Welcome to party politics.

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

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

Thanks for hanging out with us and talking politics on party politics.

Kind of an interesting week.

We've got independent counsels, we've got speakers, races.

So, you know, from D.C. to Austin, there's a lot going on.

But actually, the first thing we're going to talk about is some interesting news for the Democrats.

The big picture is that the Senate race is shaping up in 2024.

Yes, I said 2024.

I'm sorry to inform you.

Remind you that the next election is upcoming, but the 2024 race for the Democrats promises to be really interesting, potentially problematic.

The good news for the Democrats is that in 2022, they're able to kind of hold the line, right?

They're able basically to not lose as much as Ryan.

We talked about this the end of last year, but the problem is that in 2024, things look a lot different and it's not for them doing anything or not doing anything, but that 34 seats that are going to be up for reelection in 2024, Democrats are defending 23 of these, including two independents who caucus with the Democrats, as also includes several races that are going to be really challenging for Democrats to win Montana, Ohio, West Virginia.

They're still waiting on word for senators there to tell them that they're running again.

Swing states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania are up.

So it could be like a real bloodbath.

So what do you make of that?

In addition to news that we've got some movement and some specific races?

Well, I think it's going to be very interesting, especially when we're thinking about the last two years of the Biden administration.

And it's going to depend in terms of how they can flip the narrative.

One way or the other, and also how Republicans try to flip the narrative on their side.

But one thing that we learn during these past 22 election is that voters do not have appetite for significant, you know, ideological partizanship.

So I think that as long as they can keep it together, deliver some goodies to the public, then I think they should be fine.

It'll be interesting to see.

And I think you're right to note that the Biden administration and kind of what they do matters a lot here, because basically six of the seats that Biden won by less than 3% in 2022 are going to have to be defended by Democrats.

So that's going to be a really rough ride.

Biden tanks, they all tank and things are looking a little bit grim because I don't know if you heard, but there might have been some documents that were stored improperly.

So we'll see.

We'll talk about that in a second.

But actually, there are a couple of races.

Indiana Jim Banks, a former rep, decided he's going to run.

And this is in lieu of Senator Mike Braun.

Also in California, Representative Katie Porter, who is reading that book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Eff during the.

Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

She became kind of famous for a minute doing that.

But Dianne Feinstein, who is the current senator from California, has not said she's going to retire, but she's quite old.

She's in her eighties.

Right.

And late eighties.

Yeah.

So obviously, this is her presumption she's not going to run again, but she hasn't said that yet.

Katie Porter says, well, I'm not going to wait.

I'm running and here's $1,000,000 to.

Find the first 24 hours.

24 hours.

Yeah.

So I mean, I think that's interesting.

But it's also, I think, problematic for Democrats because like I just said, there are at least six of these seats that they're potentially going to lose strong incumbents in in California is not one of them.

Democrats are going in California no matter what.

So that million dollars could be spent, you know, and go pretty far in a place like Montana where there are like 90 people.

So.

But I mean, you could pay them.

Sure.

But, you know, Katie Porter also, you know, she's famous for the white boards that she uses when they have congressional hearings.

Yeah.

But also in that race, you have Adam Schiff, Barbara Lee, Ro Khanna, and, you know, everyone is bidding for that.

So we're going to see who's going to be the strongest at the end.

But obviously, you know, they can chip in, right?

I mean, eventually, for the good of the you know, the 2024 election, they can start bankrolling some candidate somewhere else.

But we're going to see what happens.

It's going to be interesting to see how that race folds out, especially, you know, a year in advance.

Yeah.

So it's going to be interesting nonetheless.

It'll be here before you know it, right?

Oh, absolutely.

It will, of course, bring all of the details that we can muster to help you get there.

I think one of the subtexts that we're talking about here is that the next two years are going to mean a lot for Democrats.

How they position themselves and how Republicans position themselves.

So one of the things that's come up this week is sort of an interesting little brouhaha that was actually related to an obscure agency that most people have not heard of.

This is the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

There was a report that they were thinking of banning gas stoves and that at least they said, quote, It was on the table.

Well, this set off a firestorm of tweets and tiktoks and angry press releases and actually led to a lot of kind of, you know, Texas political lore like the come and take it with.

Oh, yeah.

So Ronnie Jackson said that, you know, if the maniacs in the White House come for my stove, they can pry it from my cold, dead hands.

Ted Cruz made this logo.

The scientific evidence was the reason that they've chosen to do this.

They basically say that there's a higher respiratory risk for people who have these gas stoves.

Of course, it's the case that this is something that is not a done deal.

They're just considering it.

But I thought that this was related because there's a sense that the Democrats are becoming the party of this sort of elitists.

Right.

It creates, I think, a real disconnect and I think is the reason they're struggling in some of these races.

So if the Democrats are perceived to be this out-of-touch party, Republicans are the ones who are going to give you common sense, like you can keep your gas stove.

Is that going to affect the politics of like the next two years?

Well, I think so.

Yeah.

I mean, it's first of all, what we're talking about, around 40 million homes, right.

The, you know, scientific evidence that you're mentioning to study that was published, I think recently saying that kids are more likely to develop asthma when there's a gas stove presence present in a household.

Yeah, yeah.

But again, I mean, yes, I understand that.

I understand the evidence.

I understand that.

But again, it's what matters is the issue.

Right?

I mean, Democrats seem to be picking issues that make them see completely out of touch.

Right?

Right.

Yeah.

It's you know, they issues regarding.

Yeah, you you should go and travel to Thailand and Bali and, you know, be in contact with nature.

It's like, yeah, but you know, most people don't have ten, $15,000 to spend to.

Take a luxury.

Yeah, exactly.

So it's those little things, right?

Paddle boarding is fantastic.

Sure.

Yeah, it is.

Very objectively so.

Yeah.

But we cannot go to the ocean every single time and paddle board and rent the paddle board or buy one.

So I think those things, it's, as you said, get them out of touch from a reality that, you know, most of us are living day to day.

I think that's the real issue.

And so, you know, how they positioned that's going to be really meaningful.

But that's not the biggest issue the Democrats have faced this week, let alone two years.

The biggest issue that they're going to come across is going to be that the Attorney General, Merrick Garland, has appointed former DOJ official Robert Hall as special counsel to lead the probe, which investigates the classified documents that has been found in Joe Biden's private residence.

We mentioned this last week and we said that there's going to be a little bit more about it.

And as it turns out, obviously, it's a complete firestorm.

Right?

Right.

This is the kind of thing that obviously DC lives for.

And the timing could not be worse for the Biden administration and for the Democrats right there.

Republicans are just taking over.

They were literally sharpening their blades, getting ready for all these investigations.

And now it's like, ah, slice of rare roast beef has been served up to you, right?

They're just going to have to kind of sit at the table while Republicans eat it.

So let's talk a little bit about kind of what this means.

Obviously, the president has said that it was a mistake, that this isn't something that like it's consistent.

But the problem is, number one, that you've got essentially the comparison with the Donald Trump investigation.

Right, which I agree with you were kind of lack of enthusiasm slash willingness to believe.

But I think the fact is that it's hard for Democrats to be able to say that that's illegal and this is not right.

I mean, no matter how you slice it.

But I want to get your take on that.

The other is that the president stored these materials next to his Corvette in the garage, which is very Joe Biden right there.

A horse underneath is like collection of aviator, right.

He said they're locked in a garage.

It was totally safe.

But obviously the independent counsel will determine some of this.

So let's talk about generally like what this means scandal wise for the Biden administration and how independent counsels have had a kind of effect right on the political sphere.

So I think I see three things.

The first one is that indeed, having classified documents on unsecure non-governmental settings, it's a violation of the law.

Right.

They weren't like in his trunk.

It was like it's safe.

But yeah, it's it's a violation of the right.

So, you know, potentially there is something there, right?

The second thing is attorney General Merrick Garland has set up, you know, as you said, a very high profile former prosecutor, very experienced, highly qualified, Robert K. Hur and put them, you know, very similar in terms of, you know, what President Trump did and that moves to, I guess, try to recuperate the Department of Justice image in the public and seen very clearly to no one no one is above the law.

It's a good pull I think politically right for optics.

Yeah but the Trump Mar a Lago investigation and Biden investigation are not equivalent things.

Right.

All right.

Yeah.

And I think well, I mean, first of all, I think that Sesame Street has the answer to that.

I don't know always write a PBS plug.

I think.

It.

Is.

They will get it.

But it's as you know, it's one of these things.

It's not like the others.

Right.

Well done.

Okay, good.

Thank you.

But how, though?

Right.

So kids can see this on Sesame Street.

But okay.

So first of all, you know, when they found the documents, the Biden lawyers turned them in immediately say like, oops, we found these things.

The Department of Justice.

Here you go.

Okay.

On the other side, right.

The Trump administration was asking May 20 went in May 2021, then in June 2022, then they have these whole subpoenas in terms of the warrant that allowed the FBI to go and seize all these documents in which they found, you know, probably 11,000 documents rather than I don't know how many the Biden administration has found so far.

And 70 documents on the Mar a Lago findings were marked secret or super top secret that have very important implications.

We don't know yet what are the implications of the Biden documents as what we know now.

But there are very, very important differences.

So they share these common denominator.

Yeah, but on the other hand, you know, the implications or the criminal implications, potential implications are very, very, very different from Biden to Trump.

No, and I totally agree.

I think objectively that's true.

And you could pass it a thousand ways.

But the fact is that politically speaking, it's the same effect.

Right?

So people like Jim Jordan tweeted out, where's the raid?

Right.

How come there wasn't an FBI, you know, you know, hopping around the you know, the, you know, Biden residence, whereas Mar-A-Lago got like swamped.

And I totally agree.

You can see those differences.

But I think the fact is the Republicans are not going to make those distinctions.

And politically, you know, it's I mean, there's no subtlety in politics anymore anyway.

Right.

It's all about like hitting people with brickbats.

But I do think that that's going to be a problem for Democrats to have to explain.

Right.

So it does create a political problem.

I will say to that, in terms of independent counsels, they do tend to be a little bit more unwieldy than like a straight investigation.

So, for instance, looking back over history between when the law was set in the seventies and when it was ended in basically 2000, there were 20 investigations, 46 pleas or convictions.

And the ultimate cost was $164 million.

There was just a lot of investigations and not a lot of convictions.

And so I think that's not necessarily going to be repeatable because the circumstances are different, the law is different, but even with a narrow scope of investigation, it's still going to be tough for the Biden administration to hide.

And obviously, there's going to be a lot of people who are going to be asking.

The thing is too, though, actually.

So the committees that are doing his investigations actually might get stonewalled a bit by DOJ.

The same thing happened for the Trump investigation.

So some of these committees that Democrats are running in the last couple of years, you know, wanted there to be more details put out.

But, you know, DOJ said, you know, we're still investigating.

So no.

So I'm not sure how much of this will come out in terms of that shared relationship, but you can bet that there will be a friction between the two.

So that's going to be my prediction.

Yeah, we're going to have some I.

Just don't see.

That.

The other is that there's going to be a lot of political impact.

So like we said, I mean, okay, you can you can pass the difference between the two, you know, six ways from Sunday.

But I don't know that it matters to voters.

Right.

They're going to still see documents in the wrong place, potentially legal.

There's some problem here.

So basically takes the Trump scandal off the table for Democrats, right.

Just when they were getting momentum towards being able to say, you know, I mean, we're going to sort of investigate.

We're the party that's going to try to keep, you know, democracy alive, that rosy outlooks been pretty much squashed by this investigation.

So true.

But I think it's problematic.

We're in 2023, right?

And you don't have, you know, your own research.

FRIED says that, you know, scandals are dead and, you know, from January 2023 to November 2024.

Yeah, I think that we're going to have plenty more at the plate to discuss these issues.

So, I mean, it's going to play a role right now, but eventually is going to die down.

It will.

There'll be something else to get absorbed.

So.

Oh yeah, we need more.

Oh, yeah.

Ooh.

But what will it be is the question around it.

Right, right.

Right, right.

But let's switch gears and talk Texas because there's a lot going on in the legislature underneath the pink dome.

A lot of interesting events happened last week and are happening this week.

The two biggest really are the speaker's race, which is sort of the kind of thing that really governed much of what happened, followed by the rules actually say three things.

Number one, speaker's rates, which the speaker said was a kind of a little fizzle.

But we'll talk about it.

The second was a rules debate, which eventually sort of the speaker got his way not to give you not to give away who won the speaker's race, but obviously Dade Phelan reelected.

The second was rules and the third is the governor's inauguration.

So let's talk about the speaker's race first representative of Troy - Tony Tinderholt from from north Texas is was a contender against Dade Phelan.

He had to have himself do a second nominating speech because there weren't enough people to.

Right Nominate him or second his nomination.

Ultimately, the final vote was 143 to 3.

So Tinderholt didn't get a lot of movement on that.

But I do think it matters because to some degree, it's like the far right telling conservatives that they're still watching and that they're still interested in having certain policy outcomes.

I think that at least for people like Brian Slayton, who is a big proponent of Tinderholt, on f It was a way to be able to kind of set a marker down.

But I also think that the kind of right wing is waning a little bit in terms of.

Oh, yeah.

And so the fact that it was such a lopsided get the kind of traction that you always might assume that they would and maybe that they had been in years past.

So what's going on is Dade Phelan do a good job?

Is it like post-election and people sort of appetite for high politics has gone down.

There's a bunch of money to spend, so everyone's like busy counting dollars.

signs In their head though.

Like, I don't really care about all that political nonsense.

So what's going on?

Why is it.

Well, why didn't it go farther than it did?

Why three.

Votes?

Yeah, well, I think, you know, I think that Phelan has shown right that partizanship and making deals is the art of doing politics and creating policies.

Okay, I think that having 145 votes Right.

Yeah.

with the majority of Democrats supporting him.

It's very indicative that he means business.

Yeah.

And I mean business not in the sense of, you know, pursuing whatever he's party and wants because, you know, they have the majority and you know, that's democracy.

Right.

But showing that you can not ignore the other, you know, big chunk of people that are also representing a big chunk of the state.

So I think that that's a very smart way of conducting policies because, you know, he's not saying like, oh, yeah, Democrats, I'm going to give you everything, blah, blah, blah, because, you know, Kumbaya.

No, no, no.

That's not going to happen.

It's not going to happen.

Oh, absolutely.

What is going to happen is that there's going to be negotiation.

Right.

And when you have negotiation, eventually both parties are going to be satisfied.

And the only thing that it's also strike me is that, as you said, you know, the Texas Freedom Caucus did not get a lot of traction.

And I think that it's the lack of appetite in terms of voters like get we're done with this thing, right?

We're done with issues.

We want to see results.

Yeah, I think two more reasons don't add to my list of things that led to this.

One is this.

No, you can't.

It's like you said, it's already sorry.

I'm going to have an amendment.

Okay, a second.

Okay, good.

Thank you.

I'll come to the to the to the back mic and.

Okay.

And asking them to the front mic to offer so speaker Phelan spent almost $6 million getting people elected.

So that goes a long way in politics on this side.

I mean it's not all about the yeah, but let's say at least a little bit about the money.

The other thing is that after he was re elected, the speaker talked about issues that were all of consensual stuff that everyone wants to happen.

So he talked about runaway appraisals.

He's talked about how to spend the surplus, how to expand health care access to rural Texas.

Like these are things that everybody wants, Democrats and Republicans alike.

So I do think that there is a kind of consensus building about what to do.

But as you said, there are a couple of these hot button issues that Phelan basically kind of let roll off his back a little bit, one of which was that there were rules that would have limited Democratic committee chairs.

This was an amendment from Brian Slaton, who we mentioned earlier.

He proposed actually seven amendments, four rules, six out of seven failed on points of order upheld by the speaker.

So believe me, we're going to hear about this a little bit more.

Yeah.

So through Republicans, especially the far right, are going to say that Phelan is on the side of the Democrats.

Right.

And then one of those votes have failed.

But basically, a lot of the stuff you wanted to do was to have, you know, committee chairs swear that they, you know, weren't going to use preferred pronouns or enforce preferred pronouns in committee hearings and that they would, you know, enforce speech, do not enforce a speech code that restricts the use of biologically correct pronouns.

And so a lot of these little details that are pretty like kind of outlandish in terms of just your personal side of things, but, Phelan didn't budge.

And the oh yeah, basically either on points of order on votes, they said none of this.

I thought they were going to propose one that said, you know, committee chairs couldn't like White Lotus or something like that.

It's too far.

But what do you make of these rules and kind of how they came about?

Democratic committee chairs also passed a lot of stuff here that the basically the far right didn't get right.

Are they going to be unhappy about it or are they just going to work together and sort of figure out a way to move forward?

Well, I think that, you know, they have a choice.

And that choice is that either they work together or they're not going to be working at all.

Well, yeah, I don't.

Why?

Because, you know, Republicans in Texas, at least at the House, they have the support of the Democrats.

Yeah, the new leader of the Democrats, Troy Martin.

This Fisher is willing to negotiate.

He has shown that in the past.

And Phelan speaker Phelan he's willing to negotiate as well.

Yeah.

So when the two, you know, leaders of both parties are willing to sit down and say, okay, we're not going to leave this table until we get a deal, right?

Then you leave these folks out and you're talking about, you know, seven, six of them that could potentially create chaos.

Yeah, but that's not going to happen.

And Phelan said, like, we're not like the house in Washington, D.C., right?

We get things done.

Yeah.

And also, he mentioned that it's a long standing tradition that you have to give, you know, political parties from the opposite side, you know, some committee chairs.

Yeah.

And I think that that's very important and interesting because eventually they're going to have, you know, Democrats winning more and more elections.

And I think Republicans are thinking in terms of the future, 5 - 10 years ahead Yeah.

That they don't want the favor returned to them.

Yeah.

And I think that it's very smart.

You know, things look into the future.

Yeah, it's for both reasons, right?

Yeah.

You're right that if you in the history, if you like, restrict the chair positions to only the parties or it tends to be like a disaster.

Bob Bullock tried this in the early nineties and it was a disaster.

I mean, ground to a halt.

And if there's anything that Dade Phelan i right, making sure things move forward.

And it's not always exactly the way everybody wants it, but like that's what speakers do.

You make sure that, you know, the trains run on time so you can't have these held down.

One of the things that is a rule change that might actually speak to that is that the body voted to have fines for people who are willingly obscuring the work of the House.

So basically anybody who goes a wall like in a quorum call, they have to pay for the sergeant at arms to come in them.

They have to reduce their operating budget as a result.

So if they can't pay for it out of campaign accounts, they have to pay for it out of their personal body, which, you know, adds up 500 bucks a day that's going to be an issue going forward because like you said, for the Republicans, a handful of those folks who could obscure things and really slow things down.

But there are also a handful of Democrats who could do the exact same.

So these rules at least prevent that a little bit from happening.

But I think it's going to be interesting to see how that shakes out.

The other thing that happened this week was that you had the inauguration on Greg Abbott's third inauguration tying a record inauguration and pretty interesting to see him in a very different position than he was with his first inauguration.

You know, he was essentially having to beg and bargain to get things done.

Remember, he had to like bargain to get pre-K, right.

Funded at like like $150,000, something like that.

Like people were not going to follow him and now he's at the apex of his political power.

So I think the party is looking to him through this speech to kind of set the tone and substance for the race and it means something, I think, profound to him that it didn't in a couple of years ago.

So what's your take on what the inauguration and sort of the content means?

Well, I think that the inauguration has changed from, you know, a huge, massive event, three days parades, candlelight dinners, etc., etc., into I mean, they still have that kind of stuff.

Right.

But I think he's going to be, you know, first of all, he's going to be more, I guess, down to earth, knowing not so, you know, big and, you know, that kind of stuff.

And that in times of inflation.

Exactly.

So just sort of.

100%.

No, no fireworks.

And then it has transitioned into a more more policy, you know, state of the state type of address and saying, this is what I want to accomplish.

That gives a lot of substance and also allows political players to have.

Right.

A better idea of what's going on in terms of the state legislature, both in terms of public policy.

I think so, too.

And I think he's also doing some legacy setting here.

As you know, I've been working on this book on Rick Perry.

And so it's setting governors broadly.

And one of the things that is most interesting is that when you ask people what a governor's legacy is, a lot of people give you the kind of shrug like, I don't know, governors of past like Mark White had that like a stake their whole political career on education, on or on, you know, reforming roads like fresco.

But when I ask people what they think that Abbott's legacy is, there's this kind of shrug.

The same is true for Perry and the stuff that he's most known for, stuff that didn't pass.

And so you don't want to be a governor in that position at the end of your term, like you want to you know, you want to be able to say, here's what I did.

And if you throw in the kind of heightened weight of national expectations, we keep teasing this notion that Greg Abbott's running to run for president and maybe he will, maybe he won't, but to be in the national conversation, you have to have this legacy, you have to have intrusion.

And this, I think, kind of gets him in to that position.

So he's got to be mindful of the fact that he's the kind of ideological stalwart of the Republican Party in Texas.

And maybe that doesn't mean much to people in Texas, but like other people look to Texas to see that movement.

Right.

And historically that's been true.

So I think it's going to be important for him to set that tone.

Well, absolutely.

And, you know, we have so many issues right in the state.

I mean, the state is growing.

Yeah.

Which is perfect.

A lot of people are moving in.

But now we have you know, we have to think about the next, you know, 50 - 100 years of the state.

Roa Yes.

Right.

Infrastructure, water issues.

I mean, water issues are going to be so, so, so important in the near future that we need to start having those conversations.

And the fact that the governor might be focusing on policy issues, in my opinion, is very smart.

You got to think big, right?

And that's what legacies are built on.

So we're going to discuss these and many other issues next week.

Thanks to everybody here at Houston Public Media for making us sound and look so good, and especially producer Troy Schultz.

I'm Jeronimo Cortina and.

I'm Brandon Rottinghaus.

We'll see you next week.