The Texan Podcast - Special Edition - Grassroots Leaders at the Texas GOP Convention

Episode Date: June 27, 2022

Welcome to a special edition of The Texan’s Voices of Texas podcast. Our team spent most of last week covering the Texas GOP Convention, and chatted with dozens of elected officials, candidates, and insiders. This episode is a compilation of interviews with the following Texas GOP grassroots leaders:  00:45 - Matt Rinaldi 06:30 - Jill Glover 12:52 - Cindy Siegel 16:25 - Don Huffines 24:50 - Mark Lee Dickson For more information, please visit: https://thetexan.news/

Howdy, folks. Mackenzie Taylor here, senior editor of The Texan. Welcome to another special edition of The Texan's Voices of Texas podcast. At the 2022 Texas GOP convention, our team chatted with dozens of elected officials, candidates, and insiders. We've been releasing these interviews in batches, and this is the final installment. In this fourth episode, our reporters talk with Republican grassroots leaders from all over Texas about the state of the party, the 2022 elections, and the convention itself. We'll start off with a conversation between our reporter, Isaiah Mitchell, and Texas Republican Party Chairman Matt Rinaldi. Thanks for tuning in and enjoy this episode. Thanks for being here.

First of all, maybe you could just tell us a little bit about the legislative priorities. Yeah. Well, as a party, we do a little different than many other states or the national parties do. We're not just a cheerleading society for Republican elected officials. Once we win elections, we want to put those electoral victories and turn them into policy victories. So we have a list of legislative priorities, generally things to focus on in the platform, to basically tell our legislators that these are what the thousands of Republican delegates voted for and wanted you to focus on.

It gives guidance for us during the legislative session when we're testifying when we're messaging and you know those are the issues that you'll you'll hear more from us about than the other things in the platform usually so on that note how would you grade the previous legislative session compared to others and in terms of how many of these priorities it accomplished what was the best one in terms of accomplishing our priorities. We effectively accomplished four of eight, or three or four of eight. We passed the heartbeat bill and passed a Roe v. Wade trigger bill that will outlaw abortion when Roe v. Wade's overturned. We passed constitutional carry. We passed a religious liberty bill that will make sure

your churches aren't shut down on easter again and we passed election integrity legislation so we you could say we had at least an on on priorities we had the best session we've ever had problem is it doesn't feel like it because democrats had a lot of wins too. And they're accumulating wins more than ever before. And they're not only doing it as part of government or in Texas local government, but they're doing it as part of the administrative branches of government. They're doing it in corporations. They're doing it in schools and academia. And they're doing it by controlling every institution in the United States of America, except for currently state government in Texas as it relates to us. Well, I'd like to home in a little bit on school choice, since I know you've been paying

attention a lot to that. Yes. The most recent school board elections that we had, general school board elections, maybe you could sum up what trends you saw, since I know you're paying attention to several school districts around the state. Oh, absolutely. So Republican Party of Texas got more involved in local elections than we've ever been. I appointed a committee before the local elections that would help us determine where to put resources and what to do. Long story short, we made national news because conservatives

across the state of Texas swept school board races. We won about 75% of the school board races across the state that we were involved in. And if you want to know why Democrats captured virtually every institution in our society, it's because they got the schools decades ago. And we got to take the schools back. You can take Congress. You can take the president. I would trade that for every school board in America being held by Republicans. So just to turn a little bit

to another issue that's real hot right now. I mean, I was up early this morning waiting for the Dobbs opinion. And so if the Supreme Court does what it's signal it's going to do and reverses Roe, what kind of legislation would you anticipate the state might start considering if the trigger ban gets enacted, elective abortions are banned? What would happen after that? What would you like to see? So if the trigger ban gets enacted... Or it starts becoming enforced 30 days after and so forth, right? Not enacted, I guess becomes, yeah, effectively bans abortion in the state of Texas. I think the focus will be, now it has a civil penalty for doctors. It also has a criminal penalty.

I think a lot of it's going to be holding DAs to evidence that they're presented. A lot of DAs have effectively wanted to create abortion sanctuaries across the state of Texas by saying, no, we're not going to enforce this law. So I think one is figuring out how we're going to get DAs to enforce the criminal aspects of the law against doctors. And two is going to be companies that are going to try to circumvent the ban by paying and incentivizing people to cross state lines to have abortions and then bring them back. Sure. Well, I guess my last thing, as a general bird's eye view, what issues do you anticipate taking the center stage at this particular convention this year?

At this convention, I think, you know, it's always legislative priorities. I think we won't have a competitive race for uh for chair uh we're gonna have a competitive vice chair race so that's always going to be a focus um it's going to be platform and it's going to be legislative priorities and the idea is there are so many things that the biden administration has done to mess up america and to destroy destroy America, which ones do we pick as priorities? It seems like there's more and more things to fix every day. How do you limit it to just eight? But I think we're going to pick property tax relief, school choice,

protecting children in schools, banning child gender modification, again, protecting children um i think you're gonna see a border uh priority for to to strengthen the border and fight biden's open borders um and i think you're gonna see protecting the second amendment which is under attack right now okay that's all i got thanks so much for talking to us no thank you I appreciate it. Appreciate it. This is Hayden Sparks with Jill Glover, a member of the State Republican Executive Committee and chair of the Legislative Priorities Committee. Jill, thank you so much for joining us today. I am so glad to be here with you. Thank you. We've had a busy convention yesterday. Republicans elected Matt Rinaldi as the chair and

Dana Myers as the vice chair. We've also had debate over the future strategy of the party. I'd like to ask you to comment on the possibility of having a closed primary in Texas where only registered Republicans are able to vote in the GOP primary. What are your thoughts on that? You know, Hayden, I think that is very much a debate worth having because we know that Democrats are coming and voting in our primaries. We've caught them, right? And we've got evidence of that.

And that shouldn't be, and that can definitely affect the types of candidates that are chosen in the primaries. And we really want our Republican voters to have the ability to express their will for their chosen candidates and not obviously members of the other party and of the progressive left. So I think it's very much a debate worth having. There's pros and cons. We need to look at other states that have done that, see perhaps things that haven't worked well there that we could do different in order to make closed primaries work better here. So I'm really pleased to see us going in that direction and looking at that option. Yes. Makes sense. And as we just mentioned,

we have new leadership. Do you think they would be open to advancing this and making it a priority among all the other things that are being worked on? Yes, I think so. I really think there is momentum growing for closed primaries. And yes, I think that will be the case. You said recently in an update to the party that the landscape has changed a lot since 2020. We have a lot of different issues that are presenting, many social issues that we didn't have before, such as children being at drag shows and other things that Republicans view as a problem that need to be addressed. The legislature has only 140 days. What are some top two or three items you think

they'll want to address right out of the gate? Yes, you know, looking at the Legislative Priorities Committee this week absolutely indicated that there are so many issues, and frankly, they were having a hard time kind of narrowing things down, and you will see that the priorities this time look a little different than the priorities two years ago in that they will be longer. And we've always historically liked to have shorter priorities, but this time because, as you said, so many, especially social things that have just popped up, but also things affecting our liberties and our freedoms like, you know, the vaccine mandates and government overreach and, you know, the border is and government overreach. And, you know, the border is still an incredibly important issue, but also property taxes. You know, people who have opened their bill

in the last month are shocked at the increases in property tax. We've got to address that. And then certainly education and the drag queen story hours and the drag brunches, you know, the attacks on our children are just absolutely unprecedented. And so we've got a gender modification ban is still back, of course, among those priorities, but also adding protections for children in public schools in terms of the sex education curriculum, the gender pronouns, all of these other things that even just two years ago were not so overwhelming and prominent. We've talked about issues that are important to many of the conservatives in this convention hall. And of course, any political convention, there's going to be clash and discussions about the future and priorities of the party. Yes. What is your sense as someone

who's actively involved in RPT? What is your sense of the unity in the party? Are people more united or Republicans more united? Or is there a little bit more disagreement and clash this time around? You know what, I've been really encouraged this week because I do see more unity. I think because things are so serious in terms of what is coming down from Washington, D.C. and, you know, the real push that we are seeing to diminish our Second Amendment rights and limit our liberties and attack our children. I think all Texas Republicans are uniting around fighting back and not just being defensive, but really beginning to go on the offensive. You know, we as Republicans, we tend to be more individualistic. We tend to be, we try to be gracious and work with the other side. And quite honestly, I think that in many ways that has been a mistake in that we are in a real war.

We are in a real battle, and we have got to be firmer and tougher, and we've got to protect our kids, and we have to protect our liberties. And we're not going to be able to do that in the ways that we have in the past. We've got to be harder, we've got to take a harder line. And so at this convention, yes, I have seen Republicans, even on the committees, you know, there may be some differences in process, but in terms of where we want to be, I believe that we are absolutely all united.

And I think one of the best indicators of that is the fact that our chair did not have a challenger. Matt Rinaldi was elected unanimously. We had three really good candidates for vice chair. Any one of those three women would have done a good job. I'm thrilled that Dana Meyer was elected. She, in particular, wants to support our legislative priorities and work to ban gender modification and protect our kids. So she got my vote because of her commitment to work on that in particular with me. But the other two candidates would have done the same thing. So I think we are really in good shape coming out of this convention.

Jill, our time is too short, but it's always a pleasure when our paths cross. Thank you so much for joining us. Absolutely. Thank you for having me. This is Holly Hanson here with the Texan News, and today I'm visiting with Cindy Siegel. She is the chair of the Harris County Republican Party. For our listeners, Harris County is the most populous county in the state of Texas. Unfortunately, a lot of people have resigned Harris County to the Democrat Party. It has trended blue for the past few years. But Cindy, I think you have a different perspective on what's happening this year in the elections in 2022. Tell us about that.

Yeah, I do, Holly. The fact is we've looked at the data and we've looked at the new lines. And I think, you know, things are changing. I personally have always believed that it was still purple. It's in play. But things even look better than it did when I took over office a year and a half ago. You know, I think with Biden's policies, the inflation in an all-time 40-year high, then you've got the crime rate that's just

skyrocketed. And then you've got corruption that we see down at the county commissioner's court with Lena Hidalgo's three staff members indicted. You know, people are opening up their eyes to the fact that this isn't good for us, it's not good for the county, and it's not good for our country. Harris County has a very long ballot and we do not have straight ticket voting anymore. But maybe that's helpful for your candidates here in Harris County this year. Tell us, are there particular races that you guys are targeting that you really think are very winnable in Harris County? What are those and what is the party doing to try to help in those races? Well, the reality is that I think we have the opportunity to actually take some countywide positions back. We're very positive about our county judge candidate and also with all of our countywide, including our county judges.

I mean, people are opening up their eyes again, like I said, and they're recognizing that what's going on down at the county Courts with you know the bails people letting violent criminals out on multiple bonds is really Impacting all of our neighborhoods and communities, so we've got those I think will continue to hold Precinct for Jack kegels we have our eyes on Adrian Garcia precinct four, Jack Caggles. We have our eyes on Adrian Garcia, precinct two. I don't think it's as safe as they thought it was. I think that's a real possibility. And additionally, we have some house districts that we're going after and we think we can flip them back to red. And I believe the candidate in that precinct two race is Jack Mormon, who was a former county commissioner.

So, and I also understand the party this year has a candidate for every single court race, for every single judicial race. Is that correct? Yes. We worked very hard to make sure that we had a full slate of candidates. When I took over back in December 2020, people were pretty disheartened, one, about the election. But people were upset because when they went to vote, and I felt the same way same way when i went to vote we didn't have a full slate of candidates and we have a bunch of great um judicial candidates who've got great experience and are really committed to you know

instead of writing the law interpreting the law like the democrat judges are doing they want to apply the law fairly and and they They want to apply the law fairly, and they're going to put the victims above criminals, and that's not what we've been seeing with the Democrat judges. Very good. Well, thank you so much for your time. We wish you and the party the best in the upcoming election. Thank you, Holly. Thanks. This is Hayden Sparks. I am here with former state senator and gubernatorial contender Don Huffines. Senator, thank you so much for joining us. Oh, you're certainly welcome. It's great to be on the Texan. I imagine it's nostalgic for you to be here and reminiscing about your days in the Senate.

But an issue that has been present in our political dialogue lately is border security. And as you reflect on your gubernatorial run, we had in this past month, CBP report nearly a quarter million illegal immigrant apprehensions, which is a record-setting number, highest in history. What do you believe the state of Texas needs to do at this point to combat illegal immigration? Well, as I've been saying a long time, if you think it's bad now, just wait a few months. It's going to get worse and worse every month. We have an open border. It's completely open. The federal government will never secure the border. They never have, and they never will. Even if the Republicans take over Congress again in Washington,

do not think that border is going to be secure. Because we had the trifecta with Trump as president, and we had control of the House and the Senate, and the border was still porous. The only chance we have of saving Texas and the United States and securing the border is with a courageous governor of Texas. And it's simple. He has to initiate Article 1, Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution and declare this an invasion. But he has to have the courage to follow through with it. It can't be just simply like he did before and he's going to do more safety inspections on the border. You have to have the guts and the courage to close it down,

deport everyone that gets across that river immediately to the other side. You have to have the courage to engage all the military that the state has with a defined, clear mission, unlike the ambiguous situation we've got with totally low morale of our military, with the National Guard, I should say, because they don't have a clear, defined mission. All they're really doing is watching cameras, and they're away from their family and their jobs. It's a disaster right now. Abbott is a disaster leader for the state of Texas. He just is. He's not a real leader. He has to get military from the other states, from Oklahoma, Mississippi, Arkansas. He has to flood the border with

state guard members and ask for the federal government to cause a conundrum with the Constitution or a constitutional crisis. We'll take that fight. Abbott should be willing to take that fight. Yes, sir. You've outlined these policies and you've been an advocate for border security, but I want to talk about your role. You've started a new foundation and you're still speaking out on these issues. Tell us about your plan going forward for how you will continue to advocate for this, including with your foundation. Well, thank you very much. I started, as you mentioned, a new group, and it's called the Huffines Liberty Foundation. It's a C3, excuse me, a charitable organization, and it's to educate Texans about liberty and freedom and to promote that and also to help hold our elected officials accountable to liberty and

freedom and to our party platform. I've talked earlier this week, I spoke with a lawmaker and some others about lessons that need to be imparted to Texas children. You talked about educating the public on liberty. What do you think needs to be prioritized in classrooms and in homes across the Lone Star State to advance border security beliefs and liberty and freedom? The first thing we should do is get prayer back in the schools. When we got God out of our school system in 61, 62, we haveated now two generations of Texans without a strong foundation of morals. And we can't keep doing that. We've got to get prayer back in the schools. We've got to get

God back in the classroom. And I think that's first and foremost what we have to do to educate our children in the state of Texas. We have to give them a solid foundation of virtue. What is right, what's wrong. And it's not gray, it's very clear. If you want to educate them about the Constitution, that's great. I'm all for it. Western civilization, I'm all for it. But we got to remember, it's what's taught in the classroom that the state of Texas can't control. We can, and we did. And when I was in the legislature, we passed legislation that requires certain things to be taught. But it depends how, we're not in every classroom. It's ultimately the responsibility of the parents. And that's why I'm a champion

for education freedom, or parental freedom, really school choice, where the money follows the child. Senator, you're an accomplished businessman, and you've been fighting for these issues in the legislature and elsewhere. You represented North Texas. What do you think are some priorities locally that should be advanced in North Texas for the issues that you're raising? I think education is very important. The border also affects North Texas.

People always look to government to solve their problems. No matter what, generally, oh, government's going to take care of that, or surely government's going to do something. No, that's not the role of government. The role of government is to always defend your fundamental liberties, your liberties that come from God. That's the fundamental role of government. It's not to look at government to solve all the problems, whether it's a city problem or anything else.

There is a role for government. But government's role is to defend the individual's liberty that's enshrined in our Constitution. Our liberties come from God, of course. So if we can keep that awareness out there so that people don't always be asking for government for solutions, because government generally causes more problems. When I was in the legislature, one of the, you know, not surprising, but things that people don't realize, the legislature spends about half their bills they pass and half the things they do fixing government on the previous legislation they had already passed. Oh, well, we didn't think of that.

And, you know, it just starts the market. I'm a big champion, of course, of the free market, and I mean free and not market. And so the possibilities for prosperity in Texas are unlimited if we have a true free market. And just to back up or look at it from a broader point of view, do you have hope as you look at the next generations that they will adopt your philosophy of limited government and looking toward family and church for solutions as opposed to state? I definitely have hope.

I think the only, the variable in the equation to get to where we need to be is that we don't control the media. And we haven't ever. It's not controlling the media, it's just having a fair media. And when, for instance, in 1699, the top 100 newspapers in the United States by subscribers all endorsed Hillary Clinton, we got a problem. And it's continuing, and it's worse and worse. It's really polarizing society. If we find government corruption, which there's a whole lot of it, for instance, just something very practical of bureaucrats actually stealing money. I got six people put in prison when I was a Texas senator. But without the media, no one cares. No one's going to know about it. And there's a lot of government corruption going on, and the media just ignores it, for instance, or the media ignores our

liberty messages. Because we have the answers and the solutions to most of the issues that affect Texas. And they're being decided today and tomorrow here at the Republican Convention. Well, Senator, our time is too short, but it's always a pleasure to speak with you. Thank you so much for coming here today and doing an interview. We appreciate it. You're certainly welcome. Thanks again for coming by. Really appreciate having you here. Maybe first you can start off by introducing yourself and the Sanctuary Cities for the Unborn project

and explain how these ordinances work. Okay. My name is Mark Lee Dixon, director with Rights Life of East Texas and founder of the Sanctuary Cities for the Unborn Initiative. So the Sanctuary Cities for the Unborn Initiative has seen 50 cities pass ordinances outlawing abortion within their city limits. Many of those are in Texas, and most of those are in Texas.

We have one in Louisiana, two in Nebraska, two in Ohio, and one in Iowa. And we are working hard to not just pass these in Texas, but all over the United States, because we need to see abortion outlawed everywhere. Now, I understand that these ordinances are to some degree tailored to the needs of each city. But in general terms, if you could explain a little bit how these ordinances work and what makes them effective right now under Roe. Absolutely. So these ordinances are written with a public enforcement mechanism and a private enforcement mechanism here in Texas. And the public enforcement mechanism is the city fines.

And so those fines cannot be enforced unless one of several situations happen, including the returning of Roe. But the private enforcement is immediate. abortion were to happen in, say, Lubbock, Texas, then the citizens of Lubbock, Texas could sue the abortionist and anyone who's aiding and abetting the abortionist for the death of that unborn child. Okay. So we're all waiting on the Dobbs ruling for Mississippi's 15-week gestational ban. If the Supreme Court does what it has signaled it will do and it reverses Roe v. Wade, what's that going to mean for that ladder enforcement mechanism that you described? Are you going to keep pursuing civil enforcement in new cities afterward or how's it going to look? Absolutely. In fact, we'd be foolish not to. I mean, we just saw Austin, Texas say that they're not going to enforce any abortion ban, essentially.

I mean, they're going to put it at the lowest spot of the totem pole, that they're not rushing towards this. And so what's going to happen in cities where the DAs or the mayor and council or the police department just chooses not to enforce the laws on the books. So what we need is we need to make sure that this private enforcement mechanism is in laws all across the state of Texas pertaining to abortion so that we can actually hold these abortionists accountable. We know that when this ordinance was passed in Lubbock, it shut down abortion completely from the moment of conception. So Planned Parenthood is not performing any abortions in Lubbock, Texas. They haven't performed any abortions since the ordinance went into effect on June 1st of 2021. And so over a year of this ordinance standing surviving and they

lost in a lawsuit that they eventually appealed that to Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Planned Parenthood withdrew and babies are saved in Lubbock and we need to continue to make that fight across Texas Texas heartbeat acts was great but of course Texas heartbeat Act only has private enforcement for children with a detectable heartbeat. Abortion performed on them. And so we've got to make sure that from conception to detectable heartbeat, that stage of life is covered as well. I'd love to get to the significance of Wascom in this movement. That was the first sanctuary city for the unborn anywhere.

Maybe you could explain what gave you the idea in the first place way back in 2019 and what was going on at the time. So at the time, there was an abortion facility in Shreveport, Louisiana that was, there was rumors circulating that they may be closing down due to some laws there in Louisiana that had been passed, and specifically the June Medical v. Russo case, which was before the Supreme Court of the United States at that time, which was very similar to Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt in 2016. And, of course, with the new makeup of the court, people were thinking that if Roberts were to rule as he did in Whole Women's v. Hellerstedt, then this was

really good for us. And so what we knew is that back in the early 90s, the abortion industry had been offered land in a building that was in Wascom, Texas. Now, Wascom is about 18 miles to the west of Shreveport, Louisiana, and so Wascom being just across the Texas-Louisiana border. And so that was a concern. And I remember reaching out to the mayor of Wascom and ended up, he said, what can we do? And I said, you need to pass an ordinance outlawing abortion within city limits. And he said expedite him that ordinance.

And so I ended up at a Chick-fil-A in Longview, Texas, staring at this ordinance I came up with and looking at this ordinance and eating some waffle fries and just enjoying Chick-fil-A. But I had so much weight on my back because I'm thinking, I don't want to see this city of Wascombe sued into oblivion. I'm called to love my neighbor, and that's not just my unborn neighbor, that's my unborn neighbor as well. And so what happened, I texted my senator, Senator Brian Hughes over at Senate District 1, and he ended up introducing me to Jonathan F. Mitchell, former Solicitor General of Texas, and we got on a conference call, the three of us, outside of Chick-fil-A, and Senator Hughes said, Jonathan, do you think we could do with this what we're talking about doing with the Texas heartbeat bill?

And Jonathan said, my thoughts exactly. And so I said, what are y'all planning on doing with the Texas heartbeat bill? And they explained this private enforcement mechanism. mechanism and we ended up seeing Roscombe be the first to pass this type of enforcement mechanism in Texas relating to abortion and of course they were not the last. So that was a very exciting development as we saw city after city start passing these ordinances and we heard the arguments from the other side.

And hearing those arguments from the other side allowed senators and representatives to know kind of what was going to come and allowed those working on the bill to really refine it even more and more. That's all I got, Mark. Thanks so much for talking to me. Really appreciate it. Thank you to everyone for listening. If you enjoy our show, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you want more of our stories, subscribe to The Texan at thetexan.news. Follow us on social media for the latest in Texas politics and send any questions for our team to our mailbag by DMing us on Twitter or shooting an email to editor at thetexan.news.

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