Welcome to the Texas Talk.

I'm Gilbert Garcia, metro columnist for 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 a true Texas maverick.

State Representative Eli Larsen.

Larsen is a skilled campaigner who has won 11 elections over the past 31 years, but much prefers the sport of fishing to the art of politics.

He's a lifelong Republican who's become a strong critic of the GOP and is thoroughly disenchanted with the two party system.

Larsen is stepping down after six terms in the Texas House, and he talks about where our state government has gone wrong, how to fix it, and what he envisions for himself.

Let's get started play.

Larsen Thanks for being in Texas.

Yeah, thanks.

You.

Well, you're down to roughly about the last three months of what's been a 12 year run in the Texas house.

I guess about a 31 year run in politics.

Did you catch Commissioners Court?

City Council.

How are you feeling right now?

Feel relieved.

I think any time you serve, you try to do the best job you can and you walk away and hopefully you made an impact for future generations.

Now, you know, you could have held on to this Texas House seat probably for many years as you wanted it.

And I know you're an advocate for term limits, and I wonder how much of your decision to step away was, you know, wanting to walk the walk and say term limit yourself and how much of it was just being fed up with with the Texas House?

Because I follow your to your Twitter feed.

And I know there was there was some of that happening to what?

Well, it was a combination of both.

I laid out a term limit, Bill, six years ago, and I stated that whether it passes or not, that I'll comply to the terms or bill, it was 12 years and so on.

I walked in to the last session.

My desk mate said, So you remember what you said two sessions ago.

We laid that bill out and I said, Yeah, I'm done.

I think that you've got a lot of people at the state and the federal level that run on term limits but they're not willing to to serve under the terms that they're advocating for.

And I think you're only as good as your word in politics.

And so it was a great exercise strategy for me, by the way.

You know, it allowed me to say I believe in term limits, but also truly believe that after about 12 years, your ideal isms starts diminishing and the day your idealism starts to mention, you get out of office.

Now, you served in the legislature two Republican governors had Rick Perry and Greg Abbott.

Right.

When you when you look back, I mean, how would you compare the governing styles of these two.

Different you had one that had a lot of courage.

He put as he put his agenda on the line and he fought for it and he worked with legislators.

His executive team would work with legislators on key pieces of legislation or Perry.

And then he had talked talk me through if he had some concerns about it to keep the office from vetoing a bill, he would just come into your office, say, hey, if you could change this for us, that would help us.

And so it gave more direction.

Abbott, you know, you can tell he comes from the judiciary because he's not a hands on working with legislators.

He doesn't have that same personality.

I think he he doesn't have the same intuition that Rick Perry had as far as, you know, what what needs to be done.

The conviction is different, you know, and I think it comes from the fact that he was a judge.

You know, he feels like he makes the decision and that's the way it's going to be.

That doesn't that's not how the legislature works.

And so I didn't get along with either one of them very well.

You know, I put term limits up and Rick Perry took exception to it.

I put a pay for play Bill up that Abbott didn't like.

And my deal is the Republicans always like to talk about, we're the Reform Party.

You no, they're not willing to reform anything as long as they're feeding the trough.

And that's the problem, is nobody will step up and do the right thing because it could hurt their party structure.

So I it was nothing personal against either one of them.

But at the same time, if you're going to if you're going to serve and you believe in something, you need to go for it.

And they took it personal.

And in the 2018 campaign they both endorsed my opponent was going to be around you know, so that, you know, that's just the way politics works.

The job pays $600 a month.

And so if you don't have conviction and you're not scared about losing, if you're scared about losing your job because you feel like you need to do something for the state or your community, then so be it, you know.

You know, I kept thinking that in 20, 18 maybe I'll lose and I'll get back to the real world.

Pretty fantastic, you know.

But part of you that's.

Yeah, well.

As you mentioned, I mean, the thing was in the 2017 session you filed a bill that would have put some restrictions on something that you had spoken out about which was the fact that Greg Abbott was appointing his, some of his campaign donors to state boards and commissions.

And so he appointed you, he endorsed your Republican primary opponent you know, you ended up winning.

I remember, I think it was the next session.

20, 19.

There's a kind of famous photo of him on the on the floor of the House and shaking hands with you or talking to you.

Did the things ever get any better?

Was there an effort on his part to try to make things better after that?

His Chief of staff, Louie signs as a friend of mine and I and Louie, more so than the governor or the governor, is just not that warm of a person.

He doesn't have that personality.

He's not real he's just not not real warm.

And you know, so I never never really got along well with the governor.

We were cordial and collegial as we went through the process.

But I still think the pay for play is going to haunt the Republican Party.

This goes back.

Ann Richards.

I mean, if you want to be a border regent at Texas A&M or the University of Texas or you want to be on Parks and Wildlife, I think it's the sums between three and $500,000 that you got to give a governor.

And and that's consistent, Republican and Democrat.

And so if you want to fix the problem, if that was the ethics session, you know, he advocated that we're going to fix any ethical breaches, real or perceived that exists in the state government.

I think he was looking at the legislature like there was some ethics issue.

The most egregious ethical problem we've got in government is the pay for play system that we've set up where you've got to give the governor obscene amounts of money to be appointed to some of those boards.

And commissions.

And I just said, well, let's make it 20 $500.

You can't get more than 20 $500.

And then everybody's in play, you know, or right now it's the billionaires club.

People are going to pay, pay that kind of money, and they're appointed to that, and we're not necessarily getting the best qualified people.

Governor Abbott is currently seeking a third term he's facing a challenge from Democratic nominee Beto O'Rourke.

How do you see that race playing out?

You know, it's going to be interesting.

It's going to be a lot closer than people think.

If you look at the Kansas vote on on the abortion issue and you look at just how many people are being registered on the Democratic and the Republican side.

I think there's an unknown there.

It's the young folks and women and how they turn out in all these different primaries.

We're getting some different outcomes.

And so I think it's a toss up.

I think the lieutenant governor's race is where the Democrats have the opportunity to to win.

Michael, you're against Dan Patrick.

Right.

And the reason being is Dan Patrick.

His polling numbers are real low and might call your almost beating last time.

I mean, and then just a lot of stuff transpired during the COVID issues.

Some of the things Dan Patrick said, I think that's going to be a closer race than than the governor's race.

I think that's where the breakthrough.

I think we need to have balance And I'm you know, as you as you serve through the process, I had a lot of good friends, Republicans and Democrats.

And I think this whole partizan deal, the dumbing down of American government, we need to we need to see sort of an emergence of an independent movement where whether it be in a party or a movement where people start recognizing, let's look at the person, look how they stand on issues and take off the red and the blue jersey.

And I think we're going to start getting the government we want but the unified power or a single party rule that we've got in Washington and in Austin, it doesn't work well.

We've got to have balance that keeps the extremes for moving to too far right or too far left.

And that's why I think that if the independents step up and they start looking at all the different candidates, my call yours probably is a strong candidate, as they have on the statewide ballots.

You know, you're a lifelong Republican, but you've been very critical of the Republican Party in recent years.

And and you've talked about independent movements.

And I think when you when you talk to voters, I think there's a there is a philosophical appreciation or support for the idea of a third party movement.

But when you get to election time, people tend to think, well, I'll be wasting my vote or this, you know, an independent Ken doesn't really have a chance.

I may unwittingly end up helping to elect somebody that I that I like the least of the options.

How is it possible to really develop?

Because, I mean, I'm going back to Ross Perot in the early nineties.

And I mean, there's been various attempts on the national level and even, you know, at the state and local level to try to bring an independent movement into the mix.

And it's been really hard.

It is.

The polling by Gallup a month ago showed 62% of Americans see themselves as independent, more so than Republicans and Democrats.

The issue is if an independent party emerge.

The crosstabs on that same poll indicated that it's the far left and the far right that like to see an independent party come their direction.

In those same.

62%.

So all the democracies across the world that have collapsed and our forefathers said it and Jefferson said it.

Washington said it.

Adams said it.

They said the greatest fear they have is the emergence of a two party system.

That would be the great evil that brings this country down.

And I think they were right.

They saw that and they saw what's happening right now with the parties and the fervent partizanship that we have People are no longer concerned about the state or the country.

They're worried about their party structure.

And most most of the democracies have split in.

And they create a parliamentary system where you have multiple parties, far right.

Can have their party far left, can have their party.

But you would see two parties that represent 35 40% of the people, and they'd be more of a Republican and Democratic.

Then you got coalition government.

That's a whole lot healthier than what we've got right now.

Where we're fighting each other to the detriment of our state and our country.

I would rather see to two parties in the far right and far left will have voices and but they would have to compromise to be effective and doing things.

Right now, the far right and the far left have taken over our party structures in the primaries.

And what they have to say in the primary, that follows them into the general elections.

And that's where something's got to happen.

I know there's a movement and I've been contacted I've been talking to folks primarily at the The gentleman that ran for mayor in Houston.

He's the guy that's pushing for it.

And he's talked to me on a couple of occasions.

He's talked to Strauss he's talked to other folks.

I don't I don't think we're there yet.

No, I don't think in 20, 20 to 20, 24, a lot of things can happen over the next couple of years.

Maybe we'll have that.

But you're right.

What happens is when people get in the voting booth, they look at it and they go, well, that's just a default candidate that they're not going to they're not going to win until they get some viability where they can actually win a statewide seat or can win the presidency.

I don't know where we get unless we fracture into a parliamentary system, which I'd be all for.

I'd love to see us get in where we would have six or seven parties create a structure where you could vote, vote the leader out overnight.

If they're not following what the people want.

I'd like to have that.

It'd be much more accountable than what we've got now.

I'd love to see the governor stand up and talk about issues every week on TV there, and you'd be a lot healthier than what we got right now.

You know, they just everybody hunkers down and you don't get a lot of communication.

You know, the big issues are the grid.

And what happened in in the winter storm.

We haven't rectified that issue.

Guns after what happened in Nevada.

There should have been just like they did after Parkland and Florida should have called a special session to sit down and talk about red flag laws.

Talk about common sense gun legislation and then the Roe issue.

Incest and rape, that issue, that provision needed to be in there.

Laid out a a bill in the special session that would have allowed those exceptions to be put in.

The governor didn't like it and couldn't get any traction on it.

It did have a lot of Republicans in support of the concept.

Those are the big issues.

And then, you know, education, health care, water infrastructure, those kind of issues, those are the issues we should be hearing about in the campaigns.

Not about that he likes Biden or that he likes Trump.

You know, it's just it's idiocy you know, in our in our campaign style.

Well, you mentioned you've already made 24th.

We had 19 children, two teachers killed.

It robbed elementary school in Nevada by an 18 year old gunman.

There were a lot of calls for a special session, which the governor just did not follow through on.

So when you when you talked about wanting to see some kind of response to this school safety you know gun reform you mentioned red flag laws.

What about the the the issue is that I think it's probably been talked about the most recent bunch, which is because not only the you've all the shooter, but many of the the sort of mass shooters we've seen recently have been extremely young.

You have someone coming in with an assault style rifle at his age purchased by an 18 year old Would you like to see some kind of change, some kind of an age restriction maybe make it required that you be 21 or over to.

Purchasing I think that's a reasonable discussion and we should have that discussion.

I think I could support that.

I don't know if we can get enough Republicans to support the concept The NRA has a strong lobby and a lot of folks feel like that's allowing the Second Amendment to be a compromise.

Might let's just use common sense.

And looking at that, the red flags, the same thing.

There are there are markers out there on all the people that have created urban involved in mass shootings.

And we just have restrictions as far as sharing information.

There's confidentiality between the mental health providers, the folks at the school and law enforcement.

Those issues need to be addressed.

You know, I hate to even imagine another shooting happening or, you know, anything like that.

If it does, the governor's done.

If something like that happened between now and the election, you know, there's an opportunity to solve the problem or start working towards a resolution and preventing this, or at least obstructing the ability to do it.

I just I think that we should have done what they did in Florida and Parkland.

They immediately passed red flag laws.

They also looked at age restrictions on accessing those guns.

That's the kind of leadership we need.

We need to have people that are willing to step up and not really worry about their political career and just do what's right for the people you serve.

You cross your fellow Republicans on a few issues in the 20, 21 session, and one of them was Medicaid expansion which would allow the states.

Texas is now they're about a quarter of the 50 states have held out and not adopted Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act.

This would provide coverage for more than a million uninsured Texans with this federal government would pay roughly 90% of it.

And you remember you wrote an op ed at the time and you were this is something you really advocated for and we had Joe Strauss on the show a few months ago I asked him about the same issue.

Is it just partizan stubbornness, you think, on the part of Republicans because it seems like such a common sense thing that could benefit a lot of Texans.

Well.

Yeah, you're exactly right.

The red states, you know, from Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Idaho, Nebraska, all of them have taken taken the expansion.

And the reason being is they're able to lower property taxes, our property tax and barricade have gone up significantly because the hospital district taxes.

Direct connection.

They're not taking Medicaid.

And so when you look at your property taxes, a lot of it is your income taxes are going to Washington, D.C. We re we recapture as much money as we can.

Half of our budget is the federal government but we won't take the $5 billion we've close.

20 rural hospitals.

We've compromised health care in the starkly underserved areas in the state.

And from a fiscal standpoint, it makes no sense.

We already give the federal government 24 billion and to get 40 billion back on a match and this is at 1090.

I'm an Aggie a little bit slower than most.

But I can tell you that the math is a whole lot better for that 5 billion than for the for the balance of money we get Medicaid back.

I don't know how the rural folks continue to vote for Republicans.

I'm glad they do because I'm a Republican.

But the hospital closure is directly related to a false narrative that was set up by Rick Perry in 2013 he didn't take Medicaid when it was offered to us.

That is a nine to ten match because he was looking at running for president.

And so we stay on this fall narrative.

We've passed up over the last eight years.

We passed up $40 billion for health care while the methods health care system, the Baptist Health Care system and Christmas in San Antonio, they're having to pay for the indigent health care without being provided Medicaid dollars for a lot of those folks because the state is just stubborn it's a false negative.

The most fiscally sound thing we can do is take that money at a 90 and match.

Water has been an area of Expertize for you and most of the state went through a severe drought this summer.

I think there's kind of a more of a consciousness or concern in the state.

Certainly California, there's real serious anxiety there about the stability of their water supply sure.

When you look at Texas, how concerned are you about our future when it comes to water and what steps should we be taking?

Water is the biggest challenge we have as a state if you look at the drought of 2011 2012, you look at the compression we had on our groundwater and our surface water that was evaporating if that drought would have persisted for another three years.

We did some projections on the the inventories of our water supply.

On surface, we monitor 115 reservoirs.

70 or more have been completely dry.

All three of the reservoirs that feed Corpus Christi would have been dry, choking in Lake Corpus Christi and Texarkana.

So it's a big issue and the state needs to step up.

We did create a state water infrastructure fund, but that's loaning money.

I would advocate that for the 27 to $40 billion surplus, whoever's numbers you're looking at that we take between two and $4 billion and set up a state participation fund like they did in the trial of the 1950s where we would go in and start building projects for smaller communities that can afford to either retrofit their wastewater treatment facilities or their pier for their purification process.

We need to build some water, some water projects.

So the scope of what San Antonio water system did with this ridge, there's a lot of communities can't afford it.

I think the state needs to step up and we need to be the leaders on this and put state money down.

We did it for our flood control.

We put in a few billion dollars in dealing with flood control management, mainly after Harvey and some of the issues are impacted there.

But we would, I think, we need to do the same thing for for water project.

A more stringent conservation sort of measures we should be taking.

Oh, absolutely.

San Antonio does the best job we we've got the best per capita use of water from a conservation standpoint than any major city in the country.

And so we've seen a lot of it.

You the the the facilities you put into a house, whether it be low flush toilets, the faucets, all of that stuff, but also the re-use of our wastewater.

We do a good job on that.

But a lot of it is just we've gotten so many people moving into Texas.

We got so much industry.

We've already got restrictions on our on our river basins.

And we're going to have to we're going to have to start moving water.

You will see probably in the next 20 years, you're going to see a series of coastal desal plants that will be built, one of them being Corpus One will be in the Rio Grande Valley, and one will be in that Lake Jackson area where we have a lot of needs in the lower basin of the Brazos.

You're going to start seeing that.

And then the laterals have come across die 35.

Of course, the biggest concerns I have as far as the the the water resource issues, the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and all the way down to Austin, we don't have very much ground water there.

It's depleting quickly because the populations and we don't have a lot of water in the rivers either that aren't already permitted out.

So we've got to do something pretty dramatic if we're going to do this but it needs to be done.

Now.

Texas deals with crisis.

How about let's take some leadership and deal with these issues in a preventative way instead of a reactive way?

Just got a little bit of time left.

But I want to kind of get a sense of what you you see yourself doing now.

I my sense is that you don't you don't see yourself running for office again.

Unless I have a major head injury.

If I do, then at that point, if you see me and I'm stumbling along and talking about running for office, yeah.

You know that there's something physically happen to me.

But other than that, no, I have no, no decision.

But do you.

See yourself doing a lot of fishing or.

Yeah, I'm going to go to the family ranch and work on cows, but also do a lot of advocacy work dealing with water.

There are some large scale projects need be built in Texas.

I'm going to advocate that we need to put more money aside to develop water projects, develop, you know, delve and develop a long term strategy, not just so much for this generation, but future generations.

We are we're we're inadequate as far as what our planning is going to give us.

For water for that next generation.

So I look forward to continue to work with with the folks of the city, the county and the state level.

I'll be in the background.

I'll be the guy with the bullhorn and calling them idiots if they don't do the right thing.

Well, Larson, thanks so much.

All right, thanks.

Appreciate it.

That's all for this edition of Texans Talk.

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