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

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

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

It's been an exciting week this week, Jeronimo in politics.

Obviously, some of these things are going to come up in the weekend's festivities.

So we're going to try to get you prepared for it.

The big news the week obviously, is about what's happening in Washington, D.C., the shutdown politics.

We're back to the nineties again, it seems.

I'm happy about it because, you know, obviously I'm an aficionado of the nineties, but not everyone's excited about it.

So we're going to talk all about what that means for Washington and for you at the end.

But let's first talk about some of the other things happening in Washington, D.C. this week.

Well, obviously, it's not quite in D.C., but D.C. based because it's about the Republican debate in Simi Valley, California, at the Reagan Library.

It's been an exciting round so far.

They've winnowed the field to seven people.

And once again, we're trying to figure out, you know, who is on top here.

So what do you make of the big picture here in terms of the state of the play for 2024?

Well, I mean, well, first of all, we have to talk about the big elephant in the room, and that's Donald Trump.

Right?

Right.

Who was not there.

Yeah, exactly.

And the issues that he's lead is huge, you know, 30 years, 30 to 40 points.

So he has the luxury to say, nope, I did go to Detroit to talk about, you know, the workers are striking in terms of the auto manufacturers, so on and so forth.

So it's complicated in the sense of that.

But yes, you're right.

It's weaning down.

And that perhaps, you know, could bring a closer, quote unquote, candidate towards Donald Trump and complicate things at the very, very, very end.

But we are very far beyond that tonight.

That's true.

I think you're right.

I mean, I think it's really smart for Trump not to go to these debates because you can frankly only get yourself in trouble when you're the front runner.

You want to minimize mistakes.

And we all know that Donald Trump is prone to making these mistakes.

And even if he doesn't think that they're mistakes, they're mistakes.

Right.

The other thing is that, yes, going to Detroit, going to the heart of kind of working class America is like a stake through the vampire heart of the Democratic Party.

Right.

And this has been something that Republicans have been trying to promote for a long time.

They want to be the party of the working class.

And honestly, because we're seeing this gravitation of people without college degrees to the Republican Party, it's a really smart play for them to be able to move in that direction.

So I think Trump is wise to do that.

The other thing I think it's worth noting is that although of course, Trump is the frontrunner here, it's going to mean that you're going to get most of the slings and arrows.

And we basically saw that that was true.

One of the things we have seen more true is that a lot of these candidates are going after Donald Trump on abortion.

So Ron DeSantis, who frankly has the most to lose here in all of these discussions, is attacking Donald Trump about his comments about abortion and the ban in Florida.

So Florida has a six week abortion ban.

Donald Trump called it terrible.

DeSantis basically claps back and says that, you know, Donald Trump said he was pro-life and it doesn't look like he's a pro-life as he claimed to be.

I think that's going to be a wedge that's useful for these other candidates to be able to say that Trump isn't the kind of candidate that you think of when you think of a conservative Republican.

So that's going to be useful.

But obviously, Joe Biden wasn't invited to the debate, the GOP debate, the presidential library, Ronald Reagan, if he stepped foot in there, he probably like blow up in flames.

But he did send a proxy and that is Gavin Newsom, who's the California governor.

This is good news for Joe Biden because Newsom and the White House have been at odds in some things.

It's been friction, not just because they're both kind of heavyweights in the party, but there's also been some policy disagreement.

So what do you make of kind of Newsom's invitation by the White House to go to be a proxy at this debate?

And what does it mean for the big picture of 2024?

Well, I mean, this also these in the context of what was reported this week that Gavin Newsom is going to debate Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

Okay.

Yeah.

So there's a lot of speculation in which we academicians do not engage.

But no, of course not.

Absolutely.

No, no.

As you button your ascot.

Exactly.

Yes.

But the issue here is that perhaps he's mending, you know, some of those fences that were broken before on the one hand.

And the other one is that perhaps they're preparing Newsom for something big.

Coming up, whether next year or, you know, in a couple of more years.

Yeah, I think it's potentially dangerous for the Bush and for the Biden White House because they are struggling.

The polling numbers for Joe Biden are not great.

Yeah, they're not much better for Donald Trump, but for an incumbent president, the kind of lackluster support he's getting among Democrats is really discouraging.

And to put, you know, Newsom out there is a kind of admission in some ways, I think, that there are other popular Democrats.

That's not to say that like there's going to be a replacement, I don't think.

Right.

But I think people like Kamala Harris are probably unhappy about this because, like she's the heir apparent.

Right.

And so that's definitely a kind of vibe at her, as well as the fact that, you know, she's from California, too.

So like, if are going to elect a California Democrat, she's like, You're going to elect me.

Yeah.

But I do think it's a kind of admission that's problematic for the Biden White House.

So we'll see how that how that plays out.

We'll talk about that debate when it comes.

But it's certainly interesting to see how this is shaking out on a national stage.

Let's talk a little bit about some other events that are taking place in Washington, D.C. this week, including from the land of New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez, who was a senior senator from New Jersey and his wife, have been indicted on federal bribery charges.

The couple has been accused of accepting several hundred thousand dollars in bribes in exchange for using the senator's power and influence to basically sway American foreign policy more towards Egypt.

And a benefit three New Jersey businessmen.

Jeronimo, The brazenness on this would even shock people from New Jersey.

Basically, the bribes included cash, gold and payments toward a home mortgage and other things of value.

The senator has got basically almost a half a million dollars in cash hidden away their safe deposit box full of gold bars like it is out of a movie.

Yeah, I've studied Scandal for a long time, and this is a doozy.

So what do you make of, like, how this is all going to shake out?

He clearly suggests that he is innocent.

He said this is something that he did because you sort of have, you know, this kind of, you know, mentality from being his family was that we were refugees from Cuba.

And so this is why he collected all of this.

But what about, like, the luxury car?

Is that something you take?

I mean.

You cannot defend this ride.

I mean, either or you can make whatever story you want.

Yeah.

I mean, if you don't have the receipts of the $480,000 or how you got more than $100,000 in gold bars, it's like indefensible.

So perhaps right now he's trying to, you know, find the shipwreck in the coast of of the North Atlantic coast and say, I dove down.

He was diving.

Yeah.

Yeah, I saw something shiny.

Exactly.

I pick it up and that's it.

But I mean, it's it's I mean, it's something that it has no escape, whatever it is.

And I think this is going to go down bad for New Jersey.

Senator Menendez also within New Jersey, there have been some voices, right, members of Congress, that say like you need to step aside, like right now.

Yeah.

And eventually this could have potentially implications for '24.

I mean, not only in terms of New Jersey, but in thinking about the presidential race.

It's a good point.

So I think that DOJ is going to go full force, full throttle.

Yeah, I'm trying to get, you know, an indictment.

Yeah.

You know, pretty serious.

And they did you know, this is the second time this Senator Menendez has been indicted.

He didn't get a verdict in the last case because the jury wasn't able to reach a verdict.

But this definitely is going.

To be.

A problem.

So maybe the second time is a charm here.

But one thing is for sure that they've got him dead to rights.

They say the evidence is very specific.

They've got Google searches literally of them, Google searching.

How much is a gold bar worth?

So in its heart, if you're caught in such a scenario, don't Google stuff.

You know, you're going to have to find it the old fashioned way.

I go to the encyclopedia.

Library, you.

Go to library.

But so I think the other part of this, obviously you're right, there's going to be serious implications for 2024.

But this is also in keeping with how we've talked about scandal in the last couple of years where scandals don't matter as much as they used to.

This would have shamed any politician anywhere else.

And you've got, you know, his friends abandoning him.

New Jersey politics is basically cratering right underneath him.

And he's saying, I'm going to stay and fight.

Right.

These charges are baseless.

In fact, just like last time he was indicted, he said, well, this is basically like, you know, my enemies out to get me the powers that be or, you know, trying to see me as an obstacle.

And I want to get around it.

I'm not sure.

But obviously he fighting these charges is definitely in keeping with how we've seen how scandal unfolds in the last few years.

So it's interesting to see how Partisanship has really kept things pretty rigid.

Speaking of rigidity and the U.S. Senate, the Senate has effectively stopped enforcing a dress code.

Informal dress.

Informal dress code.

Tell us why.

So Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said that the staff from the chamber surgeons, chambers surgeon arms will no longer be tasked with enforcing that dress code on the Senate floor.

And that means, you know, for some senators wearing, you know, tie in a suit or jacket for the senators, you know, which is whatever, slacks, blouse or, you know, a dress or whatever.

Right.

So this happened because Pennsylvania's senator John Fetterman unapologetically wears his trademark hoodie and shorts to perform his duties as senator.

Yeah.

So it was, I guess, a way to accommodate senators.

Fetterman Right.

Dress Yeah.

Code.

Yeah, dress is his informal dress code.

Yeah.

Obviously, this has become once again a political battle in terms of the Senate is going down in flames, etc..

Yes.

And it's not just the, you know, Republicans who are angry at the Democrats for this.

The Democrats themselves want to enforce this dress code.

Yeah.

Their argument basically is that, like this is a serious place where serious things are done and not the least of which is literally sending people into harm's way in harm's way for their service to their country.

That's a pretty heavy duty.

And maybe we should do it in more proper attire like gym shorts and like a wrapped Eagles t shirt that, you know, that maybe is coming, because that's what The Washington Post said in response to this.

They said that like it's only a matter of time before people start wearing, you know, flip flops.

Yeah.

Crocs.

Yeah.

Or what they said was like inflammatory partisan messages, right.

Where, you know, you have some kind of a statement you want to make and you have a t shirt that is going to accommodate that.

So I think obviously there are some serious concern about.

Absolutely I mean, and I'm all for dress codes I mean, look at us.

You're you're the sharpest dresser that I know.

So, you know, of course, you're going to disagree with it.

But like our students going to class, like certainly less well dressed than any of this, but like and they dress for comfort, as does.

Yeah, but it's a different I mean, yeah, I get it right.

It's a different thing.

But, you know, yeah.

One thing, it's wearing crocs to high school or here at the university.

You know, one thing would be wearing crocs at the US Senate with the little things I would have thought of.

Yeah, that two types.

And I mean, I think it's too much.

I think, you know, I'm for, you know, a.

Little bit more sartorial.

Dress codes have changed after the pandemic granted.

Yeah right but yeah you can go to work on your pajamas.

I agree.

The only thing I'll say on the end of this is that, you know, Fetterman obviously kind of represents that kind of working class sort of voter.

And I like that about it.

I mean, I think that, you know, he's real.

He is a true person.

And so it's nice to see people expressing themselves in that way.

But like, I don't want to see him wearing an Eagles T-shirt on the Senate floor.

Yeah, that would be a bridge too far.

Yes.

Okay.

Oh, this is party politics.

I'm Brandon and this is Jeronimo.

We're talking all about the state of play in politics.

Let's talk about Texes, because there's been some interesting developments this week.

One of the biggest was that the mayor of Dallas, Eric Johnson, who was formally elected as a Democrat to the Texas House, has decided he's switching parties.

He's going to become a Republican Now, while the Republican Party is basically in a modern sense.

And Texas built on party switchers.

This was kind of a big news.

So what do you think about what the implications are for him switching parties?

Well, I mean, he has to a certain extent hinted that, you know, he was not pretty much aligned with some of the Democratic Party's policies.

Yeah.

You know, you can see that, for example, in terms of how the city tried to pass a budget, that it was too much.

No property tax relief for Dallas residents, so on and so forth.

The other signal might be that he's trying to look and position himself for a statewide run.

And the only way that you can do that so far, given previous data and 11,000 billion elections so far, is that you have to be a Republican to win a statewide election.

It's only about 170 consecutive wins.

Okay.

I'm sure that to some point the Democrats are going to do well, but.

That's.

Going to be big.

This not going to be somebody.

That's the history of the state.

It's a one party state because Democrats, you know, were in power for more than 100 years, Republicans, you know.

So we see that transition and that's normal.

And finally, I mean, it's very odd.

And I want to know your thoughts about this.

Is Dallas is solidly Democratic.

It's like super Democratic.

Very.

So, you know, yeah, I don't know.

Right.

Biden won in 2020 by more than 30 percentage points.

So, like, does this make sense to you?

Well, I think you're right.

I mean, he's going be pretty lonely.

Obviously.

There aren't many Republicans left in Dallas, at least, that are elected.

Of the 14 state reps in Dallas County, only two Republican.

It does, though, put him as the basically biggest city Republican mayor.

And that's something that's good for him in terms of eyeballs.

Right, Because you need to have that momentum.

But to be honest, it's going to be tough for him to get out of a Republican primary.

As a former Democrat, he's taken hundreds of votes that are going to make it look like he's much more Democratic than Republican.

And so I'm not sure this is like a recipe for him to win statewide, especially as the party or the Republican Party shifts more to the right.

The other thing is that, honestly, you know, he's been kind of an absentee mayor.

He's missed hundreds of council votes.

That's been an issue that the Dallas News reported and, you know, he hasn't been that instrumental in this, actually, because his voice has been sort of marginalized.

Dallas is a weak mayor system.

It's a strong council city, basically.

A city manager like most Texas cities, runs the city.

And they voted for the budget, like you said, over his objections.

And so in some sense, like his irrelevance is now probably even, you know, lessened in Dallas because of this.

So I think he's put himself into a bit of a political bind here.

Yeah.

And I'm not sure it's politically going to be that useful for him moving forward.

But we will see.

Obviously, you know, the GOP is crowing about this, right, saying that, you know, we've of course, you know, turn one of these, you know, major figures.

So that's useful for them.

But obviously, I think for him, I'm not sure it's going to move that far.

But let's talk about the rest of some of the political trends that we've seen this week, this week in particular, a former member of South Texas prominent families is running for a seat in the Texas House.

Rosie Cuellar has confirmed that she's going to run for House District 80, which is being vacated by Tracie King.

This is a pretty swingy district.

She is the daughter.

She is the sister of US, Representative Henry Cuellar from Laredo.

So what do you make about this?

Do you think this is a seat that Democrats can now keep or is this still going to be Republican territory and hard to hold?

It's hard to say.

But, you know, the Cuellar's have very strong political presence.

Right.

And we have seen, especially in the past, the election of representative Cuellar, that he won.

Yeah.

Despite some charges from, you know, the more progressive aisle of the Democratic Party.

So we'll see.

I think that, you know, is going to be important.

Her brother, older brother is the Webb County sheriff.

So, you know, there is a lot of presence.

There is a lot of political capital there.

Yeah.

So I think that, you know, if Republicans want to change or shift that district, yeah, it's going to take a lot a lot of effort.

So I don't know if they're willing to do that in terms of, you know, swing in it.

Yeah, this is the only House district that Greg Abbott carried from the opposite party.

So if Abbott's popular, this could make it hard for the Democrats to keep it.

So we'll see.

That's going to be something we continue to monitor.

Another thing we continue to monitor is the ongoing blowback from the Paxton impeachment.

During an interview with Tucker Carlson, Ken Paxton lashed out at the Texas House and at U.S.

Senator John Cornyn.

Do you think that we're going to see a primary matchup between Paxton and Cornyn in the future?

Well, according to A.G. Paxton, he said that everything's on the table.

Okay, So we don't know.

We don't know.

But, you know, Senator Cornyn has been on the side of the more conservative wing of the Republican Party.

I guess Senator Cornyn has, where, you know, bipartisan deals.

He was involved in controversial, quote unquote, legislation regarding, you know, firearms, so on and so forth.

Yeah, so could be.

But also A.G. Paxton is going after every.

Everybody.

Everybody in one county.

He wants to get paid, too.

He says that the controller should have paid him for the time he was suspended from office.

The controller says, no, we don't pay you.

That's not the way this works.

Also, the whistleblowers are still asking for their money, right?

In some ways I see this impeachment as the beginning other than an end, like the legal troubles for the attorney general continue, the political fallout continues.

Like you said, I think that's going to be something we'll have to watch.

This is definitely, you know, an issue that's going to divide the party.

I think buried in a lot of this is that you see here that Dan Patrick said he was going to run for reelection.

They kind of buried the lead a little bit at all of this.

But he is running again, which is pretty surprising.

So there's a lot of stuff swirling around here, not the least of which, of course, is that we're going to probably have a special session where they're fighting.

It's going to make it hard to get things done.

What do you take of sort of the lat the week after the impeachment like and where the dust has settled?

Well, I mean, as you say, there's one thing, as we said last week, trying to, you know, be able to campaign again, but this one he's trying to stay out of jail and, as you said, is a federal case, they are very careful about those things.

So, yeah, he's not out of hot water.

Yeah, he's national prominence has increased dramatically, but in Texas, not very sure.

In Texas, he's not very sure how he's going to recoup that perhaps positive momentum that he had before.

Yeah.

And then he's going against everyone in everywhere.

Looks like he's going to make a shirt says.

Paxton versus everyone.

You know some state representatives you know Yeah.

Have responding to X formerly known as twitter.

Oh I did I think I heard about that yeah yeah.

Saying you know, like we're waiting like.

Actually they're calling his bluff a little bit.

I'm not sure that this has legs too far beyond like this or very corner of the Republican primary.

Right.

Some people really care about this, but most people don't.

Yeah.

So I don't know that this is going to be the hill that many of them are going to die on.

So we'll see how it plays out.

But the tension that that produced for the Big Three is going to be problematic in terms of legislating.

So we'll see that when we get there.

But yeah, speaking of tension, the big news of the week is that we are in the middle of an Infinity War.

Basically.

You know, this friction in Washington has created this pause for a showdown, and that's definitely wreak havoc with the federal budget.

Give me your sense of kind of why we're at this point and how politically this is going to play out in the next few months.

Oh, well, it's very simple.

It's, you know, the battle of Kevin McCarthy trying to keep his job.

And the issue here is that becoming a speaker, he made a lot of concessions, right, to the most conservative, you know, wing of the Republican Party in Congress.

You know, and basically he's he's eternal hostage forever.

So we that they just need one vote to have a resolution to basically, you know, boot out Speaker McCarthy.

Which is a body blow for a speaker.

Right.

It just basically is a display of Oh, yeah, for everybody that you don't have control of your caucus or of the chamber.

Know, the problem is that McCarthy doesn't have any support from the Democrats.

Yeah, yeah.

As of now right.

And he has some votes from more traditional Republicans.

Yeah, but zero support from these MAGA wing.

Right.

To do so he needs those votes.

Yeah.

And if he wants to pass a gap or any sort of legislation, he needs Democrats.

Yeah.

And if he goes out to the Democrats right.

Matt Gaetz, represent Matt Gaetz, is going to have that resolution, get him out of the job.

So he may as well keep walking because yeah they're not.

There's.

No Yeah.

For even talking to the Democrats.

Yeah it's funny because as you said, like any one motion to vacate the chair is a problem and Matt Gaetz apparently, like, left like his copy of this which he printed out I guess in his office in the bathroom with an iced coffee.

Right.

Which is uncool.

We need to throw that away.

Probably throw all of it away just for, you know, kind of messaging purposes.

But yes, he's at this.

The right flank has been the real problem for the speaker.

And he also, though, has a problem with the other Republicans.

Right.

Mitch McConnell on the Senate side is saying, let's get this done, let's pass a resolution and move forward.

You know, obviously they'd like to do that.

McCarthy wants to have something that, you know, passable that, you know, he can get some agreement on, but that's become a real problem.

But I want to talk about the public feels about this.

Right.

A shutdown is a real problem for a lot of people.

Things are going to get delayed.

Immigration type issues.

You've got, you know, some of the sort of means tested programs are going to slow down.

These are all problems.

But the public is having to kind of face this.

Right.

We did it in the nineties.

Like we said, we had it 2013, 2018, 19.

What is the public's kind of view of this?

Who's to be blamed for all this friction in Washington?

Well, I mean, given the I guess in the polarization area in which we live, you know, Democrats are going to blame Republicans, and Republicans are going to blame Democrats.

So that's how it's going to be.

Now, the fact of the matter is that it's more complicated.

The fact of the matter is that, yes, our debt keeps growing and growing and growing.

So some measures, you know, perhaps like Bill Clinton did back in the day, Right, to balance the budget and have a decent budget if necessary.

But, you know, it's a partisan issue.

So that's what's going to happen.

And, you know, a lot of federal employees are going to suffer.

It's like, no, they should not suffer because of politics.

The thing is, Yeah, like there was an agreement to make this happen, right?

Like they already tentatively did this right.

Then of course, the politics of this changes and we see it being pulled apart.

The public is not happy.

Yeah, they see it as a partisan issue.

And I think the problem for the GOP is that they could be perceived as the party.

That's basically just burning it all down.

Right.

Tommy Tuberville, who's holding a military promotion.

Yes.

You've got this where the right wing is saying, look, we're going to pull down the entire government.

It's just creates this problem and I think the Democrats are willing to let them go so far with this to kind of hang themselves.

But it's going to affect a lot of people.

And that's, as you said, a real problem.

So we'll keep an eye on this as it goes.

And obviously, we can't solve Partisanship this week.

Exactly.

But we're going to keep tabs on this and many other matters next week.

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

The conversation.

Continues next.

Week.