Welcome to Texas Talk.

I'm Gilbert Garcia, metro columnist with the San Antonio Express-News.

On this show, we bring you in-depth one on one conversations with some of the most fascinating figures in Texas politics, culture, sports and business.

Tonight's guest is someone who never lacks for opinions.

State Representative Trey Martinez Fisher, the dean of the Baker County delegation and one of the most dynamic forces at the state capitol.

Over his 20 years in the Texas House.

This political warrior has used his command of parliamentary procedure to block what he regarded as objectionable bills.

And he's dedicated himself to helping Democrats turn the state blue.

Martinez Fischer is running unopposed for his 11th term, and he has a lot to say about the current midterm elections, the upcoming legislative session and the state of our politics.

Let's get started.

Trey Martinez Fischer, thanks so much for being part of Texas.

Thank you for having me.

As we tape this, we're about three weeks away from Election Day for the 2022 midterms.

There have been a lot of conflicting signals out there, a lot of conflicting polls as far as what's going to happen in this election.

What are you seeing out there?

What are your expectations?

Well, look, the confusion and the conflict is a really good thing.

That's just a sign that more people are coming to vote.

You know, these elections, I mean, there's so many statisticians and experts that can study things all the way down to the block level and predict behaviors of voters.

And when you have voters that are coming out for the very first time, a high school graduate or somebody who just moved into Texas from San Antonio to register to vote, all of a sudden you see all this movement, but you don't know who that person is.

That's a very exciting time.

And I think, look, you know, when more people are voting, democracy wins.

So do you think the polls are that we should be kind of a little bit skeptical about some of the polls we're seeing statewide?

Because there are so many new voters?

I think there's always going to be an unknown phenomenon.

Right.

So I don't think you can take polls as science anymore.

It's really a snapshot in time.

And really it's limited.

It's a limited view.

It kind of gives you a sense of whether you're on track or whether you're not on track.

But I wouldn't take any days off from my campaign because I got a reading on a poll because as you know, those things can change literally overnight.

Now, this was always expected to be a pretty tough cycle for Democrats because historically we've seen that whichever party has the White House.

Midterm elections are generally pretty tough.

Two years ago, it was a different story.

Democrats in Texas were coming off a really great 2018 cycle, gaining 12 Texas House seats, two congressional seats.

A lot of optimism going into 2020.

Pretty much every Democrat I talked to in the state was really confident that Democrats would gain control of the Texas House in about a week before the election.

You announced your intention to run for speaker.

Those gains didn't materialize for Democrats.

When you look back at what happened in 2020, what what's your postmortem on that?

Like if you had to do it all over again, I mean, obviously, the impact of COVID really just changed the democratic focus for campaigns.

I mean, look, we're Democrats.

We're Latinos.

We're hands on.

Knocking on doors, hugging people, doing events.

And all of a sudden, when the guidance for campaigns was, you can't do that anymore, you have to get on an iPhone and send a text message or make a robocall or I mean, that's just not the way we campaign.

Right?

So I could see people saying, hey, they must not be interested in my vote.

Because, you know, Trey Martinez was you came to my door every single election and now he's not here.

Maybe he doesn't want my vote.

I mean, so that is a big lesson.

Learn.

All of that being said, we're in the current midterm of President Biden's first two years in office.

And as you said, we should be just no way we could compete in this election.

And to know that we're neck and neck in national polls, to know we're neck and neck and not losing the U.S. House and particularly the U.S. Senate.

That tells us that there are people paying attention to these issues.

They are not happy with the status quo, but moreover, they're not happy with the agents of change.

They want to take us to a worse place than we are now.

There's been so much focus, there always is on the Latino vote in Texas and particularly the Rio Grande Valley.

Democratic gubernatorial nominee Beto O'Rourke has suggested that Joe Biden hasn't really invested the resources or the time into that area.

And, of course, Republicans are hoping to make gains there.

What what do you make of that?

What do you want to see there?

Sure.

I mean, I have two takeaways.

The first takeaway is if you're the Republican Party in Texas and you find yourself courting Latino voters and you have to ask yourself, what did I do wrong with my base?

Right.

That has never been the base of votes for the Republican Party.

So that is a flare in the sky for someone like me.

With regard to Democrats, yeah, I absolutely do believe that we have not done our best work when it comes to making sure that Latinos know that they're a priority in this party.

Now, you walk around San Antonio.

You can't you can throw a rock and hit a Democratic official right there.

So many of us.

And sometimes we take that for granted.

But we should use that opportunity as a as an opportunity to reflect and show that the leadership that we have here and we can mirror this across this country.

But it's not just President Biden.

I mean, it's all of us.

It's my responsibility to let the president know that he is not pulling his weight with regard to Latino outreach.

All of that being said, this this this notion that Latinos are going to, you know, change the face of the Republican Party in south Texas.

I mean, I will remind you and others that that the high water mark for Latino engagement in Texas politics is George W Bush.

These Trump numbers don't even match.

It's true.

They all stand in the shadow of a former president.

George Perry did pretty well, too.

Rick Perry did okay, too.

So this notion that all of a sudden we woke up and Latinos are voting Republican, well, that's kind of been the case.

They have not voted.

And levels that we have seen before and I think that if we do a better job letting Latinos know that our issues are their issues and the party that really will look after them is the Democratic Party, I think things will get back to more.

Last year you were one of the leaders in the Texas House when more than 50 members of the House broke quorum and went to Washington, D.C. in opposition to a really strict Republican voting law.

Ultimately, the Republicans were able to get, you know, these restrictions.

They wanted no overnight voting, no drive thru voting, no unsolicited mail ballot applications.

They've now empowered Partizan poll watchers with when you look back at that that process, could you talk a little bit about what you all were, what your objectives were in doing that?

Because obviously you you know, the numbers in the House and in the legislature better than the rest of us do.

And what a difficult situation you all were in.

What were your objectives there and what do you how do you assess that?

I mean, for, you know, 60 Democrats to pick up and leave and not only walk out of the Capitol, but leave the state for five weeks.

I mean, this really goes to show you that, you know, you reached a tipping point and people had enough that we had enough.

And and, you know, bad idea after bad idea was coming through the legislature by way of proposed laws.

And now we saw attempts to take away people's voting rights.

And we're talking about simple things, things that you and I maybe don't think about.

You know, starting Sunday, voting at a time that conflicted with the African-American church community, that had a tradition and a custom to have what they called souls to the polls.

You know, you go to church, you hear a sermon, you get fired up and you go and vote.

Republicans said, no, you can't vote on Sundays during church service hours because we don't want that kind of activism at the polls to know that that you could have a a proud boy, whether with us with a handgun, you know, on his side, sit there and intimidate people outside the public school at the polling place, and then have a voter walk in and see the same proud boy wearing the similar clothing, standing over your shoulder, watching you vote.

You know, those kinds of intimidation tactics.

Maybe they don't scare you.

Maybe they will scare me, scare my mother, my 80 year old mother.

And so it just we had enough while we were in Washington.

I'll tell you, we spent a lot of time with Senator Joe Manchin.

And Senator Joe Manchin said, listen, you know, I don't really know if it's that bad in Texas as well.

Let's talk about it in West Virginia.

If you work a shift, if you're a teacher or a nurse or a police officer even to vote by mail.

Can't do that in Texas and West Virginia.

If you didn't want to get in line because of COVID and you're worried about getting COVID, you can vote by mail.

Can't do that in Texas.

In West Virginia, you could have a DWI sitting in the county jail and you can vote by mail.

You can't do that in Texas.

And so and Senator Manchin office and myself, when we were going back and forth, I said, you know what?

You're right.

We do not need a national voting standard.

Just give us this West Virginia law.

We'll take the West Virginia law for the country because you can't do any of these things in Texas.

And that's when the microphone really dropped.

And you saw the look on their faces to know just how hard it is to vote in the state.

And it doesn't have to be that way.

You know.

Last year you were pretty vocal about the redistricting process.

You did an op ed talking about the fact that century has seen great population growth, but we didn't really see that translated into new congressional districts this time around.

You wrote about the fact that Hemisphere Park is now in a district anchored by Austin, anchored in Austin, that the Alamo is in a congressional district that's anchored in Laredo.

As you look at this, do you think San Antonio was shortchanged by the redistricting process?

And if so, why?

I mean, I think we've really now just sort of become the left over when it comes to congressional reapportionment, redistricting.

I think, you know, you read pages of news about controversy, moving the Senate taps a few feet, but yet the Alamo itself went from a district in San Antonio and it's now sent to Laredo.

Not a peep, you know, crickets from from from folks concerned about that.

Henry V Gonzales Convention Center, named after, you know, an iconic congressman from San Antonio, now is anchored in Austin.

Right.

And these things are not right.

So when San Jose, it becomes a place where all the surplus population just sort of gets dispersed across the state.

There's something wrong about that.

No, I filed a lawsuit, as you know, saying that you cannot take 50,000 Latinos out of San Antonio and replace them with 50,000 non-Latinos in Austin and say, we have a fair district.

What we have left of the Voting Rights Act and Section two says you can't do that.

So that fight is still ongoing.

But look for business leaders, political leaders, philanthropic leaders, social leaders.

I mean, federal having a member of Congress comes down to federal funding.

We have a congressperson who now lives in sleeps in Austin, and he has $1 in his pocket and he gave it to San Antonio.

Austin, what do you think it's going to go?

We need to really get smart about this and figure out what's best for San Antonio to have equal and fair representation, not just, you know, Republicans and Democrats going to Congress.

It's about who's going to come back and deliver goods and services for this community, who's going to provide constituent services for the folks who need help with VA benefits or Social Security benefits.

You know, if we don't have a congressperson that we can go knock on their door.

Are we going to get effective service for the seventh largest city in America?

We need members of Congress that sleep and make their bed in this community, walk on aisle five at H-E-B and then we'll find them in the pew, a San Fernando church on the weekends so that we can have an active member of Congress responding to us.

In a few months, you're going to be starting your 11th term in the Texas House.

So my what are your big policy priorities going into this next session?

Sure.

Well, look, I'm going to tell you something.

A term that I'm learning that I want you to know, and I want your viewers to know.

I'm really concerned about zombie laws.

There's been a lot of talk about zombie laws in the halls of the Capitol.

Take this abortion legislation that we have now.

You know, in wake of Dobbs, it says you no longer have Roe v Wade.

There's this argument that there's an old zombie law in Texas that comes back and triggers and says that if you perform an abortion, you can go to jail.

That was a law that was set aside many years ago by Roe v Wade.

Court decision and now very conservative legal minds argue that when Roe v Wade goes away, then that law is back on the books because it's never been expressly repealed by the legislature.

So let's take it a step further.

Say somebody, if the US Supreme Court decides that we're going to take away gay marriage rights in the United States.

We have to provisions in Texas.

We have a state law.

We have a state constitution provision that says Texas only recognizes marriage as between one man and one woman.

Now, those laws are not active because we have federal United States Supreme Court law that says you love who you love.

But if it gets thrown back to the.

States, it gets thrown back to the states.

The argument is that these zombie laws come back a lot.

We have things called the white primary.

We have things about separate but equal.

We have a number of laws that have been set aside because of court rulings.

And now people think that this is an opportunity they should Supreme Court act in certain areas.

These laws are valid because we never repealed them.

I'm very concerned about this as.

One of your priorities, to look at all of these and see if we can get those.

I've already asked I've asked the Legislative Council and the researchers to tell me how many laws do we have that are currently been inapplicable or set aside because of the Federal Court ruling?

And again, I'm reading that concurring opinion in Dobbs where they said, well, then you can take this away for abortion rights.

Bye bye bye.

This legal theory, you can do the same thing for gay marriage.

Right?

And so, look, it's it's a very concerning time.

So that's a priority.

The second priority is we have $27 billion more than what we need to fund our budget.

We have a governor who says we should pass this massive tax break, property tax break in Nelson.

I own a home.

My mother owns her home.

And.

And that sounds like a good idea to me, except for the fact that we have a lot of people who pay into the tax system that don't own their own home.

I saw in California, Governor Newsom passed a proposal that gave every single individual state of California $1,000 check for inflation and they were able to pay for it and it was cheaper than $27 billion.

And I thought maybe we should talk about that, finding ways to come up with a better use of those funds if we're not going to invest in back by way of government goods and services, if we're going to return that kind.

Of rebate and.

We're going to return the people's money to the people, let's be equitable about it.

Let's give it to more people, not just those who are lucky enough to own their own home.

Because we know we have a lot of hardworking families that are just renting that have not been able to achieve the right of homeownership.

They should get some benefit, too.

One of the things that that you're known for, these Democrats have pretty much had to play defense for a long time, for more than a generation or about a generation.

One of things you're known for is, you know, your sort of command of parliamentary procedure and use of points of order to block legislation.

How did you develop that?

You came to the House at a pretty young age in your late twenties, and how did you develop that?

So it's a little bit of a nuanced story, but I graduated the University of Texas Law School in 1998 and and I started campaigning in 1999.

So I was like, you know, kid and just read the books.

And the minute I was elected to the house in the 2000 primary, someone told me, You need to learn these rules.

If you know these rules, it doesn't matter.

You know who's coming after you, doesn't matter how much you're not liked around here.

These rules are very powerful.

And so I would read like a page a day, two pages a day, and I would really just try to learn them.

And over time, I've just been fortunate to be able to work with folks that knew the rules and procedures and they were right.

You mean you can be the least like person in the Texas Capitol, but if you know those rules, you're a force to be reckoned with.

And and I have used those rules as a as a serious leverage tool to get things for the state and to get things for our community.

And so it's a it's a playbook that I will never relinquish and continue.

I will continue to use those rules.

After the May 24th mass shooting at you've all these Rob Elementary, there were people calling for Greg Abbott to call a special session.

He refused to do that.

I'm curious how much optimism you have that in the regular session starting in January that that there's a possibility of of movement either on school safety or or gun reform in Texas.

So, listen, I mean, it is a very well known strategy to you know, we say in Austin that manana is the busiest day of the week because we never get there.

Right.

And so that is that is that is very strategic and with purpose to sort of put this idea off as far as you can.

I think the governor is going to wait to see what the election results are.

And if it's Republicans by a mile, then they will feel compelled to do very, very little if it becomes a very tight race.

As you know, the state is changing and these these these political outcomes are getting closer and closer, that it might be an impetus to actually do something new, something meaningful.

And I will say, you know, when we go back to work in January, then it's incumbent upon all of us and using rules and procedures, there are rules and procedures where you can make items, priority items.

It doesn't matter whether the government, the governor will will identify that as an emergency.

There's a way through House rules that you can identify priorities.

There's ways you can amend legislation as as as long as the amendment is germane to the idea on the floor, you can have a conversation about another idea.

And so, look, I think we're going to put every single tool on the table.

I'm not going to hold my breath that the governor is going to find religion on this issue of gun reform.

But I know this.

I know that if there's an opportunity to have a conversation about it and I see that opportunity, I'm going to take it.

In 2021.

The Texas House elected a new speaker feeling who, much like San Antonio's Joe Straus in 2009, was elected with a lot of help from Democrats.

But the 2021 session was one of more rancorous partizan sessions that we've seen.

While a lot of sort of culture war issues going through.

We had the election law, we had the abortion ban, the ban on critical race theory being taught in schools.

They went after social media companies, went after transgender kids in school sports.

How much of this do you attribute to that feeling and how much of it has had to do with pressure from his caucus or even Governor Abbott or Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick?

Sure.

I mean, look, I mean.

What people have billed.

As the most conservative legislative session in Texas history.

I mean, I think there are a lot of, you know, good Republicans in San Antonio that do not recognize this Republican Party.

Right.

I mean, I think that none of these things many of these things will never see the light of day.

And the former speaker, Jim Strauss, in terms of of just governing from the center, doing the people's business first.

And, yes, we're going to have these wedge wars and and cultural issues that we will fight about.

But that's not why we're there.

We're there to do the people's work.

And so in, you know, in Speaker Fillon's first administration, you know, I think he forgot that he was supported by a tremendous number of Democrats.

I did not support him there, 150 members of the House.

I might be number 151.

I like the guy.

You know, I think we've worked well together, but I just did not like the direction that I think he was going to go in and win.

We are now living with that pain.

And so, look, we're going to go forward in 2023.

It's important for Democrats said that they think that they can support speaker feel and put the foot down and speak up.

That's why they're there.

They're not just there to get committee assignments and get their individual legislative proposals passed.

It's not just about taking care of themselves.

It's about taking care of everybody else.

And so there's an obligation on their part to say, I'm part of your leadership team.

We need to put a stop to this.

And then it's it's up to me to to when I see these things that are coming that aren't right as to do my job and and to push back and to play defense and raise that awareness.

But I will tell you, I mean, you take, you know, outgoing, say represented while Larsen.

I mean, there is no there's no better standard bearer for Republican and Bear County than Lyle.

I even Lyle had it.

I mean, he was fed up with it and he recognized that there is no sense, there's no place in politics for just spiking the football day after day to accomplish some partizan agenda, you know, to satisfy, you know, some of the smallest minds in the Republican Party that make the loudest noise.

It shouldn't work that way.

Now, you were you were out of the house for two years.

You ran for Texas Senate, gave up your House seat.

You came back in 2018.

I'm curious what those two years were like for you.

I would imagine you were a little maybe a little antsy here, but when you came back to the house, did you have a different perspective on it?

You know, that's a fantastic question.

I mean, I made the decision to walk away from the house after 16 years, and I loved every minute of it.

I did a whole lot.

You and I interviewed a whole.

Bunch on a.

Number of topics, and I felt like, look, I did everything I could here losing the Senate seat.

I took my medicine like everybody else, and life went on for me.

But I developed deep relationships with these colleagues.

I mean, we're family and lots of lots of respect.

And when they said, you know, try to take a look at this again, this is really bad over here.

We need folks that can can put up a fight.

You know, I was convinced that maybe I had a little bit of gas in the tank left, you know, to do it again and going back there, you know, I used to think, you know, Gilbert and don't take this the wrong way.

But when we're up in Austin fighting every day on the floor of the House, I mean, sometimes you think you're the center of attention in the state of Texas and, you know, you're on page one somewhere in the state talking about your ideas.

Sure.

But when I was home in 2017 and early part of 2018, and my colleagues would call me about lamenting of whatever bad idea the day was going on, I tell them, he, slow down.

What are you talking about?

Like, give me the background on this.

Well, didn't you see the debate?

No.

Where were you then?

You watch the the the live feed.

Now, I didn't hear it.

No one else on my block did either.

Right.

And so we sort of get caught up in this idea that we think we're making a lot of noise and people are paying attention and it's not penetrating.

Right.

So so my perspective going back was like, oh, wait a minute, you know, being in the newspaper is not enough.

You know, being on that microphone is not enough.

And we have to communicate our wins and losses to people directly and get them to engage directly.

I think that's what you're starting to see a little bit now.

You're starting to see more people directly engaging and sort of bypassing traditional news outlets to get the information firsthand.

And hopefully that engagement is going to bring about, you know, a little bit better change a lot quicker.

When you you're in high school, you played linebacker for the Holmes Huskies.

And I can't resist asking about the connections between being a part of a team.

That's that sort of environment, how team sports teams work and being a part of a legislative body or a caucus, the state capital, what how has that sort of informed the way you've approached this all areas?

QUESTION But you know, the capital kind of itself is like high school, right?

I mean, you sit at a desk, right?

And and the bell rings, you know, when you have to do things and there's a bell ringing.

And if you get in trouble, you have to go see the speaker of the House.

That's the principal, right?

Says the principal's office.

But, you know, the fundamentals.

I you know, I went to private school and public school and I learned a lot in both settings.

And going to a public school and holds high school in particular, a school that was just predominantly minorities and blue collar, middle class families that just had one of the best football programs in the country at the time.

And and those life lessons, those things you learn on the football field about discipline and focus, muscle memory and time on task.

You know, you can take those fundamental blocks and you can put them in each situation.

Right.

So I you know, now I don't call a defensive zone the 50 yard line.

I call them on the floor of the House now.

Right.

And you have to watch that offense.

You have to study your opponent.

You have to know their tendencies.

You have to figure out a way to cut them off.

And, you know and lo and behold, I mean, if you find your team fallen behind, you got to rally the troops.

And at the same time, if we're having a good day, we got to be humble and focused.

Right.

Just so so there's a lot of football analogies.

Oh, it's it's certainly full contact.

You still get injured on the floor of the House.

It is a rough place to be, but I've enjoyed every minute of it.

And I'm very proud to have that background in and to still apply those life lessons today.

Trey Martinez Fischer, thank you so much for being on Texans time.

Thank you, man.

Thank you, Gilbert.

That's all for this edition of Texas Talk.

Thanks for watching.

Do you want to share your feedback with us?

Please email us at Texas, talk at Taylor and dot org.

We'll be back next month with a new guest.

Until then, take care.