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 Rottinghause, also a political science professor here at the University of Houston.

Thanks for hanging out with us and talking politics.

A big week.

Lots of people are quitting.

Lots of people are running.

And maybe the government will shut down the usual kind of chaos that surrounds September.

Mail storm of September.

Right.

So, yeah, here we are.

Let's start with actually big news coming out of Harris County, and that's that.

Judge Lina Hidalgo has decided not to run for reelection.

It probably was something she telegraphed long ago by, you know, not raising any money and being kind of generally combative with her colleagues.

So perhaps it was sort of, writing on the wall for a long time.

But it obviously has implications for not just the kind of budget for Harris County, which is being debated literally almost as we're talking, but also just kind of her legacy as county judge.

So let's talk about that first.

Like, what is her legacy as county judge after two terms in office and, you know, a lot of political controversy?

Well, I think on the one hand, we have baptism by fire, just like welcome.

And the year 27 like welcome to.

Yeah.

Kind of the, the the fireball.

Well the fireball but also all natural disasters.

Right.

Not only natural disasters, but also, a bunch of different, problems in terms of, politics with Austin, internal politics with, former mayor, Sylvester Turner, now with mayor, with Mayor Whitmire So that that propel you to be, like, running immediately also.

And kudos to her.

Her issues with mental health and disclosing them, pretty open, which is a, I think a very courageous step that many other politicians, from different, ideological stance have taken.

So that's also very good.

And, yes, as you say, very combative in terms, but I think that what has struck me, obviously in the last couple of weeks and months is that that is exactly what is happening with the Democratic Party here.

Right?

It's, Lina Hidalgo, very progressive, trying to assert a different way of doing policy.

Yeah, in comparison to what we consider, for example, more moderate Democrats like, the rest of the court.

Yeah, that's a great point.

And, you know, that, kind of friction is been on display last year plus.

And we're certainly seeing it play out in terms of budget fights.

But I think her real legacy here, yeah, as you said, is a number of things.

The first is that it turned the role of the Harris County judge from being an administrator to being an activist.

So most people didn't realize who their county judge was or what the county judge did right before, Lina Hidalgo came around.

And although Judge Emmett did a great job in lots of different ways, especially through natural disasters, people said we didn't really know what he was doing all day.

And Commissioners Court was kind of this sort of unknown entity.

But this all changed with her election, and it clearly pushed it into a much more progressive direction.

With her election, the sort of balance of power shifted to the Democrats.

And although it hasn't been a kind of natural progression in terms of the liberal ness of the policies, there certainly been a movement in that direction.

So that definitely is a big movement.

But also it kind of puts progressive politics on full display.

Now, that obviously invites a lot of controversy, as it did, but it certainly meant that, you know, she was this new kind of figure that was going to be, the future of the Democratic Party.

Maybe she won't be, but sort of her kind of likeness will be right.

Kind of younger, more progressive.

Right.

You a like Latino.

And so that means that you're seeing a kind of real change and in that perspective.

So that I think is one of the biggest types things that we're seeing from sort of her activities.

But they were many the policy changes were pretty big, right?

You know, changes to the jail, controversies over Covid 19 and mask mandates.

Right.

She got in kind of, you know, some some political hot water for all those things.

So this was definitely, you know, I think a really sort of impressive moment for Democratic Party politics, but also for kind of progressive politics in Harris County.

Now, obviously, you know, I think, too, kind of efforts to try to improve civic engagement and to try to expand the vote were stopped by the state and probably exaggerated some of the state versus local conflict that we see.

And it's not her fault, of course, but just that dimension was really magnified by the way that the state viewed Harris County and her position in it.

So there's a lot of things there that made it, you know, much more, sort of, controversial.

Right.

I guess the question here is, you know, will her legacy last beyond her moment?

Will we see the next set of Democratic leaders follow?

Will we see a reaction to this from Republican officials who may win?

So what's to come?

Well, it's hard to say because, I mean, the poll that we have for the potential contenders, we have, former, Houston mayor Annise Parker, we have, city council member Letitia Plummer.

We also have, Sheila Jackson Lee's, daughter that wants, to run, Erica Lee Carter.

And then on the other hand, we have Marty Lancton that is a president of the Houston Firefighters Union.

So right now, as as just like that, you know, the only person that you might say, well, it's embodying, for example, Hidalgo, progressiveness in terms of politics might be Lee Carter.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Besides that you know, might be a little bit more, still progressive, but not representing that new wave within the Democratic Party.

Yeah.

Like you won't see the fight about the kind of penny tax or child care.

That's not going to be a fight they'll probably have.

And if they do have that fight, it'll be kind of behind the scenes, right?

Yeah.

That's right.

I mean, I think part of her combativeness meant that she really cared about these issues.

And the Democratic Party does in general.

But pushing that really far too fast means that you're going to outpace your colleagues.

And that's what happened on commissioners court.

So we're certainly seeing that friction.

But I think this is potentially going to be a very competitive race.

With Marty Lancton in that, you know, Aliza Dutt who's running as well, who's Mayor of Piney Point.

Orlando Sanchez.

Right.

Former treasurer of Harris County.

There's certainly a lot of options for Republicans who want to see that this change and this is, you know, potentially their moment.

So the fact that Hidalgo had such close elections certainly indicative of the fact that this is, you know, a part of a big purple county, we are used to seeing, you know, basically urban Texas to be very blue.

But in this case, Harris County is pretty purple.

So, I mean.

Yeah, and it's going to be if we're going to do 2018 2.0 plus, 2016, I mean 2026.

Yeah.

And it might, it might be.

Yeah.

So we might get another big surprise.

It could be the luck of the draw for Democrats that they get this at the point where exactly, you know, they're getting kind of national headwinds.

And otherwise Republicans would do pretty well.

But the issues really matter here.

Right.

If it's about kind of, you know, increasing taxes or if it's about crime, these are issues Republicans can win on.

And the right candidate at the right moment can really mean something for them.

So we'll continue to watch as this goes.

Because obviously it matters a lot for Harris County.

But Judge Hidalgo is not the only person who's sort of not going to be around again.

We're also seeing two additional members of Congress from Texas decide not to run, Morgan Luttrell, who's a congressman from the eighth district, a former Navy Seal known for his advocacy on veterans issues.

And Michael McCaul, who's been in Congress for a long time, longer than most of our students have been alive at this point.

Since '04, he was influential, right, chair of the House Foreign Affairs and Homeland Security, both calling it quits.

What's going on?

Why are people not running again?

I think that, might be.

I mean, I don't know, right?

The reasons that, for example, congressman McCaul has given these, like, I want another challenge.

I want to serve, Texas and his constituents differently, not necessarily in Congress.

His district was redistricted, from going to a super secure Republican district to just moderately secure.

I mean, I would more than moderate, right?

Like, not super, super, super plus five.

Trump, you know, was a plus tens.

He was probably in the mix to win.

But yeah sure it's still different than it was.

Right.

That means you're going to have to campaign differently.

Exactly.

Maybe you just don't have the fire in the belly anymore, right?

But members don't run for lots of reasons, right.

Including kind of potential loss of seniority.

Right?

I mean, Luttrell probably sees that it's going to be a long time for him to kind of work his way up the ranks.

And, you know, it has sort of, you know, other things you probably wants to do, but they're not alone.

I mean, of the 25 Republicans in the House, currently, only four of them have been in office before Trump's first term.

Carter, Webber, Williams and Babin.

And so we're seeing a real, you know, drain in terms of members.

Yeah.

And that means that Texas clout is sort of, you know, minimized.

And you're also talking about possibly Joaquin Castro running statewide.

Mark Vesey has been district out of his district in Fort Worth.

Chip Roy is out running for attorney General.

Wesley Hunt might run for Senate.

You know, we'll see.

John Cornyn is hoping you know, you stay in DC.

We don't need you around here.

You know people like Vicente Gonzalez is now in a Trump ten district.

So that's a tough road for him.

So yeah you could see like basically a hollowing out of this that we haven't seen since the 2016 2017 kind of window where we had like, you know, some, you know, almost ten members decide to not run for office.

It's common to see people not run, especially after redistricting.

Right.

So on average, about 11 Democrats and 12 Republicans retire from the House every two years.

But this year, there's a lot more people.

And at this point, it's, ten Democrats and 17 Republicans not running.

So there's a real drop, not just for Texas, but also kind of for every state.

Right.

In terms of those members, I mean, part of it is what you're describing.

It's, you know, kind of hard to stay in office.

Being a member is now not what it used to be.

A lot of it.

Oh, yeah.

Policymaking and dealmaking.

It's about kind of how many likes can I get on my bizarre social media post where I, you know, bask my, you know, opposition party.

That probably wears on you after a while.

And obviously too the nature of politics in DC is very different.

Donald Trump changed the way that politics functions.

And it's not for everybody.

So there's a lot of things here that probably mean that members are just sort of, had it.

Yes.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Well, let's talk about some more positive news, which is that we're seeing people run for office right now.

The good news, of course, you know, people leaving means you're going to have kind of.

Yeah, new opportunities for people to run.

And in this case, we're seeing one at the statewide level.

Mark White who or sorry, Andrew White, governor, son of former governor Mark white is decided to run for office as the governor of Texas.

What do you make of this?

But basically his announcement, he said that it's time for change.

And, he's just preparing and I guess anticipating a prompt that it's going to be very difficult.

He lost, the Democratic primary against Lupe Valdez.

In '18.

In '18, '26 again, might be a good year for Democrats.

Given the, polarization that we experience.

And, you know, the fact that we know that every midterm election, the, party of the president tends to lose.

Yeah.

And the reaction to the incumbent party is a big ideological swing for the opposite party.

So part of the reason Valdez won by very little bit was that you saw this kind of liberal swing.

And Mark white was a conservative Democrat, right, by most accounts, sort of like his father, although the issues are very different.

So you can easily see a situation where, this actually ends up hurting him.

So assuming there's no one else running right, that in a liberal swing year for the primary, that there's a chance that he ends up getting hurt because of that.

But I actually think he's the kind of Democrat who can win this seat.

You know, the specifics we can talk about in a minute.

But like you know, at least from where things were in 2018, he was, against the death penalty.

He wanted more education funding.

He wanted additional Medicaid funding.

He says that he's pro-life but wants to have women's access for abortion care.

He was tough on criminal justice issues, but, opposing that recreational marijuana.

And so there are some moments there where, you know, he definitely could appeal to the moderates in the party, maybe beyond that.

But.

Also the moderates on the Republican side.

Right?

Yeah.

I mean, I think that, well, we know and we have seen many times, Governor Abbott, as a politician, is very smart, is, he has a lot of money.

Right.

But we're going to be entering a 2026 election season.

Yeah.

We the very contentious, senatorial primary.

Yeah.

As you said, we don't know if if Wesley Hunt is going to enter or not, but it's going to be very contentious.

Yeah.

Then we know, everything that has happened, with the ideological polarization of state politics that, as we have said, reflect what's going on in Washington, almost carbon copy.

So maybe he's going to be position also, if he maintains that, I would say center left, center right kind of middle.

Yeah.

The.

Whoa.

All right.

Put that on.

A bumper sticker.

Right center right, center middle.

Like will like some, some Republicans, you know, like say like, come here.

Right here.

Yeah.

Like a kind of siren song.

Exactly.

Support for kind of a moderate way of going about things.

I think that's useful.

Like common sense.

Right.

Yeah.

Just common sense, type of politics.

Yeah.

So we'll see.

But and I think that there is a kind of moment now where voters are willing to make a change.

Right?

If you look at the kind of right track, wrong track polling for Texas, like we've seen, you know, the Texas Politics Project do for a long time, they have shown that the people who think that Texas on the wrong track is sort of at an all time high.

And so that means that potentially there's time for a change, sort of as his kind of moment mentioned.

But, you know, he's going to have to raise millions of tens of millions of dollars.

Greg Abbott has almost $90 million Jeronimo.

So that's an insane amount of.

Money or and we have to wait and see if, Matthew McConaughey decides to.

McConaughey could raise like $10 and still, like, get within five points of Abbott.

And I think that's part of the problem is that Abbott is so well entrenched here.

Right?

Oh, yeah.

His vulnerabilities are a lot lower, I think, than other statewide officials.

So he's in a much better position.

And even if he wasn't, $90 million can get you pretty far down the road.

So like the prospect of raising for Andrew White, like independent of the Senate race, which will suck a lot of the money out of the Democratic Party and its, you know, pockets means that, you know, it's going to be 60 million, $70 million to raise to be able to compete against Greg Abbott.

And that would make even LBJ shudder.

Right?

So much happening here.

But I guess my question to you is, you know, nothing against Andrew White, but is this the best Democrats can do?

Like, he's not an elected person.

He already ran and lost.

His positioning is a little awkward inside the Democratic Party.

What does this mean for the Democratic Party?

Does this mean that the bench is depleted and that no one else wants to run?

There are rumors that Gina Hinojosa will jump in.

She registered some somebody registered domains in her name, such that, you know, there could be kind of a future kind of site for landing people to find, you know, her campaign for governor.

But, I don't know if this is sort of a good sign for the party or not, given that the a lot of the big hitters have decided to sort of take a seat.

Well, I mean, until they can resolve some of the internal issues, and decide, yeah.

Who are we going to support then?

I think they can move on.

I mean, but again, you have, Joaquin Castro may be thinking, like, yeah, he should run for this.

Well, I should run for that.

Yeah.

Beto O'Rourke, whether he decides, well, I'm going to do Senate or right now, governor.

Yeah.

Like, which one is it?

Right.

And it's eternal, candidates, so on and so forth.

Yeah.

And not not in a bad way.

Right?

Right.

Yeah.

But he has significant name cognition.

Is he willing to fine tune some of the message?

Can you outdo what you did before in terms of that cost You, right, significant political capital, right.

So it's tough.

No, it is.

I think the fact that, Talarico got in the Senate race means that no one else is getting on this.

That race is set.

So, governor is still an open question.

Maybe now that Mark white jumping in, it's a signal that like no one else is going to do it, it's time to really make that move.

And no one else has done it.

So yeah, March are the primary.

Yeah, exactly.

And the thing is that the polling suggests the Democrats want somebody who's not these people, right?

They want all they want.

O'Rourke, as you mentioned, they want, you know, Jasmine Crockett and they might not get it.

And so Democrats could be in a poll where they look at the lay of the land and say, well, this is sort of as we've got and it doesn't mean that they won't have good messages and won't be able to compete a little.

But, you know, this is not exactly what the Democratic Party wants.

Right?

But let's talk about the Democratic Party itself.

They have decided that they are going to simply ask the voters for permission to, okay their desired move to Dallas.

So I guess they're going to be Cowboys fans now.

Well, yeah.

Abandoning Austin, what's the implications of this?

Well, I think I mean, it's not only Dallas, there open other, you know, the other satellite offices that they have they have in obviously in Houston now Dallas, they're going to keep Austin as whatever they keep over there.

Yeah.

They're opening, field offices in El Paso, Eagle Pass, El Paso de la Isla.

So I think just looking at a perspective from pure population growth.

Yeah.

Pure marketing.

Yeah.

Where you voters are I think.

Smart.

Plus you got Tarrant County close by which is another big kind of urban battleground that they're hoping to kind of plant the flag in and transition more clearly to the Democratic side.

Yeah I mean I think there are some advantages to it.

You know, logistical issues are also solved because it's got a big airport.

You can fly in and out of there.

So there's probably some positive things here.

And I guess, you know, it signals to me that they want to make a move and they want to make some changes.

And that's probably good because whatever they're doing isn't working really well.

Right?

I mean, there's been, you know, 150 consecutive elections where they've lost so.

Something different probably is.

Yeah.

Smart here.

And maybe this is the thing they need to.

Shake it up.

And every single office is going to have like major operations.

Right.

So to me is where our voters are.

Yeah.

And what do we need to get them out to vote?

Because as we have seen before in these major metropolitan areas, yes, it does tend to be, Democratic leaning, but turnout is not what you need them to be.

So true.

You and I have done academic work on this subject, and it's really hard to get people to vote who are not inclined to do so.

And that's a major effort that takes money and investment of time.

And, you know, having it done in a place where you're not doing as well is probably pretty smart.

So I think that's good in a way.

I think that's a that's a positive sign.

So that operational growth could be potentially positive.

But while the Democrats are opening things, the Republicans are hoping to close things.

They have sued the Texas secretary of state with the effort to try to get their primaries closed.

So states differ on terms of whether they have open primaries or Closed primaries.

A closed Primary is sort of only members of that party can vote.

Open Primary is what we have now, which is that anybody can vote.

So this is a kind of a, something that they had talked about doing.

They didn't get it done the legislative session.

So they're going to sue essentially to try to force this issue.

But there are some real implications to this.

The fact that the case that the Republicans want to make is that you've got Democrats meddling in our outcomes, right?

In our elections.

It's not totally true, right?

The percentage of people who are like voting in other parties, primaries are really low, like 4% low.

And so it's not a lot.

But Republicans say even that small number can make some big differences.

So for instance, in the primary that involved Dade Phelan, the speaker of the House, nine times last cycle, he only won by a couple hundred votes.

And, you know, if you've got a few hundred Democratic votes that otherwise in that spot would have maybe change the outcome.

So there's at least on occasion this sort of outcome.

But there are real implications to this.

That is especially that people who are considered independent tend to be, you know, right leaning Republicans.

They're going to be people who Democrats, Republicans want to have in their primary.

Right.

But also, you have, you know, folks like who are younger, who are less politically attached.

Asian-Americans are often shown to be more independent, so they don't have a party affiliation per se.

So you're kind of closing the primary to them, really reducing turnout, potentially, as the scholarship says.

So is this a good idea for them or a bad idea?

Well, I don't think it's, it's a it's a great idea because as you see and party affiliation in Texas and across the nation is the number of independents keeps increasing and increasing, increasing.

That doesn't mean that they do not have any, political leanings.

Right.

But as you said, is, you are reducing your customer market share immediately.

Yeah, right.

And that can have important implications and give an advantage, for example, to Democrats and say, well, they don't want you, I want you and move the needle one way or the other.

Yeah.

And the other thing is obviously, the Secretary of State is like, things are already rolling like like, no.

That's a great point to have them logistically, I have no faith that the state can pull this off.

Right.

The amount of investment in the infrastructure to like, register people and then to, like, actually have that be checked at the polling places just beyond I think.

What's also also I think the history of these, of these state in terms of voter registration is no party affiliation.

Right, right.

So yeah, when do you become a member of the party at registration?

Do you have to pay dues that somebody has to track?

Is it just voting in the primary that they lock.

You in for two years, but just just registering as a Republican or a Democrat?

I think a lot of people are going to be uncomfortable saying, like, I want to be here or I want to be there, and it's temporary.

Usually most states have it as a kind of two year window, but still, you're right.

People don't want to have that.

I'll give you an also also.

And that's the states that have closed primaries also have same day registration.

So places like Wyoming.

Right.

You can register and have to register in a party if you want to vote in that party.

But you also means you can do it that day.

So Texas does not like that Republicans have been against that.

So this is just a cut under my I think from a like administrative review.

So yeah.

Yeah, yeah we'll see.

Well I don't know how to phrase this, but we've got more bad news and that's that we might be headed towards a government shutdown.

DC can't agree on what to do in terms of budget funding.

Republicans have put forward a plan that essentially is a clean, continuing resolution that has no riders.

It's just let's just continue the budget through November.

The Democrats have said, you know, we're not going to play ball.

We're going to fight for the rollback of the Medicaid cuts that happened in the big, beautiful bill.

Who's going to come out ahead on this?

Are we having a government shutdown or not?

I mean, maybe if if Democrats really do what they're saying, right now.

Yeah, I think the political push is real.

Like there's a certain segment of the Democratic Party that says they didn't fight hard enough last time.

A lot of Senate Democrats caved, and people are mad.

They want to push back and this is at least one way to do it.

So the Democrats are saying, look, if you want to exclude us, you want to have a clean budget.

Good luck.

Right?

This is what Brian Schatz from Hawaii says.

Do you think that's going to work out?

I mean, in my work out these these, I guess this time, Minority Leader Schumer has indicated that if Republicans were to use the nuclear option, which they did, that they were not going to play ball eventually and that they had to be very careful.

Now they have done it.

They called the bluff.

So we'll see if, then Schumer is not going to cave and say like, well, this is for, you know, maintaining these services or anything like that, or use, the other positions that sometimes, Republicans have used.

Yeah.

Is like a, you're in power we're the minority party.

You want to do something.

Yeah.

Good.

Do it.

Well I mean sure.

Yeah.

Maybe you're going to do it.

Yeah.

And Jeffries has his own problems of keeping the caucus together right here.

The Texas connection is that people like Henry Cuellar, who are, you know, moderate Democrats and maybe want to see government funded and don't want to have to fight that battle on the ground, might be among a few people like, you know, Jared Golden from Maine.

And companies should say, like, we're not going to side with the Democrats on this, and they side with Republicans who need every vote they can get.

You have to make this happen.

But if they have Democratic votes, then at least in the House, they'll be able to move forward.

So interesting.

Yeah.

So this is a certain obvious sort of conundrum that the state faces.

And, it's one of a package of a bunch of different problems that, like, is going to be on the table.

Let's do a quick Senate roundup.

So this week, James Talarico says he is not taking instruction from national Democrats Colin Allred has got a CDC endorsement.

Does this matter?

No.

Next.

Good enough.

You got.

There you go.

No, obviously it matters.

Yeah.

But it's you're.

Building.

Coalition.

Exactly.

And the distance from the National Democratic Party is really important.

Absolutely.

And Allred knows this.

So does Talarico.

Yes, it is very important.

It is a signaling game, but that's a game that we're going to analyze as Monday quarterbacks next week.

I'm Jeronimo Cortina.

And I'm Brandon Rottinghause.

The conversation keeps up next week.