout the state.

Yes.

And I think that when we think about, rural voters, we tend to throw these blank stone with, oh, they're going to be conservative.

But I disagree with that.

I think they're very sophisticated voters, and they're going to go and vote for the candidate that makes the right promises that the sector needs.

Right.

And the way that I see Miller within the sector, he has done, you know, a bunch of stuff.

Right?

Positive stuff for the agricultural sector, controlling for, all those.

Yeah.

The error term of the scandal.

Right.

But I think that, you know, he has been in power for many years, and I think that the sector is looking for perhaps a new, way of seeing these things.

I mean, this is just the primary.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

We need to see what would happen, in terms of the, of the general election, but, I think that, yes, time is of the essence, but if he hurries, maybe he has a chance.

Okay.

Anyways, let's talk about some of these congressional districts that are Houston adjacent.

The first is the ninth district.

This is a new district.

Essentially.

It was formerly held by Al Green.

The Republicans changed it to basically be a 20 plus Trump district.

Right.

Briscoe came to state rep from Deer Park.

Is running.

Alex Miller, who ran for, Harris County judge.

She was on the Metro board prior to this.

Steve Stockman, who was in prison for a long time before he and before that he was in Congress.

And now he wants back in Congress.

So that's an interesting thing.

He's pardoned by Trump in 2020.

Lots of interesting dynamics here, too.

Again, kind of establishment versus outsider, right?

Kane is a kind of more establishment figure, one of the most conservative members of the Texas House.

Miller, kind of an outsider to some degree.

Local residency matters and maybe experience might matter.

Kane is making the case that I've been in office for longer.

I fought for these things, and I live in the district up here.

He's saying things like, you know, Miller didn't grow up here, scrub in California, and she hasn't moved to the district yet.

So that's an interesting dynamic to see.

What do you think's going to hap it's going to be one of the most I would say, competitive primaries.

Yeah.

In Texas for, for two, I think, you know, the kind it it's, it's on the one hand, huge I think this is going to go to a runoff because you have a lot of people running in this primary election.

You're going to go to a runoff that, once again, is who's going to be able to outflank each other from the right.

It's gotten pretty ugly, right?

They're throwing shots at each other.

Oh, yeah.

Greg Abbott supporting Kane.

Mattress Mack is supporting Miller.

So and Steve Stockman of course has his own kind of poll.

That's interesting too.

Let's talk quickly about Congressional District two.

This is Dan Crenshaw's district.

He's under fire.

Yeah.

The, kind of grassroots don't trust him.

He had this high profile fight with Sean Ryan, who's a podcaster, talking about how he thought that Crenshaw cashed in on being a member of Congress.

He's vulnerable.

And Steve Toth is running a pretty strong conservative campaign against him.

This is a district that became more red.

So in some ways, Crenshaw is kind of in a bit of danger here.

His national profile is very much in the kind of foreign policy space Toth is saying, look, you got to focus on conservative stuff and really stick to it.

They're saying he's not doing it enough.

What do you think?

Well, I mean, he's certainly in a, pickle, as they say.

Because the way that the left has turned these days to, as you said, has become more and more conservative.

Right?

So if you look at 30,000, foot view, yes, Toth would be the right candidate for that particular district.

Now, however, I wouldn't discount, Crenshaw hit that that easily.

He's a very smart politician.

Yeah.

And, given his background, I think that he can make a point.

And I think as a candidate and or one of the aspects that he has is something that he's going to highlight.

Yeah.

And he's going to get attention and support from national figures who want to kind of keep him in power.

So this could be, again, another establishment versus, you know, outsider kind of race that, you know, depends on the nature of turnout.

And you know, it's really unknown.

But, you know, there's certainly, going to be intriguing to see the results.

Well, and we're going to find out about those results in a couple of months.

But that's it for this week.

I'm Catena and I'm brand writing house.

More party politics next week.