The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - March 4, 2022

Episode Date: March 4, 2022

This week on The Texan’s “Weekly Roundup,” the team discusses the results of the 2022 primary election in Texas. What was the most shocking upset? What was the closest call? What are our biggest takeaways? What can we expect going into the November midterms? We talk through all the details and break down the state’s most notable races and results. We also talk through notable tweets from the week and answer some mailbag questions from readers. Got questions for the reporting team? Email [e-mail] — they just might be answered on next week’s podcast.

Howdy, howdy. Senior Editor Mackenzie Taylor here on the Texans Weekly Roundup Podcast, a special extra-long post-primary edition as we take a look at everything that happened here in Texas in the 2022 primary. What was the most shocking upset? What was the closest call? What are our biggest takeaways? What can we expect going into the November midterms? We talk through all the details and break down the state's most notable races and results. We also 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, DM, or email us. We'd love to answer your questions on next week's podcast.

Thanks for listening and enjoy this episode. Why, hello, friends. This is Mackenzie Taylor with Brad Johnson, Danielson daniel friend hayden sparks and isaiah mitchell everyone kind of i did i said hello friends instead of howdy folks and everyone looked at me like i lost my marbles isaiah specifically well i was it crossed my mind again i'm sorry to do this but i'm the only friend here you're not sorry though you're grinning how can you be sorry while you're grinning i'm sorry i am the way that i am i can't help that i was born into the friend family no we love your last name it's the um isaiah without a right he's just jealous it's okay

that's okay mitchell's a pretty solid lad he doesn't have a microphone in front of him so he can't defend himself oh brother well gentlemen it's primary week are y'all holding up okay we have i will say in front of us thanks to connie and phil we have in a like it was the biggest tiff's treats delivery i've ever seen ice cream a of cookies. They even gave us a giant ice cream scoop for little cups of ice cream. Tiff's was very prepared. Like, yeah, it was a tiny little individually sized, yes.

Not like the pints, like the tiny little ones that are maybe one scoop of ice cream per container. But we still had a big old ice cream scoop just in case you wanted to scoop it out. We heard a knock on the door. We thought, was somebody knocking on the door and then daniel went to the front and came back just overloaded with tiff's treats i will say i've had three already and i already feel like uh like the sugar is rushing to my head because i ate them in so quickly like within

three minutes i had three cookies that's like 600 calories. I'm fully aware. And the sugar is affecting me very much. But they're delicious. Brad, are you happy to have Tiff's? Always. Yes. I just wanted to give you a chance to voice your satisfaction with that situation. But Connie and Phil, thank you for sending us cookies. We so appreciate it.

Yeah, anytime I can get Tiff's treats in my vicinity it's uh a good day it is a good day but you guys are holding up well after primary any what's like um what is something you either what's something you do you eat you um try to sleep you read or spend is that what you do to to kind of decompress after a crazy work week? Sleep? You kind of need to. Well, yes, but I'm saying like last night I watched an old episode of Survivor. That's what I did. And it felt really delightful.

Are you going through a season or did you just like pick out a random episode? No, I'm going through a season. I'm in a Survivor mode right now, which makes no sense, but I grew up on it. It's become a thing. But that's what I did last night. I was like, I'm going to watch an episode of Surviv episode of survivor it was awesome did you guys do anything fun i enjoyed the drive back listening to music in the car because i can't read my cell phone or scroll twitter or read anything online because i'm driving yeah and that was a lot more relaxing

for folks who don't know hayden was at um at General Paxton's watch party as well as Allen West's watch party on election night. We'll go through and say where everybody was. Actually, let's do it now. Where were you guys on election night? Well, I went up to McKinney because that's where Angela Paxton and Ken Paxton had their joint watch party. And I was also able to stop by Allen West's watch party and I got to speak with Colonel West for a few minutes but I went there and then went up to Ken Paxton's watch party and it was a few hours before they finally spoke but those were the two locations where I went on primary date

Richardson and McKinney nice Daniel I stuck around the Austin area so that I could go to the watch party for Land Commissioner George P. Bush, which was nice to stay in Austin and not travel after traveling last week. That's true. Yeah, you were out of town last week. That's very, very, very, very, very true. And it was good y'all were at the two parties that ended up heading to the runoff. Not to spoil, but spoiler alert. Bradley, where were you? I was down in corpus christi at governor greg abbott's event at the texas state aquarium which is a very cool place yeah i'd never been to corpus christi um or the aquarium for that matter yeah but it was really cool seeing the aircraft carrier there the uss

lexington i was driving over the bridge and i'm like holy crap there's an aircraft carrier it's awesome uh i first i thought it was i didn't know what it was like i didn't know it was in dock as like a tourist exhibit but i thought it was an active ship that was just happened to be there when i was there much to the dis dismay of our native Texan staff members. Yeah. What? Holly and Kim were like, Brad, don't you know? You know, I obviously was not born in the state.

And so I don't know everything about it. Much to their chagrin, apparently. But yeah, it was cool. And there was a fireworks show, which. Yeah, it started. When did it start, Brad? It started early, right? Oh, it was cool. And there was a fireworks show, which... Yeah, it started... When did it start, Brad? It started early, right? Oh, yeah.

Yeah. It's the first time something at a political event, press conference type thing has ever started on time or early. So, yeah. That was the main takeaway. Well, I like it. Isaiah, where were you? I was actually remaining in scenic Austin at the tavern

for Sid Miller's watch party so the tavern I like that that's the name of the establishment did you go to the

haunted bathroom I went to a bathroom I don't know how haunted it was it seemed alright to me one of the upstairs bathrooms is haunted that's what I was told

when I went there the first time well maybe it's the women's one because I mean mine was pretty a pretty regular experience

could be interesting well gentlemen Well, maybe it's the women's one because, I mean, mine was a pretty regular experience. Could be. Interesting. Well, gentlemen, great to have you all back in the office. Let's go through. Step Brad, we're going to start with you. The very top of the GOP ticket, the incumbent ran away with the election. Where did the numbers fall in the governor's primary?

So Governor Abbott won two-thirds of the support 66 percent um and he won every county in the state and so it was you know as far as competitive primaries go it was pretty decisive and we knew how it was going to end up pretty early i think decision desk called it what 8 8 30 i think so very very quickly although i was on election nights i don't even like time is so relative everything starts coming in at 7 p.m and i blinked and it was 9 30 so i don't i have no clue it was very quick after the polls closed for how these things sometimes go and so um yeah as it as it shook out alan west uh very narrowly finished above donna finds for second place about 0.3 percentage points difference um and then chad prather finished third the other rick perry finished fourth at 3.2 percent um prather was only about a half a percent above him and then candy k horn the

billboard woman um she spent 1.3 million dollars on billboards across state you've probably seen them uh she finished fifth at 1.2 percent so about a hundred thousand dollars for every point one hundredth or a point or tenth of a percent the i did the the cost per vote and hers was like almost 60 maybe it was above i was talking about the 1.3 million on billboards and the 1.2 percentage points that's just very interesting i'm not good at math i just about a hundred thousand dollars for every tenth of a percent it's just interesting i decided to put it in something i'd already calculated you just saw similar numbers um okay well that's fascinating fascinating um i think one notable thing from that is west finishing above huffines despite spending that happened on either side of

those you know campaigns west obviously has a much uh his name id is a whole a whole other level um and huffines has name id but locally elected state senator compared to florida congressman texas gop chair tea party figure nationally it's just interesting that it 12.3 was what west could come out come out with now they did they were neck and neck so um you know a lot of the polling before this showed Havine's, you know, at least a few percentage points behind West, if not more. But as it shook out, you know, they were basically even, even though West was slightly more. Yeah, for sure. And the other interesting thing, if you share the same name as a former governor, it doesn't mean that you're going to walk away with you know double digits yeah in the polls uh rick perry came in with 3.2 percent as of what i'm seeing right now how much did he end up spending brad you know off the top of your

head uh it was less than 300 bucks i talked to him this morning and um yeah that that was about it so um i think it's he spent cost him point zero zero four cents per vote i love that this is your this is your thing right now it's not a perfect metric but it's fun it's it's a interesting comparison but um yeah i mean he spent nothing he did no campaigning and he still got 3.2 percent and almost beat a guy who has been campaigning who was the first candidate to jump in the race against governor abbott and um i think he prayed the rays brought in like 80 000 throughout it but um it helps to have well it didn't it wasn't a um you know a silver bullet it definitely worked to some degree i mean if rick perry did not share the name rick perry with the former governor he would not uphold that 3.2 percent so yeah and

if there had been some sort of you know offensive launched in terms of like using the name and campaign ads running if there would be money behind it it would have been very interesting you can't necessarily use rick perry himself's likeness on this on those kinds of ads like you're not gonna be seeing his face but the name it would have been very interesting to see if there would have been some sort of i think it's it is interesting just like from a political science experiment that you could possibly conduct controlling the variable of just the name it's a very fascinating thing yeah i'm sure i'll remember this and look back at it later and be like this is what name id does here's an example absolutely well interestingly so so I talked to him this morning.

I have a few comments and a piece I'm working on from him. But he said that, you know, he ran to try and put a dent in Abbott's results or in the votes he gets. That way he would be pushed to a runoff, obviously, as all of these candidates challenging him were doing. And then he said, you know, he doesn't believe that the founders intended for you to need millions of dollars in order to run for office. And he happened to have good name ID. So he wanted to put that to the test. And, you know, we see where it ended up. And it wasn't as much as he wanted he he told me that he was hoping he would be beat Prather which didn't happen but he got pretty close and

yeah it was definitely an interesting storyline throughout this election yeah absolutely and poor other Rick Perry he's being called other Rick Perry it's his god-given name yes he was rick perry before there was a governor rick perry a state rep rick perry an energy secretary rick perry right it's just his name but he said he he's been called that since the third grade and he was very he was very upset about and i don't believe him about uh when this first came out everyone was calling him all the media was calling him ricky lynn perry like he was a serial killer oh my gosh and uh you know you that's a good point because the media does that they add middle names when somebody does something terrible yeah and does so he that he's right to be like he's he's never gone by that yeah triple names are rarely used except when somebody is an assassin or a serial killer. So, yeah, interesting storyline there.

What happened on the Democrat side? Beto really ran away with it. Pulled in 91% of the vote and only lost two counties. One was Daniel's beloved Loving County. Lost to Rich Wakeland by a massive return of four votes to two. And then he also lost Sterling County by an even closer margin of two votes to one. Abbott didn't lose any counties. Abbott did not lose any counties. counties and compared with O'Rourke's 2018 primary primary for U.S. Senate he you know amassed near near total support and captured every South Texas county that he lost last time in the 2018 race

so he grew his support in the party which is not surprising because last time he was not the massive figure in the democratic party that he is this time yeah and so everyone lined up behind him or almost everyone lined up behind him whereas last time there was a bit more of a question as to who would be the democratic nominee but now we have the heavyweight matchup most people expected um and i saw the very next day both candidates put out digital ads hammering each other they were ready in aurora so um you know there's there's a long way to november and the fact that neither of them are in runoffs means that they are solely focused on each other and they're going to be throwing haymakers left and right there's something about it we'll talk about in a later segment that was

interesting but um yeah the the general election's on there we go daniel we're going to come to you the attorney general was uh the race for attorney general on the gop side was arguably well him the democrat side honestly we're still waiting a little bit there but was arguably the most contested statewide um contest in texas Talk to us about the results and what we're seeing now. So the results, as you spoiled it earlier, was... I'm so sorry. Incumbent Ken Paxton did walk away in first place with about 43% of the vote. He pretty much stayed around that number for the entire evening, even with early voting, uh, throughout the voting day returns. And, um, so it was pretty clear early on that he was going to go to a runoff.

The big question was who he was going to go to a runoff with. It ultimately ended up being land commissioner, George P. Bush, who, um, as of the time that we're recording is at about 23%. Uh, there's still a few votes trickling in. Um, but, uh, that is who's going to be going to the runoff together for the May 24th election. I'm sure it will be quite competitive. In the Democratic side, it's actually even a little bit more interesting. You have Rochelle Garza, who is a former ACLU attorney, and she definitely walked away with about the same percent as Paxton

at 43%. But the runner-up position is not as clear, and we still, as of Thursday afternoon, still don't know who is going to be the second place candidate. Right now, when we're recording this podcast, Joe Jaworski, the former mayor of Galveston, does sit in second place with 19.59% of the vote, or the tally that I'm looking at is 196,488 votes. But Lee Merritt, civil rights attorney, is trailing him at also 19.45%, just a little bit, about 1,500 votes away. So it'll be interesting to see what actually happens there. Lee Mer merit has not conceded the race at all in fact earlier today he posted a tweet uh saying that he was waiting for uh the votes to come in he said that there were 60 000 votes still remaining uh and so he's hoping

to to make up the the lead uh there but uh we shall see later on and we'll of course have an article out on that when we actually do see the results. Yeah, well, that's actually called fascinating to see a statewide elected official in a runoff election. Let's talk. How did the candidates perform? What did we expect to see? What differed? Where are we at with in terms of performance for the candidates on the ballot? Yes. So Paxton definitely dominated the race. You know, he won most of the counties throughout the state or led the field in most of those counties. There are some notable exceptions, of course.

I think the most glaring one is out in East Texas, which is home of Congressman Louie Gohmert, who jumped into the race. He walked away with about 17 percent of the vote. And a lot of those East Texas counties where he has represented in Congress for, um, I think 15 to 20 years, uh, they, they all went with Louie Gohmert, um, as the lead candidate in those places, uh, you know, in Smith County, for instance, where Tyler is, uh, Gohmert walked away with 62% of the vote, uh, where, whereas Ken Paxton only had 21%. So quite a big difference there. And then the only other candidate to defeat or top Paxton in a few counties was George P. Bush. Notably, he did pretty well down in South Texas and along the border. So there's a lot of counties out in the Rio Grande Valley that voted for him. And in South Texas, there were, so down in South Texas, there were four counties. And then out in West Texas in the Hill Country area, you had a couple counties that also voted more for Bush than for Paxton.

So those are just like regionally some interesting things. Now, while Bush did walk away at the end of the night as the second place runner up, that was not very clear right at the beginning. As the votes came in, a lot of the urban areas that had early voting, such as in Dallas and Harris County, especially, and I think Bexar County as well some of those more urban areas a lot of those early votes were more favorable to Eva Guzman the former state Supreme Court Justice rather than Bush and so she actually had a little bit of a lead

early on but as more counties came in from rural Texas and also South Texas and then also with the election day votes a lot more of those votes went to Bush over Guzman. And so he ended up walking away as the clear second place person, whereas Guzman and Gohmert were kind of neck and neck for the last place. Now, how Ken Paxton. And he did say one of the notable things that he said was that the establishment got what they wanted.

And so what he was referring to, of course, being the runoff, pulling him into a runoff. So he's going to have to campaign in a Republican primary for another two and a half months throughout toward the end of May. So he was I don't think that he was too thrilled about that. I'm sure he was going for trying to get away without a runoff, but that is not the case. Now, Bush, at the press conference or the watch party that he was at, he came out and spoke to media about two or three times, I think two times, and then once at the end, maybe another time too. But he also was asked about this statement from Paxton saying,

essentially insinuating that he was part of the establishment. And Bush said that his success was due to a coalition of Trump voters, Tea Party voters, and mainstream Republicans. And then he also noted that going into the runoff, some of the next steps that he was going to do immediately was to reach out to the campaigns of Eva Guzman and Louie Gohmert to try and sway their support and get them to support him moving forward. So that's just what he's planning on doing. Didn't Gohmert come out and say he was just going to stay out of it? I believe I did see that. So we'll see if he continues to stay out of it. It was interesting throughout the primary election and throughout the campaigning, there was a lot of fighting between Guzman and Bush, but there wasn't really any fighting between Gohmert and the other

challengers. Gohmert was really focused on Ken Paxton specifically, and so I didn't see a lot of mudslinging between the other candidates. So I thought that might be an indication that Gohmert might back anyone but Paxton. But as we see, that is not the case, since he said he is probably going to stay out of it. Yeah, and we kind of saw in this race, particularly the two sides of the the republican party in some ways matching up with two candidates like split down the middle paxton and gomart on one side politically and guzman and bush on the other side politically whether that's true or not that was the perception and um that's kind of a lot of the reason why folks think we saw paxton

you know dishing it out on gomer right from the get-go and really going after that because he didn't want that portion of the party um swayed away from him like he needed that support to not make it to a runoff so interesting to see um speaking of runoffs anything we should know we should be uh particularly watching as we head into this season so i think there's two things that we should watch for in this runoff specifically. The big thing, of course, Eva Guzman was backed financially quite a bit by Texans for lawsuit reform. It's a very influential and powerful pack in Texas, and they had endorsed her right away as she jumped into the race back last summer, and they gave her a lot of money. So the question is, are they going to back Bush,

or are they going to stay out of the race, or will they go in for Paxton? I asked Bush about this at the press conference that he was at after he was projected as being the runner-up, and he said that TLR is going to be one of the first groups that he reaches out to, so he's definitely courting them for support. So it'll be interesting to see if they're going to be like one of the first groups that he reaches out to. So he's definitely courting them for support. So it'll be interesting to see if they're going to jump into this race,

continue on him and back him financially. If they do, that could be quite a bit of sum of money to bolster his campaign. Now, the other thing that could influence the outcome of the election is really going to be who do the voters for louis gomert side with in the runoff election because i think it's a fair assessment to say that had gomert not joined the race and had representative matt kraus stayed in the race of course matt kraus dropped out of the race as gomert entered and the support for Krause kind of shifted to Gohmert. They were kind of in that more conservative grassroots lane that Gohmert and Paxton were competing for.

So I think it's fairly safe to say that Gohmert's influence in East Texas, just looking at the map, that definitely helped pull Paxton into a runoff. And so if Gomer voters decide to go with Paxton, more of the conservative grassroots candidate that people are supporting and being very opposed to the Bush dynasty, so to speak, then that could be favorable to Paxton. Yeah. Now, if more Gomer voters buy into the arguments from George P. Bush about the allegations that are against Ken Paxton and the things that are going on in his office, then we might see that leading to an incumbent being ousted, which would be interesting. Basically, are Gomer folks voting for Paxton because of ideological similarities or is it an anyone but Paxton support?

Yeah. Like, where does that where does that align and we're already seeing you know true texas project a very conservative tea party group in north texas has already come out and said they support ken paxton we'll see what happens but it looks like that's kind of how it's trending how will that reflect at the polls we don't know yet and then the other question of course sorry about this brad it does depend on turnout it does if the gomer voters uh come out vote, that could influence it. If they decide, eh, we don't really care about this race, then it might not.

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Daniel. Okay, Hayden, let's talk about the lieutenant governor primaries. A little less spicy than the top two on the ballot, but interesting nonetheless, again, particularly in the instance of the Democrats. But to walk us through the results in these primaries. Unlike the attorney general's race, this was pretty cut and dry. Dan Patrick won a six-way primary with 77% of the vote, not really a competitive race at all. He clearly on primary day proved that the Republican base trusts him to deliver on conservative policy. He occupies a unique position and was overwhelmingly favored by primary voters. But another interesting note in this lieutenant governor's primary is Daniel Miller, the president

of the Texas nationalist movement, received only 7% of the vote. Of course, this race was not at all a referendum on Texas nationalism, but he received only 7%. So, if there is a desire for this, then it was not expressed in the lieutenant governor's race on primary day. But on the Democratic side, Mike Collier received 42% of the vote. Michelle Beckley received 30% of the vote. And Carla Braley, who is the vice chair of the Texas Democratic Party, received 28% of the vote. The Democratic race will go to a runoff. Beckley came in 19,736 votes ahead of Braley. So it was not a landslide win for State Representative Michelle Beckley at all. She will face Mike Collier in the May 24th runoff. Yeah. So one thing I think is interesting, we'll get into this later, but the fact that we are in a runoff for the Democratic nomination

is fascinating in and of itself, right? That's very fascinating. The two second place finishers finishing so close to each other.'s just interesting and the contrast between the republican race which had seven candidates and dan patrick ran away with it yeah and then the democratic race where the primary voters were indecisive they were split pretty much three ways yeah and part of that comes down to incumbency of course um but it's still interesting paxton and abbott both had an entirely different primary than Dan Patrick did. What challenges could Dan Patrick face if Collier ends up on the ballot? Four years ago, Collier and Patrick faced off in the general election and Collier came

pretty close to unseating Patrick within five percentage points. In fact, this time is different because Biden's in the White House. That's a bit of an advantage for percentage points. In fact, this time is different because Biden's in the White House. That's a bit of an advantage for the Republicans. Last time Trump was in the White House in midterms right after our president's inaugurated usually favor the opposition party. But Patrick has made himself a stalwart of conservative social policy, has focused a lot on transition surgeries for minors and other hot button social issues. Collier runs on what he characterizes as ending culture wars. That could be a challenge for Patrick heading into a general election with someone who almost beat him last time. Very good. Well, thanks for covering that for us, Hayden.

Isaiah, we're going to come to you. The agriculture commissioner's race, what were the results there? So Commissioner Miller, the incumbent agriculture commissioner, held onto his seat. And his most serious primary challenger was State Rep. James White. And I say most serious for a couple reasons, mainly funding, but primarily because the fact that he's an incumbent, a pretty well-known incumbent. And I'm going to pull up the specifics here, but it was about a 60 to 30 percentage ratio between the two of them. And there was a third Republican in the primary, Kerry Council, with an I. I spoke to one guy who theorized kind of humorously that he might have done better if his name was spelled with an E.

And what's funny to me is that that might be true. Because as we saw later on in our talk, Hayden's going to talk later about some more name recognition, and there's some interesting trends. So the exact numbers are 58.47% of the votes went to Sid Miller, 31.14% went to White, and 10.39% went to Council. You can see on our map that White, who represents a swath of East Texas in the statehouse, had a definite home field advantage. As far west as Polk County, but all up along the Louisiana border, Newton County, Sabine County um white won all of those and a couple way down um in star county and brooks county in south texas star county is actually on the rio grande um not a great turnout

in in brooks and so it's i want to say like nine votes that james came to i won in the brooks county um so the most significant one significant area of the state where you can see like a real trend forming is in East Texas. Yeah. Similar to the Go-Mart effect in the AG's race. What did Miller have to say at the event? You were at his watch party. Right. So, um, I asked Miller how this race, how he would have compared or contrasted to his

previous races. And he told me that each one gets a little bit easier. And that's really just another way of rephrasing the classic incumbent advantage. Name recognition means a lot. And people already know Sid Miller's name. You see it on, you know, gas pump stuff he goes to stock shows and bull sales and things like that and other agricultural events and maybe not necessarily stumps and meets with people on in those forums and events around the state. So but then he campaigns more and more urban areas as he gets closer to election time. He said that was his general strategy. Yeah, which is interesting. We have an industry that you're serving kind of similar to the Railroad Commission. It affects the entire state, but there are a specific constituency in an industry that you're serving in ways that other elected officials don't in Texas. um so in 2014 his first his first election year he won a runoff with 54 of the vote after leading the primary with 34.6 he avoided a runoff in 2018 uh with by when he got just under

56 of the vote and so it's a continuation of that trend this year he's got 58.47 and so he's just continuing that upward trend that he's established over the past three cycles. What were the big issues in the race? And talk to us about why Miller was being primaried in the first place. So obviously, I mean, now at this point, we're going to get to more general election type issues. He's going to be facing Susan Hayes, who won the Democratic primary pretty handily. But in the Republican primary, White was his most prominent critic between the two candidates, White and Council, who were challenging him. And White criticized, on the fiscal side, Miller's decision to raise fees on a lot of farmers and other licensees. The Texas Agriculture Department collects fees from these licensees in various ag-related industries. And the statute dictates that these fees are what pay for the management

of the department. And so Wyatt connected the dots between that and a separate thing that I think could be appropriately called scandal with regards to one of Miller's top political consultants who was recently indicted for selling fraudulent hemp licenses. The TDA promulgated this rule that these hemp licenses cost, I want to say $100. We wrote on that. I'll have to get back and check that, but I want to say about $100. And Miller's consultant had met with people before this rule got promulgated and told them that it was actually going to cost them like tens and thousands of dollars to get hemp licenses. And the state was only going to hand out 10 or 15 of the state. And so that's the allegation against him, right? This isn't a settled case or anything, but that's the allegation. And so obviously, you know,

why it took that and ran with it is campaign fodder and connected that to Miller's decision to raise fees on a lot of farmers and other licensees and saying that you're collecting these higher fees to pay for these executive positions that are going to people that are under indictment. So that was a big issue for the race under at least within the scope of the TDA. And obviously this is going to mushroom out, more broad ideological partisan conflicts. Now they're in the general between Hayes and White with regards to cannabis and other more left right issues. Certainly. Well, thanks for covering that, Isaiah. Let's talk about Trump's influence on Texas. This is something that we've been, you know, watching for however long he's been involved in these races. But it's interesting now that he's been involved in these races. But it's interesting

now that he's no longer in office. You know, we were watching, will his influence wane? Does it mean as much as it did two, three, four years ago? Brad, how did those endorsements from the former president end up? They went very well on election night. And of the 33 Republicans that he endorsed, 28 of them secured the GOP nomination for their race on Tuesday. Some of those didn't have competitive primaries or any primary at all. But a good number of them did take for example greg abbott was endorsed by uh donald trump and he obviously won without uh runoff triggering a runoff so there's that um but five of them are headed to runoffs and um you know that's of of the group that was somewhat competitive in terms of the primary race, that's still a minority of them. So even on those, former President Trump was batting over 500.

But he kind of spiked the football later on that night and exclaimed in a statement that it was a big night in Texas. All 33 candidates that were Trump endorsed have either won their primary election or are substantially leading in the case of runoff. They touted Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick's victories. And, you know, that is a point that that you know those five that that are headed the runoffs each of them finished first in their primary so um and none of his candidates were defeated now we'll see how the primary runoffs turn out but he is um so far it's it's still a pretty substantial endorsement in the republican party, if not the most important one in the Republican Party politics. So, you know, he's taken a victory lap on it.

Yeah. Worth noting, you know, Greg Abbott, Dan Patrick, they have shadows of their own to cast, right? They're big figures in Texas politics. And so, while a Trump endorsement does not hurt in a Republican primary, certainly, you're dealing with name ID, you're dealing with campaign war chests that are, you know, sizable, unbelievably sizable. which you talk about in your piece um i think that it's even an out it's a much more outsized influence in those races right i mean tarrant county da um i think we definitely saw a boost there absolutely from the trump endorsement absolutely um matt kraus and molly westfall were the other two candidates in that race very interesting watching the trump candidate just kind of soar through but he is facing a runoff. He didn't secure the nomination.

So we'll see if he can stave off Representative Matt Krause in the May 24th election. But yeah, it definitely holds weight. And we'll see. Trump clearly thinks the state is important, not only just in general to the Republican Party, but to himself. Yeah. And should he decide to run again in two years, which is looking like it's definitely a possibility right now, you know, he'll need Texas's support. And I'm sure that he will, you know, be in Texas a lot if he decides to run again. And you've talked a lot about Dan Patrick's influence on that process.

Talk to us just a little bit about that before we pivot. Yeah. So at the Conroe rally that Daniel and Hayden were at, Trump basically, not basically, flat out said that Dan Patrick know, Dan Patrick calls him a lot for endorsements and he gives them to him. And so, you know, one of those was definitely Sorrell's because, you know, Trump has no idea who a local candidate for DA is. And I don't think Sorrell's had even held public office before this, but he certainly wasn't a national figure to a former president. And so Dan Patrick has incredible sway over which way these endorsements flow in the state of Texas. Lieutenant Governor Patrick sent a memo to Donald Trump afterwards.

I think it was Wednesday that then got sent out to all the media. And Patrick touted his endorsements as, I recommended all of these candidates because I believed in them and I knew your endorsement along with their work ethic and conservative records would get them into the winner's circle. A few of them are not yet in the final winner's circle for the gop but you know they'd finish first in their primary so um patrick's influence there definitely had an effect yeah absolutely well let's continue to talk about influencing these elections and specifically dan patrick so let's pivot to that um but you know dan Dan Patrick leads the Senate.

Dave Phelan leaves the Texas House. Those top two figures obviously try to influence elections in their favor so that when the session comes back, they can pass the priority items they deem most, you know, important. The lieutenant governor came out hard for five candidates and opened Senate seats. Who were they and how did those candidates fare? So, Representatives Phil King in SD10, Maize Middleton in SD11, and Tan Parker in SD12, as well as Kevin Sparks, who's not a state rep, in SD31,

all secured the GOP nominations on Tuesday. Middleton and Sparks faced multiple primary challengers so they were at least at risk of facing a runoff sparks is an oil and gas businessman correct yeah okay yep and um actually interestingly enough sparks i found this out when i was researching for the piece sparks's dad ran against kel seliger oh wow way back i think it was early 2000s and who seat sparks is now who sparks basically pushed out of office yeah with his candidacy with the help of dan patrick so uh yeah those three secured the nominations um king and parker only faced or those four secure the nominations king and parker only faced one other challenger, and it was smooth sailing for both of them.

The only one left to be decided is former Senator Pete Flores in SD24, and he will face Raul Reyes, who ran in the congressional CD23 23 was it against tony gonzalez in 2020 he pushed tony gonzalez to a runoff i think um it was a close race and um now he's back for texas senate yeah let's talk about um the speaker's endorsements how did the support that speaker phelan gave to candidates' affair. Phelan, at least in spirit, supported every House GOP incumbent who faced a primary. There was one notable absence in the congratulations list that the Speaker sent out. That was Representative

Brian Slayton, who faced a primary who won pretty easily against Clyde Bostic on Tuesday. But, well, that's not really surprising because Slayton was one of the only two Republicans who voted against Phelan's speakership in January of last year. But as of the eight-day reports, I put a list in our 10 things to watch article.

You know, there were there were 12 House Republicans on that. I found that Speaker Phelan had contributed to financially, whether it was in kind contributions like paying for mailers or TV ads or just giving money to. And ultimately, I think of those only, it was pushed to a runoff. So all of, all the other ones made it fine. Some of them didn't really have that competitive of races. Um, but they all, everyone in that, that list had a primary. Um, and then, uh, we have, well, I guess that's the next topic. Yeah.

Well, let's get into that. So the, we have four GOP incumbents, um, in the state house facing runoffs and all four of them feel and has their own support behind. Correct. Who are those? Who are those incumbents? Uh, Calcos all in house district 12. He's facing Ben bias. Um, Glenn Rogers, who I mentioned earlier in house district 60 12 he's facing ben bias um glenn rogers who i mentioned earlier

in house district 60 he's facing mike alcott rogers i think this is notable because um he was pushed to a runoff in his in 2020 and he faced john francis in that really really expensive house race yeah um that actually got really really nasty so this is his second runoff in as many years uh for the seat uh then we've got phil stevenson in house district 85 he's facing stan kitzman and stephanie click in hd 91 in tarrant county who is facing david lowe wow well that'll be interesting to see what happens there. And each of these races has a lot of different components to them. see the list i mentioned earlier grow once the finance reports come out because the numbers i had were the eight day so um it's probably pretty likely that he did some last minute spending in favor of these candidates but i think we'll see more going into the runoff from the speaker

to help support these um these incumbents that are facing runoff challenges for certainly now casals uh challenger bias endorsed by ted cruz notable um like you said glenn rogers has a history of tough primary challenges and mike olcott is a very prominent conservative donor and activist he's the one facing off in the runoff phil stevenson's race i don't know as much about um but that's a very interesting one that will be watching closely as well stephanie click isaiah has covered this um specifically but the issue in that race with david lowe being the uh runoff opponent specifically pertains to child gender modification bans and click slow roll on that

issue during the legislative session that's been the big primary issue in this race. It's been a big, yeah. Yeah. A very big criticism that's been, and what folks see, how many primary, she had four, three or four primary opponents? I want to say four. Okay. Yeah. No, I think five. It was, it was, it was a handful. It was quite a few.

But regardless, that's a lot of people. People see that as the motivation for people entering this race so all four races will be very interesting okay um gentlemen let's pivot let's do some rundowns post-primary questions what in y'all's mind was the most shocking upset of primary night brad we're going to start with you. I couldn't narrow it to one, but I've got two in House District 52. You had Patrick McGinnis win the primary, but he's going to a runoff with Caroline Harris,

who is a Senator Brian Hughes staffer. I was surprised, the part that makes this kind of an upset, I was surprised that Nelson Jarin was not among the two in the runoff. I was pretty sure this was going to go to a runoff. But he seemed to get a lot more backing from kind of the establishment part of the Republican Party. More than McGinnis?

From what I saw, yeah. McGinnis seemed to be kind of off on an island of his own. He spent a lot of money but um jarren seemed to have more support from figures uh like senator charles schwartner uh whom he used to work for but i was surprised at that and i think in the craziest election um the railroad commission race sarah stogner who is a crazy election who is the person that filmed that infamous video on a pump jack out in west texas um or maybe it wasn't out in west texas but uh she made the runoff against railroad commissioner uh wayne christian and he um he was close to avoiding it but eventually got pushed to it and in this also sarge summers the recently deceased

candidate not only did he pull double double digits in the race but he didn't finish last yeah and it was close between third and fourth or fourth and fifth but um you know that's just very weird how close was wayne christian to avoiding a runoff? I think it was three, within 3%. Fascinating. Yeah. And so all of that just, that wraps a perfect bow on what has been an insane race. Probably will be an insane runoff. Yes.

Yeah. Absolutely. Dude, did I tell you about the time, the town of May Pearl, where I, like my family, they elected a dead guy as mayor? No. In 2019? Okay. I'll tell you about that later. They elected a dead guy as mayor. No. In 2019. Okay, I'll tell you about that later. They elected a dead guy as mayor.

Spoiler alert. It's like the place in Alaska that has a cat as mayor. Oh, yeah. That happened? Yes. I've never heard about that. And they do it, maybe it's not Alaska, but somewhere up north. Oh, they do it purposefully.

Oh, yes. There's a cat that's a mayor they voluntarily elect. How does it file for the ballot? I don't know. These are big questions, Daniel. Okay, well, Daniel, let's go ahead and jump to yours. What was the biggest upset in your mind? The biggest upset in my mind is the one that you're going to talk about.

A big upset that I think might fly under the radar uh that i saw was in senate district 27 uh which was a democratic primary that i was specifically looking at the republican primary was interesting too but the in the democratic primary lorgan morgan lamontia had really secured a lot of support she got uh basically uh endorsements from all the rio grande valley delegation except for um alex dominguez who was running in the race um and so she had like she even had the support of cinderella lucio who's retiring from the seat uh she had um over a million dollars cash on hand when she was running just because her family is wealthy, very influential in the region. But she only walked away with about a third of the vote.

She was the front runner and she's going to the runoff. But the person that she's going to the runoff with is Sarah Stapleton Barrera, who previously ran against Eddie Lucio Jr. So the senator. Yes. Yes. Not the son. Yes. Yes. Junior is the third the older yes which is why i always have to clarify because junior automatically makes me think it's a son but there have been three eddie lucios yes yes we never hear about the first one though in texas politics i mean at least as far as i've been in it maybe if i was older i would have heard about it

yes anyways that's that's one of the races that I thought was, uh, pretty interesting. I thought that, uh, LaMantia was going to, uh, walk away with certainly over 40% of the vote, if not away without, without a runoff. Um, but she did not. So that was interesting. It'll be interesting watching. I think we'll see definitely this, um, the runoff will be kind of more of the the moderate democrat versus the progressive democrat so that will be an interesting runoff

yeah good stuff isaiah what about you um also i'm so excited about this segment for you i said that before we started recording i want to say it now i'm so thrilled you get to talk about this yes on our last podcast um i ranted at length on the wild phenomenon of Sandrius Martina as a candidate in the Democratic primary for land commissioner polling so well. And, you know, polls, as we're aware of in very recent history, are not always the most reliable thing to depend on. not only did martinez advance in the runoff there was a runoff but she won the primary with 32 of the vote the second place is jay kleberg of king ranch royalty who got 25 of the vote having gathered the most money in the world in this

race and then the primary at least uh i believe don buckingham outraced him in the primary at least. I believe Don Buckingham out-raised him in the Republican primary. But there were four candidates, and Kleber got rid of them all by a long shot. The second place was Jenny Hsu, who I think had five figures, and she had six in cash on hand. This is like in each report, not even totaled. Yeah. And Martinez, I want to say, spent about $600, according to your most recent finance report. You know what?

Hold on. Let's take a little look. Regardless, it was not very much. It was hundreds of dollars that she spent. It was in the hundreds. Yeah, it was in the hundreds. But she won the primary. And what's the cherry on top for me is that, I mean, I mentioned this on our last podcast, but she very candidly told the media that she was seeking this office because, very simply put, it's the easiest one for a Democrat to attain.

And so she just thought, like, this would be an easy target. And she might be proven right. Wow. But, yeah, so she's going to a runoff with Kleberg and, um, that's, it's just an incredible phenomenon. She's done.

I don't, I don't know how much campaigning she's done. If I've like done a lot of searching to try and figure that out. Um, she does have some social media, not a great big following on there. And, um,

her posts aren't very current. So I haven't seen any pictures of her at meetings or anything like that. I try and just, you know, search around and find like if she's speaking to other club meetings, Democrat events. I haven't seen anything. If she's doing stumping, it's really not very obvious. Yeah. You know, as opposed to Kleberg and Sue and even Michael Lange, who placed fourth in this primary. All of them are very obvious campaigners.

I've seen cleaver yard signs in like my neighborhood there are cleaver yard signs all around austin yeah yeah um so he's got people you know it's very interesting he put a lot of effort into it yeah and um and sued it as well sue cleaver and lange at least from the visible evidence i've seen, Evol hustled a lot more than Martinez, who won and spent the least. She has reported raising $2,400 total and has reported spending $1,700 total. So, yeah, not very much. Yeah, you're fast to that fact. Do you know you have Kleberg's total off the top of your head?

At your fingertips? I have it at my fingertips. Sure. But yeah, I mean, it's just, it's incredible. So overall, she got over 300,000 votes. Kleberg got just over 250,000. Kleberg has reported $780,000 in contributions. Oh, wait, no, that wasn't right.

I missed a column. $856,000 in contributions. Wow. yeah you could like you could buy an island and he has spent uh 679 000 okay which that would i could do a lot with that much yeah i wouldn't run for office dude i wouldn't run dude i'd be buying it yeah yeah i'd be buying an island that's what i Isaiah would be doing. I would buy an island. I would have a Navy of me. A Navy of you. You wouldn't. You probably wouldn't float very well.

Would you clone yourself? No, it would just be me. It would just be you. Defending Isaiah Stan from pirates. But yeah, San Andreas Martinez, one of the Democratic primary for land commissioner. And this is my one correct campaign prediction. Woo. So naturally, I was going to pick this as my topic.

Spiking the football, as Brad would say. I'm going to spike it a little bit. You deserve to. You've been watching this race closely than just about anybody else in the state. Well, good. I like that. Hayden, we're going to come to you. Talk to us about what you saw as the most shocking upset of Tuesday night.

I don't know if I would describe it as shocking. It was surprising, though, that Michelle Beckley's political career is in a runoff. She had wanted to run for Congress, but after redistricting, the legislature put her in a district that was unfavorable. She had announced she was going to run against Beth Van Dyne. And after they drew her out of that district and stacked that race to favor Republicans, she mulled out loud that she might run for Texas Senate or a Denton County judge, and then settled on Lieutenant Governor. So she made lemonade out of lemons and will face Collier in the runoff. A debate between Dan Patrick and Michelle Beckley would definitely be interesting if she wins the runoff.

And as we know, anything can happen in politics. So we'll have to see how that race turns out. I am fascinated to see. I'll jump in on this one biggest, most shocking upset in my mind. But was this election night? This was, I didn't say it. All this section says is post-primary questions, most shocking upset. That's what it says.

I think you had mentioned election night. I did for Hayden because I did for Hayden because we were switching mics and I was buying time. You're correct. Yeah. Most shocking upset in my mind. Let's talk about congressional district three a lot of us have seen this go down in the last few days but we're talking about a congressional race where an incumbent was forced into a runoff um against a former it was a former county judge

right or correct he was the county judge in collin county from 2007 to 2019 yeah so for quite a while he was a he was the collin county judge yeah um so in the military for 25 years wow no you're good um but forced into a runoff it's very notable when a congressman is forced into a runoff there were all sorts of uh accusations flying around or not accusations so much as criticisms flying around about his support for a january 6th commission that's really where a lot of this opposition stemmed from several days before election day there were rumors articles on on some websites going around talking about an affair that van taylor had with the congressman with um yeah an isis bride is basically what the headline said and regardless it was a couple days before the election we'll see if that gets any any steam early voting had

basically already been completed um we fast forward to primary night forced into a runoff the next day at like three in the afternoon well i'm sorry before we drive off from the runoff he didn't it wasn't like keith self got 30 and he got 40 but it was he was barely uh he was barely in runoff territory taylor came within if i don't know if it was a few hundred or it was uh i think very close 48 48 was and self got i believe i deleted it off my page but he got like 21 22 percent or uh no it was 20 26 percent so it was he got like a quarter of the vote taylor came just shy of being nominated outright um and so that's that's the setting for what happened the next day yeah absolutely and it was one of those that were back and forth all night it was like will van taylor be in a runoff will he not

it was kind of going back and forth depending on which count, you know, which, uh, polling locations you were looking at. Um, and needless to say the next day, 3 PM about, um, an email goes out to supporters saying I'm withdrawing from the race. Yes, indeed. I had an affair. Um, my wife found out about it. Uh, we've been working through this for like the last year, I believe he said, and that he said his daughters found out about the affair through these articles and through this rumor mill circulation. And basically withdrew from the race and congratulated self for being the GOP nominee so when we're talking about upsets or not or I mean electorally it wasn't it was an interesting upset in and of itself uh sitting congressman going to a runoff but then to have the candidate who did force that runoff but not with a as you said an incredibly sizable amount of the vote compared to other runoff candidates it was uh very interesting to watch

that happen well and that this one, and I spoke to most of the candidates in this race, the big issue was the January 6th commission that he voted for. And he didn't vote for the select committee that Pelosi started in just the house. He voted for the bipartisan commission that died in the Senate. But usually incumbents are when they have these political snafus, they're able to get past them and the fact that taylor didn't and that he ended up in a runoff is interesting and then add on top of that the um the rumors that were going around it's i said this morning it's just um it was a very rapid descent for his political career yeah absolutely, very fascinating. But regardless, that's where I'd

say my most shocking upset landed. Okay, let's talk about biggest takeaways. Brad, we'll start with you. I think it's the fact that after two years of a lot of discontent among certain factions of the Republican Party, Governor Abbott still holds a lot of support from the average primary voter. You know, he pulled in two thirds of the support. Even after the pandemic policies that drew a lot of criticism from especially more conservative wings of the party that were really the source of the primary challenges. I think ultimately that's when the decision was made for people to run against him,

especially, at least Don Huffine said that it really traced back to his daughter. I think she got arrested for being at church unmasked and he said this at his election eve stump speech but um you know that would definitely drive someone to to do what he did launch the campaign maybe he had decided beforehand i don't know but um you know despite all of that despite the two years of of a lot of criticism you know he ran away with it and there wasn't there wasn't a lot of wondering what was going to happen yeah on election night and um so i think that's an interesting takeaway of you know everything that went down i'm one thing that i know a lot of folks are talking about kind of observing

and watching the race was okay. What number does Abbott have to get to for this not to feel like for this to feel like a solid victory. Yeah. And I don't know that that is something that can be answered except for me by Abbott's team. But in terms of perception it was a solid enough victory. And certainly you had names on the ballot

who were spending big money. Alan West is a big name. Don Huffines raised and spent a lot of money. But what was that number? What number would it take for team Abbott to feel like they succeeded? It's certainly not 50%. It's certainly not 51%.

The fact that he cleared that bar so significantly i think they'll be happy with yep um i think he would have liked both of the the bigger challengers west and huffines to finish below double digits but you know 12 that's not far off from that those low double digits yeah low yes low double digits um so i i think they think it probably could have ended up a little bit better but it went pretty well for them based on how it shook out yeah certainly daniel uh what about you biggest takeaway one of the biggest takeaways in my opinion was that it was a good night for progressives on the ballot. If you look at the only incumbent who lost was Representative Art

Fierro. He was being challenged by another state representative who had her district moved to a different part of the state during redistricting. Claudia Ordaz-Perez, definitely the more progressive candidate in the race, ran against him and walked away with the victory. You also had in Austin, you had Austin San Antonio, I should say, you had Greg Kassar, who is running against Eddie Rodriguez and a couple other candidates for a congressional seat, and he walked away without any runoff as well. Then you also have a bunch of progressive candidates

who went into runoffs, including Michelle Beckley in the lieutenant governor's race. You also had Jasmine Crockett, who led, almost walked away without a runoff, but did not make it over the 50% mark, but she still led in the congressional race for congressional district 30. You have Jessica Cisneros, who had previously challenged Henry Cuellar, and she also managed

to pull him into a runoff, and it was very close. At some point, she was even ahead of Cuellar, even ahead of the 50% mark. But I think at the end of the evening, she walked away with a little bit less than him, but still going to a runoff. You have then also Sarah Stapleton Barrera that I mentioned in Senate District 27 and Michelle Vallejo in the 15th Congressional District as well going to runoffs. And then also in the Democratic primary, you saw a lot less challenges against incumbents as you did in the Republican Party. But of the ones that happened, two of the notable ones would be against Senator John Whitmire and State Representative Harold

Dutton. And both of those challengers who were kind of running more of a pro-public school platform, definitely did quite well compared to other challengers. Now, Dutton and Whitmire still managed to come out on top and win their elections, but they were pretty close challenges they faced. Well, thank you for that, Daniel. Hayden, what about you? I think the lesson, we joke that it comes down to turnout, but it really comes down to name recognition. You touched on incumbency earlier with regard to Dan Patrick. People know Dan Patrick. People know Greg Abbott.

Greg Abbott was running for governor for the first time when Trump was running. And that's one reason why a lot of these House incumbents cruise to victory, because people get nostalgic and people prefer candidates they're familiar with and they're willing to forgive them for their faults because they are in office a lot of the time and when things are generally going well and people don't know the names of the people challenging them then it is favorable to the people with higher name recognition. And even in like the governor's race, we've heard Allen West, Don Huffines, we've heard those names every day for the past year. And, but most people are not following.

Most people have, you know, responsibilities they're tending to. And so they usually, a lot of the time people go with the names that they recognize and that they're familiar with. And I think that's one of the big lessons of this primary. Yeah, certainly. Isaiah, what about you? Big takeaways. Hayden took a lot of the words out of my mouth. I think on that same note, I would say that endorsements and fundraising are useful, but they don't win races necessarily.

As y'all brought up earlier, Pete Flores versus Raul Reyes in Senate District 24 is a big example. He's got Dan Patrick's endorsement, which means almost equivalently that he has Trump's endorsement as well. And he's the only Dan Patrick endorse seat to be going into a runoff right now against Raul Reyes. Don Buckingham versus Tim Wesley, that's the current runoff in the Republican primary for land commissioner. Buckingham had all the money in the world, was the biggest fundraiser in that race, and had all the endorsements from Rick Perry and from Donald Trump and so forth. And Wesley didn't have any of that, but their margin in the primary was still a pretty big

gap between them. But nonetheless, he's still pulling her into a runoff without any of those resources. Obviously, I mean, the proof is going to be in the pudding for who wins between them at the runoff. But it's interesting. Same deal with Click versus David Lowe in her district. She's had that seat since, I think her first election was in 2012, assumed off in 2013. So we're talking about like coming up on a decade of her being in this seat, huge incumbent advantage. People are very used to her and they've kept her steadily there for a long time. And she also is an Abbott

endorseee and has a lot of other big endorsements and still getting pulled into it. What's interesting also, this isn't a takeaway as much as it is a question. It's obvious that Trump's endorsement, it goes a long way with a lot of Republicans, and it is more of a positive than a negative for most Republicans in Texas, I believe. But I wonder because for the most part, they're so equivalent to Dan Patrick's endorsements. When we look at the candidates that dan patrick wants in the senate especially the senate for example um these are not they're often opposed at least perceivably to the grassroots type candidates right and so i think a good question to ask is how much does trump represent at least in texas politics establishment, however you define that. Right. I mean, yeah.

Patrick prefers these more established and I guess we might say cooperative Republican candidates for the Senate, you know, and is not looking for the grassroots types that build themselves as troublemakers, you know? Yeah. And I mean, so the question really is like, how much does Trump look into each of these candidates? Is he just going on like, I trust this guy, this guy tells me to endorse and so I will. But, you know, like Trump for in a general given Republican primary, this is just such a common pattern.

We see like the Trump endorsed candidate is going to like that candidates opponents or competitors is what it would be on a primary are generally going to frame themselves as the upstart underdog rebel types for sure and they may not be the furthest right in the race either they may not be the most conservative or have that kind of um conservative billing or support from grassroots organizations it doesn't always indicate that right but it is a huge stamp of approval for primary voters right i think um with Trump being he's quite obviously the biggest figure in the Republican Party. You know, how much is he the effective establishment? Like how much of the Republican Party when he won became, you know, supporters of Trump? Right. You know, there are obviously some that were supporters early on.

I think Dan Patrick and Sid Miller were both on board pretty early. But then we just saw most of the party get behind him, as they normally do. But that kind of shifts what constitutes the establishment and the literal meaning of the word. But in Texas, it kind of takes on the liberal Republican versus conservative grassroots Republican kind of dynamic that's the way it's kind of drawn among some circles right but if we're going just based on who pulls the strings and in Republican politics you know Trump obviously does that quite a bit and he's

very successful at it at least with picking candidates and how much does that make him bit and he's very successful at it uh at least with picking candidates and how much does that make him the establishment for the republican party right now and that may change whenever trump's no longer a political figure um i think the the center of gravity and parties changes certainly running it and i think that's a better way of looking at establishment the overton window, Bradley. But I guess like the question is, I mean, we say establishment, we just mean like, I don't know, I guess it's hard. It's a hard term to define when you think about it. Like, I guess we, that connotes an incumbent, especially, but not necessarily a well-funded

candidate, one that is in good, whatever that means with a lot of the other existing incumbents and politicians and it does connote a moderate position on some things or at least attention withheld to more grassroots focused issues right and um those types of candidates i think are overwhelmingly the mold for trump endorsements, at least in Texas politics. But then, you know, how much of that is Trump sifting through their positions and saying, like,

this guy's more moderate than the other, I'm going to endorse him. And how much of that is, um, he's, he's accepting the recommendations of other politicians that are themselves the establishment, right.

And whatever that means. And he'll, he'll endorse, I mean, he'll endorse grassroots candidates who are conservative it doesn't always mean he's going to endorse the most moderate i think the interesting part is in the trump era of the gop the lines are not as clear-cut and um endorsements have a lot more to do with uh you know a lot more to do with being willing to play than necessarily like a set of policy

positions that somebody aligns with or pledges allegiance to right it has a lot more to do with okay you're going to be willing to play play with our team and overall you know there are some some primary fights where the candidates differ greatly on policy issues. But generally, the Republican Party has adopted the Trump agenda, however you want to define that, kind of writ large. And so there's not a lot of issue difference that Trump is going to need to sift through on many of these. Certainly there are some, but that's why he then uses dan patrick as basically a heuristic say who who should i jump in for dan patrick calls him and says you know

this guy is a good candidate endorse him and um then he does it and so um powerful tool very powerful tool yeah absolutely but um yeah i don't have anything else to add there you go well i guess i just say like if endorsements i think the most useful role the endorsements play is letting people know generally like what camp a candidate falls into yeah like okay if you're endorsed by this guy then i assume you know you're kind of in this realm of political candidates and you know in a republican primary candidate with no endorsements is if not like you've got the ones that are on the fringe that have raised ten dollars and but then you do have like more grassroots types that are just political outsiders

yeah but a trump endorsement i think usually is a badge of for the most part you know for lack of a better word an establishment candidate that's the pattern that i saw in this primary yeah it's very interesting we'll see how this all fares in the runoff we'll see if we get another trump um statement talking about how you know spiking the football bradley let's see if we can get another one of those okay let's pivot to closest calls we're going long today but it's post-primary we have a lot to talk about um closest call bradley we'll start with you i've got two because they contain the same exact number um hg64 andy hopper uh barely lost to representative lynn stuckey in the north texas district by 102 votes that one went pretty late into the night without us realizing

who who won maybe it was the next morning. And then in HD70, the Democratic primary, 102 votes separated first and third place. Third place, Lorenzo Sanchez missed the runoff by 29 votes. So both of those were incredibly close. And, you know, only 100 votes separated these things.

And so that's a very small amount, even for state house districts. Yeah, absolutely. Daniel, let's go to you. Let's talk about what you thought the closest call was on primary night. On primary night? You're right. I said that again. The closest call that we are still waiting for the results of.

The OAG race for the democratic primary still waiting i guess it was close on the primary night did i spoil that one too i think i did i talk about this one too like right at the top no i did okay i was like i feel like somebody talked about it i definitely talked about this as i was talking about the the results we're still waiting to see who the democrat runner-up will be for the the runoff uh we'll find out at some point someday soon um that was that was one of the interesting ones and the other interesting one i would also throw in there uh would be a congressional district 28 uh that race between henry gray are and um jessica cisneros yes yeah absolutely hayden what about you? I think in HD11, Travis Clardy almost slipping into a runoff was pretty surprising or it was a close call.

In that race, a majority would have been 13,064 votes. He got 13,780 votes, which was 52.7%. In other words, it came pretty close to a runoff and that would run off would have been with rachel hale the runner-up who got 21 of the vote i talked to rachel hale she was one of the candidates i interviewed in hd11 she was very energetic and she's new to politics and i think it's interesting one of the more interesting things that have happened in HD11 since about a decade ago when the incumbent in that district, Chuck Hobson, switched from Democrat to Republican, won once and then got defeated by Clardy the next time around. Probably one of the more interesting things that have happened since that event. And this district is shaped awkwardly now. It extends down into Hardin County, I believe, on the border with Texas and Louisiana. And it's shaped kind of awkwardly. But clarity has not come that close in recent elections to a runoff for an incumbent. That is notable that for someone new to politics to take enough votes away from

the incumbent to almost take it to a runoff. And of course, the other two candidates were Greg Caldwell and Mark Williams. However, both of those candidates received less than 15%. That's what I noticed on primary night. Good stuff isaiah what about you um when we were getting this all organized i was actually fixing to say lynn stuckey and then brad started talking about him um but uh so this isn't the closest closest call but i mentioned earlier that don buckingham current state senator won the general land office commissioner primary for Republicans with 41.37% of the vote. And Tim Wesley is the runner up with 14, about 14%. So who the runner up was going to be was actually pretty close between about three of the candidates.

Don Minton, John Spires, and Tim Wesley. We had talked before about how Spires had an interesting conglomerate of endorsements from groups that don't typically agree. And I wonder, I wonder, because I said, like, endorsements are a good heuristic for people to figure out where people stand, you know. And, I mean, everyone knows that there are some Republican circles where, like, they see a newspaper endorsement. They think, well, I'm not voting for that guy. Right. And so I've been one of those buyers like pitch to the Houston Chronicle too well. And people saw that and thought like, I'm not voting for a Chronicle endorseee. And so, but he was about 30,000 votes shy of being number two and replacing Tim Wesley. And I just wonder if those 30,000 votes had not seen that he was

endorsed by these newspapers, would they like him a little bit better? I don't know. It's a good question. So not the closest call, but an interesting question. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, well, let's go to notable tweets, fun tweets, just spicy tweets that caught your eye this week. It's a fun week for Twitter action um brad we'll start with you so i referenced it earlier referred to it but um abbott's spokesman dave carney

had a media availability after the election on wednesday and um he said that the governor is going to spend more than 100 million million in the race against Beto. I'm not sure if that's collectively because he's already spent decent amounts, but even if he were to count what he's spent so far, he would still have to spend like $70 million, I think. But it could also mean he's going to spend $100 million more, which, wow. But Abbott does have $50 million cash on hand. Just sitting there.

Just sitting there as of now. And obviously the guy can raise money like nobody else. So there's that. And it's not like he went out there and was so scared about his primary challenge that he burned through much of the reserve whatsoever. Certainly puts him out there. Spent a little bit of money. But if he was truly scared about his primary challenge he would have spent a lot more yes yes and then you match him up against beto o'rourke who himself is a prolific fundraiser we'll see if he brings in

as much as he did against ted cruz i think it was what 84 million yeah it was the most expensive u.s senate race in history um i think he himself spent 84 and ted spent 50 something it's like 130 150 ballpark but you know if abbott's spending 100 million you can bet that this race is gonna eclipse the 2018 senate race in terms of total spent but carney added that you know we're gonna about o'rourke we're gonna take the wood to this guy we're going to take him we're not going to take him off the map so it kind of appears that abbott's team wants to put the final nail in o'rourke's political coffin we'll see if you can do it but this would be the third loss in three cycles for o'rourke and um yeah we'll see how it turns out very good daniel what about you uh it wasn't really just a tweet that i saw per se, but one of the interesting things that happened this week after the election, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick sent a memo to President Donald Trump about the election results in Texas.

And Trump actually sent that out on his own email list. So I just thought that was fascinating in and of itself. I know Brad talked about Lieutenant Governor kind of having Trump's ear earlier. And this is another example of that, where you have Lieutenant Governor sending the former president something and then the president forwards that to everyone. So that was just fascinating. Absolutely. Isaiah, what about you? Well, you know, I'm kind of on the fence because i didn't see a lot of very interesting twitter tweets so i'm gonna i'm gonna call an audible here um do it

and never mind i'm not going to i'm calling audible on that audible so i was in san angelo on and on primary election morning and it was was in Austin on that night. And I was in San Angelo in the morning to attend a city council meeting where they were considering, once again, an ordinance that would ban abortion in city limits. And they'd be the 41st city in Texas to do it, and I want to say the 45th in the nation, because they've got some in Ohio, I believe, of all places. Don't quote me on that on this recorded podcast,

but I focus of all places. Don't quote me on that on this recorded podcast, but I focus on one state anyway. So they, the San Angelo city council unanimously voted this down, which might come as a surprise to a lot of people. Like my mom is from Robert Lee, you know, and I was talking to her on the phone about what was going on. And I said, Oh, San Angelo actually voted down this ordinance without a lot of abortion. He said, it really San Angelo. And I was like, yeah. And so, well, I mean, we'll have a story coming out on that pretty soon, but it was interesting for one, because it was a pretty haphazard meeting and I could go into that for a lot of reasons. But basically the allegation at hand from the residents of San Angelo who formed the committee to put this ordinance

on the agenda, the pro-life residents, they've been alleging that the city leadership has violated the Open Meetings Act by deciding beforehand that this ordinance would go to a November election. And there's pretty solid evidence of that from very public remarks of city leadership at this meeting and at previous meetings saying that they support the right of the people to vote on this issue. But that admission itself strongly suggests, to put it lightly, that they've already decided the way that this would be voted on. Anyway, there's a lot of drama going on with that one. to put it lightly that they've already decided the way that this would be voted on anyway um there's a lot of drama going on with that one but what was interesting is that um this is the same deal that happened in lubbock and uh in lubbock we saw when the city council rejected this ordinance

you know afterward then it goes to the whole citywide vote but at that city council meeting the lubbock city councilors for the most part, unanimously voted down and almost unanimously said that they themselves were personally pro-life, but didn't agree with the way that was enforced and felt that it was coming on too strong. And that was, Lubbock passed theirs before the Texas Heartbeat Act was passed. San Angelo previously decided to, instead of passing this ordinance, consider a proclamation in support of the Texas Heartbeat Act. And so the position that a lot of counselors and the mayor have taken generally has been that, you know, this ordinance isn't needed because of the Heartbeat Act.

And what was interesting at this meeting was that the counselors seemed to publicly take a position of saying that the ordinance was not strong enough. Because, for for example the mother cannot be penalized and the city can only impose a penalty under certain legal thresholds and when they do it's for a maximum of like a two thousand dollar fine and one of them said well the texas heartbeat act has a ten thousand dollar penalty if you prevail in court and so but for those reasons it was voted down unanimously putatively for being too weak which is interesting like it's just interesting stuff going on so now it's going to go to the voters in in november but um that's going to happen with a few other cities around texas too

yeah you've been all over the state this week thanks for following all of that hayden we're going to come to you um what kind of of Twitter fun did you get into this week? I was amused by some of the comments about Biden's State of the Union address being on the same night as the primary. I had one tweet, or I saw one from, I'll just use first names, Allison. Still impeccably annoyed the State of the Union is the same night as the texas primary end quote and then there was another one from griff how dare biden hosts the state of the union on the same day as the texas primaries and it was i saw another one that was like um excuse me could y'all please not tweet about the state of the union until the primaries are over thank you

it was it was just funny to see some of the comments because everyone in texas was preoccupied with the primaries and um you know elsewhere people were preoccupied with the state of the union but that that was amusing to me yeah certainly did you tweet about it as well yeah i did okay yeah i did i saw daniel smirk over there and i saw him yeah i did i think i tweeted i don't remember, but I was like, I retweeted, but I can't remember what I said. I forgot. I keep forgetting the State of the Union is even happening tonight.

Like who, you know, let's let's get into that tomorrow. Yeah. Okay. Twitter fun. I'm going to go back to the same kind of thread here from Patrick's VTech that Brad mentioned earlier

from with specific quotes from dave carney who's abbott's chief political guy um but interesting quotes after the primary victory for the governor um uh the report the uh question asked was will abbott shift to the middle for the general election and the quote from carney was great abbott's never shifted on an issue for elections ever. And I think it's notable in that both fans and critics of the governor have come out and said that there are certainly issues that Abbott will not shift on necessarily, but emphasize far more if he is facing criticism from somebody within his own party party or just even electorally. So that was an interesting, very, very interesting quote. And that's part of what politics is, period,

right, is looking at issues, hearing criticism, deciding what is worth your energy or not from a messaging perspective. I thought that was a very interesting quote from the governor's top political guy. He was asked how much influence does don huffines have over abbott going forward and carney said who very spicy thought that was interesting um but he he did follow that up and say that he hopes huffine stays engaged and spend some of his money to help candidates in the general election huffines is uh famously wealthy and uh definitely how much did he end up i think it was 15 million dollars that he ended up

spending of his own money all of his own uh it was a five million dollars in loans yeah it was it was seven digit number two more islands you could buy uh five of those islands isaiah wants have a couple of Isaiah navies. I was just going to say, I still get his family's car dealership jingle stuck in my head when I hear his name. Oh, really? Yeah. I'm not going to sing it, but anyone who's lived in the Dallas area has heard that jingle because it's on the radio station all the time. I was going to ask you for it personally. In that same thread, Carney also said um talking about tarrant county which

is the last remaining red county uh red large county urban urban um obviously fort worth is there said that we will erase on the whiteboard all of the things all of the thoughts that tarrant county is changing so you can bet your bottom dollar they're going to throw a heck of a lot of money at that county yeah so mutual uh boat tarrant county has a very strong republican infrastructure locally that will benefit a lot of those candidates who are fearful of the county uh turning purple or blue and better work did win tarrant county in 2018 which i think is where this is stemming from too right is that supposedly the largest red urban county in the country. And we did see it go for a work in 2018.

And obviously there's a lot of kind of PTSD from 2018 of these low ballots, Republicans getting shellacked because of the Beto effect at the top of the ticket. And Abbott, his team is clearly determined to not let that happen again. Or to reverse some of those effects that local candidates and officials are still feeling after 2018. A couple more interesting portions of this thread.

Will Abbott debate O'Rourke? And Carney said it depends if it's a competitive race maybe if it's not probably not i thought that was pretty honest and then finally in my opinion the most interesting part of this thread um the governor is coming under a lot of fire right now nationally for um an order tasking this state with investigation as to whether certain child gender modification procedures are child abuse um and the quote from carney says that is a 75 to 80 percent uh winner that is a winning issue texans have common sense this is why the democrats across the country are out of touch fascinating and that was one of the top things that he was criticized

for by his primary opponents as well same thing he's getting flack for in national media um now that is interesting to see the national media react to things that candidates here have done for the conservative base you know they were hesitant to do in themselves and then the national media react as though it was, you know, their original idea when so many of these things, they originated with other candidates or grassroots or other various sources. You know, we've been talking about these things for a while. But the one who, you know, the incumbent that advances the policy usually gets a lot of the attention nationally. Yeah. Well, the Huffines camp, and Brad can speak to this far better than I can,

has been talking a lot post-primary about the victories that they saw in this primary, despite, you know, electoral losses saying, hey, you know, we are glad to see the governor coming forward on some of these issues and that we did affect the conversation, the topics that were at the table that's been a lot of their messaging for sure and i think there's a lot of truth to that yeah and well once the results became not final but understood like everyone knew how it was going to turn out hafines put out a statement that said he wasn't gonna you know fight the election at all or anything like that but that he was declaring victory on the issues. And I spoke with Huffines on at the election eve event and I asked him flat out, you know,

other than the election, you know, what, what do you think your campaign has succeeded in doing during this time? And he said that he pointed to the actions from the DFPS that were kind of more minor things, but like exposing the, the messaging on one of its websites and the training material that had CRT type language in it about institutional racism and whatnot. Those got nixed. And then there was by the state. Yeah. One of them very clearly came because Huffines called it out.

And we saw from email records that were put out. But he also said that he didn't think that the special sessions either would have happened. Obviously, redistricting would have definitely happened, but he didn't think the special sessions would have happened without him in the race um he also said that if those would have happened he said that the array of conservative issues that were on the ticket or on the the calls you know like the big tech stuff um the uh the the final election bill he pointed to um various other things he said he didn't think those would either have been on there in the first place or gotten the kind of support that they did. So, yeah, I mean, that agree with that assessment or not. You know, that's that's his opinion of it.

And this was this was this primary while Abbott won handily it was not a cakewalk for him he was getting barraged every day by these candidates especially hub by huffines yeah and so it was definitely the one the most on the offensive yeah yeah and so obviously they didn't um pull enough support to even come close to pulling enough support to pull the governor into a runoff but um you know they did they think they you know affected the the direction of rhetoric in the race the extent to which is the debate whether or not he did is not up for debate right and huffines thinks that it will have a lasting effect um at least on some things with abbott sticking to certain issues that he committed to in the primary. Rick Perry disagreed with that.

The other Rick Perry disagreed with that. He thinks that the governor is going to, quote, go back to whatever typical general election issues he would normally stick to. We'll see what happens. Carney's message here on this issue indicates that that is something they're going to run on and they're not going to shy away from but um which may also just be the case because of the national media attention it's getting right now you kind of have to stake your claim whether or not this will still be talked about in october right and you know

there was national coverage on the border stuff you know so none of this stuff happens in a vacuum it's not like donah finds candidacy and everything he said was the only thing going on. There's pressures from a lot of different places. But a substantial primary is a big pressure in one direction. And the governor handled it. He won the race. So it didn't pose a threat to him there but um you know it was it was more significant than his last primary which was just a bunch of

real really no-name candidates so absolutely okay well let's get to um finally our mailbag question here we have we're way over time we're just going to stick with one um but lindsey w emailed us this week asking can your team research and explain who runs the polls during a primary election? She went to vote and was told that the Republican room was not set up yet, but the Democrat room was fully set up, fully staffed, ready to go. She's wondering who dropped the ball, what was going on, basically how this this works from an administrative standpoint. Any of y'all can take this, but we can go ahead and answer this for lindsey so at each precinct there's a election judge for each party during the primaries and i think during the general day the same thing um because you you can't just have democrats running everything uh when republican

voters are showing up and you especially can't have them running the Republican primary because these are two different things, two different entities. The parties run the elections. And so under the election judges, you have Republican poll staffers. And if there's no poll staffers or poll watchers, poll watchers, or even an election judge in which can be the case in very heavily democratic areas which it happens in heavily republican areas for the democrat side too they can't have a precinct there because there's no one there that is legally able to govern basically the the collecting of

votes and so i think that's that's the cause of some of the issues that we saw. Not all of them. The story I wrote out in Maverick County this week, there was legit I don't know if it goes to fraud, but it was wrongdoing that was going on. Democratic poll staffers were pushing Republican voters to the Democratic primary

and lying, saying that there were no Republicans on the ballot when there were eightans on the ballot when there were eight republicans on the ballot so um there are certainly instances where there's going to be something fishy going on but a lot of times it's just because there's not enough infrastructure infrastructure people to staff the polls yeah for that party and every county has their set of activists who are very uh involved in the issues very uh up to date with with what's happening with their local party and just like you said in some counties

there are a lot more republicans than there are democrats or a lot more democrats than there are republicans and when you have these activists kind of split between okay who's going to be an election judge who's going to be a poll watcher who's going to stand outside the polling location and you know advocate for candidates wave signs hand out push cards you have a lot of different jobs that need filled on election day for campaigns for candidates and for these actual polling locations so it really comes down to who's available who signs up for these are volunteer positions in many cases and so it just kind of comes down to infrastructure. It's already hard,

even with a larger pool of people to pull from in a county. It's already hard to find people to staff polls. It's not a very fun job. And it's especially hard when the pool of people to pull from is smaller.

Very, very tiny. So, Lindsay, all that to say, your local parties run their elections in the primary specifically, and there may just not have been enough infrastructure or something fishy could have been going on. But most of the time in these instances, it's because there aren't as many people as needed. And just while we're on the subject of suspicious election activities, I don't know about that particular situation. I'm not suggesting anything about it because I don't know. But there is a form at sos.state.tx.us. That's our Secretary of State's website. If you go to elections, forms, resources, and legal library under that drop down menu, there's an election complaint form that can be filled out if you suspect there's illegal activity or something untoward happening. Very good. Okay, gentlemen, well, we are way over time here. Let's wrap this

up. Folks, thanks for listening. Happy primary week. If you have questions, email us at the Texan or no, excuse me, that's not the email whatsoever. Editor at the Texan dot news and we will hopefully be able to get to it on next week's podcast. Thanks for listening. We'll catch you soon. 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