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

I'm Jeronimo Cortina.

And I'm Brandon Rottinghaus.

We're political science professor at the University of Houston.

We had so much fun on primary night Jeronimo that we decided to go into overtime.. Why not?

Oh why not?

Let's keep talking about it.

Honestly, there was so much going on.

Yeah.

We thought initially the primary would be kind of boring, but we were totally wrong.

There's a lot of storylines that are happening, and of course we know that it's not the end of it because we're going to do this all again in May when we have a bunch a historical number of runoffs.

Yeah.

So let's start at the top.

We had tremendous turnout.

This was breaking records in Texas.

The Democrats increased their turnout by about 200%, Republicans by about 120%.

So there was a significant enthusiasm for this, largely driven by the Senate race.

But obviously there's something happening in Texas.

What does this tell us about what's going on and how it relates to kind of national trends?

Well, it's one effect of, political polarization.

Midterm, Trump administration 2.0, yeah.

Yeah.

And obviously, there has been a lot of what national politics have contributed to state level politics.

And also obviously, state level politics have also contributed, to motivate voters to way to go either way.

One, for the Democratic primary or the Republican primary.

So I think it's just an indication that people seem to be paying attention and that people seem to be, picking their winners based on their political or policy positions.

Yeah, I think you're right, too, about the Trump administration.

People are obviously excited about this.

They want to weigh in on it, and the only time they can do it is this way.

It's odd.

They're doing it in a primary because it's such a rare thing, the main vote in primaries.

But here we are.

And that turnout definitely has implications now.

It's too soon to tell whether that turnout means that Correct.

November is going to be a big turnout.

But if you model this in a way that you can expect to see the kind of relationship between the primary and the general unfold, it's very possible that the Democrats have added between 300 and half, 300,000 and half a million new potential voters.

They're having more people to talk to, and that means that they're going to be in a better position.

Whether it means Texas will turn blue in the general, you know, we don't know.

But for sure, the opportunity is there and it's looking the way that they wanted it to look.

We'll certainly talk about the Senate race as that.

But a lot of swing vote constituencies are also breaking towards the Democrats by about 3 to 1.

If you look at some of these numbers in terms of how people have traditionally voted or whether they've ever voted before, there's a lot of shift here among non, primary voting independents who voted for the first time, 72% chose the Democratic primary and 27% chose the Republican primary.

So if independents- Right.

-are going to back Democrats, that's a huge gain.

We'll talk a lot more about the Hispanic vote, but 74% broke for the Democrats in this primary.

South Texas voters same, 72% broke for the Democrats.

Independent Hispanic voters, 83% for the Democrats.

So if you're looking at this from a an optimistic perspective, this does look good for Democrats in terms of what's to come.

Now, of course motivation matters.

Yeah.

-messaging matters.

And of course money matters.

Correct.

So all these things have to be in place, you know, in November for this to operate.

But if you're a Democrat, I think you're looking at this and you're pretty happy with some of those outcomes.

But let's talk about some specific races, because obviously that's going to drive much of the turnout.

We talked a little bit last week about the primary and the Republican and Democratic side's top of the ticket.

That's largely the brass ring.

Everyone's motivated by that.

What were your top takeaways from those races?

Well, I think, as we said last,week, one of the key thing is, well, was the, the reality in terms of voting and then what the polls were saying.

Right.

So it's not worth even repeating that.

But, I think that, that indicates that we have to be very careful in terms of how we interpret, polls when they're polling and granted, polls are just the picture of that day.

But also, we have to be mindful that public opinion swings just like that does not happen, right?

No, least, let's say, 100 years of public opinion research has never, ever, suggested that.

So that's one issue.

The other issue, I think it's very important is the geographic distribution of, of the board for both the Republicans and the Democratic, primary.

When you look at the maps, you see that, Talarico did a very good job in, I guess, expanding, his campaign, operation all over the state and perhaps was not very good in urban centers.

And then on the other hand, we see that, John Cornyn did better in urban centers, on average, than Ken Paxton.

Right.

The Texas Triangle was won by, Cornyn, in comparison to, Paxton that had, you know, a wider reach in, other non big urban centers.

Yeah.

It's interesting because the turnout in rural areas in 2024 was higher than in urban areas.

We might see that switch.

And that's not surprising in a, you know, a in a midterm year.

But it's interesting to see that that could be the tale of how this goes down.

Talarico I think, ran a good campaign.

Obviously, there's some internal churn about how the campaign was going to unfold.

Who was a better candidate in general.

That debate took place largely online, including a lot of people who weren't from Texas.

So obviously there's going to be some need to mend that fence, and it's going to be a very expensive race on both sides.

We could see the setting records, and I'm not surprised that this has already set records for a primary.

And that's, to the tune of about 110 to $120 million.

I think the Crockett didn't run a great campaign.

We mentioned this last week.

She didn't get a jump start as Talarico did.

She didn't engage in the kind of fundamental campaign tactics that you have to in a place like Texas to buy up ads in these media markets to get a good ground game.

There are a lot of people who also and I want to get your take on this, said that like the late Harris endorsement of Crockett actually hurt her.

What do you think about that?

I'm surprised that this has become a point of contention, but there's so much bad blood with Kamala Harris that perhaps it just became a kind of instant negative.

What you think?

Well, I don't know.

I mean, it was, first of all, super late.

Yeah.

Real late.

Even after early voting, it's right.

Right.

So I don't know if it was, something that, helped Crockett or not.

I think that, when you're talking about the Texas electorate.

Right.

Even Democrat voters are not your liberal, Democratic voters in other states tend to be a little bit more conservative.

I don't know if the if the if, at the end.

Right.

Because this is a primary electorate at the end, in the general election eve, that's going to motivate a lot of, other, voters.

Right?

So we I mean, Jasmine Crockett got, 1 million votes.

Yeah.

No, I did, which is not bad.

Talarico got like around 1.2, 1.18 or whatever it is, a million votes.

But you have to start thinking about the other million, right?

How can you bring especially in urban areas, how are you going to bring these folks, into the fold in such a way that they don't feel, abandoned or something like that?

So true.

That's going to be, especially important.

And Talarico has an advantage that he doesn't have to go to a runoff.

Yeah.

That's great.

Now, he can spend that time raising money and the money building momentum and mending fences.

And he needs to.

Yup.

I mean, Jasmine Crockett carried five of the biggest counties in Texas with the biggest black populations.

The only one that he carried was Bexar County.

Right.

That is, I think, by itself, a need and a real wake up call for the Talarico folks.

The good news is they've got a lot of money to be able to potentially do it.

Another problem for her was that, like external money didn't show up for her, right?

But they did.

For Talarico, he had a three month head start.

He outraised her in like hard money, but he also basically had a lot of outside money, about $8 million from the Lone Star Rising PAC and and oh, about $1 million for right from the kind of Crockett, Texas forward PAC.

So the money really mattered here and the jump start really mattered.

And at the end of the day, that's the kind of way that you win.

Texas.

So in a sense, this is sort of what Democrats are going to face.

And if they can recreate that, then they can be successful.

But for Democrats on the Republican side, looking across the aisle, this is really the dream scenario.

They go to a runoff in that race.

You've got John Cornyn, you've got Ken Paxton, both with the willingness to get into the ring, mix it up, throw some punches- Yup.

-and get very, very bloody.

That's what this is going to end up being.

John Cornyn edges Paxton by just a little bit.

But it's going to be a bare knuckle just mega primary battle... Oh yeah I mean now he's going to be, concentrated attacks, over and over and over and over and over and over and over.

And which Cornyn could very well still lose.

I mean- He could spend another, you know, 60 million, $70 million and still not come out ahead on this because it's just the case, I think that Cornyn to his hit his ceiling and in a runoff where you're going to have a lot fewer people vote.

This is a scenario where we've seen insurgent Republicans do really well against establishment figures.

Oh, absolutely.

And Paxton, whatever you want to say about Paxton, he has a very, very, very disciplined, following, right.

And regardless of what he says does or doesn't do.

Yeah.

People are going to support him.

Yeah.

They'll be in his corner.

Yeah.

Let's talk about other races because there's a lot of stuff happening down ballot.

We talked about a lot of runoffs.

Let's talk about some of them at the at the statewide level at the attorney general's race.

Mayes Middleton.

"MAGA Mayes" Middleton, as he self-proclaimed himself, pulled pretty far ahead of Chip Roy, Chip Roy in the polling, like you mentioned a minute ago.

And last week was way ahead.

Yeah.

And it turns out that was basically totally flipped.

That was a pretty interesting race on the Democratic side, you have Nathan Johnson, who again, was supposed to finish second, ends up finishing ahead of Galveston, former Galveston Mayor Joe Jaworski.

But it, obviously is going to be decided by, you know, voters in, in, in a few months.

So what do you make of that race that got pretty nasty, and I suspect it's going to get even nasty.

-Oh, yeah.

-The Republican side.

Well, yeah.

I mean, once again, you have, Mayes Middleton senator.

Mayes Middleton... Oh, he's still a state senator.

Yes.

But not anymore.

Right.

No, he had to resign.

Oh, yeah, I, I don't know, I get always... There's a million- in terms of the, of the timing like you are.

But you're interim like right.

Anyways.

No Dan Patrick already picked who's going to replace him in the Senate.

So that's all done.

Gotcha okay.

Fair enough.

So here once again we see these geographic divide right.

We see starting let's say Austin to the left Chip Roy won.

Austin to the right and up.

Mayes Middleton won.

Yeah.

One of the advantage or the key things here is you don't have the Cornyn-Paxton battle, right?

You have two, let's say anti-establishment.

Yeah.

Rogue operators, self-made, etcetera, etcetera.

Coming.

Tête-à-tête.

Right?

Yeah.

That's face to face.

There you go.

Wow.

Translate that for.

Yeah.

We should have that, like, on the screen.

It's like- In parentheses.

Right.

But that's going to be very important.

Yeah.

Chip Roy, can, potentially get a lot of money.

Yeah.

I don't know if it's going to be enough, money to compete against Middleton.

Middleton's got his own war chest.

Yeah, that's been of his personal dollars to get that done, and that's going to be pretty important.

Middleton is come hard against these folks, especially Chip Roy, who he said is, like, not aligned closely enough with Donald Trump.

Right.

Obviously, Roy was one of the people who voted to certify the 2020 election result, which is like an apostasy in the MAGA movement.

So that is going to be a problem for him.

And he had the serious words with Ken.

Paxton ends up quitting and whistleblowing on the attorney general.

I think Ken Paxton get involved in this race and it could tip it to Mayes Middleton.

So Middleton, to be honest, ran a hard to campaign like vicious, but it could very well be effective.

So that's interesting.

But on the other hand, Chip Roy brings that, independence one way or the other, right?

That the MAGA following.

Or MAGA conservatives were very conservative.

Really, really, really like, I mean, just look at Don Huffines, right, that we're going to talk about.

No, no, no, let's talk about that right now.

Huffines wins the comptroller's race.

He beat a couple of established figures, right.

Christi Craddick, who is the Railroad Commissioner chair.

And, and he beat these kind of incumbent, basically Kelly Hancock, who was Abbott's handpicked successor.

So here- By far.

Huffines is going to be kind of a thorn in, Greg Abbott's side.

Collectively, they spent $16 million for this race, which is stunning for an office that no one's ever heard of.

Right.

The Comptroller is extremely important because they're the ones who certify the budget.

They're the ones who basically track the money to see how much the "Leg" has to spend.

Normally it's about counting beans, but this is a pretty important race because this is going to be the cornerstone of how the new public Ed accounts are influenced, and whether or not, you know, the money is going to be spent properly.

He's promised to basically DOGE all of Texas government.

That could be a headache for Greg Abbott going forward.

And the fact that he and Abbott don't see eye to eye and Huffines was a former opponent of Abbott in an election cycle for governor a few years ago means that it could be pretty interesting.

Fireworks come next legislative session.

I mean, absolutely, because the role of the comptroller is, is is saying you have these much money to spend.

Yeah.

That's when they certify that.

Yeah.

And then the legislature said, okay, fine, I have $100 in I'm willing to spend this week.

Yeah.

But on the other hand, the other thing that you just pointed out is extremely important because is about waste and don't have fines, has a very particular vision of how government should spend money.

Yeah.

Which may not align right with the current thing.

I mean asking very, very obvious things.

Right.

Should we spend, given that we have public education, should we spend in educational vouchers?

Maybe.

Yes.

Maybe not.

Right.

Oh, it's he brings that spending bill.

Yeah.

To the foil.

Yeah.

That not necessarily aligns well with let's say a political agenda.

Yeah.

So that could could become especially very, very complicated.

Watch this space.

I think this is going to be the most interesting political friction that we're likely to see.

Oh yeah.

In the next legislative session.

Yeah.

So let's talk about though a success story for Greg Abbott.

He back Nathan Sheets in the race for AG Commissioner.

You may have tasted Nathan Sheets is honey.

Yes.

This became a political issue because Sid Miller said that the honey is not pure.

It's cooked in.

There's stuff added to it.

So it's funny to see how, like, an ag race gets devolved into a story about how good the candidates honeys are.

But Sid Miller went down a this was an interesting race because yeah, like I said, Nate Sheets got the endorsement from Greg Abbott.

He got the endorsement from Dan Buckingham.

And also like the Farm Bureau.

And honestly, I know way too much about the ag commissioner position because for my Rick Perry book, like, this is sort of the, kind of way that Perry got started.

And whoever the Farm Bureau picks is who wins, right?

And once they endorsed Sheets, it was pretty clear that's the way it was going to go.

So he ends up beating Miller pretty badly.

Yeah.

Miller out of a job.

I mean, this is a kind of stalwart of Texas politics.

He was among that cohort, elected in 2014 and has been in office ever since and now is out of a job.

Well, maybe he and works for the Trump administration.

Who knows?

It's a good I mean, he has- He got the Trump endorsement, which didn't seem to matter.

It was late.

But yeah, it was a short but it didn't matter.

And here he's he's this is one of the offices in Texas where, you can see a very well organized, group, going one or the other and Texas agriculture, and farming, I guess has been up and down there has been a lot of problems, especially with the with the tariffs.

There has been a lot of problems in terms of exporting a lot of of goods produced here in Texas, even, cattle, there is a lot of problems with grazing areas.

There's a lot of problems with importing or exporting cattle, processing and exporting it again.

So maybe, fresh pair of eyes and let's see.

Perhaps the "Leg" didn't trust him.

They took away a lot of his powers.

Yeah, yeah, he was kind of outspoken on things that they didn't like.

So I think a lot of people are kind of happy to see him gone, but not Donald Trump, who.

Yeah, I kind of pick wrong on this one.

Let's talk about the Railroad Commissioner race.

Jim Wright is the incumbent.

And Bo French, who we've talked about several times, basically pushed him to a runoff.

That's an interesting race.

That's of course, included regulatory stories about the oil and gas industry, which is what the Railroad Commission actually does, but also included a clash over China and diversity rules, obviously, is a kind of modern take on the Republican Party politics.

Bo French has been extremely outspoken.

We've talked to all about his outlandish comments on social media.

He's been chastised by his own party for these kinds of things.

And then forgotten and forgiven.

Apparently.

Seems like so.

Yeah.

Let's talk about the, Lieutenant governor's race.

Vicky Goodwin headed to a runoff, which is really interesting.

Her opponent in that is, a union official, Marcos Velez, he's got a little bit of momentum here.

She didn't run a great campaign.

Obviously, they're going to have to take on Dan Patrick, who won his primary.

Overwhelmingly.

And it could be pretty, interesting to see how the Democratic Party kind of shifts along those lines.

What do you make of that?

Well, I mean, it's going to be interesting, especially because you have people with experience.

And once again, Democrats may have, the 2018 2.0 repeat.

Right.

So I guess they know that.

Yeah.

Presumably.

Right.

So this is the time to get into that hotel and perhaps, break the spell of not winning a statewide election in 30 something years.

That's a good point.

Yeah, like, a lot of this could be driven by the top of the ticket.

But, you know, one thing we did learn from 2018 was that it wasn't just the top down, it was also the bottom up.

The Democrats had competitive candidates all across the- Correct.

-the board and the kind of ginning up of support really did work its way upwards.

So they need to have good candidates in these positions for sure.

So these primaries I think, are telling for that.

And the runoffs will be really instructive in terms of like who they're going to pick for these things.

So let's talk about some of those down ballot races.

A bunch of these U.S.

House races went to runoffs.

Oh, yeah.

And here in Houston, Christian Menefee, who was presumed to win by a pretty outstanding margin, didn't he ended up getting more votes than Green, but it's going to likely go to a runoff.

Amanda Edwards, who was still on the ballot because of the quirkiness of the calendar, got about 7% of the vote that may have pushed it into a runoff.

But also largely what's going on here is that the little sliver of 18 in Fort Bend County voted overwhelmingly for Al Green.

That was part of his old district, which was among his core base of support.

So that's going to go to a runoff, another election for these folks who were so blessed with democracy.

They're going to vote like eight times in the last one and a half years.

And this election, I mean, the runoff in May, especially in this district, given that there is, election, fatigue.

Yes.

It's going to be a very, very low turnout.

Yeah, I really think so, too.

So whoever gets more people out.

Literally just your neighborhood, get them to come out.

Yeah.

Buy them all.

Whataburger.

Yeah.

Make it happen.

Yeah.

Runoff.

Also in, the, 23 that Tony Gonzales's district.

He is in a runoff against Brandon Herrera, the gun rights YouTube star.

Yeah.

This was important because as we talked about, Tony Gonzales got snagged in a scandal where one of his former staffers committed suicide because of an affair and all the related issues.

That's interesting.

Julie Johnson in Dallas is going to run off with Colin Allred.

That became a kind of statewide story, because Colin Allred jumped out of the Senate race to run there in that, here in Houston, Congressional District nine, the new district.

Alex Mealer, who got the Trump endorsement over Briscoe Cain is going to be pushed into a runoff.

I want to talk about this because this might be a really interesting race.

The fact that this one to a runoff means no one knows who these folks are.

Leticia Gutierrez on the other side, the Democratic side got 50% of the vote, 50% of the vote.

This is a Latino opportunity district.

Half that district is Latinos.

This is one of those districts where the Republicans drew it to be, Republican pickup.

But it went if you look at the numbers, 53% for the Democrats.

So this could be a harbinger of like what people call a dummy meander, where you draw lines to try to get your own advantage and the you end up doing it, you know, mistakenly.

So this to me could be an interesting general election race, but obviously it's going to go to a runoff for the Republicans.

Yeah.

Interesting stuff there.

A net loss.

Dan Crenshaw lost the first incumbent to lose and since 2015 lost to Steve Toth, which we talked about last week.

Outflanked by the right.

Yeah.

And, yeah, it's it's one of these things that, signals the way that the Republican Party is punishing those that, tend to deviate or anything like that.

But overall, regardless of that, I think that that is very dangerous for democracy overall.

Right.

You're elected to represent a district.

You're not elected to be aligned with a particular ideology or with a particular point of view.

If your point of view and represent your district is differs from that of the leadership or the president, or so, so be it.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

In this case, it is clear that perhaps, that, the constituency of represented countries did not like that and, went on to elect, someone, more conservative.

So, yeah, I don't know.

Again, Republicans may lose a lot of expertise in, in, in the conference.

That's a great point.

And that is, because the expertise that Crenshaw brings, to that in terms of national security, in terms of drug violence, etc., etc.

was extremely, extremely, extremely good.

So we'll see is also a pretty serious kind of money hub.

Just connecting into sure, being a lot of money to folks like on his way up the chain in terms of leadership.

And now that's all gone.

So this is an issue two for Cornyn.

And if Cornyn loses, he was a serious kind of money hub.

And if that goes away then yeah all that money goes away to down ballot.

I just noticed this to some House moderates like Stan Kitsman and Cecil Bell lost.

This isn't statewide news, but they both spent over $1 million.

Stan closer to $2 million.

Both had Trump endorsements.

And so we're likely to see the Republican Party shift to the right in the House just a little by little.

Right?

I mean, the last cycle, we saw lots of a shift towards the right.

Now, kind of little by little, it's moving in that direction.

So this is definitely going to change how the legislature operates going forward.

But let's talk big picture about two things.

Number one, redistricting.

Number two, the Latino vote.

Like we said, there are several districts of opportunity.

The Republicans were hoping that they could pick up seats 28, 34 or 35.

All of them shifted to the Democrats.

This.

Right?

Yeah.

So I mean, it's not, of course, a general in there.

We're voting head to head.

Sure.

If you tally the numbers in terms of turnout and if it holds, it could be the case that the Republicans end up not getting an even maybe one seat out of that whole redistricting enterprise.

But I also want to talk about and keep in mind, too, the, you know, they spent millions of millions of dollars.

But last, talk about the Latino vote.

You saw it surge right in the Valley.

And it certainly broke for Talarico to the tune of about 66%.

That's good news for Democrats, I should think.

Right.

Well, absolutely.

And one of the things and we said it in the last election, when people say, well, is the realignment and once again, political realignment do not happen in an election, right.

We don't know what's going to happen in these midterm elections.

Right.

But it shows that the Latino electorate, as sophisticated as all the ones, the Latino electorate sided with the Republican Party because the Republican Party was, promising or campaigning on issues are worrying, pointing not only for Latinos, but also for the general electorate, the economy, affordability, jobs, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

Yeah.

And within two years of the Trump administration, they haven't seen that.

It cratered.

Yeah.

Support for Trump is like, yeah, basically totally reversed.

And the fact is that now they're used to especially in the RGB, they're used to not believe in political parties that, will promise and then disappear.

And then we promise is they know that and, you know, proof of that.

I guess he's Bobby Pulido that.

There you go.

Also won, at his bid.

He thinks you don't sing well, but I think he's wrong.

What does he know anyway?

Grammy award.

Pretty well, Mr.

Pulido.

Any time we can do a duet, I would love to do that.

And maybe we'll, have it for next week.

Love it.

I'm Jernimo Cortina.

And I'm Brandon Rottinghaus.

The conversation keeps up next week.

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