Speaker 1: Welcome to the Texas talk.

I'm Gilbert Garcia, Metro columnist for the San Antonio express news on this show, we'll be bringing you in-depth one-on-one conversations with some of the most fascinating figures in politics, culture, and business.

In south Texas.

Our guest tonight is Joe Strauss, the San Antonio, and who served 14 years in the Texas house of representatives.

The last 10 has speaker vows prior to running for elective office.

He also served at the administrations and George HW Bush and Ronald Reagan since stepping down from the house three years ago, he's continued to be a strong voice on a number of issues affecting the state.

So let's get started.

Speaker stress.

Thank you so much for being with us.

Thanks for having me good to be here.

Well, it's been three years since you left the Texas house.

How have those, those three years been for you?

They've been good.

They've been really good, but my 14 years in the Texas house were good too.

I guess I've made it.

I've now made it more years and Tom Brady made it months, but, but it's been good.

Three, three good years, happily engaged again in the private sector.

I'm maintaining my political action committee, which keeps me involved in the process from the outside.

I'm on a number of nonprofit boards, trustee of the Brookings institution in Washington.

So a lot of policy work and been been good, but seven months ago, your old friends and a former house colleague Lee Larson wrote an op ed in which he described you as the leader of the Texas needs.

And he's, I think he's basically drafting you to run for either governor or Lieutenant governor.

What was your reaction to that was where you flattered?

Were you embarrassed?

A w O P a little of both maybe, but, but flattered, Lyle and I are very close friends and have been for a long time, very close allies in the legislature.

He did incredibly good work in water policy for the state.

Something he's deeply immersed in knowledgeable about, and he's a natural leader.

So I was flattered that somebody with his perspective and his experience would be encouraging of me to be, you know, a statewide candidate.

So while his great while gets enthusiastic, it lets his enthusiasm get the best of him at times.

But that's, what's so great about it.

Well, I mean, was it something you took seriously at all?

Did you give it any thought?

Well, it wasn't just Lisle.

I mean, I had old friends from around the state that were in encouraging me to some extent, and I haven't sworn off, you know, politics or entering public service again in some way, but it wasn't the right time for me right now.

My approach to politics to governing is not very much in fashion at the moment.

And I believe that bipartisanship is not a dirty word.

I believe that pragmatism is not a dirty word.

And I think empathy in politics is missing today, but it's not very fashionable.

It's not very popular in either really both parties are struggling to some extent with their extreme forces.

And so at the timing wasn't right for me.

And I want to talk a little bit about, more about where we stand politically, but I want to go back to your roots a little bit.

Your mother Jaci Strauss was a Seminole figure in the Republican party in the 1960s.

I mean, this was a time when I think the Republican Republican party in Texas had trouble even finding candidates for, for many offices.

And she was doing the hard work of building the party at that time as a, as a young child.

I mean, did you have prominent Republicans like George H w Bush and John tower visiting your house?

Did you, were these just sort of family, friends?

Yeah.

I mean, my mother was a pioneer in the Republican party in the sixties and seventies and later, but a real pioneer early on.

And what is often missed is, is how important Republican women were to the growth of the party, particularly suburban Republican women from around Texas.

My mother was one of those.

And those were the days, as you said, when Republicans really couldn't win with the exception of John tower who got every lucky break special and special election in 1961 when Lyndon Johnson became vice-president.

Yeah, he was the only Republican in a field of dozens and dozens of candidates, right?

So he made a runoff and not for the, not for the last time, did he benefit from a split democratic party?

You had factions of Democrats then, like we kind of have an Republican party today of, of, of moderates or conservatives and liberals progressives.

And so whichever nominee was running for the Democrats was running against John tower, the disaffected Democrats who cross over and vote for him.

And he won what four times.

So, yeah, I mean, I was privileged to grow up in a family that they did know some very prominent Republicans, but my, my mom was also very active in grassroots, local politics.

So for every George H w Bush or John tower that might've come in the door, they were many, many more who are running for local offices, either state rep or state Senator judicial races or Constable or whatever, whatever it was.

But yeah, I mean, there's no doubt that I was attracted to politics because my mother kind of inculcated into me the importance of being involved, getting involved in the process, not necessarily as a candidate, my mother never ran for office.

She used to joke.

People would ask her what she, what she wanted, assuming that people who are active in politics wanted something, some office.

And she joked and said, what I really want is when George Bush was president, I want to be named postmistress of Alamo Heights as a joke, but it there's no doubt.

My, my upbringing really channeled me toward some participation in politics.

And I knew you were going to political events.

And so on at a, at a young age, was, was there like a, an epiphany free?

Was that maybe a, an early political hero, a moment when you thought this is not only something that your, your mother's involvement, but something that really meant something to you?

Probably the, probably the, the most impactful experience I had as a young man was when I was 17 years old, I was able to spend the entire summer in Washington, DC in Senator John tower's office.

I was his driver.

I was a mail room clerk, and I played on the softball team, but, but it was a great, it was an incredibly eye opening experience.

His staff was so outstanding and so nurturing of me and others, young people that work there, that it really gave me such a good impression about public service and about governing.

And I just remember walking the halls of the Russell Senate office building, and I'd peek into a peek into a door.

And there was Howard baker and, you know, some real, really impressive the summer of 1977, Bob Dole, Howard baker, some people I really admired holding press conferences, and I was able to observe them.

And of course, Senator tower was a giant in the Senate and on defense policy and other other matters.

But I guess that summer really did, did encourage me to get even more involved.

I ask him because his re his public reputation, it was, you know, he was really kind of fiery person that was at your experience at all.

Or was that?

No, not at all.

I mean, he, he had this very deep thundering voice.

Yeah.

And he was no nonsense on politics and he could be a little Curt with people he didn't know.

Right.

A little short-tempered at times, but I think he was fundamentally, probably probably a little bit shy.

I don't say that, but I think maybe that was what led to, to some people being put off.

He wasn't as gregarious around people.

He didn't know.

Now, if you knew him and you were a friend, he was very outgoing and hilarious.

Yeah.

And, and a lot of fun.

And, and in addition to being an incredibly effective Senator for Texas, and at that time, Lloyd Benson was the democratic great Senator representing Texas or the other, the junior Senator from Texas.

And I'll never forget the lesson that I learned from watching the staffs of those two office holders from opposite sides of the aisle, but worked together very cooperatively on issues that mattered to Texas.

They always put the political differences aside when it was something that mattered to the state that they both represented.

And that's something that sadly is missing today.

But a, an example that I, that I learned a lot from one of the fascinating footnotes of your career, at least for me, is that in 1986, when you were in your mid twenties, I guess you were probably about 26 or so you manage the campaign, the successful congressional campaign of Lamar Smith, who ended up holding that congressional seat for 32 years.

I was curious, did you enjoy being the person behind the scenes?

And did you, was it, was it kind of overwhelming being, being no.

I mean, yeah.

Did I enjoy it?

Yes.

I enjoyed it.

I enjoyed behind the scenes, the strategic side and helping others.

I didn't run for public office myself until I was 45 years old.

And for, you know, quite a few years, I was away from politics pretty much altogether.

I mean, it always chipped in and helped a campaign here or there did some fundraising or something, but I never had the, the, the bug to, you know, have people look at me or to be the, to be the principal.

So I, I enjoyed that experience, learned a lot from it.

It was the most expensive primary campaign in the country that year when Tom Leffler retired to, to run for governor, it was a very crowded primary and a huge district.

The district ran from Northern bear county through the hill country, all the way to Midland and the big bend.

And so it was, I think it was bigger than the state of Pennsylvania and, and land and square miles.

So I learned a lot traveled to San Angelo and Midland and through the hill country and Lamar couldn't be everywhere.

So I enjoyed being a surrogate from time to time and learned a lot.

And Lamar was a good, a good candidate.

And I'm obviously a very fine Congressman because he kept getting returned until he decided he'd had enough after 30 something years.

Now, you were elected speaker in 2009, about four years after you had entered the house, which is, I think it is unusually a little less than that because I got elected in a special election during the session of oh five.

I was curious what your philosophy was to your role as the presiding officer of the house.

When you, when you took over as S speaker, was it, did you see it as my role is to sort of facilitate actions that are reflect the will of the majority, or is it in some way to direct the actions that, that the house takes?

Well, when I was elected speaker, we didn't have much of a majority.

It was 76, 70 seventies, seventies, 76, 74 Republican.

And there was one election, one, one seat up in Irving, Texas, where the Republican Linda Harper brown one herb election against a Democrat by I think, 19 votes out of over 50,000 cast, as I recall.

So it was, it was almost an unprecedented 50, 50 tie or 75 75 tie.

And the custom is for the speaker not to vote very often.

So on most issues in most days, it really was 75, 74, depending on who showed up to work.

I mean, you always have somebody that's back in the district or sick, or is it a grandkid's soccer game or something?

And it was a, you know, pretty much a jump ball every day, but in those days it was more, it wasn't quite, it wasn't as partisan.

And you had rural Democrats then conservative rural Democrats, and you had a lot of crossover, you know, you had, you had some Democrats voting on some conservative issues and you had some Republicans voting on some things that were clearly good for their district that weren't divided by, by partisanship.

So it was really a fascinating time.

And, and I wouldn't trade that for the world.

It was challenging to say the least, but one of the, one of my fondest memories was in a, in a, in a house.

It was pretty much evenly divided.

We passed our state budget that year, and it wasn't, we weren't flushed with money.

We passed our state budget and the house that year by unanimous vote.

One of the things that I remember you championing was proposition six, which voters approved in 2013 and was basically providing a source of funding for water projects across the state.

And I'm curious to get your take on where do you think we stand now, obviously the state continues to grow at a rapid rate, and we know that's going to continue.

How, how do you feel about the, our, our position when it comes to long-term water supply?

Long-terms a challenge.

There's no doubt we're growing.

And with climate change challenges, we're going to need more water more and more prior to that constitutional amendment, our state water plan had been in existence for decades and got, there was no funding source period.

I think they, one water planners in Texas are winning awards for having great, you know, documents up on the shelf.

So I really got committed to trying to find a way, even though the state didn't have money.

Most of the time I was speaker, we were broke.

I challenged for, for funding for anything that wasn't just, you know, meat and potatoes basics.

But I was, I was really committed to, we had gone through this terrible drought.

And so I asked Alan Ritter, former representative from, from Beaumont and, and a business person who's in the lumber business and a really smart, common sense, really great public servant.

I asked him to take on the job of finding some mechanism for beginning the funding and the implementation, the state water plan.

And he was very creative and doggedly determined to find an answer and he didn't give up.

And he found a way using some of this, the state's rainy day fund balance at that time.

And it wasn't really spending the money.

It was transferring the money into a revolving evergreen loan program that was meant to kickstart projects that were on, on the list at the water development board, that they had no way of starting to help with some seed funding that could attract low interest loans and that sort of thing, and help with bonding.

And, and so I think that's been, you know, something of a success in it, and it proved to me that there's always a way, if something is really an important challenge and has to be done, there's always some way, even in a state that has strict spending limits, there's a way to, to, there's a way to address some of these pressing problems.

So going forward as your question, the future is going to be challenging.

There's no doubt that what we did a few years ago was a, a really good first step, but there's always going to be more.

And as we grow, it's going to be more and more difficult to keep up with that growth.

That's again, you mentioned Lyle Larson.

He was really a good water policy expert.

And losing him from the legislature is, is, is not good, but they'll, they'll tackle it.

And I hope with, with as much focus and as much commitment as some of the people I worked with, I know another concern that I know both you and Lyle share, and it's something that you wrote about.

I think it was a few months ago is the issue of Medicaid expansion.

And, you know, Medicaid expansion, as people know, is part of the 2010 affordable care act, which was passed by Democrats signed by a democratic president.

Barack Obama and states were given the option of opting in, or, or not to the Medicaid expansion.

Texas is one of the few holdouts at this point.

And you have advocated for Texas to expand Medicaid.

What, what are the primary points for you?

The business case for accessing more federal dollars is clear.

And whether you call it Medicaid expansion, or you negotiate something else with the federal government that avoids the term Medicaid, doesn't matter to me.

What does matter to me is that we have so many people working people, working people who don't make enough money to afford insurance themselves, who don't have jobs from employers who can afford or provide medical insurance for them or their families.

And we have people falling through the cracks and what they're doing.

They're, they're getting sick, they're getting sick and they need healthcare.

They get, they need medical attention and they get it.

But unfortunately, instead of going to primary care doctors early, which is better, they're going to our state to our hospital emergency rooms, which is terribly inefficient.

It's not as good in terms of health outcomes.

And you know, no one I know has had a tax reduction because we're not accessing federal dollars for healthcare.

We're leaving it on the table.

And to me, this, this patchwork, this, this complicated patchwork of federal waivers, 1115 is one of them.

There's another that have to be renewed every few years.

They kind of bail out, minimally bail out.

Some of our hospitals for this care they're providing to uninsured people.

It's terribly inefficient and it's, and it, it, we need, we need to find a way and be dedicated to it.

However, my Republican friends who don't feel the way I do about it, haven't, haven't been, haven't been penalized by the voters yet.

Well, I'm just going to ask you along those lines.

I mean, was it your sense that there were some Republican legislators who privately understood the logic behind accepting these federal dollars, but for whatever reason, if that maybe some, they looked at the political calculus was that this wasn't okay, they're there.

They're not dumb.

They can, they can understand the case.

But, and I know going back to when Rick Perry was governor, there was actually a bill that came to the floor of the house that my friend, John, Dr. John stairwells carried that avoided the term Medicaid.

It was a different, it was called a Texas plan or something like that that would have accessed federal healthcare dollars.

But the governor who was planning to run for president, then it had to worry about primary politics, you know, put the hammer down and said, we're not doing that.

So rather than going through the exercise, just to take a vote, we had the discussion made the case, and I think it would have passed the house, but we didn't push it that far because we know it wasn't going to go anywhere.

The answer is, yes, they do know many, many Republicans understand the case.

They know it would be better, but they needed to find a need to find a politically palatable way, acceptable way to get from here to there.

I want to ask you, you know, in 2017 there, you opposed the passage of w became those, the bathroom bill, which was supported by Lieutenant governor, Dan, Patrick, and others, and would have a required transgender individuals when they were in government buildings or schools to use restrooms that matched the, the sex on their birth certificate rather than their gender identity.

And you were able to prevent that from passage in the past year, though, we've seen, we saw a new state law that will basically prevent transgender kids from participating in school sports.

And now we have a directive from governor Abbott in trying to get the child protective services, Texas child protective services, to do launch child abuse, investigations of parents who helped their transgender kids get gender affirming care.

What do you make of what I have to say to me seems almost like a fixation on transgender kids in this state among some of our politicians.

Yeah.

There's no other way to describe it.

It is a fixation and it's, you know, in my view, it's going after a very vulnerable population, a population of people who have a much higher risk of suicidal thoughts, if not action.

And I just thought it was so I thought it was mean-spirited.

I thought it was an example.

All of these are examples of legislatures legislatures, trying to pass laws to address problems that don't exist, or if they do exist, it's so minimal that they ought to be, they ought to be focusing their attention on some of these things.

We've already talked about, like health care, making sure we have adequate water supply for the future, or be able to move people and goods around this rapidly growing state, better than we can right now.

And public education and higher education.

I'd put at the very top of the list to strengthen before, you know, going after these, these minor instances of not a very big issue in the overall scheme of things.

And it actually can, can ruin some people's lives.

Before we wrap things up.

I went to, to ask you about basically our, our election process or political process.

I, I recently spoke with former Republican Congressman will Hurd, and he has a new book out.

And one of the things he talks about is the idea that so many of our elections, particularly the state are really decided in the primaries.

And often you don't have a lot of voters in there.

And so, so what he would call it, he talks about the difference between what people think of as the base, but he thinks of as the edge, more of the fringe of sentiment within the party is having such a big say in our elections.

I mean, is that something that, yeah, I mean, wills will herds exactly right.

Are the primary politics is the biggest problem that we have, and it affects both parties, but the Republicans being in the majority and having every statewide office for almost three decades now is the example that that should have the most focus.

Our primaries in Texas attract somewhere between two and 3 million voters.

I think there's 17 million registered voters.

And if you take the Republican primary, and I'm not sure whether it was 2 million that voted in the Republican side or close to it, you only have to get 50% plus one of that small number.

And so you're looking at what 5% of the registered voters making the decision for a hundred percent of us.

And so that's, that's really the problem.

And too many of, too many of my friends would prefer to play that game and look the other way when it comes to some of these issues that they know.

I mean their heart's not in it.

Yeah.

But, but they play along the speaker Strauss.

Thank you so much for taking time out and, and joining the ship.

My pleasure.

Thank you for having me.

It's good to, good to see you.

That's all for this edition, Texas talk.

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