The Texan Podcast - Lt. Gov Dan Patrick at the Texas GOP 2026 State Convention

Episode Date: June 18, 2026

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick joined The Texan's Reporter Meridith Dyer at the Republican Party of Texas' 2026 state convention to discuss Texas' U.S. Senate race, other primary results, and interim charges the Texas Senate is working on prior to the 90th Legislative Session.Listen to more interviews from The Texan wherever you get your podcasts. If you like what you hear, follow us and leave a review.

Okay, well, thank you. Black and black you. We're matching. Yes. You texted me and yeah. Well, thank you so much for joining us at the Texan News. I'm reporter Meredith Dyer with Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick. So in April, you made some headlines when you said that the Texas House would be tough to, it would be a tough time to hold the Texas House.

How are you feeling about that now? Well, I think what I said it, and was it April, what I said in April is being proven out by everyone. Yeah. Yeah. That everyone is talking about, we could lose seats in the house. I saw it back then. It wasn't a revelation. It was just I was the first person to talk about.

We have to understand that this race is going to be potential, can be closer than any statewide races we've had in quite a while. Remember in 18, Vito Warwick, almost one of that's interesting. It's because we ignored him as a party. We discounted him. And that's why the warning in my Paul reviewer video, the Democrats are coming with a lot of money and a lot of anger. And so we've got to be on the top of our game. And what are some specific things that you want to see candidates doing to unite and support each other?

Well, the first thing you can't do is join the other side. John Corrin making negative remarks about Ken Paxson and even the president. A few weeks ago, he was singing his praises. And these are sore losers. When you get into a primary, there's no obligation, but it's always been understood. If you're running and you're telling voters that you're, in our case, a strong Republican, you're a conservative. If you lose, you're supposed to support the winner.

And we cannot have any desertions at this point. We can't have any people leaving our party because they're mad at that they lost or they're mad at their favorite candidate wants. There were 13, I believe the number, 13 people running. And I said this back in February. At the end of the day, only four were going to win. And what happens about the nine losers? We don't normally have that. And, you know, we had it in 14 when Abbott and I in Pax and ran.

But it was a little more clear cut then. So if you're going to run for office, at least be man enough and woman enough to say, if I'm going to go out and tell Republicans a vote for me and I don't win, then I'm still going to support Republicans. So those are the ones you're disappointed in. Who's doing, you would say, like, they're doing a great job to unify? Well, I think everybody who has that voice of unifying is doing a great job. I mean, I've been leading on that from day one.

Governor Abbott, of course, has been talking about it, Capaxon is obviously talking about it, all day. down the list of Mays Middleton, Don Huff Hines, Bill Friends, everybody running statewide is going to talk about that issue. But the most important thing, besides talking about unity here, was letting the voters know, the Republican voters know, of what the mass is. 254 counties, 19 or blue and 235 are red, but our 235 is only 50% of the vote, and they're 19 or 50%. Their populations are much closer together. It's easier to your, for them to send a bus and pick up people take to vote.

We're spread out all over the place. But the people in rural Texas are the key to our victory. And when I did my bus tour, and I'm going to do it again this year, when I did my bus tour in 22, I'd go to places and people and say, well, Dan, we're voting for you. Why are you here? We're voting for Abbott and Paxton, who was Attorney General then. And I said, because I know we're going to get 80% of the vote,

but we need 80% of like 80% of people register. Not 80% of 50%. It's a cumulative vote. the Republicans who are in districts in Houston and Dallas, San Antonio, and Austin, where they're outnumbered, they can, those voters can be discouraged like my vote doesn't matter. It matters in the total can. And just one last thing. Of all the interim charges, which one do you think is going to be the most contentious going

into the 90s session? It's a great question. And, you know, we had 600 ideas. You know, people say 600 interim ideas. Remember, they're 31 senators. So each one just gives you 20. We had one senator gave us 80. You can't tell us who we can.

It's always the Democrats, but usually. But I go through them with my staff. We really research them. And I can't think of one right now. It's contentious. I'm sure people will see it a different way. But I try to pick out bills that people have talked to me about that I think are really important,

maybe didn't make it across the finish last time, passed out of the Senate, didn't make it to the House. So that's what I try to do. And the members do a great job when they end of the hearing. So I think they're all good topics. Not all of them will become bills. Not all of them will pass, but it's a good start. We can't show up in January at square one. There's not enough time from January

to May to have hearings of all these bills. So we try to try to narrow it down a little bit to see what kind of response we've had. And that's kind of of our starting point. You know, if you look at a session, I think it's about 20 weeks. Most committees only meet twice a week, the big ones, some of them only meet once a week, or as much as need be. But that's only so many hearings a year.

And, you know, you could have one bill, one contentious bill, as you know, can take up 10 hours in one hearing. And so you kind of have to pick your spots of where you're going to get your agenda to pass and you know I always had my priority bills he had 40 last time I think out of my four five sessions however many that works out to be at sometimes it was 30 priorities sometimes 40 I think we've only not passed three priorities we've passed 99% of all our priorities so I focus on those and those aren't just my bills those are the bills from senators bill from the party grassroots bills from outside businesses have ideas so those are the key

We'll top 40 and that's where you focus. Okay, well, perfect. Thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate your time. That pleasure. Yeah, nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you.