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

I'm Jeronimo Cortina.

And I'm Brandon Rottinghaus, we're political science professors here at the University of Houston.

What an exciting week.

Obviously pretty nasty in some cases, but shocking another.

So we're seeing a lot of range here.

Things happening in Texas, things happening nationally.

So let's dig in.

First of all, there are some big news out of North Texas.

This is Senate District nine.

Normally something we don't talk about.

But this was a runoff to a special election to replace Kelly Hancock, who's now the Texas State Comptroller.

This is a pretty Republican seat, but, Democrat Taylor Rehmet won it by almost 17%.

This is a pretty big or by 14%.

Sorry.

It's a pretty big bump.

He was outspent 10 to 1 in a district.

Like I said, that usually leans pretty.

Right.

So what's going on here?

The national news is basically, well Democrats are going to win.

This is a harbinger of things to come.

I'm not so sure.

What do you think?

Well, I mean, I think it's, I don't know if it's a one shot, situation or the prelude to what we could expect potentially for the midterm election.

But one of the things that it's very clear, it shows that Republicans have a very, very highly contested primary, for this election.

It was very nasty, primary.

So the Civil War within that primary, I guess push perhaps both Republican sides or different, sides of the Republican Party to confront each other.

So maybe that's an explanation of turnout.

So I see that the other thing, that we have talked about is running the right candidate, the right election, the right message.

Right.

And I think the Democrats are, well, picked in this case, the right candidate for that particular thing.

And also what we see in North Texas is that.

Yes.

That's perhaps the last, big, chunk of land in North Texas that is extremely, extremely red, that is surrounded by a creeping, blue county seat, so on and so forth.

So when you put everything together, that's, perhaps something that, could explain these results.

Yeah.

I'm not surprised that he won.

I'm surprised by the margin with which he won.

Trump won this district by 17.

Right?

Kelly Hancock walked it right.

No problems the last couple cycles.

So this is a pretty red seat.

So the fact that this happened and the fact that he got so outspent is certainly pretty impactful.

You're right.

Republicans stayed home the count here is pretty outstanding.

I mean obviously the runoff had about half as many people right as the as the general.

But the fact that yeah, the Republicans didn't move to kind of unify things like John Hoffman ran a pretty normal ish campaign.

He definitely had some money backing from the gambling interest, but he basically kind of ran a separate campaign from, from Lee Juan Morgan's.

And, they didn't really move to heal that rift and where a lot of Republicans stayed home.

So that in and of itself, I think is a pretty good signal.

Right?

People like Dan Patrick were saying, get out to vote.

Please come out.

And it didn't work.

So I think to some degree you have to see this as a rebuke to Dan Patrick.

He handpicked Juan Mcgahn's to run like he actually excluded Nate Schatzline from running because he said, no, I've got a candidate.

And Democrats were able to beat her.

So that certainly is a kind of problem for Dan Patrick, who, you know, obviously has got a pretty, you know, pretty tight hold on who runs for Senate.

And you know, general what happens in the Senate.

So do you think that if we I mean extrapolating right.

I yeah this became national news right.

Yeah.

No, I mean just in terms of, the primary for the Senate here, here I mean, we know that he's going to be very contentious.

We're going to talk a little bit about that later.

But I do think that we can see a similar phenomenon in terms of you have pre-Civil War during the, primary and then you are wounded, once you get into the general election.

Yeah, that's a great point.

The drop off for Republican support was pretty high.

You know, certainly some of the numbers indicated the Democratic base was turnout, about 26%.

Republicans turnout about 23%.

Right.

So their turnout was lower.

If those turnout figures matched well, I'm again still would have lost, but it would have been a lot closer and probably more like what we're, I think, going to see in.

Oakland.

Where there's going to be some Republicans who aren't happy about the outcome.

There's certainly economic problems.

There are definitely kind of concerns about Trump.

These things are all going to hurt the likelihood of Republicans turning out to vote.

And if they don't turn out to vote in big numbers, this is going to happen again.

So I think a lot of people are correct.

People like Pete Sessions, let me get your take on this.

Pulled a milli Vanilli and said, blame it on the snow right.

If you know, you know, you remember live in LA, you're too young for that.

You don't remember.

That I I'm very.

Sorry.

That is true.

You don't remember that?

But Milli Vanilli said blame it on the rain.

Pete Sessions said blame it on the snow.

There are bad conditions.

People just didn't want to turn out.

And look.

This is a runoff to a special election that's temporarily filling this seat.

It's not for keeps and sense.

So I suppose that there's a lot of caveats you could put on this.

So national news, national media is like Texas is going blue.

That's not what happened.

Yeah.

But there are definitely elements here that make sense.

So the secret sauce for Democrats is picking the right candidate Taylor is Emmett is one of he's the only member of a union official who's won a state Senate seat in Texas.

So is this an indication the tide is turning?

Is electing the right candidate for Democrats part of the approach here that could give them, these big seats?

Well, I mean, once again, is this issue, but if we put into the equation.

Yeah.

Midterm election.

Yeah.

Trump 2.0, yeah.

Anything could happen.

Is is 2018 2.0 I don't know.

I mean could be.

We'll see.

Now Donald Trump said I didn't have anything to do with that one ask.

But he did send out three different messages on social Trump saying get out to vote.

And that didn't work.

So obviously they want to have a little bit of distance here on this.

But I think you're right that the Trump phenomenon could be waning a bit.

And the polling suggests that's true.

People do in polling reflect on the fact that they think Donald Trump has too much influence in Texas, and the fact that his approval numbers are low, the economy's not doing great.

These are all kind of problems for every Republican, especially those wrongly attached to to Donald Trump.

But I want to kind of pivot from the Trump question in SD nine to the Trump question in the Texas Republican Senate race, so that he has said that despite weeks and weeks of saying, I'm not going to endorse implied he might pick John Cornyn, Ken Paxton or Wesley Hunt, what do you make of the kind of about face on that?

Well, I mean, that is going to be very, interesting.

And I think that is going to give a niche to any of these three candidates.

Right.

But we have seen throughout these primary campaign that it is, hunt, Cornyn and Paxton all trying to be the most.

Most.

MAGA, MAGA Trump supporter.

Right.

And it's just an auditioning game.

Yeah.

The big question is what happens.

Right.

And here is one of these two things.

One is, yes, it could have an impact once again in the primary.

Right.

But then you're going to have that endorsement that I see whoever wins the Democratic, elect, primary election using that endorsement against, whoever wins.

Yeah.

So it's.

Cuts both ways.

Yeah, yeah, a double edged sword.

And I think, like I said, you know, Trump's name certainly carries weight in the Republican primary where you're going to see some pretty conservative.

Voters, right?

Right, right.

Like if you and we'll talk about this a couple weeks ago, that up and down the ballot, there are some very conservative people running in the Republican side of things.

And so that's going to juice up conservative turnout.

So we'll definitely see that be impactful.

In terms of Trump, it's hard to know what he'll do here.

Right?

He likes a winner.

And if he likes a winner he's probably going to back John Cornyn.

Right.

Who's got a huge fundraising advantage over Ken Paxton.

Paxton's numbers aren't great.

Cornyn raised $7 million and he's got about $15 million on hand.

The other two, Paxton and Hunt, raised collectively about $2 million right cycle.

So there's not like a lot there in terms of that money.

Paxton's big dollar donors said he shouldn't run for Senate, and he did anyway.

They've abandoned him, so he's going to have to raise money in some other way, which is a complicated and very time consuming affair.

So that money definitely is going to matter, because I think you're seeing Ken Paxton not running the kind of campaign he wants to run because he doesn't have the resources.

So that he hasn't run many ads.

And John Cornyn has got like a dozen super PACs, and the Republicans are running ads on his behalf in addition to the money that he's already sitting on, that he can then kind of bank for the general.

So in terms of money, in terms of resources, in terms of just strategy, John Cornyn has got basically everybody beat to boot.

You've got Wesley Hunt, who thought to be kind of a bit of a bump there.

He had a little bit of traction.

But now things aren't moving in that direction.

National Republicans are saying he's never in DC to help them vote.

And with a razor thin margin, we'll talk about in the second, they need every vote.

And then this picture comes out where hunt is eating alone in a restaurant with a little plaque that says Mr.

Hunt on it, that has this very kind of regal effect.

Right?

I don't think that's going to play that well.

So I wonder your sort of take on how all this is going to play out with respect to Trump and the Republican Senate primary?

I think once again, this is going to be an election that is about turnout.

Yeah.

The Republican Party, yes.

It has moved to the right, especially here in Texas.

But still, you have a significant number of, let's say, independents that lean Republican that participate in the primary election.

That's happening.

This happened in SD nine, right?

Yes.

A lot of those folks.

Exactly.

Democrats.

And the issue here is, Eve, the closeness.

Right?

We, Trump or we let's say Paxton or whatever, etc., etc.

is going to help them or not.

I don't think that the core MAGA constituents are going to be, you know, persuaded to vote for X, Y, or Z, but they're going to be persuaded.

The independents that lean Republican to vote, perhaps, you know, for Corning or for whoever.

Yeah, that is going to have an implication.

Scenario number two is what happened.

The Z9 you know what I'm just going to for what, the Super Bowl.

Yeah.

Oh well I don't know if that's.

Yeah it's.

Coming.

Yeah.

Oh good.

Perfect.

The Texans are not in it so yeah.

Oh okay.

Fair enough.

That's why I'm.

Not like whatever.

You know Seahawks fans.

So you don't care.

Oh yeah sure.

Yeah.

So it depends on that.

Yeah.

So it's going to be about turnout.

And as you say turnout implies having enough money to mobilize people.

You got to be able to win.

And like if you're thinking about who can compete in general, then John Cornyn is a better bet.

John Cornyn made the implicit question to Texas, saying, look, can a Republican who's a moderate and a dealmaker win?

We'll find out the answer.

I think the answer is probably no, actually.

And so Ken Paxton, although he hasn't raised a lot of money here, doesn't really have to.

He can walk to a runoff and he's going to win a runoff for sure.

And then he can kind of limp into the general with not much money, but hoping that you know, kind of Republicans carry him in November.

That's a tough bet.

And Eddie, this was both this was the theory of the case from the start for Democrats who are like chomping at the bit to get to him.

And so I think that the scenario the Democrats played out and tried to manufacture really is coming true.

So, you know, we'll see how it all plays out.

But, so far we're seeing those battles kind of play out.

On the Democratic side of things, we're also seeing a bit of friction.

So there's a lot of fundraising news, right?

Even fundraising these days is a political battle.

James Talarico said he's raised $13 million.

Jasmin Crockett has raised $6.5 million, but that includes about a $5 million transfer from her House account.

So she's not raising a lot of money, but she still has a competitive enough amount of money that could be an impactful outcome.

You know, come November, we're seeing more ads, frankly, from Talarico than we are from Crockett.

But that could catch up even like today.

That could change.

The other thing is that there was definite controversy because there was a TikToker who claimed that James Talarico told her that he thought he was going to run against, quote, a mediocre black man that is Colin Allred, who was running in that race before he jumped out.

And after Jasmine Crockett jumped in.

This became obviously national news.

You had Colin Allred clapback at him and say some pretty ugly things.

James Talarico could denied it, saying this isn't true.

So, it's nothing to say here, but it became definitely a point of contention.

And certainly in terms of demographic dynamics in the Democratic primary, this could be really impact.

Yeah.

So what do you think about how this is going to play out with with the kind of Democrats still battling for kind of who's going to get that nomination?

Well, it applies the same thing as a Republicans, right.

Yeah.

If the primary is bloody.

Yeah?

If it turns I mean so far the Democratic primary.

Yes it has got, you know, some jabs here and there, but it has not been bloody in comparison to the Republican primary.

But if it turns ugly then whoever wins is going to be wounded.

And in order to compete for the general election, you need to be healthy.

You need to be 100%, without any significant scratches.

Because if you have one, yeah.

Then.

Yeah, it's infection time.

It is infection.

It hurts.

Yeah, I think that's right.

So yeah, there's definitely kind of some elements to this, I think for both parties that again, with a competitive seat, you're going to find a lot of this.

Yeah.

Let's talk about a race that actually wasn't that angry.

It wasn't that ugly.

And that's the race for the Congressional District 18.

Christian Menefee, who is the outgoing county attorney in Harris County, won this race by a pretty healthy margin over Amanda Edwards.

It didn't get too chippy.

It was pretty kind of fair fought in most of that.

This is a temporary win for Menefee, who goes to Congress for about a month.

And then there's another primary where he'll face Al Green, who is of course, a current incumbent in a different district that's been redistricted.

So this will be the fight for the new 18th district.

Try to keep up.

Okay?

I know I'm going to have to take careful notes, but basically the with redistricting, this is a new fight for the Democratic outcome in Congressional District 18.

Whoever wins the primary in 18 probably will win the general and the Democratic side.

So, that's going to be a pretty pitched battle, a generational battle, in fact.

Right?

Correct.

What do you think about this?

Well, I think, that that has been the trend that the Democratic Party has been following, especially after the 2024, presidential election.

And is this issue about the generational change?

We have that with President Biden and then, Vice President Harris.

And we are seeing that not only, in the US Senate, we have seen it in RGB, we have seen it in many other places.

And now, obviously, we're seeing it in Houston.

Candidates like Rahm Emanuel, who are running for president, are saying things like, we should have age limits.

So there are a lot of people who are talking about this.

We'll see how this actually works.

But this is going to be a pretty pitched battle.

Menifee is going to raise a lot of money.

He's got momentum from this win.

Al green is really well known and really well-liked among the constituencies there.

So it's a little different district.

But you know it's going to be a tough battle.

And, you know, Al Green is not backing down.

This turnout was pretty low, like really low.

And I think part of it was that it was a, again, a runoff to an off cycle, a temporary election, same as what happened in SD nine.

So you don't want to read too much into it, but definitely wasn't the case that this was an inspiring race for a lot of people.

So, you know, the primary will be a little bit different.

But it does, I think makes some kind of, you know, tough choices for these candidates in terms of how to get voters out.

One wrinkle here and I want to add to it is this.

And that's the judge, Lina Hidalgo, the outgoing judge of the Harris County, has endorsed Al Green.

So kind of an old school Democrat, getting endorsed by a younger Democrat who in principle would be more in favor of a kind of, you know, generational shift, and progressive.

Yeah, totally.

Not that if he's not progressive because he very much is.

But, what do you make of this?

He's kind of, I don't know.

It's it's kind of odd, right, as you say, but obviously it's, a pattern that, of of of political support, Lindell has been supporting every time, every press conference when big issues happened by Al Green, etc., etc.. So I think, it's it's an endorsement that may carry some weight, but I don't think that he's going to be.

It's not definitive.

No.

Absolutely not.

That makes sense to me.

There's some bad blood, not direct, not open, but some bad blood behind the scenes.

And that could create some of these issues that definitely mean it's more personal than political.

But, a lot of wrinkles are happening here.

So that primary is going to be one to watch.

Yeah.

Let's talk about Ted Cruz and the fact that if we're talking about Ted Cruz, it's probably election time, presidential election time.

A couple things came up this week.

One is that, recordings were obtained by Axios that basically captured Ted Cruz sharply criticizing President Trump and JD Vance, especially on issues like tariff.

Is this just Cruz trying to find a way to separate himself from the Trump movement, from the MAGA movement with the hopes that he can run and win the presidency in 2028?

That's the long term thinking.

That's an interesting question.

I had the same question in a different way in terms of does Cruz smells blood in the water?

Yeah.

Or sees blood?

I mean, you cannot smell.

Yeah.

Loading the trucks.

Okay.

But and they're politicians are all sorts.

Yes.

That's true.

That's very true.

So I think that the answer is yes.

Right.

Yeah.

And why.

Because the MAGA movement is supported, funded re supported by one person and that is President Trump.

Yes.

President Trump has the political charisma.

The wittiness, the aggressiveness, the etcetera, etcetera, etcetera that has the right.

Exactly.

That has redefined the American political system.

Number one.

Number two is who's going to be the opponent here.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

And so far it could be JD Vance.

Could be Marco Rubio.

Right.

Or could be Rubio already got a thousand jobs if you follow Twitter.

Well yeah he's doing everything.

Yeah.

The poor guy.

But yeah.

And he's about our age.

So I'm like.

I'm sure he's exhausted.

It should be all the time.

We are.

Exhausted.

I don't know how you keep up.

No, but anyways.

I like your point.

Yeah, I think that's right.

Yeah.

Basically, like, you know, the movement has to change.

And I think Ted Cruz recognizes that there's going to be a vacuum and that maybe he can fill that vacuum.

Another thing that happened this week, which is a kind of controversial fundraising ploy that Ted Cruz is involved in, and that's that he basically sent emails to his supporters saying, help support Republicans.

But the fine print is that 99% of that money goes to Ted Cruz.

So a little bit of a bait and switch.

It's something that's legal and that a lot of politicians do.

But a little bit on the untoward side.

So, you know, this I think doesn't help.

Ted Cruz's image is somebody who's not likable.

So this could be a liability for him moving forward.

And obviously, like you said, you know, this is all a long game and he's going to have to play it pretty well.

Let's shift and talk about Texas, because Dan Patrick, the lieutenant governor, has released a set of interim charges which, are really basically like homework for the committees.

A couple things stood out to me.

Number one, state affairs is being asked to prevent Sharia law and taxes.

And then the finance committee is being asked to basically do further tax cuts.

The lieutenant governor outlined some of these things, essentially saying we should increase the homestead exemption for people who are older.

But what do you think of this politics and policy?

I think I mean, once again, we're entering in every other well know, in every session.

Right.

And now in the interim session, we're entering, aspects that are very worrisome in terms of the future viability of the competence, the of the state of Texas.

Interesting.

Yeah.

Very important issues that have to do with infrastructure.

Yeah.

Like, highways, roads, maintenance of these roads, etcetera, etcetera.

Yeah.

Water investment.

Right.

And then power generation, these three things are I cannot underscore how important are for this state.

Right.

Because on the other hand, it's saying, well, we want for example, these I am data centers etcetera, etcetera to come to Texas.

Sure, that's perfectly fine.

But on the one hand, yes, they give money, but they don't generate a lot of employment, of, of jobs.

But then they use a lot of water and a lot of power.

Yeah.

So I think that it's completely disconnected in terms of the policy.

Right.

There's a real risk that the tactics drives the policy and.

Yeah, and not the other way around.

And we need to focus on these issues if we want to maintain this state in the upward trajectory that has been for the past years.

Yes.

Last session, the state invested in water.

Yes.

But he's not enough is not enough.

It's almost definitely not.

Yeah.

No.

You're right.

And, I had a former chief of staff for a governor tell me that, like, it used to be the case, that the policy would drive the politics.

Right?

That's what you campaigned on.

But now the politics drives the policy.

And I think that's a real shortsighted way to go about it.

The other thing I thought about was in a similar vein, and that's that the Republican Party has got a really narrow set of advantages.

And if they take those for granted, then it could be a problem.

So for instance, the Sharia law elimination, you're seeing a lot of ads based upon Islam, and it obviously has a very extremist element to it.

They're scary, no question.

And it's driving a lot of the policymaking.

The other is that if you try to continue to increase the homestead exemption, there's a real liability there because all you're doing is shifting the tax burden around.

That's what people are still mad about, property tax relief.

So it's not really happening for most people.

So the Republicans are playing to an older property owning crowd, which isn't going to be, you know, the kind of basis for Texas voters forever.

So there's a potential limitation there that could be problematic.

So we'll see how these shake out.

Obviously the specifics are going to get worked out by the committee heads, and we'll see that in the next session.

But it's always good to give us a kind of preview of kind of how the policies are affected by the politics.

Let's talk about the federal funding situation.

Happily, the government's funded.

Yes, that got passed, but what didn't get passed was funding for the Department of Homeland Security.

Homeland security has a lot of things involved in it, including the Border Patrol, TSA, Coast Guard, FEMA, and a lot of stuff.

They're going to have to negotiate some kind of an outcome here.

What do you think's going to happen?

Who knows?

Yeah.

I mean, someone has to give.

Yeah.

Democrats are in the position that they are demanding, not the abolishment of Ice.

But they're demanding different ways of how Ice operates.

The accountability.

Accountability.

Right, that you would expect in any law enforcement department, body cams not wearing masks.

I don't know, using judicial orders.

Warrants, own and so forth.

So that's what they want.

And then Republicans are saying, well, yeah, but some of these things simply do not work.

Yeah.

Or they're saying, you know, these are federal obligations and these cities have to comply.

So some of that will be in the negotiating table to say exactly.

Yeah, it's going to be a tough couple of days.

If they don't fund that then that could be a case that yep, they're run short of money, which means some of those elements don't get paid for.

And there could be some gaps in terms of how things operate.

So we'll see how the best plays out.

But obviously there's a lot going on here.

Donald Trump hasn't fired hardly anybody.

There's only one person from this administration that's been kind of let go.

And it wasn't Kristi Noem, despite all of the chaos happening in Minnesota.

So interesting.

Let me ask you one last question.

Did you see the new Melania movie?

Not yet.

Okay.

We should go together.

Let's watch.

Yeah, let's watch it.

I'm curious about it.

Critics panned it.

The people sort of like it.

The people like the documentary did.

Okay.

Oh, yeah.

Maybe banked 7 million.

Amazon got 3.5 million back of the 75 million investment.

So working towards that.

Yeah, but, I mean, in any case, I think it's, it's, interesting to see.

Right.

And as we, as political scientists, we always look at things from, 11 different angles.

So I think, yeah, I think it's, it would be an interesting.

Yeah, a documentary to watch.

And I love documentaries.

My take is that there's a problem for the Trump White House, because it makes it look like they're just Eye off the ball, not thinking about the Sorkin people, thinking about promoting the first lady.

That plus the fact that you have the Kennedy Center, which is shut down for renovations and you've got this brand new arch that's supposed to go across the river from DC, that makes it look like the white House is focused on kind of the pomp and circumstance part of the presidency, not about the policy and public attention part of the president's.

I need.

In addition to that, perhaps the first lady is going to bank around $28 million in.

But that's something that we will discuss next week.

I'm Jeronimo Cortina.

And I'm Brandon Rottighaus.

The conversation keeps up next week,