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

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

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

Thanks for hanging out with us and talking politics and commiserating a little bit.

Jeronimo.

The Cougars, fell a little short.

Kind of a bummer.

We wish we could have seen them, you know, advance and get that championship trophy, but great to see them in the Final Four.

Oh, I'm so happy to see.

One other element of disappointing this week is if you look at your 401 K. balance of your retirement - I have not don't recommend it.

Things are not.

I'm not going to.

- Not going great.

One economist describe this as economic nuclear winter.

The market lost basically upwards of $6 trillion on that span of a few days.

Too many zeros.

A lot of zeros.

I just don't know.

I read the opposite and they said between two, and I think it was two years more or less will be fine.

So it's like, okay, I'm still within that.

After that I'm retiring so I don't.

Oh, but then you take a hit.

Yeah.

It's complicated.

It's complicated.

Yeah.

Well, I think that is the problem, right?

That a lot of people are trying to figure out what the kind of sort of Venn diagram is here on how the politics of this work with the financial elements of it.

The numbers are pretty staggering.

We won't go through all the details, but basically with the reciprocal tariffs and with the tariffs that the White House is putting on things, you're talking about about 104%, tax on consumer goods from China, which is most of what people buy, a 46% tax on clothes from Vietnam, 24% tax on Japanese machinery, a 20% tax on European food and drink.

I know you like your bougie French wine, so you're going to be paying 20% more, my friend.

Get ready for that.

Well.

And also the Heard in McDonald Islands, right.

That is inhabited by penguins.

They're going to pay to 10% off for years.

Yeah, 10%.

Yeah.

So, I don't understand what is the end game.

Yeah.

Because what it's creating is a lot of uncertainty.

Right.

And markets and investors, they do not like uncertainty.

Oh yeah.

And the whole problem here is that is going to increase or perhaps potentially increase.

Inflation is going to increase the cost of essential goods like your beer, is going to increase, financial planning, on for businesses, consumers, etcetera, etcetera.

What if I drink bottled beer is not going to be.

I think, bottled, I don't know, I don't know if bottled beers are made here.

I'm worried everything seems to be going up and nothing seems to get coming down.

And that's the problem for the white House, right?

Yeah.

The implicit assumption here from like the kind of campaign was that we're going to reduce price caps.

I mean, he said day one, everybody says, okay, that's just a kind of bloviating.

But certainly it's the case that they expected it pretty soon.

And in fact, people are getting the opposite.

I don't want to alarm people, but like I'm a film buff, as you know, and like the Austin Film Society is running The Grapes of Wrath this week.

Okay?

Which is not like, great indicator of like where things are headed.

So I think it's a coincidence.

I hope it's a coincidence, but that's a real issue.

The other issue, I think, for me is the financial problems aside, it's about the messaging from the white House.

They've been inconsistent about how they delivered it and when they have delivered a message, especially from President Trump.

It's been, I think, a little bit too harsh.

He said.

Stuff like, you know, you need to get tough, right?

And, it's just going to be, a little bit of a pinch.

What does he say?

Don't be weak.

Don't be stupid.

Don't be a panic-can, I guess, and say I'm an American.

I don't think this is the right sales point.

Right.

I think they're better off.

And actually, their internal polling shows exactly this, that they're talking about the long game.

So you mentioned sort of what is going on here.

I think what they want is really a kind of resurgence of domestic manufacturing.

You I think, made a great point last week, as you always do.

And they did.

This takes a long time to happen.

So, you know, you can make that case and maybe people will buy it for a little bit, but the halo will soon, I think, lose its luster.

And it's going to be harder for him to convince Republicans to pull through on this.

The other thing, too, is that there's a kind of non panicky ness to the white House that seems to be troublesome.

So for instance, the White House issued a statement this weekend saying that the president won this senior club championship trophy.

It's almost like kind of eating cake while, like, the country burns.

That's I think, kind of a worrisome figure here.

And some of the numbers actually suggest that the kind of impact is going to be pretty bad for him.

He's underwater.

When it comes to net approval, disapproval is over 50% for the first time in the second term, economic policy approval is at -15.

Tariffs are underwater by 30.

This is not a good spot.

Absolutely.

And and and the problem here as we have said is that is not about understanding how trade, deficits work in terms of consumer goods, in terms of raw materials.

The service industries and things like that.

You go to the supermarket and you see it, right, period.

End of story.

So that is going to complicate things.

Once again, I'm sorry to say this, we are, months away from 2026 and.

More bad news.

Is.

Yes.

And it could be a debacle for Republicans.

Republicans, when they go to town halls, they're going to be.

Yeah.

Oh, they have been yelled at.

Screamed at yeah.

By their own constituents.

Yeah.

So it's something very complicated.

And then on the other hand, you have, I guess, the Senate one way or the other saying like, hey, maybe based on article one, section eight, maybe we should have a little bit of a say in and not let the executive branch do the stuff that is crazy.

And among all people in the world.

Right.

Our own senator, junior senator from Texas, Ted Cruz, he's saying maybe, like, let's rethink this a little bit more.

Yeah.

Like, be careful.

This could be a political problem.

Not for him, because he just got reelected for his buddy John Cornyn.

Right.

Who, by the way, we'll talk about this.

You can chose not to endorse immediately.

So we'll see that play out.

But yeah you're right.

It's like Republicans in the Senate are like sending food back at a restaurant.

Like you don't want to have to do it right.

It's kind of embarrassing.

But like, you may have to because my chicken's undercooked.

Yeah.

And so you have members here, like of the Senate who are going to try to send their food back.

You've got at least seven Senate Republicans who signed on to legislation that basically reviews the trade act, which is the kind of theoretical right, legal basis for what the president's up to, so Congress could reassert its authority here.

About a dozen Hill Republicans are considering a very same bill.

It doesn't take much here for the kind of critical mass to form and for Congress to reassert itself in this fight.

So that's going to be, I think, the real telling point.

And the question is sort of for how long now Trump to his kind of, kind of consternation, looks at all this and says, you know what?

Just stop being weak and stupid, literally is a quote from the president to his party.

Like, that's a tough sales job to because not only does he have to kind of navigate this very complicated trade arrangement, but he's also got to work with the Republicans to pass a budget.

Yeah.

So another piece of news this week was that basically, the House and Senate have got to agree on the budget format.

So far.

They haven't.

The Senate has put together a resolution.

The House is considering it.

But many of the hardliners in the House say it doesn't go far enough.

Yeah.

Like you need to make more cuts.

The president has met with everybody.

There was a dinner for the RNC saying like, okay, let's get on the same page on this.

But a lot of Republicans, especially House Republicans, are coming out saying, we don't trust the Senate to follow through on these cuts, and we don't think the president is going to be able to or willing to make these deep cuts.

So that creates a kind of imbalance there.

And a potential wedge issue for conservative Republicans in the House.

What is going to happen?

Are we going to get a budget before the House and Senate break for the Passover, Easter, or recess, or are we going to have to fight this out and come to the brink of a government shutdown?

I don't know, and and it's getting more complicated because, Democrats, especially in the House, have smell, blood in the water.

Yeah.

I don't know how you smell blood in the water, but they have done so right.

So now, Hakeem Jeffries, the leader or the minority leader of the Democrats in the in the House, he's trying to have a one on one debate with, Johnson.

Right.

So they can discuss the budget and what Democrats are doing to some extent is going public and saying, look, this is a, I'm quoting here a reverse Robin Hood, maneuver.

Right?

They want to cut things like Medicaid or Medicare, etc., etc..

Right.

And they want to give tax cuts on the trillions to these, billionaires.

Right?

Right.

So it's let's discuss and then they try to open that gap.

Yeah.

And basically in preparation for 2026.

Yeah.

And there is a sort of lingering question about tariffs, right.

Like Peter Navarro, who is the kind of trade specialist and guru in the white House is fighting on Musk.

So we got two millionaires, billionaires fighting each other about what to do for the economy when people can't buy bread, like it's not a good look.

And I think that, as you say, the implications for the election are going to be pretty profound.

So, you know, we're going to kind of just sort of hope for this to happen.

And we get a budget resolution.

As Donald Trump says, close your eyes and get there is what he says, they're going to have to swallow some hard votes here.

And so it's not just about the budget, but, you know, the cuts that are probably going to be there.

And it's also about Doge, what happens to government services.

People can't even call Social Security more to get a kind of, you know, clear answer on the phone.

And then you've got tariffs where people are struggling to sort of get their 401 K balances up.

So it's going.

To be, the amount of money that is supposed to be coming back to the federal government that we haven't seen yet, because the number of Doge, very dodgy.

Yeah, yeah.

There you go.

Yeah.

Nice.

Nice alliteration.

There's a pretty clean.

Yeah.

Let's talk about Texas, because the big news this week is that Ken Paxton has officially launched his effort to try to unseat John Cornyn.

He's running for U.S. Senate.

And this will be what amounts to a pretty bitter primary.

The response from the Cornyn campaign was pretty direct.

All he said was Ken Paxton is a fraud.

Doesn't that just say it all?

Yeah, it's.

Going to be, kind of an establishment versus this insurgency campaigning.

And it'll tell us a lot about the future of what's going to happen in Texas.

The insurgents have been battling for years to get the power and to try to unseat a lot of these sort of country club Republicans who have been in power for a long time.

But once you kind of really at the vanguard of moving Texas to the Red column in the early 2000, and now this new group wants to say your time is done.

In fact, Ken Paxton says exactly this your time is done.

So how is this all going to play out in a very bitter primary that is really right around the corner, right?

Less than a year away we're going to see the sparks fly.

Well, it's going to be very bitter.

It's going to be very poignant.

And he's going to be very aggressive on both sides.

Think Paxton has some money?

Yeah.

Obviously Cornyn has a lot of money.

And we still waiting to see what happens to the wild car.

Yeah, the dark horse, you know, stealthy moves, here and there.

Wesley Hunt.

Right.

That could suddenly be like.

Yeah, you know what?

Yeah, I'm your guy.

That's the guerrilla warfare.

Yeah.

It's just I want to win gold.

Yeah, I.

Wouldn't mess with him.

Yeah.

He also, as I note, he raised about $2 million in the first quarter of this year, kind of very on the sly, right?

I don't know if he's going to jump in now.

That's not clear yet.

We speculated and he obviously is running ads and stuff with the expectation that he wants to increase his name ID, so maybe it's not this, but something else because we will see this transition happen in the leadership in the Republican Party.

The kind of group that's in there now is going to eventually kind of cycle out.

And so a lot of the new generation is going to be a part of it.

So if he does jump in, it'll be a real generational fight.

But as it is now, Ken Paxton still going to have to battle his way through, pretty resilient John Cornyn.

Oh yeah.

And I think you said something like, you know, he's won 18 straight contests.

That's pretty hard to beat.

And obviously, this Republican primary audience is a little different.

But Paxton's a potential liability here.

So a couple things actually happened with Paxton this week that are worth noting.

It's a kind of good bad, right?

In good news, the Justice Department declined to prosecute Ken Paxton.

This actually is something that the Biden Justice Department didn't decide to prosecute.

This was a federal investigation.

That was really the most serious inquiry.

Basically, he was able to settle a different fraud case and corruption allegations, eventually get dropped by the FBI.

So he's a bit in the clear on this.

Some bad news, though, is that Texas judge is awarded $6.5 million to four senior aides who blew the whistle on Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Improper firing of them.

Basically, they had gone to the FBI saying there's some business here going on that's problematic.

And so they got fired as a result.

The laws are really clear on this.

So they're going to get paid at some point.

Although Ken Paxton says, you know, this ruling is, you know, ridiculous judgment, even though they didn't fight it out and actually, like, and this is sort of complicated, but as a matter of law, they chose not to contest the charges.

So there's really nothing to contest here.

So as a matter of literal fact, this is now a kind of known thing.

So the judge had basically no choice but to say, yeah, like you're going to have to pay these people.

So I guess my question to you is this Paxton's had good days and bad days sued Biden a bunch of times.

The base loves it.

Serious liabilities when it comes to some of the fraud issues and sort of ethics, things that are happening to his career, is it going to matter at all?

I don't know, I mean, who knows?

Yeah.

Is it going to be harder?

Absolutely.

Is it going to really, really, really matter?

No.

Paxton has a base that is very different from that of Cornyn Yeah.

Right.

So whatever Cornyn says about, Paxton, the base doesn't care.

Yeah.

It's like which base shows up.

Right.

And in a year, remember, like we've been talking about, that's going to be rough for Republican incumbents.

It could just be the case like we saw in the specials from a couple of weeks ago that the base stays home.

They don't want to come.

So then the question is sort of is it just the sort of most committed true believers, the most kind of aggressive Republicans, the conservatives, like the people who would support Ken Paxton, are the only people who come.

You shrink the overall turnout and Paxton wins in a kind of narrow race.

Or is it the case that, you know, Republicans are resurgent?

They want to sort of really see this battle come about and they understand the stakes.

So they come out and vote.

It depends.

Yeah, I mean, it's going to be a turnout election.

So far we have, you know, serious contenders.

Paxton, obviously.

Cornyn, we need to wait and see what Hunt is going to do.

Hunt has if he enters the game, the capacity to divide and conquer one way or the other.

Stealing votes from here is doing a little bit, number of votes over there.

Maybe her.

Yeah.

Very competitive.

Probably hurts, probably hurts Paxton more, right.

Because Cornyn is going to get his votes.

Like I think those are pretty stable.

I don't know how much more he's going to able to convince people that he's the right choice here.

He's already kind of done that.

And so it's a turnout question, like you say.

But I think hunt coming in really does take away the momentum from like a challenger to Cornyn.

If you didn't like what challenge we're doing, then Paxton is a good choice.

But then you've got Hunt who presents a or kind of looks or less ethically challenged face.

And so maybe you kind of pull back on that and.

Then it depends if President Trump, supports either Paxton or Cornyn.

- Yes!

All right.

Or Hunt, give it to me because I think you're totally right.

Like basically Trump is the kingmaker.

Oh yeah.

If he says one of the three of these.

People, that is the.

Choice, then they're probably going to be the choice.

I actually don't know what he'll do.

Cornyn and Trump have made nice, but Paxton and Trump are close because of the sort of election stuff.

Sure.

Wesley Hunt has been very vocal about support of Donald Trump, especially the tariffs.

What's going to happen?

What is Trump do here?

I don't know.

Who does he pick, right?

- I don't know.

It's going to be interesting.

It will be.

And so the I think the point now is that basically that Paxton has got to spend some time raising money.

That's going to be job one.

Really, it's going to be fund raising.

A lot of what he does is just to say, like he did, to blame Dade Phelan for the problem of having to pay the whistleblowers, that it's all about the establishment's fault they're out to get me, right?

They don't want to me to do what I'm doing here, to kind of make, you know, this a conservative place that's been a useful tool for Ken Paxton.

So he's going to have to start doing that immediately.

Because as it is, you know, John Cornyn sitting on a whole whole bunch of oh yeah.

So and actually, Cornyn got the endorsement of the National Border Patrol Council so he can sort to shore up his bona fides when it comes to border control or security and immigration issues, which is going to be a big issue for, for, the the election for those Republicans.

So we'll see how that plays out.

But let's talk elections beyond that, though, my friend, there's going to be a lot going on.

Glenn Hager has been confirmed as the chancellor of the Texas A&M University system, a woop.

And basically the, kind of race is on to see who's going to replace him.

Don Huffines, who is a kind of former senator and a kind of conservative stalwart, is throwing his hat in the ring.

Christi Craddick, who's currently the chair of the railroad Commission, also has said that she plans to run.

What do you make of this matchup?

Well, I mean, it's going to be very interesting.

Christi Craddick has a lot of, credentials running or being the incoming chair of the Texas Railroad Commission.

So, you know, I think that that is something, to her advantage.

Then, on the other hand, Don Huffines, has pledged to spend, $10 million.

He's rich.

On his campaign, which is an insane amount of money, but fine to.

Be to be comptroller.

Right.

Exactly.

I guess I'm not surprised, though, right?

I mean, the stakes are high for all these races, and there's this assumption that basically, when you become comptroller, that the next step is lieutenant governor or governor.

Right.

So, you know, there's a springboard effect.

Oh, yeah.

We're spending some money right now to get there.

Right.

And finally, he will try to bring DOGE to Texas, but we already have some sort of, Texas DOGE.

Even before Elon Musk decided to create DOGE.

It's a good point.

Yeah.

I mean.

The Sunset Commission, so.

But, you know, it's, It sounds good.

It sounds good.

And primary audiences like it, right?

So, yeah, it would sell pretty well, especially if you can make the case that you're willing to spend a bunch of money to make sure that Texas stays red, which is really the issue.

If this is an open seat, then, you know, you're certainly going to see some Republicans and Democrats fight it out in a general.

And if it's a bad year for, you know, Republicans, then it could be the case that Democrats try to sneak it in here.

This is going to be a pretty ugly fight.

And over very kind of little stakes.

What's interesting to me is that the office of comptroller has always been one where this sort of is just about counting beans.

Literally.

You're the state's kind of accountant.

And yet now the kind of expectation is that that changes to be much more of a kind of conservative version of itself.

One element is that they're going to be in charge of watching the money for the putative voucher system, which is likely to pass, that's still in the mix in the House and Senate.

So we'll talk about that more next week when things percolate after the budget fight.

But basically that's going to be something that the comptroller is in charge of.

So there is a real renewed sense that this is an important office politically.

You know, the comptroller's office has always been political, right?

Right.

Like Bob Bullock, when he was basically running down people who hadn't paid their back taxes, or, Carol Creighton Strayhorn, who just, sadly passed away.

She fought with Rick Perry on budget issues, but use that to her kind of political advantage.

So this is a race that matters in the sense that being comptroller gives you some serious political power.

The other thing, too, is that, like if you look at who is released, the kind of names for the endorsements, you certainly see a kind of real insurgent grassroots versus kind of you kind of Texas mega-donor.

So, some of the people who Huffines put on his list include like Matt Gaetz.

Oh, yeah Vivek Ramaswamy.

Mattress Mac, Brandon Gill, the US rep, obviously from Texas, Christi Craddick has a huge list of Republican donors who are probably more establishment like Javaid Anwar, Brent, Ryan, Kelsey Warren.

These are kind of all - right really, Greg Abbott's donors who were kind of, you know, willing to sort of test waters a bit.

So it's going to be a bit of a fight.

But and here's how you know, it's going to be a fight.

So one of the people on the list was named Glenn Rogers.

And remember, Glenn Rogers was the you as the Texas House rep who got ousted from Greg Abbott's purge.

And he's been really mad.

Oh, yeah, op eds and stuff against this.

And so some of the conservatives looked at this and said, you got Glenn Rogers on your list.

There's no way you're going to be conservative enough.

And what she came back with and said was that you've got the wrong Glenn Rogers.

This is actually my dad's orthodontist.

You know, who I've known since I was a kid.

And so to me, this is a perfect encapsulation of just how vicious this fight is going to be.

Every little detail is going to be about kind of who's in power, who's up, who's down right, and the conservative kind of fight there.

And so that'll be interesting.

But we've got more elections yet more oh, Greg Abbott's called a special for CD18.

- Yes.

For November 4th.

What do you make of that?

Well, I mean, we were expecting that, we discussed, last week that, you know, it was it going past November 4th was entering in very, very, very, more murky water.

So he's doing that.

and it opens, the raise little bit more competitive, right.

Obviously, having more time keeps, more time for folks are, planning to run, but cannot do it right now.

For example, Yolanda Jones.

Right.

That might run, but she's in Austin right now.

This gives her a little bit of a cushion, right?

Exactly.

Yeah.

Because to announce that you're running now means you're sort of a lame duck in a way, right?

You just sort of neglecting your Austin duties in favor of running for something else.

So it's a kind of a bad look, and it does kind of crowd the field a bit.

Does it change the dynamics?

I mean, Christian Menefee, obviously, like we said, is raise a ton of money, got a bunch of endorsements.

Amanda Edwards is definitely able to raise a bunch of money.

She's put out a list of endorsements.

So there's a kind of, you know, definite kind of top cycle, right, of, of candidates here.

But does this change that dynamic, like significantly or, how is it going to work?

And the second question is Abbott takes a swipe at Harris County election.

Oh yeah.

Right.

The reason we have to have, election in November is because Harris County can't handle it, right.

In the short term.

Right.

Harris County kicks back and says, yeah, we can like we did find last cycle.

Right.

There's been hiccups before that.

But generally speaking like yeah that's true.

So what do you think about that.

Is he making this up or is this, like politics or is it true?

None of the above.

What?

Obviously.

So I don't think that's right.

Yeah.

Always right.

I mean, it's it's impossible to say that they cannot run elections, right?

They have run elections.

There have been a lot of things, investigations and that, the State Department, the Secretary of State has investigated in these and that it and yes, there have been faults like in any other counties.

Right, right.

So there has not been any evidence that.

Oh, yeah.

Just, just incompetent.

Period.

Right, right.

So yes, it's kind of, yeah.

Of, bit of a dodge.

Right?

Yeah.

It's hard to say what he's thinking, but for sure, the benefit is that if you take one vote away from Democrats in DC, it's going to make it slightly easier for Republicans.

So it gives them until November at least to be able to caper here.

But I don't know if it'll change things dramatically.

But you know, this is a marginal fight here that we're seeing right in DC.

The number of votes between a kind of victory and defeat is really probably one, maybe two.

So this could be this sort of it could be.

And then you think about the people who are in this district, like who need to get attention to issues like they've got a problem with Social Security or they have a federal grant that they're working through, they need help with, these are all things that these citizens really need to have access to.

So that's something that's definitely lamentable.

Speaking of lamentable, the last thing for the week is that Fort Bend County Democrats have called for county Judge K.P.

George to resign upon recent allegations.

Natalie Webber, who is one what our colleagues here at Houston Public Media reports basically that, George was first elected in 2018 and then reelected in 2022, has been accused of two counts of money laundering up to $150,000.

And this is, of course, following previous indictments on unrelated criminal charges for allegedly faking racist attacks against his own campaign on social media.

Do you think that his fight to keep his seat is going to work?

Well, he's going to be definitely is going As you said, the, chair of the Democratic county, Democratic Party in Fort Bend County has asked for his resignation.

Obviously, Republicans in commissioners court have also asked for his resignation.

So the pressure is amounting to an increase in an increasing and increasing.

You have already some people indicating that they want to run and they want to participate in a primary.

Yeah.

So he's going to be very complicated.

Yeah.

And this is a definite kind of purple county.

Right.

The people who are winning these down bad elections are only winning by about 1%.

Democrats typically.

Right George only won by about 3%, 4%.

So it's a really close fight.

We know a politician survives can survive scandals, but they have to have unity of their party.

He doesn't have no.

So it could be a real problem for them to hold the seat.

And that and the flip could be meaningful.

Having four years of a county judge of a different party is a tremendous amount of time.

Right.

And it's in preparation.

Right?

It's in preparation for the Democratic, parties looking in in terms of what are we going to do there?

Yeah or not, but obviously that's going to be something that we're going to keep track for the next couple of weeks.

I'm Jeronimo Cortina and I'm Brandon Rottinghaus.

The conversation keeps up next week.

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