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

Jeronimo Cortina, political science professor at the University of Houston.

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

Thanks for hanging out with us and talking some politics on a pretty hectic week, actually.

Lots going on Supreme Court is kind of ping pong.

Yeah.

Back and forth on the legality of Senate Bill four, which is of course, the bill that deals with immigration issues and whether or not we can criminalize this in Texas.

We're going to talk about that in the deep, because that's really the big issue.

And one of the most prominent, potent issues that the state faces.

And, of course, the nation will face.

But first, let's talk a little bit of national politics.

Joe Biden is here in Texas this week.

Spend some time rallying the faithful, is he going to win Texas?

Well, no, but it took.

You like 5 seconds to get there.

I mean, it's just, you know, Democrats, comparatively speaking, in presidential elections have done better every single election cycle.

So, you know, is he going to do better?

Probably so.

It's about a 6% gap now, which is a lot better than it was, you know, decade ago.

yeah.

We're going to talk today, too, about the fate of the GOP because its chair is resigned.

And so one question is kind of who's going to be next and what the strategy is going to be.

But Joe Biden is not here to win Texas per se, although, of course, they'd like that he's here for the money.

Right.

Texas has got a lot of money.

So basically, that's much of what he's spending his time here doing, but he's also doing something else.

And that's something we said a couple of weeks ago where after the State of the Union, the best thing a president can do is really follow up on that message.

And so he's really basically making the rounds, right, state by state.

yeah.

Especially battlegrounds, trying to make sure that you can get some attention to his issues.

He's been you know, joking that the state of the unions reception was good and that, you know, he was able to stay up past his bedtime.

And he also joked that he hates to see Mitch McConnell, who is, of course, leaving his role as the Senate majority leader who is a year older than him.

Leave his leadership in his prime.

So, yeah, he's got jokes, but he's also got a ton of money.

Yeah.

This week, the Biden campaign announced that they had raised $53 million and has $155 million on hand.

This is the highest amount of money of any Democratic candidate in history at this point in the cycle.

But there's more.

That is also the case that the extra effort from all the other allied groups will possibly reach $1 billion.

It's insane.

One union in particular said they were going to spend $200,000,000.

Ten times what the main Trump superPAC has on hand.

That's good for Joe Biden.

What's bad for Donald Trump, of course, is not just that that's happening, but also that they're struggling for money.

There are serious financial disparity between the Trump campaign and the allied super PACs and the Democrats.

The the RNC has only raised about $40 million, which is pretty small compared to what the Democrats have raised.

And, of course, they're switching leadership at the top right now.

His now his daughter in law is part of the operation.

And there's been some some churn there while they're getting their footing.

What do you think about this cash disparity?

Is this going to have any influence on the election?

Well, we need to look at 2022.

2022 The same thing happened.

Democrats got into a position where they outraised Republicans in terms of fundraising.

2022 was the year that it was going to be the red way, the red tsunami that didn't materialize.

Democrats were able especially to hold some important in key places.

Right.

And basically hold the Republican Party to get a supermajority in in the House.

So I think that, you know, it's good for the Democrats, it's bad for Republican candidates.

And these obviously is going to have implications down the ballot.

Yeah.

And that's really, I think, where the critical thing is going to be.

Right.

There are some key pickups Republicans are looking to get that they might, frankly get by looking at Ohio, which had primaries this week.

And they had some candidates there who were Trump backed, who have got a lot of momentum.

And that might mean that Sherrod Brown, who's the incumbent Democrat there could be in some danger.

I mean, sure, it could be some danger.

But if you look at especially at Ohio right now, I think Sherrod Brown is very interesting example.

You have Moreno that is backed by President Trump.

He won.

But the interesting thing is that the minute after he won, the Democrats were attacking already.

So I think that, you know, to me, there is indication that Democrats have now moved to the offensive position rather than waiting till they have that.

They're putting I don't know how many millions of dollars in that particular race.

Ad attacks.

President Biden did the same thing after President Trump's blood bath comments refrain only talking about the auto industry.

So it's you know, it's now punch Cat in Point is like boxing is the jab, jab and then the hook.

You got to immediate.

You got to bring the cross.

yeah.

Well, and you've got to have that ready to go.

yeah.

And that's something Democrats have been struggling with.

They've been trying to find that messaging and running as incumbents in some cases are going to be kind of a tough thing.

But I think you're exactly right about this.

And actually scholarship sort of came out this week that suggests that a Trump endorsement does kind of polarize the electorate.

But in some ways that are not good for Republicans because it makes people who are otherwise unaffiliated politically sort of see those Republicans as too far to the right.

So that could be an issue.

Now, it's hard to do this in a scholarly way, but at least is evidence that that's the case.

But let's stick with Ohio, because you made a good point about this comment that the president and former president said that if I don't get elected, there's going to be a bloodbath in this country.

Now, out of context, it makes it sound pretty ominous.

He was specifically talking about the automobile industry in Ohio, but I'm not sure it's going to matter because that's really the trigger that a lot of Democrats are going to use.

The other thing he said this week was that he had floated this idea without saying directly or having any specifics, that that entitlements could be cut, which means Social Security, which means a lot of seniors are going to be a little bit jumpy.

That's something I think that is problematic for Republicans and for Donald Trump, because if they're not sure what he's going to do and there's this kind of erratic ness to his behavior, it could be a problem to try to cement that vote, which in some key places like Arizona, where there's a competitive Senate race, or Florida, where there's a competitive Senate race, you could see some problems for Republicans.

Well, absolutely, 100%.

And once you start entering into, you know, these type of social welfare programs.

Right.

And and Social Security is very tricky, right, Because every worker contributes to Social Security.

Right.

So it's an entitlement.

It's something that we are contributing as we speak.

So the fact that he's going to say we're going to cut it down is like, wait, didn't like, Yeah, I paid before.

etc., etc., obviously the government contributes a significant part and it's too important.

But a very wide number of seniors, 65 plus and, you know, surviving families, etc., etc.. Yeah.

Rely on that income.

It's a cornerstone for a lot of families especially in retirement.

So if you mess with that, I think, you know, you're entering the I mean yes.

Make America great again, but not without hurting my pocketbook.

Well, no.

And make kind of working class America great again.

And that's really where Donald Trump has been successful.

And Republicans have tried to use that as a wedge to try to pull certain voters away from the Democratic Party.

And that's worked in the industrial heartland, places like Ohio, places like Michigan.

But if you start to sort of manipulate that and take that away or even float the idea of taking it away, it could have serious political ramifications.

That's why they call it the third rail, because you don't want to touch it.

Yeah, right.

There's other decent news for Biden this week, and I say decent because I don't think it's good news, but it does imply that you're going to probably see some of the former president's trials go.

So this week, a Georgia judge ruled that Fulton County D.A.

Fannie Willis can continue to prosecute the election subversion case against former President Donald Trump if she removes one of the lead prosecutors who she's had a romantic relationship.

He resigned anyway, so it didn't really matter, but she didn't emerge unscathed.

The judge was very harsh with their criticism of the fact that this looks politically indecent.

And that's where Republicans have come from on this.

They've basically said that this is like all political.

It's become a witch hunt.

And every time the president sends out a message on social media, he basically concludes that in all caps.

Right, it's a witch hunt.

This is just kind of more fodder for that politically.

Do you think this is going to have implications in Georgia, which is a swing state?

I mean, in Georgia, I think he's going to have very, very important implications, Right?

In Georgia, you have an electorate that has tended to become more democratic in the past election cycles.

And obviously the margins are very small.

But it's going to be one of those states that is going to be key for 2024.

So it's going to have implications, is going to depend on, you know, how the case move forwards.

And obviously it's going to depend on how successful the Trump defense is in this particular case.

And we have also a lot of co-defendants, right?

Yes.

So.

Well, and then you have a jury pool which is now effectively polarized.

And that could be a problem to the terms of getting an adequate prosecution and defense.

And so it creates all kinds of problems, not that prosecuting a former president has its own problems inherently built into it, because.

But anyway, politically, of course, things are pretty nasty no matter how you cut it.

This week, Representative Michael McCaul from Texas apologized to his friend Darrell Issa of California for saying that he should do something that is impossible to do in a very aggressive and unhappy way.

We won't repeat it.

This is a family show.

Yes.

And they're friends, by the way.

Yeah.

So things are getting pretty nasty out there.

Actually, Darrell Issa was sort of funny.

He said, you know, tweeted at him, hey, Representative McCaul, I've been called worst and by people I don't like.

So I've never said that to you publicly, but true privately, I won't comment.

But let's talk about something we did see comment publicly, and that is the race for the 34th District here in Texas.

Democratic Congressman Vincent Gonzalez of McAllen compared Hispanic Trump supporters to Jews for Hitler.

I think he was joking, but it ignited a lot of criticism from Republicans who basically said that's unfair to say that he's running against former Representative Mayra Flores in what probably won't be a very competitive race, but is definitely a battle that right in south Texas has become more prominent Democrats.

He's worried, will lose the conservative Latino vote because they're losing that traction on issues.

Right.

He's upped the stakes in a way that makes it very aggressive.

I'm not sure it's not going to work, though.

I don't think what he said was right.

And clearly he shouldn't have said it in the way that he did.

But I think Democrats want to see some fight.

They want to see some blood behind this argument.

And he's not wrong that there is a shift politically.

So trying to get the Latino vote to focus on the bad things that Republicans have said about immigrants and border security instead of the good things is a winning strategy.

So I think so, too.

How do you see this kind of play out?

Because, again, South Texas is a huge battleground for the state and really, frankly, the only kind of real battleground.

Yeah, Well, I think, you know, he made a point in terms of, yes, Latino tends to be, and actually I had a paper about that.

Yes.

Yeah, I know this is true.

Yes.

These are the natural constituency of the Republican Party in terms of, you know, being conservative, religious, you know, entrepreneurial, so on and so forth.

However, you know, the Republican Party has not able to figure out how to talk to Latinos.

Right.

It's it's a complicated political strategy President Ford tried to do while eating a tamale with her husband.

Just bit into it.

Yeah, she's bit into the husk.

And then you have on the other side, you have George H.W.

Bush that was very skillful at understanding and and knowing, you know, the cultural intricacies, these political intricacies, etc., etc..

So it's complicated.

But I think that once again, this proves my point that Democrats.

Right.

Are saying enough of being civil and enough of being nice.

This had gone fine.

We're going to get into the mud and we don't care anymore.

Yeah.

And on the other side, you see, you know, the Republican Party is, you know, saying, my God, why did you say all these things?

And so, so times they also say very, very, you know, offensive.

Very offensive things as well.

Yeah.

And what he did is he called out Mayra Flores for not calling them out for saying all the things they've said in the past.

And so it's kind of a non-apology.

It's a political apology.

Yeah.

I'm sorry if you're offended.

Right.

Is the apology.

But it's not a real apology because he doesn't mean it to be sorry, because he's probably not sorry.

Like, I mean it like you're saying that, you know, they want to be able to kind of inject themselves into this.

And there's a real battle here that they have to win, because if they don't, then there's no chance Texas will turn blue.

So, yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

Well, let's speak about immigration and the bigger legal implications, because there's a lot of stuff happening this week.

This is party politics.

I'm Brandon this is Jeronimo.

Obviously the whiplash that we all had this week in terms of the court battle over SB four, which is the bill that would allow for the prosecution and jailing and and really kind of sending back of migrants across the U.S. border is the hot topic the Supreme Court gave Texas officials permission to enforce SB four, then the circuit court switcheroo and said, we're going to block that because we're going to have a full hearing on the constitutional issues involved.

So the Supreme Court didn't say it's good, it's not good.

They just said we're going to pass it.

Of course, the appeals court is going to step in and make this case.

But let's kind of reveal a little bit about what this means.

Basically, what SB four does is to create a kind of criminalized to criminalize this sort of crossing of the border.

Right.

Right.

And although it's already a federal crime, it is now a state crime.

It also creates a state felony charge for illegal reentry.

The other thing it does, I think people forget it is allows for Texas judges to create order that will allow for a migrant to return to the country of origin as an alternative to prosecuting them for criminal action.

So it's a de facto state deportation system that goes along with the federal deportation system.

Mexico, like said, we have no idea what this means.

Like we are not going to accept any like any repatriations from Texas.

That's not the way this works.

It's basically chaos.

All right.

So UT Professor Steve Waldeck, who's a law professor, described the situation as indefensibly chaotic, which sounds like a great nineties band, but is a terrible way to enforce immigration policy.

So, you know, what's your kind of initial take on how this plays out?

All right.

So first some numbers.

Yeah.

So the average apprehensions during the Trump administration in the southwest sector.

Right.

Were about 1.7 during his four years.

The other apprehensions in these three first years in the Biden administration is 2.6 million in comparison to 1.7.

1.8 million.

Right.

The total GOP apprehensions it's from presidents since 1960 has been around 30.7 million.

For Democrats, that's 25.7 million.

So you're talking about on average 930,000 per year that a Republican was in the president and 820,000 apprehensions on average for every year a Democrat was in the presidency.

So the difference is about 100,000 apprehensions per year.

Right.

But obviously, this migration is cyclical.

You know, you have to control for differences, you know, a natural disaster, insecurity, so on and so forth, like.

Government changes and.

Yeah, exactly.

So I mean, on average it's, you know, pretty similar.

Right?

And we see, you know, the Republican Party basically, you know, blaming the Biden administration.

And this is not a problem that the Biden administration created.

This is a problem that the Biden administration created, the Trump administration, the Obama administration, the Bush administration, the Clinton administration over and over and over and over, and has to do because Congress has not acted.

Congress is the only one right that can decide policy.

That was my initial thought that this is really a way to spur the feds to act on a more comprehensive immigration policy.

But that seems very unlikely.

What do you think?

Are they going to be able to move on this?

I don't know.

It's it's it's you know, historically, I'm from, you know, political science and constitutional perspective.

It's extremely, extremely fascinating because, believe it or not, immigration policy in this country before we became a nation and before 1882 was controlled by the states.

Yeah.

So there is precedent.

You know, New York, Massachusetts, required, you know, ships to manifest if they had, you know, at risk migrants, those that become likely to become a public charge.

Yeah, the states deported the poor, expelled the poor, you know, imposed administrative burdens, so on and so forth.

And it was until 1882 with the Chinese Exclusion Act that the federal government takes control and nationalizes Immigration.

Yeah, the reconstruction amendments that 13, 14, 15 also ratified between '65 and 1870 strong or changed that balance of power.

So we have have these things are obviously denoted by the political climate of the area.

Interesting.

However, the argument that Texas is using in terms of an invasion, I think it is no good.

Well, in it, you know, like we said, the court didn't say specifically that this was unconstitutional or not.

They'll still have to adjudicate those arguments, but at least temporarily, it does affirm the kind of core underpinning of the legal argument that the state has been pushing forward, which is that the federal government has failed to act on this.

And so they have to let the states be able to take responsibility.

But that's such a far cry from kind of where things are, as you're describing even historically, that it really is hard to see.

The Justice Sotomayor basically indicated all kinds of problems with how this would be in effect that it would disrupt sensitive foreign relations, it would frustrate the prosecution.

Of individuals.

Fleeing prosecution.

It would hurt the ability of the federal government to monitor kind of imminent threats.

Since you've got this kind of parallel system and the federal system, like you've talked about for a lot of years, is broken right now.

There are not enough judges or not enough money to be able to facilitate it.

And everybody kind of sees these problems.

But politically, it's so hard to get this done.

But I see two problems.

The first is that if Texas is to have the system in effect, which I'm not sure they will, I actually do think the courts are going to strike this down.

It creates a racial profiling problem.

yeah.

Obviously, that's the most basic.

We've seen this happen in a bit different ways, but it also creates a wholly separate police law enforcement judicial system that Texas cannot afford.

They have already spent billions of dollars, tens of billions of dollars on this.

So to spend more, to have this permanently kind of a fixed, it's a difference between having it like as a political cudgel and having it be like a real functional institutional part of, yeah, responsibility.

Texas has.

Absolutely.

In addition to that.

Right.

And you just said it.

Mexico said, no way, no way.

Yeah, I'm going to accept any repatriations coming from Texas.

Yeah.

Then why do you do that.

Then what we do.

Right?

I mean, like, are you going to deport them, you know, via private flights or buying seats in commercial airlines or stuff like that is especially given airline tickets today that is extremely, extremely expensive.

So the state thought that they were going to get private donations to do some of the shipping of the migrants to other places.

They didn't.

Right.

So the state's confronting the full cost of this.

And the other important point that you just mentioned is this has ramifications for our federal system right.

And at the end, you know, anything can go there.

Yeah, right.

It's you know, I'm being invaded by mosquitoes, therefore I'm going to do X, Y or Z. I mean, I really understand their frustration.

And obviously this is also political.

I mean, we cannot deny that.

Sure.

But it has implications for, you know, very, very, very interesting things.

And if they going to, you know, side or go with, you know, the colonial period, it's like you got to New way want.

To open up a creaky book like yeah.

In the colonial period I mean there is precedent but then we go, you know Second Amendment once again the Second Amendment at that time we were not talking about semiautomatic weapons.

Right.

Like legit militias, people with muskets.

Right.

So it's.

Lots of, you.

Know.

Lots of lots of problems that ultimately have like no real solution except just to kind of find this this balance and that balance hard because the politics of it make it really challenging, especially in an election year.

Right.

But the Biden administration already put that off, right?

It's like you know, these a bipartisan bill pass it on will solve the issue.

Yeah.

I mean, solve it.

We'll see.

I mean, it will not solve it, right?

But at least it would start a process, address it.

I don't know.

I mean.

It's a challenge, but as you say, it's all about the politics of it.

And honestly, like we said before, the party is really evolved into a place where this is the number one issue.

And the Republican Party is in a bit of flux in terms of their leadership.

They just had some big wins in the primary season, at least, you know, version of the party that's on the far right.

But the kind of one of the cheerleaders of that Matt Rinaldi, who is the current chair of the Texas GOP, is stepping aside after a three year tenure that's marked by a lot of party infighting but also some serious gains.

Yep.

So the Civil War has really come to a head because you've got these huge mega-donors who want to see a very conservative Republican Party and you've got some of the more moderate ish candidates who are still very conservative trying to kind of hold that line and maybe not push that far in that direction.

And that is become a kind of hot potato.

Right.

So Matt Rinaldi stepping aside, He's suggested that Abraham George, who is kind of a local activist in Collin County.

Ken Paxton was backed him, should be the next person.

But he ran to some controversy, too, where he had the police called to his house and that became kind of a messy affair.

I don't know how to sort of see this coming out.

This is obviously kind of small ball politics.

What the GOP chair does or doesn't do is kind of not something that most people are attentive to, but it has implications because this position has become less of a kind of administrative political position and more of a kind of real activist position.

Yeah, So we've gone from basically that person being quietly partizan to very loudly Partizan.

Matt Rinaldi got pushback from members of the Republican Party saying You shouldn't inject yourself into these races.

He's picking sides where other GOP chairs haven't done that.

But the Senate Republican Executive Committee has to make this choice at the convention, and that's going to be a tough thing to do because they're pretty gerrymandered.

Right.

And remember, those people are elected from state Senate districts and those districts are gerrymandered.

So again, all the partizanship is kind of distilled into these places.

So they're going to pick somebody who's very conservative, probably in the order of Matt Rinaldi, but we'll see how it goes.

But that's certainly going to be a really interesting fight for for the sort of heart and soul of the GOP.

absolutely right.

And it's going to create winners and losers.

And then the Republican Party will have to accept those consequences, right?

Yeah.

Whether people are, you know, especially looking at the composition of the general electorate in Texas, you know, and catering to a very, pretty large part of the electorate in Texas in terms of, you know, ideological views.

So that could have, you know, I'm going to get this thing right now, this part of the electorate very excited.

But then looking at the five, ten, 15 years moving forward, it's like, It's a real question.

Yeah.

And the Republican Party doesn't want to go too far, but maybe they can.

Yep.

Last thing quickly, let's talk about Houston.

The Houston firefighters are happy this week.

Got an agreement with the city to increase pay to $650 million in the next five years.

They're also going to get a 34% raise.

This ends a years long court battle that's been back and forth.

The question is how to pay for it.

It's a big win for John Whitmire.

Yeah, he promised he was going to do it.

He got it done within the first few months of his campaign.

But honestly, it's an expensive win.

It is the likelihood of this breaking the budget is pretty high.

They floated the idea possibly of having an increased garbage fee, possibly having voters approve of a raise of rev cap, which they can do for specific purposes.

But that has to go along the ballot along with where, yeah, the mayor is going to run for reelection.

That's a dicey proposition.

So how do you see this playing out?

Well, good or bad?

I mean, I think it's good, right?

And I think that we talked about these things before in terms of, you know, the mayor and the city administration have to prepare the public and have to make them understand to run a city these big you need to pay up.

It has to be it's going to be expensive and it's going to be expensive.

And this is what it is.

You got you.

want trash going Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays at ten, 11 and 12 p.m.. Yeah.

Yes please.

But it's going to cost you.

Yeah.

yeah.

You're going to pay up.

Have to upfront.

And that's a question of messaging, which is a tough thing.

Exactly.

When you're running for reelection again.

So that's probably where it's going to be For him.

And that message.

We leave the next message for next week.

I'm Jeronimo Cortina.

And I'm Brandon Rottinghaus.

The conversation keeps up next week.