The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - February 25, 2022

Episode Date: February 25, 2022

On this episode of our "Weekly Roundup" podcast, the reporting team discusses state officials revisiting the issue of puberty blockers and transitional surgeries for minors, a Republican race centered around police unions, attorneys for the indicted Austin police officers going to bat for their clients, the Austin Public Library paying students to attend sex-ed seminars, Ken Paxton’s former top aides accusing him of making “false and misleading” claims in interviews, Cook Children’s Hospital denying their refusal to provide a kidney transplant for an unvaccinated minor, Van Taylor’s primary race, Abilene citizens turn in over 10,000 signatures for a petition to outlaw abortion, a legal battle between an El Paso tribe and the state of Texas, and a former Austin mayor running for his old position once again. 

Howdy, howdy, Senior Editor Mackenzie Taylor here on the Texans Weekly Roundup Podcast. This week, the team discusses state officials revisiting the issue of puberty blockers and transitional surgeries for minors, a Republican race centered around police unions, attorneys for the indicted Austin police officers going to bat for their clients, the Austin Public Library paying students to attend sex ed seminars, Ken Paxton's former top aides accusing him of making false and misleading claims in interviews, Cook Children's Hospital denying their refusal to provide a kidney transplant for an unvaccinated minor, Van Taylor's primary race, Abilene Citizens turning in over 10,000 signatures for a petition to outlaw abortion,

a legal battle between an El Paso tribe in the state of Texas, and a former Austin mayor running for his old position once again. We talk through notable tweets from the week and answer some mailbag questions from readers. If you have questions for our team, email editor at thetexan.news or DM or email us. We'd love to hear your feedback and answer your questions on next week's podcast. Thanks for listening and enjoy this episode. Howdy folks, Mackenzie Taylor here with Brad Johnson, Hayden Sparks, and Isaiah Mitchell. No Daniel Friend this week because he's off gallivanting on the slopes. Yeah, that's my word.

That's true, that is your word. I'm pretty sure I trademarked it, so you have to pay me a small stipend. Okay, you've got royalties on the word gallivanting. We'll work on it. But Daniel, we are debating whether or not to roast you in your absence but it feels like he's still here it feels like he's i hear his voice what does it sound like daniel okay got it um well daniel even though he is out did author a piece today i know he messaged me okay it's not like he's that right

this and i said you are off that's all i said you are off he goes yeah well he really likes the foreign policy stuff he does but it's also big news it is absolutely russia and ukraine probably the biggest news in the world right now the biggest and we're not going to talk about it at all that's right we're we're not talking about it today we may talk about another day well but today is not that day putin hasn't gotten back to us yet that's why we're talking about it you will that's very true still hasn't given us a statement which i simply cannot understand what else i know right they have going on right now okay folks we're going to jump into the news isaiah we're going to start with you let's talk about an issue that we've talked about how many times now but it's back in the news um ken paxton

issued a pretty major official opinion recently what did he argue well this is a pretty highly anticipated issue but paxton issued an opinion uh claiming that under current Texas law regarding child abuse, procedures, including puberty blockers, meant to modify a child's gender constitute abuse. So that, yeah, that's an opinion that just came out. Got it. What is so significant about this opinion finally being released? What were we waiting for? Well, so on their own, opinions of the attorney general don't really have any legal power. They're meant to guess how a court would likely rule on a case. However, for one, obviously it goes without saying this is a hot button issue for everybody involved. And more substantially, with regards to the whole political background behind this, there was a pretty long staring match. That's the metaphor that I've been using in articles between Paxton, Governor Abbott, and members of the legislature regarding this issue. So to get into this, first we have to go back to Abbott's previous directive, which he issued without an opinion to the DFPS Commissioner Jaime Masters arguing or trying to persuade the DFPS to treat genital

surgeries for the purposes of gender modification as abuse was performed on children, again, for that purpose. And so Abbott wrote this letter months ago to DFPS Commissioner Masters. And later that exact same week, Masters said, you know what, Abbott, you're right. We are going to start investigating and prosecuting these surgeries as child abuse where we see them. And so that was a pretty major development for Abbott, who has normally been pretty quiet on this issue and has decided not to just not to touch it. And so that was that was a big change on Abbott's part. During the legislature, when these bills are being discussed along these same lines, I did see testifiers who were minors or young adults testify that they had undergone these surgeries before the ages of 18. So that does happen. However, it's really not very common, especially compared to puberty blockers, which obviously have to be administered much earlier,

and these other cosmetic surgeries, for example, such as mastectomies. So those are a lot more common. And Abbott's directive to DFPS only regarding genital surgeries, again, big step forward to Abbott, but it left a lot of Republicans, or I should say conservatives on this issue, unsatisfied with that action. So one of them, a state rep, Brian Slayton, who has spoken out a lot on this topic, but surprisingly didn't file a bill on this in the regular session, which is interesting. He asked the DFPS if the child abuse law would apply to these other procedures as well, puberty blockers, mastectomies. And interestingly, he threw in counseling as well,

counseling to encourage transition. DFPS didn't answer right away. Shortly after that, another state rep, Matt Krause, who did file one of these bills that would have banned these procedures, asked Paxton for an official opinion. So it's an official opinion request. He wasn't just sending a letter. This is the wheels of government. It's a real process that has outlasted the people in these offices after that the dfps got back to slayton and said that they could not respond to his request to resolve it or start acting on that at all until they heard back from paxton's opinion that was anticipated after the request and i believe it's 180 or 190 days that the attorney general has to

respond to an opinion or respond to a request with an opinion after that request has been filed. But there is a deadline that happens, so it's got to happen. But the DFPS told Slayton that they couldn't answer his question without an opinion, regardless of the fact that they did respond to Abbott's inquiry or encouragement without an attorney general opinion. So later on, Abbott appeared in a radio interview and was pressed on the same topic. You know, what about puberty blockers? What about mastectomies and these other more cosmetic surgeries? And he said that he had already prepared a letter with masters in, you know, in coordination with the DFPS, I should say, to address these issues or these procedures rather, and define them as child abuse and

treat them as child abuse under the law. But he couldn't release that letter yet and start acting until Paxton issued his opinion. So to shorten that, Abbott said he couldn't move until Paxton did. Paxton appeared on the same show, I think the next day, definitely that same week, and said that he was going through the opinion as fast as he could, but he shifted the blame over to the legislature, saying that the legislature failed to pass a bill on this issue when they could have during the regular session. For long-time listeners, you already know what happened to the legislature, but there were

several bills that would have banned these procedures. Krause's went the farthest because it actually made it through the House Public Health Committee, chaired by Stephanie Click, but it was placed too long under the agenda to get a vote, so it never actually got a vote on the House floor. But in the first special session afterward, in all three special sessions afterward, Krause continued to file essentially identical bills, eventually gaining majority support. And so it would have passed if that were a topic that the legislature could have addressed in a special but they can do whatever they want during the regular session but they can only act on topics that the governor chooses during a special and the governor did not choose that

topic so abbott said he couldn't move till paxton did paxton said the legislature should have moved first and the legislature ended up getting majority support to pass a bill but only once passage became impossible yeah and so that was going on. And so Paxton's opinion was so highly anticipated because that was kind of the linchpin that everything else, all the other parts of this machine were waiting on. Yeah. So let's quickly dive into this. How did Abbott respond the next day following Paxton's opinion? Well, true to his word, actually, Abbott did have a letter on hand and directed the DFPS to start investigating puberty blockers and all these other gender transition procedures as child abuse the next day. So in his words, he says, because the Texas Department of Family Protective

Services is responsible for protecting children from abuse, I hereby direct your agency to conduct a prompt and thorough investigation of any reported instances of these abusive procedures in the state of Texas. And he refers to the directive as explained in the attorney general's opinion released the previous day. Now, how is this new situation different from what the legislature would have done? So I mentioned Krause's bill. I want to say that there were it's difficult to count the bills because you've got like a House version and a Senate version that are identical. So are those two bills or one? I'll just say that there were several bills that would have banned these procedures with two main methods.

Krause's bill would have told the Texas Medical Board to, at worst, revoke the licenses of doctors who perform these procedures. So the pressure, the enforcement is on the medical side of the equation under Krause's bill. There were others that would have worked a little bit more like what the DFPS is doing now. They would have classified these procedures as child abuse and the consequence of that would be that Child Protective Services, or in other words DFPS, which has CPS inside it, would have begun investigating and prosecuting these procedures as abuse. So under those bills and under Paxton's opinion and Abbott's directive, the pressure is more on the family side. And so instead of the enforcement wing being the Texas Medical Board pressing on doctors, now we have the DFPS pressing on families under this new

definition. Well, thanks for following that for us. Bradley, we're going to pivot to you. One of the most heated primaries this year is in House District 19, a Hill Country district that extends out to Fredericksburg, a change after redistricting. What's the point of tension? So at a forum asked about regulations or laws she would like to remove, Ellen Traxclare, who's one of the candidates for this race, a former Austin City Council member, she homed in on unions, calling them associations and basically saying what are called associations in Texas

are actually unions. And she said, they have incredible control over our state legislature, our teachers' unions, our labor unions, they are holding back freedom. She didn't really go into more detail beyond that. Instead, kind of jumped to a somewhat related but different issue of taxpayer funded lobbying and how that should be banned. But, yeah, that was that was the comment. And she didn't explain much more at the time. Now, her opponent, Justin Barry, is a police officer and a member of Austin's police union.

How did he react to that answer? So Barry and PAC backing him shortly after this forum accused Trox Claire of wanting to uh, wanting to hurt public safety by eliminating police unions. And Barry, who is one of the officers indicted by progressive district attorney, Jose Garza, uh, that we'll get to later. Um, he said that my opponent and the Soros DA are effectively working together. One frivolously indicts police and the other tries to strip away our ability to defend ourselves in court. And the CLEAT, Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas, I believe is the acronym. They are funding, it's basically a union for an association for the associate the smaller associations for

austin for dallas for whatnot and they finance part of the legal defense for these officers that are currently indicted and they do it for other officers that are indicted as well so um he is equating uh you know restrictions whether it's all the way up to basically neutering them entirely or placing lesser restrictions. He's equating that with eliminating the unions effectively. Got it. Now, I know you've spoken with Trox Claire. What did she tell you about the attack? So she told me that I made no mention of, quote from her, I made no mention of eliminating police associations. What i stated in that debate was in line with the republican party platform now she pointed to two planks in the

platform and i won't read them verbatim but they essentially say that the republican party calls for the legislature to eliminate special collective bargaining statutes in Texas. The collective bargaining is prohibited, but there have been, over time, little carve-outs established throughout the years that especially apply to larger cities. So, like, for example,

the Austin Police Association is currently involved in collectively bargaining uh discussions about their next labor contract with the city uh it also says to prohibit taxpayer dollars going to unions and this is all unions just police or this isn't just teachers unions it's all of them uh no do they want no dues requirement so that you're not required to pay dues as a condition of employment and joining the union. And no automatic dues deductions. We saw Janus, the Supreme Court decision, I think it was in Illinois, basically struck that down nationwide if they're using, if the funds are being used

for political lobbying or campaigning. But in Texas, they want to add a more stringent restriction on that. And so this is the latest dust up between these two candidates who used to be allies. They, you know, last year around Augustust they were running as a kind of ticket in two separate houses or legislative races and so now they're you know at each other's throats and it's just getting more and more contentious and i think it will continue to even though we don't work a few days away from election day yeah absolutely well and. Well, and you already alluded to this, but let's hop over to another issue in Travis County, specifically relating to police. Last

week, 19 officers were indicted by a Travis County grand jury for actions during the 2020 George Floyd protests and riots. But defense attorneys for some of those officers hit back this week with some of their own messaging what did they say so just a recap of the situation um 19 officers were indicted with aggravated assault charges and stemming from uh firing beanbag rounds at the the crowds that were throwing projectiles at them during the 2020 events and um this comes you know almost two years after that happened. But the attorneys lambasted Travis County DA Jose Garza. They announced that the charges were for aggravated assault,

that we didn't know yet at the time last week and they um those charges carry a potential five to ninety nine year sentence or life in prison or a ten thousand dollar fine and so we don't know what this is gonna how this is gonna end up but um that's the stakes basically and each officer was booked last week or on um on monday a couple were booked then and then they bonded out at one dollar so they're all they're not in jail right now and a court case is coming i don't know exactly when it'll probably vary for each officer that is charged but the the attorney said that at those those um, they will request a jury trial and go right to a jury trial. That way, they can kind of get in line with what is currently a backlog in the courts.

How long do they think that the trial process will take? I heard it could take three to five years, but the attorneys said they think more like one year. It'll probably fall somewhere in between that, but we attorneys said they think more like one year. It'll probably fall somewhere in between that, but we don't know. And there is a massive backlog in the courts right now because they were closed for so long and especially on cases that need trials. And so one of the attorneys said that of his clients, the cops are unable to understand how they can be charged with first-degree felonies for carrying out duties that they were ordered to do and that were commonly taught and accepted. And so at center of this is the department's directive for them to clear the I-35 bridge. And the method they had to do that was using smoke and gas canisters and then these

beanbag rounds and then the some of these beanbag rounds were apparently expired defective they had melded into a kind of slug and they cause more damage than beanbag rounds are supposed to cause and so that's the um that's the focal point of these lawsuits. And the city has already settled on multiple civil lawsuits because of those injuries. And I'm sure there will be more to come. But now we're on the criminal side of this. Certainly. Well, thanks for covering that for us.

Isaiah, let's talk about another Austin story. Very controversial. Give us an overview of this event that the Austin Public Health Department is planning. The Austin Public Health Department plans to pay high schoolers to attend a sex education camp at Austin Public Libraries. It's scheduled to be hosted at four branches in person, but if Austin remains at the stage five COVID risk level as it is now, then they'll have it virtually. So from the announcement, I just pulled this from the announcement. They say, our staff use an evidence-based and LGBTQIA plus friendly curriculum used in schools across Travis County. Students who participate will

receive up to $100 for attending. Now, where's this $100 coming from? How are they funding the event? The funding comes from a federal grant from the Department of Health and Human Services, the federal one. Combining grants for the last two years, the city of Austin has received over $1.5 million from the feds for its Teenage Pregnancy Prevention Program. I reached out to Program Manager Roxanne Saldivar, but she could not be reached to respond to an inquiry. You got it.

Well, we'll keep an eye on that. Thank you, Isaiah. Hayden, this is a story that Daniel wrote earlier this week while he was not be reached to respond to an inquiry. You got it. Well, we'll keep an eye on that. Thank you, Isaiah. Hayden, this is a story that Daniel wrote earlier this week while he was not skiing on slopes. You're covering this for him. What are the background details of the accusations leveled against Attorney General Ken Paxton before we get into this news about the whistleblowers. First off, Ken Paxton has been indicted, I believe in 2015, with securities fraud that is separate from what we're talking about today, which is a lawsuit that was filed by former employees of Paxton and the Attorney General's office under the Texas Whistleblower Act. And before this, these employees, who are James Brickman, Mark Penley, Ryan Vassar, and David Maxwell, have not been outspoken about their accusations

against Paxton. But as we get closer to primary day, of course, all the gloves come off and candidates and their opponents start to make statements in the media. And among the statements that have been made have been these former employees going back over some of the accusations that have been made in the Texas whistleblower lawsuit. What are those latest statements made against Paxton and what has the response been from the Attorney General's campaign? Well, these statements follow Paxton's comments in the media. Among those have been that the accusations were not detailed specifically and that the accusers themselves were engaged in illegal conduct. Paxton's campaign has also said that this is a distraction and that conservatives who produce results are going to be maligned in the press and voters essentially don't care about these issues. Again, like I said before, he's under indictment. He

hasn't been convicted of anything and indictments are not evidence of guilt, but that's the criminal proceedings. And this whistleblower lawsuit is still moving through the process. And like I said before, these individuals who have made the allegations against Paxton have not spoken up but are doing so now because Paxton has stated in media interviews that he was not read in fully on the accusations that were made and that he was not approached. So those four individuals that I named put out a detailed statement in which they said that they did go to him with their concerns, and it was only until they reported his alleged misconduct to the FBI that they were fired. They also stated that the former district attorney of Travis County, Margaret Moore, had met with the attorney general as well as another individual named Nate Paul. And Paul is the person that Paxton is accused of having unscrupulous dealings with and benefiting Paul by using his official position

to investigate Paul's opponents, business opponents, and people that Paul wanted to be investigated more or less. And the Travis County DA at the time had said that while Paxton claims that this investigation against one of Paul's opponents was the result of Paxton's action or had been the result of a local investigation that culminated in a criminal complaint, that Paxton had been the one to get the process started on that. So a lot of claims made against Paxton ahead of election day. We do have the full statements from those former employees. Daniel linked it in his article, and you can read specifically what um statements paxton made and their rebuttals to that but again highlighting that uh prior to election day uh they are speaking out um and they've been relatively quiet so far yeah certainly and daniel's followed this you know from the from the very beginning so definitely go to the texan.news to read all those stories if you want all the details. Hayden, thanks for covering that for us in Daniel's absence.

Isaiah, let's talk about a very interesting story. A Texas mother made the news last week with an allegation about Cook Children's Medical Center in Fort Worth. What are her claims? So there's a mother named Kristen Haugen, and she has a son who's had kidney problems since before he was born. And they've always gone to Cook. He had surgery in utero. And in fact, she gave her son her kidney when he was just a year old in a procedure that happened at Cook. Yeah.

So now he needs another kidney because they wear out, I guess. And she says Cook bumped him to the inactive waiting list because he is not vaccinated for COVID. So she said that first she learned about this from the transplant coordinator who told her, you know, there are people on the transplant committee that do not see transplant as a patient, right? But more of as an elective procedure. And instead of transplant, he can just do dialysis. Haugen doesn't prefer dialysis for a son because she says that it's not good to have minors on dialysis. And he's 17. And then a few weeks later, she got a phone call from the transplant coordinator confirming that the transplant team bumped him to the inactive list instead of the active waiting list because he is not vaccinated for COVID.

And she also got a letter that she provided to us that strangely does not have letterhead or return address or a name on it. But what she says is a letter that the transplant committee sent to her son informing him that he's on the inactive waiting list because he's not vaccinated for COVID. Interestingly, she further claims that his lack of COVID vaccination status has interfered with other more routine procedures at the hospital. Like she went there one time to have a doctor's visit and they asked him if he had been exposed to anybody with COVID in the last 14 days. And she said yes. And so then she couldn't see the doctor. But then afterward, when she went to go do lab work in the same building, the same transplant coordinator that I alluded to earlier called the phlebotomist and said and instructed her to not take the son's blood work on that day because of his vaccine status. So those are her claims about what's going on at Cook.

Were you able to get in touch with the hospital? I was. A spokeswoman for the hospital named Kim Brown told me that she couldn't speak to the topic specifically, but denied the hospital enforced a vaccine requirement for transplant patients. In her words, she said very flatly that there is no such policy. And so, I mean, logically, several options remain. It could be that the mother made it up. It could be that the transplant committee decided something that is distinct from what would be called a policy of the whole hospital at large. And so, or it could be that the spokeswoman was not aware of the transplant committee's decision.

We've just got a couple of competing claims here about the hospital. She advised me, just a little behind the scenes of what went on in the reporting. After the phone call, because she said she couldn't speak to the topic specifically, she advised me to email her, which I did. And that was a couple of days ago, and she hasn't gotten back yet on that question. The nephrology team webpage has been deleted. It was never archived in the archive site that I like to use. And so I don't know when that actually happened.

But I do know that I, you can't really see the transplant committee team members on the webpage that formally listed them. So again, just as the background of the reporting, my avenues of contact kind of ran out at that point. But we've got a claim from an official hospital spokesperson that they do not have a policy of refusing transplant patients for lack of COVID vaccine status. Certainly. That's a very interesting story, and I'm sure we'll continue to follow it if doors open. But thank you for doing that reporting for us. Hayden, let's talk about a primary race up in North Texas, Collin County specifically. Let's talk about Van Taylor.

Did the incumbent vote in favor of the january 6th select committee to investigate the storming of the u.s capital let me walk myself through this i don't know why i said myself but i'm gonna do this methodically you got it taylor had voted for a bipartisan commission to investigate the january 6 event, which has been characterized as a riot, an insurrection, storming of the Capitol, whatever, however you want to describe what happened on January 6th, he voted for a bipartisan commission to investigate what happened. He was among 35 Republicans who voted for this commission, and it was a deal, an agreement that had been organized by Representative John Katko, who is a Republican congressman from New York. Another Republican from Texas who voted for this bipartisan commission was Representative Tony Gonzalez. He was the only other Republican to vote for it. That is what Taylor voted in favor of. There is a select

committee investigating what happened on January 6, 2021. That is just in the U.S. House of Representatives. It was not passed by both houses of Congress. The bipartisan commission that Taylor voted in favor of did not materialize because it did not receive the required number of votes in the U.S. Senate after it was opposed by minority leader Mitch McConnell. Taylor sent us a statement about his vote. He said, quote, I voted against Nancy Pelosi's January 6th select committee, the witch hunt currently harassing Republicans every time it came up for a vote. I voted for an independent commission that died in the Senate and was never formed. This commission would have been structured with equal Republicans and Democrats so that Republicans could block Nancy Pelosi from politicizing the commission in the same way she is doing now

and force Pelosi to answer why she denied a sergeant of arms request to secure the Capitol, end quote. There's been a lot of discussion about Taylor's vote, but it's important to distinguish between the bipartisan commission that he voted for and the select committee that only two Republicans in the U.S. House, Representative Liz Cheney and Representative Adam Kinzinger voted in favor of. And now those two people are the only two Republican members of the select committee. Now, who are the candidates challenging Van Taylor and what do they have to say about this? Of course, his challengers have been being vocal about his vote in favor of the commission. He has four Republican primary challengers, Suzanne Harp, Jeremy Ivanovskis,

Keith Self, who is the county judge of Collin County, and Ricky Williams, who's from, or he has a background in education. I was able to speak with all the candidates except for Harp and Taylor sent us a statement. I didn't speak to him one-on-one, but Judge Self called the January 6th vote a red line for a lot of people in the district. Dr. Williams, who he is a doctor in education from UT Austin, he has an extensive background in education and teaching. He said that the select committee has been applying a double standard to those who participated in the January 6 storming versus those who were riding throughout the summer of 2020. And he said the select committee is a Trump bashing affair. So again, Taylor did not vote for that, but he was on board with the bipartisan commission. And even if people are opposed to the bipartisan commission, that is also viewed as him cooperating

with Pelosi. And he's also a member of the Problem Solvers Caucus, which Judge Self mentioned that as being, the way he characterized it was when we're talking about bipartisanship, quote, it always means the Republicans cave to the liberals. And a lot of people hear that when bipartisanship is mentioned. And in fact, a lot of the time, it does mean that Republicans make concessions to the Democratic leadership. So I also spoke to Mr. Ivanovskis, who stated that Van is bipartisan, he might as well be a Democrat, was his quote. He also said, quote, he's not the conservative that everybody thinks he is. He's on the problem solvers caucus. Why isn't he on the House Freedom Caucus or the Second Amendment Caucus? Those are true patriots. So his opponents take issue with him cooperating with this January 6th investigation. And they all took conservative stances on things

like the Second Amendment and critical race theory. But by far the most contentious issue in this race is Taylor's vote in favor of the January 6th Bipartisan Commission. Got it. Well, Hayden, thanks for following that. We'll be interested to see what the results show us on March 1st. Isaiah, let's chat about Sanctuary Cities for the Unborn. There have been a lot of developments since the last time we wrote about this issue. What's happened since last week? Well, the 40th town in Texas passed one of these ordinances which outlaw abortion at the local level, the town of Jewett in East Texas. In Abilene, where they're pursuing not a city council vote, but a citywide vote that begins with a petition process, they just turned in their signatures. They needed a little bit under 7,000, and they turned in a little bit over 10,000 signatures. So if they get about 6,000 and some change of those signatures verified, then the city council will certify that petition, and that will require the

council to consider the ordinance. So if they vote down the ordinance which is a very probable probability then it will go to the november ballot where the citizens will have it in a general vote which is what happened in lubbock if you'll recall so far that's the only place where that has happened but interestingly it's looking like that's going to happen in potentially four cities wow uh depending on what happens between now and november but this november i mean amid all the other controversy of the midterms and everything else abilene plainview lindale and san angelo potentially are all gonna have these um these ballot propositions at the local level for local abortion bans so citizens have an opportunity to pass these ordinances in those towns that's

what it's looking like right now so speaking of san ang Angelo, in San Angelo, Mayor Brenda Gunter fired back at allegations that we recently reported on of a violation of the Open Meetings Act. So specifically, the activists at the local level and the statewide activist Mark Lee Dixon that they've been working with claim that Mayor Brenda Gunter already decided with city leadership long before the actual outward political process began to send this ordinance to a citywide vote. And that's a decision that should be made during the political process on the council floor with everybody watching. And so they claim that because that was decided behind closed doors, that's a violation of the Open Meetings Act. Gunter fired back and said that she has not tried to, you know, massage the result behind the scenes. She's not tried. She's not broken the law. In her words, she just said, I said repeatedly from the very beginning, when Mr. Mark Dixon showed up to my restaurant to have a discussion with me, I said to him, then I say say it again, I want the voters, our citizens, to have an opportunity to vote on this issue. We have not, I have not worked behind the scenes to get the outcome that I want. So she responded to the allegations that have been flurrying there. And just to update you on the next step of the process there, they have already

passed the threshold. They just passed an abilene of turning in the signatures. And San Angelo has already set a hearing for, I believe, March 15th. But we've reported on that recently. Y'all can look at the article. And after that hearing, the city council will have the chance to go through the same thing, vote up or down on it. And if they vote down, again, also probable for San Angelo, then it'll go to November. Wow. What a process. Well, thanks for breaking that down for us hayden we're coming back to you tell us about a dispute between an el paso area indian tribe and the state of texas is texas trying to ban electronic bingo well um i'm really debating whether to make this joke because it's so daniel-esque and he's not here and i don't know i'll save it for the end maybe but there is a a native american tribe in el paso an indian tribe that is sparring with the

state of texas because they are and they have been for several decades they've wanted to regulate their own um what they characterize as electronic bingo and the state has said that they are wanting to set up las vegas style slot machines at their speaking rock entertainment center and that they did in fact set up las vegas style slot machines but the the tribe is on sovereignty grounds claiming that they have the right to regulate their own bingo activities. In Texas, bingo is not flatly illegal, but the Texas Lottery Commission does license different organizations to offer charitable bingo, like churches and nonprofit groups. And 1300 organizations have been licensed to offer charitable bingo. It has also been legalized in 226 counties in the state of Texas,

in at least part of the county, and there are 254 counties. So that's a solid majority of counties that have at least partially by ballot referendum legalized bingo so it isn't completely illegal but there's a process that everyone has to follow if they want to offer this it's not legal on a commercial basis and if you this sounds really funny but if you commit bingo then you you commit bingo if you commit an act of illegal bingo i find you guilty of aggravated bingo gray-haired old lady is getting police um you it's a defense to prosecution if it low stakes, bingo is the way the lawyer for the state characterized it the other day. So honestly, like playing bingo, if it's not licensed, if it's low stakes, odds are you're not going to get, you know, thrown into state prison.

But more or less, Texas is a state where the Constitution mostly bans gambling. Bingo is not excluded from that. And there's a process you have to follow to do it. So is Texas trying to ban electronic bingo? A, they don't believe that what the Waisleta del Serpiroblo Indian tribe is trying to do is bingo. They believe they're trying to just set up a traditional casino and they're calling it electronic bingo um b it is already mostly illegal unless you follow the process got it so what is what's next and what's the outline for some of

these arguments that are being waged right now um the litigants at the supreme court the other day argued over first of all we just talked about whether the speaking rock entertainment center was really offering electronic bingo and there was even some joking back and forth what makes it that what's the difference between a slot machine and an electronic bingo machine or or live call bingo um and the next the the controversy goes all the way goes all the way back to the 80s uh over the the 1987 restoration act and the indian gaming regulatory act of 1988 these are the laws governing whether uh indian tribes are allowed to regulate their own gambling activities and without getting into the complexity of all that more or less the tribe argues that because bingo is not completely illegal in texas that they have the right to

offer it on their own terms texas is saying that we're still a state where we have laws and everyone else has to follow this process of getting a license and being a bona fide charitable organization. And they shouldn't be exempt from that just because they're an Indian tribe. Texas is also contending that they agreed to comply with Texas gambling laws in their 1987 Restoration Act, and they're trying to get out of that by asserting all these sovereignty arguments that don't apply anymore because they agreed to do this as a condition of being granted federal status. The state agreed to give up some of its regulatory authority and not oversee all of the gambling activities in the restoration act and that's why the lawyer for the attorney general said everyone gave up something in this agreement and now the y slated del super pueblo is trying to get out of their part of the agreement was essentially the state's argument but

in the u.s federal recognized federallyally recognized Indian tribes do have special rights, and they are asserting those rights in this case. Well, thank you for breaking that down for us. Bradley, back to Austin. Man, we have so many Austin stories this week. It's a very Austin week. It is. It's Austin heavy. I feel like half the stories we're talking about are Austin related.

That's probably accurate. It's like four or five stories. It's close to it, yeah. But another candidate jumped in the race for austin mayor this week um it's kind of a big name who who joined yes someone did jump in and his name is kirk watson i don't understand what happened uh the former state senator uh announced his campaign for mayor it had been long been rumored that he was at least mulling it and um he made that official this week he joins a at least three-person field made up of austin city councilman kathy tovo state rep celia israel and former council candidate jennifer verdon

watson served as mayor from 1997 to 2001 when he left to run for attorney general against now Governor Abbott. I mentioned this in the piece, but Austin has changed quite a bit since his last stint as mayor. He's probably the frontrunner right now just because he has the biggest name ID. But if he were to win, there's a whole host of issues that would be on his plate that he didn't have to deal with last time and um you know for whomever replaces current mayor steve hadler that's going to be the case but we'll have a reference point for for kirk watson if he manages to to pull it off yeah i think it's very interesting to watch a former mayor go and serve in a higher office not necessarily one of more influence necessarily

the big city mayors in texas have a lot of influence but a higher office and be there in a prominent position for many years and come back and you know be willing to jump in the fray it's a very interesting political situation and he he resigned from the state senate to go be the founding dean of the hobby school of public affairs down in houston and when he resigned there's a lot of speculation that he might run again for attorney general obviously that didn't happen uh but now he's settling on the city of austin's mayorship and it is a it's an interesting choice um one that he's made before certainly well thank you for that,

Bradley. Okay, gentlemen, we are, we have two more segments before we wrap up the end of this podcast. One fun political tweets that we will dive into. And two, we have a couple of mailbag questions to get in.

Wow. Look at that. I know. Look at that. Starting to trend. Starting to trend. We're we'll, we'll see.

We'll see if it sticks around. People still, you know, have questions for us, but folks email editor at the Texan dot news. If you want your questions answered on our podcast dm one of us on twitter email us individually just reach out however you want but we'd be happy to answer those questions on our podcast i feel like we need a sound effect to interview this we totally should like a letter opener well i'm opening something i used to have a cell phone it's a it's a potato phone kind of like isaiah's but it was a potato phone you every time i got

a text it would go you've got mail and i feel like we need a little time i think we just clip you're singing that just now and use that very off-key singing every time yes i think that's what we should do we'll auto-t lot of tuning oh my gosh we should have a lot of that too no yeah daniel's gonna come back and be riddled with a lot of work on this podcast yes okay well let's get into this broad we're gonna start with you on this um i want you to talk about this tec filing that you uh that you found yeah so within was it when tuesday all of the um the last the eight day campaign finance reports were due before the primary and uh hidden within one of them governor greg abbott's which is a massive thing because he raises a lot of money and so there's a lot of paperwork in there but they put in a uh a little text annotation about a an in-kind contribution that they

say they got from the beto o'rourke campaign and uh all i think the the texas republican initiative tweeted out it out but so you can find it there um and if you really want it message me and i'll send you the screenshot but um it's just funny it's a funny little tidbit that they put in here and basically a shot at the other campaign for giving them an in-kind contribution in terms of you know the rhetoric they've used and pushing voters their way so basically saying we need to report this in-kind contribution. It's our duty to report it. Yes.

But we've received no paperwork from the other camp. Yep. So what are we going to do? But here's what they've done for us. They've, what do they say about Beto's candidacy? They're basically saying, like, the views he's purported publicly are an advantage to our campaign.

And helping them financially and therefore it must be reported. It must be reported. It's a funny joke once Brad explains it to you. It's very

like it's very much for insiders. Brad had to explain it to me before we started this podcast. Yeah. Well I mean if you don't know what an in-kind contribution is

then it's impossible to get the joke but sorry i didn't mean to take a shot at you there um most people don't have you know the complexities of campaign finance or know how to operate the tec website which lord knows i do not blame folks for not knowing how to operate i have trouble operating the tec we all do we all do but i thought that was pretty funny yeah that is a little joke hidden there a little gem for all of the reporters parsing through this you know hundred these hundreds of pages um awesome isaiah let's talk uh let's talk to you tell us something you found that you thought was uh interesting or notable well okay um i might have made like a passing mention to this in our last

podcast. But obviously, there is not a lot of polling for preferred primary candidates for Texas Land Commissioner, sadly. And the one big major poll we've got out of the most recent one is from the hobby school. And some time has passed, it was late January, you know, and so opinions have changed we're all close to the primary there's been some more coverage but i am still just flabbergasted that sandra grace martinez who is a democratic candidate is polling so so so far above the rest of her democratic competition so there are four democratic candidates right now one of them is jay kleberg as in kleberg county as in that same family that owns the King Ranch.

Wow. All kinds of money. Yeah. And he is the biggest fundraiser in the race by far, like far and away. Second place is Jenny Hsu, and she is a whole digit behind him. You know, he's like got six figures and she's got five. But they're the top two fundraisers in that order. The polling that the Hobby School released says that the other two are're the top two fundraisers in that order the polling that the hobby school released

says that the other two are at the top michael lange who is the third place fundraisers in the second place in their poll and sandra grace martinez who at the time reported nine dollars in cash on hand was at the top of the poll and not just at the top she was pulled like 70 percent of or no 18 we'll go with almost certain, 18% of almost certain Democratic primary voters said they were going to vote for Sandra Grace Martinez. Which is, again, when you have a race like this, that is like the name ID of these candidates is so low. Yeah.

That's a relatively high number. It is. It's relatively high. For $9, you know, a $9 candidate. That's money well spent. Yeah. Money well used. But for example.

The dollar per vote ratio there is amazing. Yeah. So for example, Michael Lange, I i mentioned took number two in that same poll so six percent of almost certain primary voters said they would vote for him and that was the number two spot the rest in order are five percent for kleeberg and four percent for sue so it goes from bottom to top four percent five six eighteen that's a huge jump for example like just to contrast it with a Republican primary, Don Buckingham is at the top of the same poll with 5% and number two is 4%. So the spread is a lot tighter and there are a lot more undecided voters, but there are a lot of almost like nearly

one fifth of almost certain democratic primary voters said, I'm voting for Sandra Grace Martinez, who has, I want to say, 71 social media followers, spent $9 or had $9 in cash in hand at the time that the poll came out, according to like that most recent TEC filing. I think now she's jumped up to like $43. And the cherry on top is that she didn't, I responded to, or reached out to all these campaigns for an article on the Democratic primary in this race. and I didn't get a response back from Martinez.

She did fill out a Fort Worth Star-Telegram questionnaire, and one of the questions was, why are you seeking this office? I will give her the benefit of the doubt and say that the first part of her answer is facetious, but she said in parentheses, aside from the $211,000 a year salary, of course, which is just funny. She's joking. You know what? She's joking. She said she spends like 90% of this paragraph saying that this is the easiest way for a Democrat to be elected to statewide office is this race. Not the most altruistic of motives for this. Like just publicly publicly it's very

interesting yeah yeah like compare the the mailers and the advertisements of the other democratic candidates it's very different um cleaburg is focused on climate change sue's focused a lot on that as well saying like you know we're the candidates to defeat climate change and michael landis focused a lot on veterans issues and mart Martinez told the Star-Telegram, this is the easiest way for me to take office with $9 cash. And it's just funny to me. And at the end, she mentions that her experience as a counselor could benefit the office,

but says space here does not allow specifics after spending three or four sentences on other stuff anyway it's just funny this is this is a head-scratching phenomenon to me that she has pulled so high besides doing no obvious stumping that i can see telling the media that she decided to run almost for the heck of it like a rungaba-bug that, and having $40, according to your most recent TC filing and cash on hand, while Kleberg has like 100,000 times that. Well, I don't, check my math. 100,000 times that. But a lot more.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, 10,000 more. Okay, I did some math. That's a lot. It's still a lot. I love it. I think that's it. I love fun little campaign stories like that.

I think it's fascinating hayden what about you what do you got for us um i well mine's not nearly as thought out as isaiah's um i know isaiah came prepped yeah you really did your homework on that one um patrick zitek who i believe was on this podcast once upon a time, wasn't he, a few years ago? He tweeted after the TEC filings were published that Miriam Adelson, which I presume is the widow of Sheldon Adelson, gave $2.3 million to Texas Sands Political Action Committee, which is connected to Las Vegas Sands, the conglomerate in Nevada that is hoping to get casinos legalized in Texas. And I think that's an interesting foreshadowing for the 88th legislature coming up in 2023 when they will likely, as they did last time, continue laying the groundwork for casino legalization in Texas. I seriously, well, I won't say that. I think it would be a huge, it'd be a lot of work for them to get that done next year.

But they're going to continue to do this, continue to lay the groundwork for that. And there are millions and millions of dollars. Yeah, their end game is definitely to get that passed. Yeah, we'll see what happens. lay the groundwork for that and there are millions and millions of dollars yeah their end game is definitely to get that passed yeah we'll see what happens i'm curious if it's even touched next session but we'll have to see brad i want to you have one more thing i think it's worth noting before we move on to our mailbag a poll a very interesting polling number one specific polling uh one part yeah one tiny part of one poll yes that is really interesting so the dallas morning news put out a poll on sunday has a bunch of numbers you can

find it if you like um but something that stuck out to me was that they asked in the gop primary they asked voters to say what attribute about each candidate do you like more than the other candidates and uh of course one of the candidates on the gop ballot will be rick perry no not that rick perry but a different rick perry who will have the same name on the ballot and the attribute given most to him was experience and it's so much higher than any other attribute for any other candidate yep 41 said experience the closest is 32 for conservative for avid's avid had experiences the top one too and that was only 25 so um i think the uh at least in this poll the rick perry's purpose behind running is

having some effect and and uh coming to fruition we'll see how many votes it gets but uh people are mistaking him for the former governor so uh i wonder what the return on on investments in dollars per vote he'll get on election day are but uh i assume it'll be pretty close to sander day martinez or sander grace martinez in terms of you know the number of votes you get for how much yeah yeah i was actually i was just fixing to ask you um if you knew off the top of your head about how like his recent tc filings you know like what cash on hand he's got or uh rick perry yeah he's spent 32 dollars in the lat in the latest one i mean mean, his name's just on there, too.

That's it, yeah. Just for the heck of it. Yeah, and he emailed me and said that he's running because he doesn't think the founders believed that you had to spend a lot of money in order to run for office, and he's trying to prove that. In his own words, that's the reason he's running, and obviously it helps having one of the best name ids in texas that is an important caveat like um i mentioned in a recent i might have been the the glow one the glo one but daniel has written an article he wrote one in in the wake of the 2020 elections about how there were a lot of better funded candidates that lost so like funding doesn't win necessarily name record or like social media presence doesn't necessarily win obviously like that is that

very poorly translates into votes most of the time because you can get social media followers from all over the globe yeah and not just your district and so you know like we should just make people we are aware of of these yeah certainly these factors you know those factors don't necessarily equate to the ballot box right you can have a great social media strategy or a great yard sign strategy or a great whatever it might be a fundraising and not be able to pull it off well we saw kathleen wall i mean come on we saw in 2020 uh jim right was way outspent and one of it wasn't just this but one of the reasons that he won was he shared a name with the former uh speaker of the u.s house yeah jim wright so um you know

scott walker who's on the court of repeat like those things help yeah they help a lot absolutely okay well let's transition here folks to our mailbag session we will see how much time we have to get to a few of these questions the first question from reader micah what race regardless of the outcome is the most intriguing to watch this election cycle so forget whether or not somebody wins or loses but has been the most fun to watch the most intriguing to watch during this primary cycle well i think you have to go with the railroad commission all the crazy stuff that's happened um and some of it very tragic um sitting commissioner wayne christian who's the chair of the body he's running for re-election he faces uh he faced four now it's three challengers because one of them tragically passed away. Sarge Summers out in, I think it was near Midland. He got in a car wreck.

But then you have one of the other challengers, Sarah Stogner, post a video of her almost entirely naked on a pump jack out in West Texas for the start of early voting. Something nobody's ever seen like that before. For the Railroad Commission. For the Railroad Commission, yes. something nobody's ever seen like that before for the railroad for the railroad commission yes um there are tom slocum is in the race he's a kind of a legacy of a big houston oil family um then you got this uh basically just petroleum engineer that's running named Dwayne Tipton. And, uh, he's,

you know, it's, it's just a very, very weird race. And, um, the, the,

the last polling I saw Christian was at like 9%. Everyone else was between three and 5%. And there was three quarters of the voters undecided. So, you know, I think if I think Christian will at least make a runoff, but if there's something that's primed for an upset, that certainly seems to be one that could be it.

Certainly. Yeah, this has just been so weird. That whole race is just a mess. What about you boys? Any thoughts on that? Most intriguing for you guys to watch? I'm going to have to stick with the land commissioner, actually. For one, it is the only open statewide seat in this election.

George P., the current sitting commissioner, is running for attorney general. So, for one, I think that makes it stand out. On top of that, as I mentioned, the Democratic primary is going to be really interesting. That's for the reasons I mentioned earlier. It's going to be real interesting. On the Republican side, it is also interesting to see such a strong leading candidate or what would be a leading candidate, Don Buckingham, not have such a great lead in polling. And obviously, this is because people are just not very aware of the General Land Office Commission and what the commissioner is supposed to do right and so buckingham hasn't run statewide before right buckingham sure she's got i'm sure name recognition in her senate district but for statewide you know that kind

of peters out and um i say that she would be leading because she's got all of the big name endorsements the republicans really go for you know and um she's got a huge fundraising lead as well but so far that hasn't really translated into um as strong of a polling lead again polling is pretty sparse for this race so i mean there's a lot that we don't know the last poll was kind of far away it's not the governor's race where it seems like every day we got a new poll coming out there's different newspapers and universities doing it. So for the most recent one was late January, as I mentioned. But nonetheless, there's a lot of money and a lot of endorsements going to one candidate in that race.

And her lead is very slim considering that power that she's got behind her. Yeah, I like it. Okay, last question before we wrap up from Leah. Our reader, Leah. What race, no, whoops, I went it. Okay, last question before we wrap up from Leah, our reader Leah. What race, no, whoops, I went the wrong one. Is lower turnout better for the incumbent or for the challenger typically? That's a really good question. Yeah, I think that's very, very interesting.

And we're watching numbers. It'll be interesting to see how this all wraps up by the time Election Day comes around. I can take a swing at this first. Go for it. I mean i mean typically if more people are motivated to go to the polls it could denote and often does denote the desire for the electorate to have some sort of change right there's motivation dissatisfaction um i think incumbency is a big big um uh benefit to most folks running for I mean, incumbency is huge. You have name recognition and some semblance of a record, but high turnout usually means that there's,

you know, some, some moving in, some shaking, people want something different. And so it oftentimes, and we saw that even with the, the Trump phenomenon, right. And who was willing to go to the polls, the high turnout in the beto ted election right i mean it just shows that people may have uh the willingness to go to the polls or something in order to change something up and as we know it all comes down to turnout yeah oh my gosh yes it all does in the end yeah yeah um yeah i think higher turnout, there is more of a wild card present. It's more unpredictable. Trying to guess who's out there, what they're going to do. Yeah. I think it also depends on the party that we're talking about. And so like right now you have Democrat in the White House, which is generally going to mean a better election for Republicans across the country.

You know, in 2018, you had the opposite. And I think if the incumbent falls on that side of it, you probably have a little bit better of a chance of surviving any weirdness that happens in the turnout. But I don't know i don't know it totally depends but that's i think that's like the trend is typically is better but who knows well the data is going to answer this question so just play devil's advocate because i don't i don't know how to answer it strongly on one side or the other. But in the primary, it would seem to me intuitively that if you've got lower turnout, for one in the primary, those are more discerning voters than in the general, right? And those are voters that are making really more of a decision to get to the polls and pick from among their own field. And so it seems to me with the nature of Texas

politics is one factor that a lower turnout in the primary means that is a population of very discerning voters that, you know, especially among Republicans would be less likely to choose a well-challenged incumbent. Right. I mean, that's just, yeah, that's two cents and I don't have any data at my fingertips to bear that out. So we'll see. But it's worth mentioning. We've seen during this early voting phase, turnout is very, very low. Yep. So right now, so far, we have the former, the lower turnout situation.

So I guess we'll see how that turns out. Absolutely. It'll be interesting. And how the voters turn out because it all comes down to turnout. Yeah. Wonderful. Well, on that note, folks, we are going to wrap up this podcast. Thanks for listening.

We'll catch you next week. Thank you all so much for listening. If you've been enjoying our podcast, it would be awesome if you would review us on iTunes. And if there's a guest you'd love to hear on our show, give us a shout on Twitter. Tweet at the Texan News. We're so proud to have you standing with us as we seek to provide real journalism in an age of disinformation. We're paid for exclusively by readers like you, so it's important we all do our part to support The Texan by subscribing and telling your friends about us. God bless you, and God bless Texas.