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

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

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

It's an exciting week in politics this week or on M.O..

There's a lot going on, as usual.

Obviously, we've got some presidential campaign news.

We've got some a new speaker, which is sort of surprising, but also, I guess a happy occasion for some, although there are others who are less happy.

But the big news of the week, of course, is the ongoing special session in Austin.

There's a lot of things that are happening there, not the least of which is, of course, school finance and whether there is or is not a deal.

This is sort of right in the ether, apparently, but some details need to be hammered out as of our recording.

So we'll get to that and much, much more.

And speaking of much more, actually, the sort of interesting news of this week for national politics and for Joe Biden is that the United Auto Workers have struck a deal with GM to bring an end to one of the most high profile strikes we've seen in recent memory.

Basically, there's a lot of little details, but it's going to increase base pay for workers by about 25% over about four years.

So this is a pretty big moment for the country, but also for Joe Biden.

And that's why they why bring it up.

And I want to get your sense of like what you think this is going to mean for Joe Biden, his candidacy for president.

President Biden took a gamble.

And that gamble was for the first time in our history, went and supported workers picket line directly and took the side of, you know, the workers.

Yeah.

So in a pre-election year, we're in the election.

Yes.

We're always in an election year, but it doesn't matter.

You know, it was a very risky gamble, citing and obviously preempting former President Donald Trump that also visited, you know, workers that were on strike board for Biden has a significant, you know, positive outcome in the sense that now he has made signals he can, I guess, you know, political points and perhaps are going to seek or the UAW is going to actually.

Mm hmm.

You know, endorse.

Yes.

Yeah.

Because that's still happening.

And it's not, I think, probably in jeopardy of not happening.

And even if this didn't happen or went on for longer, they probably would have mattered.

But it's a little bit of a sigh of relief for Joe Biden, right.

Because what you don't want to have happen is sort of chaos economically in the year that you're leading up to election.

And you also I think he was vulnerable to claims that he simply wasn't enough of a solid lefty Democrat.

And that's where his biggest concerns are.

So polling this week came out to suggest that basically there's an enthusiasm gap like Donald Trump.

Supporters are really active, really engaged in this election, but Joe Biden's are not.

And that's especially among people who sat out in 2022.

So that's the kiss of death for Democrats.

If you can't get younger voters to come out, especially younger voters of color to come out, that's going to be a huge issue for him.

So this do you think, will kind of generate some enthusiasm there and maybe right the ship for him?

Well, I mean, perhaps not, you know, significant enthusiasm like, you know, you would get at a kid's party, you know, hitting a pinata.

Right.

Which is always depends on what the pinata shaped like.

Right.

And what's inside.

What's inside is more important.

Too.

But I think the strategic thing is that if you have labor on your side, right, that implies that you're going to get, you know, movement on the ground, that you're going to get grassroots movement being involved in your campaign and getting people out to vote.

So that can have, you know, the positive impact in terms of the ground game and try to bounce, especially in, you know, battleground states.

Yeah, have a huge a huge impact.

Yeah.

And these states where you're seeing a significant transition economically, places like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, where Democrats have had that blue wall for a long time, you can't take it for granted.

And so he's going to have to make sure that works.

And this is probably a step towards that, which at least for him, is good.

But we mentioned Donald Trump.

We mentioned Joe Biden.

But there are a lot of other people running for president.

So other news this week has Nikki Haley surging, Ron DeSantis lifting question mark and then Mike Pence is out of the race.

We'll explain what these are in a second.

But let's talk about Nikki Haley surging.

A new Des Moines Register poll has got her essentially second place in Iowa, which is a pretty stunning momentum shift for her.

In fact, the fact that she's that close to Donald Trump is one thing, but the fact that she jumped over Ron DeSantis is quite another.

So what do you make of this kind of is this real momentum for her campaign or is this just kind of rearranging the deck chairs on a sinking ship?

I mean, I think it's it's you know, I mean, you can say what you will about, you know, Nikki Haley.

But I think that if you go and attack President Trump, you better have one way or the other, a policy solution or one way or the other, an alternative or the other, something else.

In addition to remember that the Republican Party is not, you know, 100% supporting former President Trump.

Right.

Right.

You have very different groups within the Republican Party that are going to support either one candidate or the other candidate in terms of the alternatives.

You know, people are saying that, well, Governor DeSantis doesn't have any substance, right?

Yeah.

In terms of what needs to be done.

And therefore, if you're very close to the brand of President Trump, it's like, well, why would I change my allegiance is to Trump.

Yeah, right.

For something that is similar to Trump, but he's not Trump.

Yeah.

Not as good as.

Yeah, you want the original thing, right?

Yeah.

If it's like a car commercial in here.

I don't know.

I was thinking in terms of chocolate.

I'm going to.

Tell me.

Tell OEM parts.

Okay.

Yeah.

You know, if you're going to buy a part that is basically the regional part for the same price of an OEM, Right.

It's like, you know, okay, I'm going for the original.

You know what, the original.

That's a problem for this is that it's too late to try to do this in terms of how I'm a different product.

Right.

I'm for Nikki Haley's line.

Yeah, I'm completely different And that has, you know, other has appeal.

Yeah, exactly like yeah, yeah.

And it's a battle to see kind of who's in second place.

Right.

And I mean, you know, that may not last, right?

It could be that this changes and of course, you know, politics changes by the day.

But like somebody who is in a position to basically be kind of there if and when Donald Trump doesn't get the support or something terrible else happens.

I don't know what it could.

I don't even know what it could be.

I only want to speculate.

But like you want to be basically in that strike zone and and seemed like so far she is, but lots of room to run.

And of course, this means that we're going to see some people exit rather quickly.

This week, Vice President former Vice President Mike Pence decided he was not going to run anymore.

He had a kind of surprise announcement, actually, but not that surprising.

Right.

There were concerns he wasn't going to make the third debate stage.

His fundraising numbers have been really weak.

He only has about 1.2 million on hand, which is not that much to run a presidential campaign.

He'll raise about three and a half million dollars, which was far dwarfed by DeSantis and Haley and, of course, Donald Trump.

But this is a stunning moment for us politically, because here is a time where, you know, Mike Pence was formerly the kind of go to person for the right.

That's why in some cases that, like Donald Trump picked him to be vice president.

So now he can't even, like, fill, you know, pizza place in Iowa.

Like what happened and why is it that that Mike Pence fell off that political radar so quickly?

Well, I think, you know, Trump is sucking the air of every single pizza parlor in Iowa.

Right.

Mean they're all waiting for him to have pizza with them.

Like they don't care about that.

And I think that, you know, the way that if you have seen Vice President Pence interact with voters, I mean he has to a certain extent a very clear position in terms of what happened, for example, on January six and why he acted that way or the other.

And then on the other hand, that is, you know, counter attack by Trump's campaign in the sense of, you know, you committed treason, this and that, etc., etc..

So it doesn't allow for or allowed Pence campaign to get traction with the same demographic.

And once again you're competing for the same type of voters.

Right?

And you have three of them so far.

You have, you know, obviously Donald Trump, then Ron DeSantis and then you have things.

So it's very, very complicated to signal to the market in these case potential primary voters.

Yeah, how you're different and how you're going to win.

Mm hmm.

Yeah.

And I think it's also kind of a wake up call for other candidates to see, like what's not working.

And you mentioned this earlier, Like you've got to position yourself in such a way that, you know, you're not Donald Trump, but you're something different and somehow better.

And so, yeah, I think that's critical.

But, you know, Pence was basically an old school Reagan Republican, and, you know, he brought his faith to the party and that's something that is useful and definitely sells.

But obviously, given the kind of friction with Donald Trump, it wasn't that great.

And so the question is like, who's going to benefit?

Donald Trump says, you know, because of my successful presidency and you are part of it, you should endorse me.

But I think the likely is hood is that like this basically helps Nikki Haley because politics in these presidential races are all about momentum.

And so like the fact that she's surging, like we just said, may mean that like that support ends up translating into, you know, votes for her.

But it's a lot to kind of be seen.

In the meantime, What do you think's going to happen there?

I don't know.

We'll see.

We'll see.

Okay.

It's one of these things why Iowa is very different.

Yeah.

Than the other states.

Yeah, it's not a primary election, the caucus.

So it's a lot more complicated to organize.

And so, you know, my experience and that theme, I don't know.

Well, we'll have to wait.

Yes.

No other people are asking and saying rather, I don't know to whether or not Ron DeSantis is wearing lifts in his cowboy boots.

This became a kind of phenomenon for the week where, you know, there's a lot of other stuff to talk about.

But obviously we get into the minutia here for our, you know, dear listeners, and that's this kind of mocking that's been going around social media on Twitter and TikTok that Ron DeSantis basically walks awkwardly.

And so people are assuming that he wears lifts.

And this is not an idle issue.

This is not a vanity issue, because we know that the taller person always wins.

Right?

And so here, at least in that history until 2012, where you had Mitt Romney, who was taller than Barack Obama, and then in 2020, when Joe Biden was shorter than Donald Trump, you had the taller person win.

So being taller here matters or not.

Like what do you think?

Your end is very small, so I can not draw any causal.

I see.

You know, it's one of these things perhaps of, you know, I guess, political consultants that suggests these things one way or another.

Because on the other hand, you have, you know, not as tall people that have been very successful leaders in the world.

You would say that.

But I, I think that all people are tall.

People matter as well.

And we have a. Taller than me.

So next topic, please.

Moving on.

Obviously, the big news last week was in a continuation of this discussion that this nation has been looking for a speaker of the House.

Right.

Help wanted ad for about 20 days.

Eventually the chaos and the division got removed and the Republicans coalesced around Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana.

Donald Trump supported this, saying this is all good, but obviously he's going to have a pretty rude awakening because he's going to go from kind of a backbencher in the House to basically being one of the most powerful people in the country and therefore the world pretty quickly.

So, I mean, he was on the House Steering committee, he was in the kind of leadership circle, but not like at the nerve center of it.

And so he's going to have to basically organize an entire Speaker of the House arrangement, which isn't just legislating.

It's also the politics around it.

Right.

And the need to be able to have that apparatus be basically a funding agent and messaging service for the rest of the caucus.

So there's a lot going on here.

What do you think this all means for the country, the Republican Party, in 2024, since we finally have a speaker?

Wow.

I mean, it's going to be very complicated writing.

You know, the analogy would be a vote coming out of a storm.

And you need to see where the leaks you need to see if there is, you know, water.

Even a water entered the engine.

You need to basically disassemble.

There's a.

Lot of water.

Assemble it again.

So there is a lot of moving pieces.

And those moving pieces can have very important implications because 24 is already here.

Yeah.

And if they cannot deliver.

Right, if they cannot deliver is going to have important implications.

Yeah.

And you know he started he's I guess how would you say chairman.

Mm hmm.

Yeah.

Just basically swinging all over the place.

Conditioning, for example, aid to Israel, conditioning areas, funding while at the same time saying We're spending too much, but we don't want to get more money balancing the budget.

So those things I mean, I think he has to make a name for himself because basically no one knew.

I mean, I think that to me is the biggest issue here for the Republicans.

They're going to have to basically saddled this horse while they're writing it.

They're going to have to ramp up a huge fundraising operation.

They're going to have to have, you know, an entire messaging apparatus for his career.

Johnson has raised five and a half million dollars for his career.

Now, just compare that to Kevin McCarthy, who raised $16 million last quarter.

Right.

That's where the money is.

And basically, the Republicans need the speaker to be a funding agent for a lot of these folks.

The National Republican Campaign Committee, which deals with the House side of the kind of equation has raised $70 million a cycle.

But a basically almost a third of that was from McCarthy that he transferred from his own fund.

So there's a huge money gap here.

And, you know, money matters in politics, especially when you've got a message in get out the vote.

But I think the messaging is the problem here.

So Republicans are happy.

They've got a speaker, but the Democrats are licking their lips because they know that they've got like a potential opportunity here to paint the speaker any way they want to.

And they're going to paint him basically as being anti-choice and being an election denier.

And these are huge problems because those are both drag on the Republican ticket.

And so going into 2024, you've got a kind of unknown speaker who's been sort of underfunded and you've got a messaging problem with most, you know, where most voters are.

So that's an issue.

Right.

And he, you know, interviewed so far in in in the media have been very clear.

Right.

This is my position.

Yeah.

And he's like, oh, okay.

So it's not allowing, right?

Yeah.

Following your analogy, you know, trying to saddle the horse riding it to basically get get the buckle and put it through the bus.

And he's like, okay, just give me a second.

Right.

He's going to need to take take a few minutes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, and that means getting off the horse.

But that's tough because that's we're in a position where we're literally, you know, they've got to be able to pass a budget pretty soon.

Israel's waiting for funding, Ukraine's waiting for funding, as you said that the Johnson's trying to basically, you know, maneuver his own caucus, but also try to get the other side of the of the building.

Right.

And that's Mitch McConnell to agree.

150 years of combined experience paralysis means.

So is it going to work?

We'll see.

But these are brewing problems for him as well as for the country.

But on Congress, let's keep talking about that.

There is an interesting development that Beth Van Dyne, who is a Republican from Fort Worth, wants to take Mike Johnson Space as vice chair of the Republican conference.

This is also coming in news where Kay Granger, who is the chair of the powerful Appropriations Committee and is the longest serving member from Texas, decided to call it quits.

If you kind of combine these kind of questions together, my question is like where Texas is in terms of representation at the national level, it used to be that it dominated, right?

You had Lyndon Johnson, you had Sam Rayburn for a long time.

Then you had Bill Archer and and, you know, Jim Wright.

So you had so much power in Congress and now it's waning, right?

Like the Texas from a couple of years ago had basically a full third of the entire Texas delegation turning over.

And of course, the replacing them with, you know, people who were serving and doing what they need to do.

But it's a loss of clout for Texas.

And now with Granger leaving, it means that that anchor is kind of less stable.

So what does that mean for Texas?

Well, I mean, it it only means that they have to start from square one once again, because remember that the House especially has very clear paths to achieve seniority and achieve these positions of power.

So even if you're the smartest freshman in Congress.

You still have to start from zero.

And work your way up.

And that's why I think representative and is smart to kind of try to anchor this.

But it's going to take a long time.

Oh, yeah, it is happening like Dan Crenshaw is raising a bunch of money and spending a bunch of money.

But obviously it's just kind of clout issue that Texas is going to have to have to work through.

So we'll see.

And as the state changes, the party changes and the politics change.

So that'll be interesting to see.

But it's worth noting that this is not just something happening in D.C., it's also happening in Austin.

So this is party politics.

Thank you for joining us.

I'm Brandon.

This is Geronimo.

Let's talk about the special session.

Geronimo.

This is a big lift for Greg Abbott.

He says that we're on the one yard line and anybody who's followed football knows that's not always a great place to be.

It's not a guarantee you're going to score, he said.

First, he wasn't going to put extra funding on the call until they passed his version of school vouchers.

He went back on that, basically saying, I'll expand the call.

He then said, We have a deal, but it's not clear that deal really exists.

The speaker didn't agreed and even show up to that meeting.

No one has seen this bill.

Now we're recording you kind of right as this is all happening.

So we'll probably see the bill by then.

But this is a pretty serious effort from the governor and he seems to think it's paying off, but I'm not so sure.

What do you think?

Yeah, I think that, you know, the problem that the governor has is that he's not clearly a partizan issue.

Yeah.

Especially when you're talking about school vouchers.

It's a urban Democrat and Republican issue.

And for example, the last days, the you know, the session was called to recess because there was no party.

Yeah, but it was not the Democrats.

Right.

It was some Democrats and some Republicans.

20 Republicans.

Exactly.

So you have a problem right there.

Right.

And that problem is that the next alternative for the governor is like, okay, I'm going to primary you out.

Right.

But yeah, given, you know, past history on that, you know, the power of encumber, he's extremely, extremely helpful.

And the governor has not been able to break that power of incumbency.

Yeah.

And especially these Republicans are really representing the true sentiment And then he's going to be very different for Governor Abbott.

And that can have potential implications for the future here.

Well, you know, Austin, Republicans are not in touch rights with the needs of these particular districts.

And that can just, you know, start.

Yeah, a new problem.

It's like a wildfire.

Exactly.

Well, all the problems.

Yeah.

And the other problem is that if the governor does decide to primary, say, 20 members of his own party, that's a huge lift in terms of money and in terms of effort.

And then if it doesn't work, it makes you look like you have failed not only legislatively to get things done, but then politically, you know, you're so far out of the frame that people don't even see you.

And so I think that's a real complication for him.

But let's talk about the proposed deal.

The Budget Office basically has okayed this deal where the governor wants to spend about 10400 hours per student.

All K-through-12 kids would be eligible.

But they're also going to add a bunch more money to public schools for special education, school safety and teacher pay raises.

The governor implied this is a deal done, but not so fast, according to the speaker.

Basically, no one's really sure about this.

The Senate has its own version of the bill that does something very similar.

But how's about an $8,000 cap?

The other difference between the Senate bill and the House bills prior to this is that the legislature can move around money or not and or the governor can move around money or not.

And so what the House bill did was limit the ability to move this money around when the legislature is not in session.

So there's a kind of brakes on that, which is interesting to kind of check to see.

But what do you think about this particular funding apparatus?

It's expensive.

You're talking about potentially billions of dollars.

Like if every school aged kid decides to take advantage of this.

You're talking about like literally billions of dollars and that's going to break the budget.

Now, remember, the budgets have caps like by law, there are like four caps that have to be met.

And so this would bust out like year one.

Oh, yeah.

It's not clear that many people would take the kind of money because there aren't enough private schools.

But Republicans say, well, the private schools will catch up.

We'll have more of them and places where, you know, that can work.

So what do you think about this?

Well, I mean, it is it's not just in terms of the budget.

It's in terms of many other important issues.

For example, public schools are accountable in terms of, you know, they're being graded.

Yeah, they're accountable in terms of performance.

Yes.

By the school, not the students.

By the school.

Yes.

Private schools are not accountable to anyone.

Great point.

So that's public money that is being transferred to these private institutions that basically, you know, the kids can be falling apart or the school can be completely fallen apart.

And yeah, there's no way to make them accountable, no oversight.

They don't have to be the same academic standards.

They might, but they don't have to.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that's complicated.

Complicated.

And these will doesn't think all these things through.

So when you're designing policy, you have to think all these potential unintended or intended consequences.

Yeah.

And you know it's it's very worrisome because public education the state in this country has been the quintessential factor that allows people to for upward mobility.

So it's it's worrisome and especially the budget right now we're flush this year because we had COVID funds, these and that, etc., etc..

Right.

We are not going to have COVID funds for the next fiscal year.

There's no guarantee that that money's going to be there.

Yeah, you're not even going to increase taxes.

I just don't get it.

Yes, it is financially very tough.

And if things don't continue to go well, everything's going to fall apart.

But especially this.

And then you've got people who count on that money to pay their tuition and it's not there.

It's tough and it doesn't seem to really be working.

I mean, the polling suggests that about half of Texas support providing vouchers to low income parents.

And so those numbers aren't like terribly robust, but it is support among black Democrats or one.

Right, Republicans and Latino Republicans.

So it's possible that there's a kind of wedge issue for the governor, but it doesn't seem like it's so obvious that it's politically going to move the needle.

So he's going to have a lot of work to do this week because time is running out.

Right.

The other actually, Bill, I want to ask you about is this border security bill.

The House passed a bill that would let local police arrest migrants who cross the border illegally.

And there's a host of other bills that have been doing similar things.

Representative Whaley, who's from Houston, got into kind of an argument about this.

Obviously, this is something that's sort of very personal to a lot of members, but it's sort of shows how far the state has gone, how far the Republican Party has gone, that they don't care.

Right.

They want to make this bill happen.

They have to kind of get this okay from, you know, their from their constituents and don't really worry about the people.

They have to kind of, you know, like run over, including Democrats who work with them in the past on such issues.

So what do you think about this kind of border?

I mean, the first thing just starting from the beginning is that, you know, the argument is that there was no discussion.

I'm like, who cares?

Yeah, we're not going to discuss it Like we're going to end of discussion here, right there.

And it's like, really?

But aren't you supposed to.

We're debating.

That's what we do.

Yeah, that's that's.

What this building saw.

We have two podiums for it, right?

Exactly.

That's what we should be doing, right?

I mean, you want to be, you know, passing it or whatever it is because you have the majority.

Fair enough.

But you're going to be on the record signing.

What are the consequences of this or that?

Yeah.

So I get why representing while I was was angry at BS.

And the other thing is the implications and the message that this thing has right to in in certain ways.

Right police doesn't know there's no I feel how.

Can they how can they know.

That documents or you don't have documents or not.

So yes.

In order to know that.

Well yeah, likely that there's going to be a certain extent having some effect on these things.

The governor has said, while absolutely not, this doesn't have any implications.

If you're breaking the law, you're breaking the law.

And I get that right.

I do get that.

But it's one of these things that is very, very complicated to implement it and not have these very, very bad unintended consequences where a state is a state that is becoming a majority minority state.

Yeah, it's really complicated.

They rejected this a couple of times, but now it's back.

And so I do think this will be a campaign issue moving forward, but we'll wait and see.

And we're going to continue that discussion next week.

I'm Geronimo Catena.

And I'm Brown writing how the conversation keeps up next week.