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

I'm Geronimo Catena, political science professor at the University of Houston.

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

Thanks for hanging out with us and talking politics.

Another crazy week.

We've got, battle about Nazis.

There are poop videos from the president.

The Louvre was robbed.

I assume you had nothing to do with that.

And the government still shut down.

Yeah.

So we're still in just chaos moment now, where were you during the Louvre robbery?

You were silent this last week.

I had my.

Doubts.

Just here.

Just here?

Just here.

Yep, yep.

We'll see about that.

Live.

I was teaching, actually.

Yes.

Okay, well, we'll see about that when Interpol shows up.

Right on my house.

Where to point them?

But let's talk about some other intrigue here.

And that's about fundraising, which, of course, is so important to winning and losing.

Yeah, not the only thing, but it matters a lot.

Let's start with quarter three fundraising and the Senate race.

The numbers are pretty clear on this.

And you can imagine obviously, that a lot of that flows to the biggest races in this case, the primary for the Republicans, for the US Senate here in Texas, John Cornyn has raised and has on hand basically double what Ken Paxton does.

Wesley Hunt raised a pretty small amount, about 360 K, but he's got about 1.21.3 on hand.

And obviously is going to catch up pretty soon since he didn't jump in the race until later.

What does the money mean in this kind of early moment?

Well, I think the money means two things.

One is you have to be competitive for these primary election.

Paxton against Cornyn, Cornyn against Paxton and Hunt against the other two.

Yeah.

Right.

So so it's it's.

Extremely everybody against John Cornyn really.

But the important thing is that you can basically concentrate on certain parts of the state, right, where you know, that the constituency are going to be primarily belonging to the Republican primary, circle.

But if it gets very competitive, that means that you have less money for the general.

Right?

And that's the concern Republicans nationally have is that they spend all their money.

Yeah.

Trying to like, tackle each other.

Then there's nothing left when it like, you know, the fourth quarter.

That's probably true.

Although I do think that Republicans will come out of the woodwork to defend taxes.

I don't think that's going to be a monetary problem.

But there's a doozy, as one problem is definitely an emotional problem where, like, they're going to have to really re up it again after the competitive primary and you could have a pretty abused candidate.

Right?

John Cornyn is going to come out of this pretty bruised up Ken Paxton, if he comes out of it is going to be extremely scarred.

So there's just a lot of, I think, kind of problematic elements to this which Republicans would like to avoid, but no avoiding it.

Now they're in the thick of it and there's no getting away from it.

So I totally think you're right.

Cornyn's burn rate is pretty low compared to others, and so that's a useful metric for him to be able to have longevity.

But he's spending a lot of money trying to climb up.

I think what we're seeing is that, like the polling suggests that Cornyn has made up ground, but mostly it's that he's sort of stayed the same and Paxton's come down so I think the reason we're seeing a leveling here is not so much that Cornyn is like, surging, but rather that people are unhappy with Paxton.

And that's being shown in the poll.

So we'll see how this plays out.

But obviously, as you say, the money's really important.

And yeah, this definitely is a signal of strength.

Some other races down ballot are interesting too.

In the congressional district here in Houston, number nine Briscoe Cain and Alexandra miller are locked in a pretty intense battle.

She outraised him by about double.

She's got about 560 on hand and he's got about 266 on hand.

Dan mEMS is also running.

He's a San Jacinto College trustee.

He's got about 209 on hand.

So there's a pretty competitive race there too.

Lots of money flowing to this brand new seat.

So that'll be interesting to watch.

Oh yeah that would be interesting.

And in this one well, the new I guess seat or whatever, it has a Republican advantage of course.

So these might be as well, a very interesting race in the primary election.

And then we'll see what happens in general.

And kind of a whole other question.

Right?

Yeah.

Because the district is drawn to be kind of a Republican leaning district, but it requires a lot of Latinos to come vote for exactly.

Which may not happen.

Right.

But I think the money raised is also an indication that, like, this is a brand new district and these people are running a basically a brand new place, so they have to get well.

Oh, yes.

In a place whether or not.

So that requires a lot of money.

Some South Texas races are of interest to Monica de la Cruz running in Congressional District 15.

She's the incumbent.

She's got about 1.7 million on hand, a pretty healthy amount.

Bobby Deol has got about 274 on hand.

So he's going to have to catch up a little bit there.

But anyway.

Sorry.

Anyway.

Who's a doctor in the area has raised about 129.

So or sorry has on hand about 129.

So she's catching up there.

Yeah.

That could be a really interesting primary actually.

That ends up, kind of in one of those marquee seats.

Tony Gonzalez in 23 has got about 2.5 million on hand.

Pretty healthy.

Santos Lemon who's running as a Democrat there.

It's got a pretty healthy amount two 350.

So there's a lot of money being spent on these races.

34 Vincent Gonzalez has got about 1.2 on hand.

He's the Democratic incumbent.

Maya Flores, who's we talked about in the past, is not raised much.

About 148 K still a lot of money being spent on these.

This is just an indication that these are competitive races.

Well, I think I think that in the case of Democrats, they know that we have the Trump effect and that as we have said before, Trump polarizes the electorate in very clear ways.

Either you like him or you don't like him.

Yeah.

And also in terms of what Trump promised, right, these issues about inflation, so on and so forth, that have not come down yet.

South Texas hard hit.

Has hit it very hard.

And you know people notice.

And that's going to be important because the president has said that inflation is down.

Inflation is under control.

But then when you go to the supermarket you see he's like wait a minute.

So that was an issue right?

Because that was the campaign issue that Trump really, really cemented his advantage, especially in South Texas.

And also making these promises to a chunk of the electorate that, have not been paid attention for many years.

Yeah, we talked about this with respect to genuine a horse's candidacy, and that's that the support among Latinos for Democrats in general has dropped by about 12 points.

They've got to get those numbers back up if they're going to be even remotely competitive statewide.

And these are the races where that happens.

Right.

The lower oh you're out in these lower races, sort of juices up turnout at the top of the ticket.

So yeah, that's really critical.

Another way to think about this is that you've got Greg Abbott running for governor, right?

Running for reelection.

He's got $90 million.

He was here in Harris County saying he wants to turn Harris County.

What he said bright.

What he said.

He said dark, dark red, which is purple.

I'm not sure the kind of.

Like.

I guess the the kind of coloring scheme here is unusual.

I think what he means is that he wants Republicans to win, and he's got about 90 million reasons why that can happen.

Do you think Harris County could flip in this 2026?

I don't know.

I mean, it would be I mean, first of all, it's going to be competitive.

Yeah.

But like flip it.

I don't know.

I mean, it's going to depend a lot on who's going to be the nominee for Harris County Point.

Yeah.

George.

Yeah.

Who's going to be the Republican?

Yeah.

And how well organized Democrats are, especially in Harris County, to turn out the vote and get the young people out.

It's a great point.

That's a challenge, right?

In a midterm.

And that's the key.

The Harris County has very close elections in midterms.

In fact, if you look at the history of this, going back to 2014, there was not even a Democrat running against Ed Abbott that was like ten years ago.

Right.

So fast forward to today and the more kind of current election cycle, every midterm, you see the difference at the county level between Republicans and Democrats.

Like very small in a presidential years, that gap is much bigger, you know, a 200,000 person gap.

But that's not enough in it to be able to sustain a kind of very aggressive, you know, Democratic county.

So I think that he might be right, that if you're going to flip Harris County, you have to do it in a midterm.

And the money he's going to spend, if he's willing to commit to it, is going to make a big difference.

But remember, he's we have the Trump effect, and we have seen that in 2018.

What happened?

Not only in Harris County, but we saw it in Fort Bend County and the other counties of the metro area.

But I think that that is something that is going to be very important.

Yes.

Because a lot of people are not happy in terms of how the Trump policies have been implemented.

I think that people overall, especially conservatives, agree in terms of the basic premises of for example, immigration policy, let's go after criminals or let's go after drug dealers, etc., etc.

but the reality of things is that is not happening right?

And the reality of things is that, especially, law enforcement has been, particularly very aggressive in terms of how they're pursuing their mission.

And that doesn't sit well with a important part of the electorate.

So we have the Trump effect that you cannot just discount with $90 million, some backlash.

That's a good point.

But it even in a just in a year like 2018, you still saw the difference between Republicans and Democrats at the county level about 10,000 right now at the top of the ticket.

Right.

It was much bigger because O'Rourke obviously was able to generate that enthusiasm.

But down ballot Democrats stopped voting.

So that's one problem.

The other problem is that Democrats generally have a major turnout problem.

We talked about this with respect to the 2024 election, where the turnout in urban areas was about 10% lower than it was in rural areas.

So in the 30 largest counties in Texas, all red got 48% of the vote, which is the first time in three cycles the Democrats didn't get a majority vote in the urban areas.

So if that continues that as if voter turnout is still anemic among Democrats, then there is a chance that Abbott can use that money to flip.

And as you said, I think to the right candidates, the right issue.

Exactly.

Means something pretty substantial.

Marty Langton is one of the people running for the judge position on the Republican Republican side.

He's well known.

He understands how to win elections.

He's a partizan knife fighter.

And that's going to be really, I think, a telling kind of moment for him because it's about public safety, it's about crime, and there is a window there for them to be successful.

So actually, I mean, the money aside, I think that that opportunities there, but with the money, I think it could definitely be one of those kind of key moments that, you know, has Harris County turning red for the first time since, you know, 2000?

1214 so interesting stuff.

But let's talk about what's going on in North Texas and the satanic panic that's happening right now for the satanic panic from the 1980s.

You know, I'm talking about, you know, there is this kind of whole sweeping moment where people were really worried that.

Oh, yeah, we're taking over the, what is it?

The vinyl's going backwards with us with year.

And since it's Halloween.

Yeah, I don't want to scare anybody, but there's this satanic panic happening in North Texas where, Texas Senate hopeful and Texas Patriot mobile communications chief Lee, while Megan's is accusing her opponent, who is a former mayor of South Lake, John Huffman, of doctoring a photo of her to make it look more demonic and what he did, at least what they allege that he did, is to flip around the cross that she wears around her neck.

Now, Duffin campaign says, we didn't do it.

You know, this just sort of existed as some person had done this, but they didn't have anything to do with it.

It got a rebuke from Dan Patrick, who came in and said, this is terrible.

But by the way, go vote.

So what do you make of all of this?

It's they love boo boos.

They're they're creating evil.

Yeah.

You have to explain what this is to our listeners and to our viewers.

Well, I just basically, got to know the name to they.

They're just, like legal figures.

Yeah, that have, like, very weird eyes, and it's scary.

They're like little troll dolls, basically.

Okay.

But they have kind of, I don't know, like a fun, cute, maybe edgy, like demonic element to.

It, but.

Well, anyway, so how.

Many are you going to get?

I guess it's my question.

I mean, I don't know, like 20 I don't know.

Yeah, I don't know a little I don't know what they do.

And you can put them next to your Beanie Babies and your Cabbage patch.

Okay.

Oh there we go.

Well, I think that obviously this is sort of, you know, one campaign, one election happening in North Texas.

It's a competitive seat because this is Kelly Hancocks seat who is retiring.

So it's an important position.

This is basically much of urban Fort Worth.

But to me, it says something more about the role of artificial intelligence in campaigning.

Now, Dade Thielen had introduced legislation to essentially put some guardrails around the use of AI in campaigns.

And what the law did was to basically require there to be a, kind of disclosure if you had used a doctor image and if you didn't disclose, then there was a kind of criminal punishment, right, that you could be levied.

So there is at least some attempt to that.

Now, this got killed in the Senate by none other than Dan Patrick, who was complaining about the fact that this is happening.

So maybe irony is still alive in politics, but I do think that there needs to be some kind of guardrail here, because we know that the technology is getting so much better, but that partizanship continues to rise means that there's not going to be a lot of resistance to this, right?

People are going to use every edge they can.

And that might mean these tools which allow you to manipulate artificially the image of your opponent.

Oh yeah.

And from there, he's not only that.

Manipulating the image is mimicking their voice, doing robocalls, saying things that they didn't say.

Yes.

And then the problem is with social media and everything is they issue misinformation that people do not go and really check their sources and check if what they're seeing or hearing is actually a real thing.

That's such a great point.

I made this point to somebody yesterday where people are not willing to check the things that they see, and because their partizanship is so high, even in a primary right, you pick your side and you people are willing to believe it.

And so that hardens, which then is hard to undo.

So yeah, we know from political science that, yeah, misinformation is really hard to correct, even like in a kind of official manner.

So this is pernicious.

It's dangerous.

And I think that some kind of legislation is needed here to kind of clean this.

But as it is now, we're in the thick of campaign season.

It's going to be hard to get people to change their minds because things are a little bit off the wall, including this effort to try to remove Bad Bunny from the Super Bowl halftime show.

Right.

Have you seen this?

So the idea is that the petition has been circulated to replace Bad Bunny with King George.

George Strait himself.

What do you think about this?

I tried to look, and see if, George Strait has said, like.

Yes, I'm all for it.

I he hasn't he hasn't said anything, so I don't blame him.

I think that they should have asked him first before.

Yeah.

Like.

Well, no.

Justin.

Yeah.

Now you say they.

For $10 million, right?

They're like okay, well thanks, but no.

Yeah, it's just once again, pride is is this level of polarization that is permeating every single fabric of society on sports and sports become politicized.

And we have seen these things.

You know, the Covid pandemic was politicized.

Yeah.

Football now is politicized.

The, FIFA World Cup is going to be and has been politicized.

Everything is politicized this way.

And, you know, it's one of these things very weird because it's not the first time that, you know, someone, well, first of all, Bad Bunny is a U.S.

citizen.

Yes, by the Joe Sacco.

Right.

Of 1905, if I remember correctly.

So he is a U.S.

citizen, right?

Yeah.

No, he's extremely popular.

And so, yeah.

George Strait, but, like, it's a lot of virtue signaling.

I think you're right.

It's lamentable that, like, we can't even enjoy a halftime show without politics getting in the way.

So I'm all in favor of compromise and politics.

So how about this?

How about we have both of them perform?

They perform together.

How awesome would that be?

Let's make it.

Hey, let's do that online petition.

Drive.

If you want to do it.

Okay, fine.

But like, let's merge it together.

That's the way Super Bowl halftime show is a band, right?

It's kind of.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's three different people performing, right.

And they do it together.

And you and I, we can even compose a song for them.

I definitely could do a good song on this.

Yeah.

You say a. Unity song, right?

Okay.

Unity.

There we go, I love it.

Well, you said everything's in partizan eyes.

I think you're exactly right.

Politics is everywhere, and it's definitely in the pardon process.

Now, President Trump has commuted the sentence of George Santos, who's a former Republican from New York.

He was a representative who I don't even know how to quantify the number of things that he lied about and that was untruthful about during the campaign and even during his time in office.

In my forthcoming book on scandal, I have like a whole literally page of like the things that he didn't said that were wrong or misleading or even illegal.

In any case, it doesn't matter because the sentence has been commuted after three months of service of a seven year sentence for wire fraud, and he is now out.

What do you make of this?

Good luck, George Cobb.

A great life, as the president said.

And he probably will.

Yeah.

Owner out of jail and in jail, right?

Yeah.

I mean, again, he's, I don't get it.

Yeah.

I mean, because the fact of the matter is that even he was rebuked, but his own party.

Right, right.

So it was Republicans also said, like Marjorie Taylor Greene, to like, wait, what?

No, that is too much.

Right.

And the fad here is when you look at the tea leaves.

Is that.

Yeah.

The president does whatever he wants because he has control of the Republican Party 100%.

So if we have doubts that the Republican Party, was some sort of, independent from the president.

No, it's the Republican Party of, President Donald J. Trump, period.

End of story.

And he does whatever he wants to do with the party pardoning these and that.

We have no problem whatsoever.

You're exactly right.

And I think we've talked with this before, but like scandals matter less when you minimize the impact of them.

And this is a perfect example of this, right.

If there's no retribution for the scandal, there's no sanction for it, then it officially doesn't matter.

And that, I think, is contributing to this.

The other thing that's important to note here is that Donald Trump loves to pardon.

And I think, you know, most presidents use this in different ways.

But he has pardoned over 1600 people.

The Justice Department estimates that this is cost in like in terms of restitution being paid about $1 billion.

And you're exactly right that the tone of how pardons function is different.

Now, Donald Trump, I think, sees himself on a lot of these people, especially who are former politicians who've been put into jail.

I'm thinking about like, you know, like, like Michael Flynn in the first term.

I'm thinking about Rod Blagojevich, right?

Who does?

Yeah.

Pardoned.

Right.

So there are these sort of moments where, like, a politician is caught dead to rights.

There's a real problem here.

Accountability has been provided.

And the president comes and says, okay, we're going to undo that.

So it's a lot of pardons, a lot of money lost.

But I think the ultimate thing is that we're seeing a changing sort of ability for pardons to really function the way that they were intended to.

They're supposed to be used to sort of mitigate unfair prosecution or maybe to serve for merciful purposes.

And now policies of now, pardons have become just kind of very, very partizan.

This is not the first time, right?

I mean, obviously, Bill Clinton pardoned his own brother, Hunter Biden got pardoned by Joe Biden.

So, yeah, it's not like, you know, Donald Trump.

Oh yeah.

Oh no no no no no no.

Absolutely not.

No no no no.

But it does signal change here I think.

And you know, Donald Trump is also said that like he thinks that Bibi Netanyahu should be pardoned.

He says something of what, like cigar and champagne, right.

As a kind of corruption issue.

He was like, don't worry about it.

Right.

Encouraging the, president of Israel to basically pardon him.

So there's just I think it's changing standard for what it means to have a pardon.

So, that to me is interesting, but let's talk about DOJ beyond this.

There's a report that came out that the president is demanding the Justice Department pay him about $230 million in what he claims are damages related to various federal investigations that have probed him.

He points to several, including, you know, a false claim, that he, was, relates to FBI special counsel investigations, the Russia investigation, the search at Mar-A-Lago, $230 million.

Guess who gets to decide if that happens.

Let me see, let me see, let me see.

Search your memories.

Like I don't know.

Yeah.

The president.

Oh, and guess who's president.

Yeah.

Oh I see.

Oh, is there a conflict of interest there?

I don't think so.

Okay, I think it's fine.

There was a law professor that got quoted who says you don't need a law professor to tell you that this is absolutely wrong?

And I think that it is problematic.

Right.

For lots of reasons.

There's a clear conflict of interest.

Right.

But to me, it's also problematic because there's no clear standard for what would constitute like, the way that this process would unfold.

Right.

It's sort of just, well, I want this kind of to happen.

So I'm going to say yes, you're going to come across my desk as the president said, I'm going to sign it and say, I get this money in the form of a giant check.

It's like a lottery winner.

That's a problem, right?

Because a lack of transparency here and the conflict of interest is just so obvious.

Right.

And it's taking place during a government shutdown where some government workers are not being paid.

Right.

But he said that he was going to donate every single cent to charity.

Okay.

Well, that would be useful.

Yeah, but.

Is it his charity.

Maybe.

I don't know, but do you think that voters care?

I think they could be made to care, especially in contrast to kind of the difficult economic circumstances people might find themselves in.

Right.

So, like you said earlier, people are hurting and financially there's a real pinch.

And even if it doesn't affect everybody the same way, it's certainly the case that you could look at this and say, wait a minute, you've okay this money for yourself.

Like his crowd, the kind of most committed partizans probably won't care that much.

Or maybe even cheer it.

But for a lot of people, they look at this and say, this doesn't smell right.

Yeah.

I wonder how Speaker Johnson is going to flip the script on this one, because it's kind of complicated.

How do you justify it?

Yeah, I don't know.

I mean, I see it very, problematic, as you said, because it's either, pan mundi, the DOJ or is going to be the, second in command.

The are going to say, like absolutely 100%.

Yeah.

You did see the Republicans push back on the nomination of the president to the person tonight, Office of Legal Counsel.

There is, I think, a moment here where Republicans in the Senate in particular, starting to say, wait a minute, we need to hold the line here.

But I don't know how far that will go.

And if they're holding the line super far away from the medium.

Right, right.

Like I make the stop sign up like 100 yards away from where the car is right now.

Yeah.

I mean, I mean, in this case of of Ingrassia, it's just, you know, he admitted that, he had, not Nazi, strict salt.

Right?

Yeah.

He was like, he got caught dead to rights.

And so he had.

Receipts and I think to.

Yeah, there's definitely a sense that like, you know, we know nominees don't survive as long in scandal.

Like, that's something that's just proven statistically true.

So there is definitely limitation here.

But let's talk about the same kind of concept but in a different way.

And that's the main Democratic Senate candidate.

Graham Plattner has fended off allegations about a Nazi tattoo on his chest.

Now he's running for the Democratic nomination for U.S.

Senate against Susan Collins, who's the incumbent Republican.

The Nazi symbol is sort of unclear.

He said he got it when he was drunk.

He was in the military.

He doesn't mean it to be that he says he's going to get it removed.

And he apologized for it.

But I wonder if you think that this has a real kind of impact in terms of like his ability to win this primary because there's a split there, right?

Chuck Schumer has already endorsed Janet Mills, who's a different candidate in that race, a more kind of mainstream candidate.

Plattner is more of a kind of, you know, Bernie Sanders style progressive.

He's much more kind of real, I think, in that way.

So I wonder if you think this matters.

I don't think it's it's yeah.

I mean, and you know, these better than me, but I think that the way that, he acknowledged and said, like, I was drunk, I was these, etc., etc., I'm going to remove it.

I didn't mean it, etcetera, etcetera.

Yeah.

He's just confronting the scandal and then moving on.

Right.

Yeah.

And I think that it's a very interesting way in terms of how these two candidates are going to present themselves to the electorate.

Right.

You have this choice or that choice, and that has been the quintessential problem with the Democratic Party.

That's true.

Yeah.

I mean, we know from scholarship that apologies don't seem to matter, but I actually have evidence that they do, especially when they're consistent with a person's values.

So I do this test that asked people about their religious preferences.

And if a person who's a candidate politician gets snared in a scandal, they apologize.

And they kind of reference my faith.

It is something that people respect.

And so there is a moment here where apology can matter.

But he has other issues too, right?

He had some Reddit posts in the past that were complicated.

So we know, though, that elites matter and elites have protected him generally.

Last thing to note shutdown still happening.

Is there a recipe for this to be ending anytime soon?

Well, I mean, I think Democrats are going to hold on until November 1st, because that's when you start roll into Obamacare and when these new tabs, it's hitting.

Senate races hard.

Maine, Michigan, Georgia.

Yeah.

But we'll have, a better analysis for that in our next week contribution to the political dialog.

I'm Karen and I'm Brad erotic House.

Thanks for joining us.

I was.