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

I'm hearing Democratic political science professor at the University of Houston.

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

Obviously, lots going on in politics.

We've got a mayor's race happening.

We are voting early, hopefully for propositions, which is going to be the big topic of discussion Geronimo this week, because there's a lot going on at the state and questions about why we have to vote so much to amend the Constitution so frequently are definitely coming up among people who look at the ballot and say to me, why we.

Write all of amend the.

Constitution.

Yes.

So but obviously, the saddest news of all is that the Astros sadly lost.

Now, did they lose because of poor pitching, lack of situational hitting, or was it the Ted Cruz curse?

Yeah, I think Ted Cruz I mean, you have been keeping the stats.

What's this on directly?

The Astros are owned five this season at home when Ted Cruz is in attendance.

So that's not a great.

Yeah now they're not winning at home generally is a Ted Cruz's fault or is it you know the kind of MLB taking a breath.

You out.

Who don't know Right.

But yeah this does lead to some political questions because we're going to also talk about the Senate race which is heating up.

You've got the Democrats who are raising a bunch of money trying to compete with Ted Cruz, who's going to get a big war chest.

So lots going on there.

But obviously all eyes this week are on Gaza and on the Middle East because this is a continuing crisis happening.

We are seeing some delays because Israel is trying to negotiate to get some of the hostages out.

But obviously, this creates a massive political issue for the U.S.

The president was on TV asking for help from Congress to fund Israel and the Ukraine by a huge number.

And I think this helped the WHO.

Yeah, it's definitely going to help him.

Maybe.

But I want to ask you this because he's trying to make this case that he thinks that basically his presidency can be made and then his reelection secured by this kind of foreign policy moment.

Do you think that that's true?

Is that something that might be useful for him?

I think so, yes.

Or at least his chances are going to increase.

Right.

And the reason behind that is, well, first of all, you have a number of US citizens, our hostages in in Gaza.

Right.

So that's, you know, obviously a very, very, very intense problem.

And also, they have to come up with a very, very good solution for that.

So that's one issue.

The other issue is that, you know, Israel has very deep political ties with the US, and those ties, you know, have always bring, you know, political parties scenes together.

Yeah, you know, Democrats support Israel.

Republicans support Israel.

Yes.

And the general public as well.

So I think that if he is careful enough and he threads the line in that regard, I think that he can increase his chances.

Now, obviously, if that doesn't happen, yeah, he can blame Congress because we are Congress less.

Well, that's a great point, actually.

And I thought the same where this is a sharp moment for the president when he can basically point to the chaos happening in the House and among the Republican caucus and say, look, they can't even pick a speaker of the House like a leader that they all agree on.

And here I'm going to act as president.

Right.

And these moments are potentially stunning, right?

I mean, this is a president traveling to a foreign nation that's in conflict.

You've got the president giving Oval Office addresses.

This is the most presidential thing.

Right.

Yeah.

Like literally the stuff we, you know, kind of carved into monuments like.

And so it's useful for him to be able to develop this.

But obviously it's risky.

Right.

The last president who really was able to win on foreign policy alone was probably George H.W.

Bush after the Gulf War.

No, no.

You weren't born yet, so.

Correct.

Very young.

But that's a long time ago.

And so I think it's worrisome.

But I also want to note for the kind of general context, as you said, that the public tends to support the president on this.

In fact, you're seeing polling suggest that half of people responded after the attacks, that Israel was justified in striking back.

You also have about 54% of people who approve of Joe Biden's handling of that conflict.

So that's about the best he can do and honestly, given where things were pretty good.

So I do think that kind of running a foreign policy presidency has its advantages.

And for Joe Biden to be able to talk about sort of functionally preparing and sort of keeping democracy, that's good.

His general approach and it can be both abroad and at home.

And I think that's kind of where he's going to draw that sharp contrast with the Republican candidates likely Donald Trump.

But there's more to it, right?

So there are other candidates involved, like Nikki Haley, right.

Who's got a lot of foreign policy experience.

Does this help her in the election trying to basically unseat Donald Trump from not likely the nomination?

No, I don't think so.

Okay.

Why not?

Yeah, but because, you know, having policy expertise doesn't mean anything in these political.

Right.

Data.

From somebody with a policy degree like.

You know, I have a lot of policy expertise.

Right.

But I don't think anyone would elect me to do anything for you.

I mean, yeah, appreciate that.

But that's.

One.

I'm maybe if I vote for myself, you're going to be embarrassing.

But the question here is, you know, can she outwit Donald Trump into that?

And as important enough as an issue to really define the race?

I think, you know, former President Trump is going to say no one is, you know, friendlier ish whatever and supports supporting blah, blah, blah Israel than me.

Right.

And he'll get I mean, he.

Moved really flags.

Right?

He moved the embassy.

Yeah.

Good point.

I mean there is like.

Yes.

So if you say, you know, the geopolitical realignment of Middle Eastern politics with Israel.

Heavily 4 million coming on.

I'm sorry.

Oh, right.

Yeah, Maybe it's.

No, you're right.

And actually, too, we're in a moment where the public is much more insular than they were, say, 50 years ago.

You know what I mean?

Or even during the time of the Gulf War, the public is concerned about the economy of the U.S. And so it's sad to say, but like what's happening abroad, although it's terribly, you know, problematic and obviously really troubling, it's not something that is going to be like a major issue for most like a beleaguered economy here is going to outweigh foreign policy issues other places every single time.

So I think the president probably has to think about that carefully.

But obviously, I think the contrast with the Republicans is pretty big, and that's another kind of subject of discussion.

It's the ongoing speaker question.

I want to know, we are about 25 days with no Speaker of the House.

This is a major issue because they have to I don't know you know, govern occasional.

Yeah.

So we're at Halloween times and I see this is like the Walking dead.

You've got the Republicans who are just trying to find somebody who can serve as that leadership role.

What do you think?

Obviously, they're still fighting there at this point as we're recording about eight people who are still in the running right after the various other people have come and gone.

Jim Jordan and Steve Scalise.

And in a lot on a bunch more.

What do you think should happen?

Well, I have you know, I see two things.

Okay.

All right.

All right.

The first one is I know you love Halloween, but I see this as you know, early Mario voters a game.

Okay.

Right.

Gotcha.

You can just nod jump that breach and you always failing the middle.

Right.

Okay.

And then you know you have to restart the game 11,000 times.

Okay.

You get it.

You got to commit to those jumps.

Exactly.

And if you don't.

Exactly, you're going to want to jump.

So that's one thing.

But the other thing is that, you know, the Republican conference in Congress, I think there's four important groups, right?

You have the MAGA loyalists, right?

Those hard core MAGA loyalists, Trump supporters, and then you have the MAGA rank and file that you know, may or may not ideologically agree with some of those political premises.

Then you have the MAGA.

I don't want to, but I also don't want to lose my reelection.

Right.

So politically.

Savvy.

Yeah.

That, you know, it's like, yeah, MAGA is not very good but I just don't want to getting.

We don't want to.

Cross and then you have the anti MAGA right.

So each of these groups hold.

Yeah.

A little bit pieces of the conference.

Gotcha.

So you just need you know one of these groups to say no, I'm not going to support you.

Okay?

And then everything falls apart.

Gotcha.

The question is who among these eight candidates and perhaps later less number of candidates are going to be able to at least get a little bit from here, a little bit from here, here, here, here and create a coalition.

I don't know.

That's a great question.

And I think the big picture is exactly that, that no matter who wins, they're going to, you know, have to preside over this conference that's divided and bitter about the other groups.

And I think your breakdown really makes sense because they're looking for somebody who can speak, look at who can speak to each of these groups.

And that's increasingly hard.

Right.

And actually to like, if you think about the big picture here, like, why is this happening?

I mean, we can talk about the day to day and minute to minute literally, right.

Who is in, who's out?

But the big picture, I think, is worth exploring.

So, for instance, part of the problem is that you're seeing a decline in power of the party in the House.

Little by little.

You're electing since the 1990s, people who are individual, They don't think about the party, they don't think about, you know, the kind of trajectory of the house.

They think about themselves.

And that means you've got these individual actors who are then willing to challenge the power of the speaker.

And that's exactly what happens.

And so although Newt Gingrich was good at kind of, you know, making sure that the party maintained its stability, they said in things like term limits, they set in limitations in terms of seniority.

So they're basically limited how much power the party had.

And that's so come back to bite them, because now all these individuals have this power.

They can raise their own money.

They can go on social media and, you know, you know, do whatever.

And it makes them basically the focal point.

And they can basically take out their aggression on the speaker to say, like if they don't like the direction of the party, they're mad about whatever policies coming up.

They can basically look to the speaker and say, you're in danger.

So like Eric Cantor, you know, Paul Ryan, John Boehner, they all basically, you know, got, you know, sort of gal Julius Caesar level stabbed and or maybe Mike Myers levels down if we're going to try to keep a.

Lot of them.

But I mean, you see Paul Ryan, right.

And Paul Ryan now is he looks like a complete moderate.

Yeah, almost socialist.

Right.

I thought you say he was like tanned and handsome and like, just like, like happy that he was.

I mean, I'm sure that he's happy, right?

I'm probably sure that he's you know, he's cholesterol checked, blood pressure is being checked.

All normal, Right.

Hasn't lost his hair or anything like that.

But when you saw him this past weekend doing the press rounds, you literally said like, yeah, these guys.

Right.

It's a complete mess and it's a guerilla guerilla warfare within.

Just everybody out for themselves CONFERENCE.

No, I agree.

And the thing is too like no matter who wins, they're going to match up against the, you know, minority leader and, you know, keep Jeffords are going to match up against the Senate majority leader on the Democratic side, Chuck Schumer against the president, Joe Biden against even to some degree, their own party.

Mitch McConnell.

That's collectively 140 years of Washington experience.

This is party politics.

I'm Brandon.

This is Geronimo.

Speaking of votes, we're going to talk about the election because we are currently in the middle of early voting.

Hopefully you've gone to do it.

If you haven't gone to do it, please go out and do it because there's a bunch of stuff on the menu, right?

Constitutional amendments abound.

And so that's what we're up to this week and next.

And then all the way through Election Day.

Geronimo.

Interesting stuff happening, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

We have a total of 14 amendments that go from preventing municipal governments from regulating land use policies in areas with farming, ranching, timber production to property tax relief.

That's the vision and everything in between.

Parks, water, right?

Broadband.

Yeah, yeah, totally right.

And I mean, a lot of people ask kind of why we amend the Constitution so frequently and it's it de simply a remnant of the way the Constitution was written.

And this is actually true for a lot of Southern states, but basically it's easy to amend the Constitution, right?

You only have to have a sort of a simple majority or two thirds of the majority in the House and Senate.

You don't have to go to the governor.

It goes right to the voters who have to prove these by a simple majority.

So that low bar is definitely creating an opportunity to do this.

And Texas, this constitution is weirdly structured, right.

It's a kind of statutory constitution.

So if you want to make these changes that are imbued, indebted in the Constitution, you've got to be able to actually ask the voters for it.

So that's why we're voting on like bond questions in El Paso and whether or not Galveston should have a right treasurer.

Right.

It doesn't affect everybody.

But, you know, it's in the Constitution.

So we all have to vote on it.

But there are some big ones.

Like you say, property taxes is a big one.

Talk about that.

What does that mean for Texas voters?

Well, I mean, the caveat here or not, the caveat is that you are an expert in that because you have two or three editions of Texas politics.

So you know about all these little you know, these little nuances, nuances on some technicality.

Yeah.

But, you know, it's Proposition four and Proposition four is important because it's going to raise the homestead exemption for school district taxes from 40000 to $100000.

Also, they allow to limit the value of a property that is not residence homestead like for secondary use or something like that.

All your vacation homes across the state great are going to get badly.

That breaks so.

You you're good with that also puts a temporary limit on the amount of school district taxes for people 65 and older and disabled residents.

So that's also, you know, a good proposition.

And then finally is going to limit terms for appraisal board members to four years to those serving in the county with a lesser population of $75,000.

It's a lot.

And there's this kind of argument that it's too long and people would definitely vote for tax relief.

That's not a question at all.

In fact, actually apropos your point about sort of how the since he lets go is indeed, sir, I just ran these numbers are basically anytime you're the voters are asked to cap reduce or eliminate taxes they pass by 84%.

So it's a very good likelihood that it'll pass.

But it's so awkwardly worded and they really all are right.

So you have to really honestly do your homework before.

Don't wait until you get there to read it because it's really clunky, like the secretary of state translates this bizarre language and you probably want to look at the like regular translation to it.

Yeah, you can see.

What it really does.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Into plain terms.

So please do that because this is definitely.

Yeah, it is very long.

But basically, as you say, this would just reduce property taxes by the tune of, say, 100 to 200 bucks, depending on how much your property is worth.

And then the appraisal district is interesting, right?

That limits how many terms or how long people can serve on these individual boards, because that's been a concern to people say, well, you know, the problem is so much what the tax rate is, is right increase in the amount of, you know, worth of your home that keeps going up the appraisal of it.

And so that's something that definitely kind of makes that.

So tell me another one.

What about number five?

Yeah, number five.

Yeah.

I mean, I think five is a big one for Texas universities.

Obviously, for those that are not in the permanent university fund like UT and A&M.

So a lot of people don't know this.

So basically, like the permanent university fund was set up like in the 1800s, they had this land that was settled that they use that we're going to eventually sort of sell as they needed to be able to fund the university.

But turns out that there's something super valuable under the law.

Like what?

Thank you.

It's it's dinosaur wine and Kinky Friedman used to say write oil.

And so obviously, this is like a huge boon to Texas Universities A&M and University of Texas.

But no other university got access to that.

This would allow basically proposition would allow for other universities to have a separate set of money like UT and Texas Tech and North Texas.

So this is this definitely going to be like a boon for them.

But actually, I think this is in keeping with a lot of where these propositions are.

It's basically, yes, if this is a situation where if there's money and the legislature puts money into those funds, then they'll have money.

If they don't, then they won't.

There's not like a permanent source of funds or that'll flow into it.

Like in other times there have been sort of structured so that like they skim off some money from the permanent or from other funds that automatically flow in.

So for instance, the rainy day fund, they'll skim off some of that and dump that into, you know, transportation in this case are not doing that.

So the same is true here for stuff like, you know, there's a an energy fund, broadband access.

We said research funds for the university.

You know, these are the kind of things where like if there's money and the legislature decides to put that money in those funds, then they can use it.

For, you know, these purposes, like you said, number five, the broadband water parks, so on and so forth are so small, so important for the future of the state.

Yeah.

Just to mention, for example, when you look at California, right, in terms of public universities, most of the you see that University of California system are in consider one or the best productive research one tier one institution.

It's like you see for example has a lot of the member universities, UCLA, Berkeley, Irvine, etc.

etc.

are members of the American Association of of, of Public of Universities.

Right.

And that's a prestigious ranking.

It's a very prestigious rank because it opens the door for more funding, etc., etc.. And in order to be competitive in terms of, you know, just simply keeping up with demographic growth in the state, we need more of those universities there, not because, you know, universities want money, but is the future of the state is we are creating the human capital that is going to give us that economic advantage that we have had for many years.

So it's extremely important to invest in disease as well as broadband as well as water, because as we have said before in this in this program, water is going to be the next war.

And it's very important to start thinking about that seriously and putting our money where our mouth is.

Yeah.

Do you think Mad Max is a Halloween movie?

I guess it sort of is.

It says futuristic sci fi.

Yeah, I could reveal classify it, but you're right.

And the universe and basically the state is going to put money into all these things if there's.

And that's.

And that's a big if because we could find that that doesn't really work out.

So but it's better that it's there.

It's better that there's an option right.

Yeah.

But I want to ask you also about Proposition 13.

This is one that would raise the mandatory minimum retirement age of state judges from 70 to 75 and would set the retirement age at 79 instead of the current 75.

Right.

A lot of people are mad about this because they're saying basically it lets the current crop of justices stay in office for longer.

It doesn't lead to turnover, which in principle might lead to some party change.

Do you think that's true or is this just a reflection of the fact that, you know, people are living longer and we should let judges stay on the bench for a while?

I mean, yes, people are living longer.

Agree.

But, you know, we have seen some of these problems that we have seen in the US Senate, right.

Where the average age is 80 or 75 or whatnot.

Right.

And, you know, I think our public officials and elected officials need to be current.

Right.

And you know, we discussed this last week.

We have, you know, the mayoral leading candidates.

Yes.

Very, very good candidates, very stood a lot of experience and everything.

Yeah, but we see that disconnection, right?

Yeah.

And I think that raising the the the age limit, it's a matter of those people that want to be judges to not be able to start their career.

And then they're going to get laid there and it's going to be the same thing.

Gosh, I don't know.

Yeah.

Well, speaking of longevity in office, let's talk about the Texas Senate race, which is heating up.

We've got a lot of money flowing around this year.

Senator Ted Cruz, who we mentioned earlier, is obviously potentially a curse for the Astros.

We'll see.

Do we need more data on that?

Yeah, but that's a joke.

Obviously, we don't know that that's true.

Be hard to make that case.

But one thing you can make the case for is that he is making bank.

He's raised about five and a half million dollars over the past three months, and now he's got about $7 million in his war chest.

But he is being caught up, too, by others, including Colin Allred, who raised about $5 million in the third quarter.

And they got about 15 K on hand, 15 million on hand.

He had a 22 one edge over Senator Roland Gutierrez, who was the other candidate who's only got less than a half a million dollars.

Carl Sherman, who's a representative from North Texas, only has about 83 K on hand.

So it's not going super great for him in terms of fundraising.

Does this show that the races set and Allred's in better shape and will win, or is this just kind of too early to tell?

No, I mean, obviously, I mean, you just need to follow the money right now.

And I think that eventually I mean, he's not a done deal.

He has said an easy way or easier way to outspend his opponents.

But you never know.

Right?

Because, you know, the Democratic Party and people that might be involved in the primary are also very, you know, value oriented.

Right.

And, you know, most of the attacks that have been said is that, you know, Aldrin is another DC type person.

So it's the.

CTA is tackling him on the border issue where Biden had to spend this money.

Exactly.

Congress allocated it so he could not do it.

But obviously this created a problem for Allred and maybe an opportunity for Gutierrez.

So could be interesting.

Right.

So it's, you know, the establishment versus the anti-establishment.

Right.

So what are we going to see is these you know, it's the same argument that former President Trump used.

Right.

You know, these savage politicians are not getting that got traction.

The Republican Party interests.

I mean, my work in the Democratic primary here in Texas, I don't know.

But we'll see.

We'll see.

Well, another thing that happened this week was that Dan Patrick, who's been called on to give back this $3 million donation slash loan that he got from Defend Texas.

Liberty has been sort of resolved.

He's going to instead of giving it back, he's going to buy Israeli bonds.

So less than two weeks after this pack leader was met with this Hitler admirer, literally not joking, that basically Patrick finally said that he would give this money back in a way.

But this is Dan Patrick turning lemons into lemon bars and really like Hakeem Olajuwon in the paint, just moving right around the problem, right Date Field says you all should give the money back.

This is terrible standing up for the moderates.

And Dan Patrick says, well, I'm not going to give it back, but I'm going to do this instead so we can fight, help Israel fight terror.

Do you think this is a savvy move from him or do you think he should have just kind of given the money back and done what everybody else did or most people did?

I mean, I think it's it's a good way because he needs to extract political point because there's no denial.

Right.

Who this person is and that's it.

Yeah.

Right.

So I think that eventually, you know, it's a move to strike some political points, save face and perhaps, you know, say like, okay, end of it.

But I don't know if speak your feelings is and you know moderate Republicans are just going to leave it there.

Yeah, I don't think so.

I don't think so.

The last thing real quick that happened is that Sheila Jackson Lee is running for mayor, is known as a bad boss.

But this week, audio was released that basically has her berating staff in a terrible way, using awful language and just being, frankly, pretty mean to me.

This is one of the worst kinds of scandals, one that's true, but one that basically resonates what people already think.

Right.

And they really thought she was a bad boss.

Now we have evidence she apologized, saying, you know, she's just intense and sometimes the moment gets the best of her.

Do you think this is going to have an effect on the mayor's race?

I don't think he's going to have a significant effect at the end.

Right.

Because, I mean, we know that Sheila Jackson Lee is very polarizing.

I mean, not only as a boss or whatever, I don't know her boss, I guess, style or anything like that.

But politically speaking, is either you support you don't support her.

So Sheila Jackson Lee supporters are going to support her.

It's not going to bring down her negatives because they're already pretty low.

Right.

So, yeah.

So I don't think he's going to have a significant impact.

And, you know, we're going to find out an interesting.

Time to vote.

Yeah, exciting it out.

And so don't forget to vote early.

It's easier, it's fast and go all the way down the ballot.

So we'll keep an eye on all these things for next week's I'm hearing more Katrina.

And I'm Brant around the house.

The conversation keeps up next week right.