The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - March 8, 2024

Episode Date: March 8, 2024

Show off your Lone Star spirit with a free "Remember the Alamo" hat with an annual subscription to The Texan: https://thetexan.news/subscribe/The Texan’s Weekly Roundup brings you the latest news in Texas politics, breaking down the top stories of the week with our team of reporters who give you the facts so you can form your own opinion. Enjoy what you hear? Be sure to subscribe and leave a review! Got questions for the reporting team? Email [e-mail] — they just might be answered on a future podcast. This week, the team discusses their biggest takeaways from Texas’ March 5 primary elections, including the high number of incumbent state House members who were ousted or pushed to a runoff; the Abbott, Paxton, and Trump factors; and a rundown of the hottest races.

Happy Friday, folks. Senior Editor Mackenzie DeLulo here, and welcome back to the Texans Weekly Roundup. This week, our team discusses our biggest takeaways from Texas' March 5th primary elections, including the high number of incumbent statehouse members who were ousted or pushed to a runoff, the Abbott, Paxton, and Trump factors, and a rundown of the hottest races. Thanks for listening, and enjoy this episode. Howdy, folks. Mack for listening and enjoy this episode. I don't think I've ever seen it. Cameron. We'll have to put it on the office television. Yes. After we get finished up with the pod.

I'm game. It's very good. I'm game. Well, guys, nothing at all happened this week. No, it was super chill. Chill. Quiet. Relaxing.

A super chill, super Tuesday. So you guys, this is our first day back in the office. After a couple of days. Y'all were out roving Texas following different elections. Brad, where were you on election night? Super Tuesday. I was up in Collin County during the day and the evening. I went to a bunch of polling locations just to check out the scenery.

You know, the competing poll greeters in Collin County, a hotbed for this election. Poll greeters, is that what you said? Yeah, that's what. Okay, got it, yeah. People standing in front of the poll with signs for candidates. Totally, yeah. I just was checking. You want me to define what that was? No.

Yeah, I did, I did. I did. This is Attorney General Ken Paxton's home county. And each of the incumbent Republicans voted for impeachment. In the House. In the House. And thus drew a Paxton-backed opponent. That evening I was at Frederick Frazier's watch party. And he is the House rep for the Paxton's home in McKinney. He placed second.

He'll go to a runoff against Carissa Richardson, who is a close friend of the Paxton's. There was another challenger named Chuck Branch who finished third that also got backed by the Paxton's. And apparently it was that the only race where that happened where Paxton backed both challengers yeah well what happened apparently at some um one of the Richardson volunteers at a polling location told me this when I was taking pictures that uh Branch jumped in first Paxton immediately backed him and then Richardson who has a pretty big local profile um she uh kind of dragged her feet on whether she was going to jump in or not. Eventually she did. And then the attorney general just said, I'll back both of them against Frazier.

And they pushed Frazier to a runoff. So in that regard, it was a success. And Frazier got like 32% of the vote. The runoff is a different equation, but that doesn't bode well for him. It's going to be a tough fight. Richardson is in pole position, I'd say. And history, apparently, for incumbents that finish second in the primary that are pushed to runoffs is not very kind for those incumbents. So we shall see.

Yeah, absolutely. Cameron, where were you? I was in North Texas. North Texas? That's a big place. Denton area. Denton area. Denton area. Because I wanted to cover the SC30 race.

And so there was a couple election parties that were going on. I went to Carrie DeMores election night party first. And this was my first election night here in Texas covering races. So it was an interesting experience for sure. Um, and of all elections to have be your first election on the job here. Quite, quite a spectacle. Yeah. It was fun though. Um, getting to see, uh, all the grassroots people fired up, excited. And, um, you um you know just kind of i get to the watch party set up my computer and then you sort of just lock in yeah you know because i wasn't just following that race i was following 15 other races at the same time getting results out uh

on social media but it was really fun, getting to see everyone and following the results through the night. And I was at Carrie Demore's, like I said, uh, for the first half, um, of the night. And then I went over to Mitch Little's watch party, HD 65, HD 65. Talk about a Paxton centric race. My gosh. Yeah. I know that one was fun too, because, um, early in the race, uh, there was a bit of separation between two mission little. And then as the night went on, the gap started to really close and you could see the energy at the election party start to change a bit. Um, and that was sort of cool to see that, that energy switch because, um, you know, you show up and people are on their

computers on their phones chatting amongst each other and then once the race started to get uh started to get a lot tighter people started to stand up you know it got a bit louder people were excited so that was really fun to see and um everyone um on social media too was really fun to follow you know just regular people who are interested in texas politics commenting on election results and seeing people have discussions uh in your comments is always interesting too going back and forth and you're mentioned that's fun you know it's so fun you know and you're getting messages from people and um it was a really great experience first time that's awesome and it is yeah a heck of a primary. We're going to run through, um, a lot of the races. We're going to talk about

our biggest takeaways. That's where we'll start. So this will be entirely essentially a primary results podcast, but we're going to start with your biggest takeaway. Um, I think, you know, you wrote a piece earlier this week about this, but run us through what you thought post-election was maybe the biggest theme that you observed. Well, it was a bloodbath. Straight up. You know, a lot of incumbents went down, incumbents who haven't had a competitive race in years were either pushed to a runoff or had a very tight finish. You know, the combination of school choice and the impeachment, Abbott on a crusade on the former and Paxton on a crusade on the latter, those were pre-existing factors.

And they've been long baked in the cake. We knew this was a heated primary just from those two. But then you add the Trump endorsements. And, you know, Lieutenant Governor Patrick can take credit for that. He's the—handler sounds a little pejorative, but he is the guy that Trump looks to. He's the heuristic for Trump. Yep, in Texas politics. And so Trump endorsed, I think, in 18 races, and he had a pretty good record.

I think it was like 11-3 or something with a couple of runoffs sprinkled in. But I talked to multiple people on both sides of this broader clash we're seeing in this primary. And a lot of them said that the Trump endorsement changed things on the ground entirely, either making races that weren't going to be competitive competitive or completely flipping the script on incumbents who were endorsed against in these races. Which you wrote a piece on Trump endorsements like a month and a half ago, something like that. And we were like, man, there really aren't that many this cycle. And in the weeks following, like a dozen more came out. So he really did get involved.

And it really was kind of in February when a lot of those dropped. Yeah, I think it was like a dozen of them all basically at once. And yeah, that's, you know, that was, I would say, Dan Patrick's biggest contribution to this. You know, Abbott had school choice. Paxton had the impeachment. Patrick had Trump. And it didn't, you know, change the outcome in every race, but it changed the outcome in a lot. And to say that Paxton isn't, you know, at least tangential to the Trump factor would not be fair because it is – when you interviewed Trump those months ago, Covey came up and –

Especially on the speaker's race. Yes, the speaker's race, which we'll get into. That was – I think more than all these others, Paxton and impeachment played a role in Trump's endorsement on that. Like you said, he said, told me back in October, the former president did that. Tell David Covey to get ready. Yeah. And then later it came and that's flipped the speaker's race on its head, according to those involved. Like Trump has vocally said he cares at least a little bit about what happens to Ken Paxton.

And it's come out and said, you know, in support of the attorney general, even the morning of the impeachment trial. So the Paxton factor is at play here. But the gatekeeper certainly is Patrick. Yeah. Yeah. When you're looking at these other races, the less notable ones than the speaker's race, which is all of them, because that was the biggest.

Totally. It was Dan Patrick on that. And that's something I wanted to ask you guys about. You know, this is I'm still fresh to Texas politics. I've been here for a year, a little over a year, but I'm still learning stuff every single week, every single day. endorse all these candidates. Is this new to have former presidents or presidential candidates endorsing in Texas House races? Is this new or is this something that there's precedent set for it? That's a good question.

What's new is the amount that he endorsed in these House races because in 22 he endorsed in, I think it was like 37 races in Texas. He endorsed in like local county races. Like he went way down ballot. But there were also the statewides on the ballot too. So like Paxton got the Trump endorsement there. So did Abbott. But if I recall correctly, there's only like three, four House races that he backed someone in in 22.

One of those was Frederick Frazier, who did not get that this time. I don't recall Trump endorsing Richardson in this, but Frazier didn't get it again. That was an interesting one to me last cycle, how Frazier got that. But he didn't get it this cycle. Well, I just think this is interesting in terms of the larger dynamics of politics that we've been seeing the national get more local, where people are more concerned with what's happening at the federal level than what's happening, you know, at their, you know, with their local House representative. But now that we're seeing someone like President Trump endorsing in House races to the extent that he is, we're really seeing how people's national interest is having an effect in their local races. Yeah. People's national interest is having an effect in their local races. And what that can mean for the future of public policy in the state of Texas. media on X, and we're seeing national pundits on there who most likely are covering broader scope issues.

Well, regular people are reading that, and they're getting energized by that. And that's encouraging national level politicians or pundits to get involved with local races because they're seeing the energy rise up from individuals, those grassroots people, and then those national pundits who have influence with federal level officials or former like President Trump, those national level people endorse local races. So it's this back and forth between the top and the bottom. Yeah. Which I think, yeah. And Paxton, the Paxton impeachment is, I think, a great case study in all of that. I mean, the fact that the Texas attorney general, who does have a large profile, would then end up on Tucker Carlson post impeachment is a wild

turn of events. And I think there's a lot to be said about the Trump and Paxton of it all and how the politics surrounding those individuals mirror each other. But yeah, that's a whole other... We could literally do a podcast episode on just that. We saw this with the whole school choice issue where it really started out as a grassroots issue where it was just moms at local school boards being

upset about what was going on in the school curriculum. And then that energy gets translated to the national pundits who are talking about these instances. You know, we saw in Loudoun County a couple of years ago how a father was arrested after his daughter was assaulted, sexually assaulted in a school bathroom, and that made national news. And so these local incidents become national news. And the national news bleeds up into politicians at the federal level wanting to institute policy. And those people have a lot of cachet with those pundits who then will influence how the grassroots is going to vote. So it's this interesting back and forth between the bottom and the top. Yeah.

And we saw that with the Trump endorsements. You know, two things can be true at once in this. The preexisting currents of school choice and the impeachment definitely played a role. Absolutely. Especially among the more, the voters who pay closer attention to politics. You know, the average voter doesn't know, they probably just know who Greg Abbott is. Everyone else below, they have no idea. Even a lot of people who identify with one party or another may not vote in their primary. Right.

And before the, you know, the activists, they're very much aware of the school choice fight, the impeachment fight. Those were absolutely driving factors for them. But I don't feel like it's a controversial thing to suggest that for the average Republican voter in Texas who doesn't pay attention to what happens in the Capitol building every day, they're going to be motivated more by a Trump endorsement. When they go, they probably don't know who's on the ballot. And if they do, they have a vague idea. And when they see, backed by Donald Trump, if they're a reliable Republican voter, absolutely that's going to move them. Not even just a Trump endorsement, but a Trump-level person saying, you need to go out and vote, that this is the most important Texas primary in history. Just that sort of rhetoric will energize people just to get to the polls.

And then they'll vote. Totally, yeah. Then they'll get more informed that way yeah okay so let's we've we literally could talk about this forever let's go back to takeaways i'm gonna try and keep us on track as much as possible here but brad what's biggest takeaway generally speaking the speaker's race was shocking um i'd say we knew it was gonna be close i think uh at the end of the day, David Covey actually won the primary. Now, he didn't eclipse 50%, so they're going to a runoff, he and Speaker Phelan. So let's explain that really fast.

If there are more than two candidates in a race, if no single candidate earns 50 plus 1, they have to go to a runoff in May between the top two vote earners. And then they'll decide who will take the nomination. Yep. So we have three more months of this race along with a few others. And if you thought the amount of money, the amount of attention that was put on the speaker's race this time was massive. Well, now there's fewer races that have to be focused on, fewer races that can dilute the amount of money on both sides that's going around. So this is going to be just a brutal, bruising second round between these two candidates. And who knows what's going to happen there.

Covey won two out of the three counties in the district. He won his home county of Orange. He won Jasper, which was the home county of Alicia Davis, the third place person. She got, I think, like 9%. Has she endorsed Covey? I don't recall. I don't think I've seen her statement yet. And then the speaker, he won his home county of Jefferson. But the total spread at the end of the day was about 1,000 votes between Covey and Phelan, about 3%.

And, yeah, it's going to be a contentious second round match in this. And I think a sitting speaker going into a runoff, we cannot overstate the, um, uh, the alarms that must be going off in leadership in the house. And that is not something that happens often. It's been decades since it's happened. Um, for a sitting speaker to not be able to fend off a challenger and avoid a runoff is unbelievably notable. Um, the, uh, the last speaker to lose re-election was in like 1972. And that's also a different case than this time around because the speaker was redistricted into a different district and then another member was put in with paired with him. And so it's different dynamic.

Yeah. And he was pushed to a runoff, right? And then lost in the runoff. Is that correct? I think it was just head to head. Okay. So that was so it is a different dynamic here than what happened back then because it's not the same district. Right.

Right. So there's that. But the fact that it's that rare should tell people a lot. Exactly. Totally. Other takeaways, nine incumbents lost, eight were pushed to runoffs. Back to the bloodbath thing. Yeah.

Give folks an idea of how big that is. Is that a lot of people? A lot of incumbents? If I recall correctly, the record was seven incumbents that lost. And we're probably going to have more that lose in the runoffs. But we already have broken the record just on Tuesday night with nine. Those who lost were Jill Dutton, not Harold Dutton. She is sort of an incumbent.

She is, technically. She's been in office for, what, a month and a half? Yeah, because she won the HG2 special back in January. Travis Clardy, Ernest Bales, J.C. Jutton, Hugh Shine, Glenn Rogers, Reggie Smith, Karanda Timish, and Steve Allison were all the ones that lost.

This is out of 150 House members. They're all up every two years. It may not seem like a lot, but not all of those 180 races are contentious. This is a lot of incumbents that went down. And so then talk about who's in the runoff then. Then in the runoff you have Phelan, Gary Vandever in House District 1, Justin Holland, John Kemple, Dwayne Burns, Frederick Frazier, Lynn Stuckey, and Stephanie Click. I don't know how many of that group are going to lose,

but probably some just based on the odds, right? And the dynamic at play in runoffs, too, is that there had to have been more than just the two candidates to make it into the runoff for runoff to happen. Oftentimes, that means there's a lot of discontent with the incumbent. And so oftentimes, if all these voters return to the polls, which runoffs typically have lower turnout than a primary or a general. But if this voter base returns to the polls, the logic would be that the voters who supported the third, the fourth, however many candidates there are, would return and likely vote against the incumbent, right? That's where the

danger comes in. And so oftentimes when there is an incumbent that's being targeted, consultants, lobbyists, activists, whoever, will aim to get more than one challenger in the race in order to make a runoff more likely, right? Just to see if their chances can be better in a runoff. So runoffs are not historically great for incumbents. It does not mean that they'll all lose. Certainly some will likely win. I think it would be a stretch to say that none will win. And we probably will see a handful come back to Austin.

But runoffs are not where an incumbent wants to be. Yeah. And it is possible, unlikely, but possible that 17 incumbents lose re-election. Ten more than the previous record. Probably won't happen. It's over 10% of the House. Yes. That's a massive changeover. And then you would throw in all the retirements that happen.

We have open seats there. And then you would throw in all the retirements that happen when we have open seats there. So, and then last takeaway that I have. So, entering this primary, the especially anti-feeling group of consultants, activists, but also legislators, they made it a goal, Mitch Little said this in one of his debates, they made it a goal to reach 10 members in the House to be that group that's willing to challenge the ruling of the chair against Speaker Phelan if he returns. And that's a parliamentary maneuver that is seldom used, because if you do that, you're basically consigning your policy hopes to the graveyard. But the fervor around this has bubbled up so much that basically they don't care about that. They want to be a check against the speaker. Which has happened in past sessions. Yes, absolutely. But they,

by my count, actually reached 10. You have incumbents who are already in office, Tony Tenderholt, Nate Schatzlein, Brian Harrison, Steve Toth. Then among the winners on Tuesday that haven't been elected to office before, you have Brent Money, Matt Morgan, Wes Verdell, Mike Olcott, Shelly Luther, and Mitch Little. And that's not even including some of the pickups they could have in these runoffs. So whether it's in an open seat or against incumbents.

So another thing to watch. And overall, it's just an absolute bloodbath. Nobody's ever seen anything like this. And there's still something to come. I know. And we'll talk. Well, I'll save that for later. I have so many thoughts.

And we're going to talk about some individual races that we want to highlight later, so we'll go into more detail. Cameron, you talked about this a little bit earlier, but to walk us through what your biggest takeaway was from the night. Yeah, like you said, we were talking about it earlier, but the changing dynamics in this new era

of political activism that we're seeing. like you just mentioned, Mitch Little is in a debate saying that he wants to put together a coalition of 10 people to attempt to oust the speaker. Right. In a way, yes. In a way, right. Well, where do you get an idea like that if you're not following what's going on online or at the national level? Something that could inspire the Texas House or someone like Mitch Little to do that was someone like Matt Gaetz, who ousted Kevin McCarthy. And so what we're seeing with that, with the Trump endorsements, with Patrick's influence, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick's influence on Trump, and how issues that boil up with activists

having influence with powerful people in government, and then those in state-level politics having influence on the national level, and then those in state level politics having influence on the national level, and then that national level influence making its way to the individual voter through the way of social media, I think is something we're all going to be having to pay attention to, and political consultants are going to be having to pay attention to moving forward too. And what's interesting too is we're really seeing the idea of loyalty play a big factor into this. Who's been loyal to Dan Patrick, who then takes that loyalty that's been built up with those individual candidates, brings that to Trump and Trump endorses. Who was loyal to Patrick or Paxton? Paxton then endorses those people and Paxton has national profile now,

and that plays into this. And so it's the rewarding your friends who were loyal and punishing your enemies. You know, who opposed me on school choice with Abbott, I'm going to endorse your opponent. You know, so it's this friend enemy distinction. We're really seeing pop up here in Texas, which I think is really interesting. Something I don't know if you guys can comment if we've seen this before. I know you we talked a little bit about Trump, but what about on like individual issues, like how Abbott was really dead set focused on endorsing pro-school choice candidates? Have you seen the governor or any other high profile state level politicians say, this is my issue, I'm going to endorse people who are pro this individual issue? Well, I think if you would have asked us two years ago and said,

is there a world in which Abbott is endorsing against Republican House incumbents fervently, campaigning against them, going to their districts and rallying with their opponents, we would have thought you were crazy. The governor has not been known to go out against Republican incumbents, members of his own party who are in office, even if it's very obvious that they have policy differences. This is not something we've seen from the governor. I think my interest is, okay, how will this translate if the governor wants to continue to have big policy wins? This has been a big success for the governor. This primary was a very big success for Abbott. What does that mean for the border? What does that mean for other issues? Is he going to continue this? Is school choices one and done?

Like, what does this mean for his governance? I'll be very curious to see. It's fascinating also to see Patrick delve into house races. So has this been done before? Give or take, but not like this, not to this extent in recent history. The amount of money that's flowed in, both from the governor and from outside groups like Club for Growth and American Federation for Children, they came in on these school choice races against the incumbents and spent loads of money, just insane amounts of money. The governor had $6 million itemized for this. I don't know the collective amount that the other groups spent,

but it was a lot of money, millions. On house races where usually like a few hundred thousand is a big ticket for these sides of districts. I mean, looking at these results, the total number of voters in this, between like 20,000 and 40,000 people. Yeah. That's so low. Yeah.

But it's a – if you're able to get that 20,000 to 40,000 people all aligned on an issue in voting that same way. It's powerful. Powerful. Yeah. Especially in districts of this size. A majority of those. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. But I think it's interesting they're just abbott cruz even endorsing which cruz has said that school choice is like his litmus test he said that to us he said that to other outlets that that's his litmus test i'll also say that um the house the texas house has had, because of how the speaker is elected, at least a vein of anti-leadership, anti-establishment attitude. So even when Strauss was in office, it's not new for a group of members to say, hey, let's challenge the ruling of the chair. It's a tale as old as time. But what's interesting this cycle is that the political cover that was given to those Republicans and those pro-Paxton folks, these members that you talked about, Brad,

who want to challenge the ruling of the chair, the political coverage that was given to them with Trump coming out and endorsing against Phelan, huge. Well, the political cover where, as in, let's say a decade ago, it was circulations in the newspaper that they had to worry about. Someone wrote a bad column about me, about a position I took. It's not Trump on Truth Social. Yeah, now they can get political cover taking a pro school choice position or anti house speaker position because they're getting positive reinforcement and feedback on social media instead of just a single column or two columns in a newspaper. There's a, yeah, inundation of information for sure. Okay.

I have several takeaways here, so let's see what I got. I want to talk about the Abbott and Paxton of it all. We've talked about it a little bit. Let's talk about Abbott's wins and Paxton's wins. And Brad, you had a tweet about this. And I kind of want to give folks a rundown from a 30,000 foot level of how the endorsements shaped up for these two statewides. By far most involved um two statewides in this primary cycle so this is win loss runoff i like that w-o-r runoff um abbott had 17 wins two losses and six went to a runoff paxton had two wins 19 losses and four that went on to a runoff so these are in races where they're directly against each other, where they endorsed opposite candidates. So this is not taking into consideration the Court of Criminal Appeals. This is not taking into consideration where they were like-minded. These are just the races in which they were opposed. Yep.

Got it. They're head-to-head record, as you say in your tweet. So notable, right? And that's, I think, also there's a lot that can be said about that and maybe we'll go into that in more in depth later on but um the school choice candidates outright winning and many being pushed to to runoffs is is huge again the incumbency uh difficulty that was faced by these guys this cycle was unreal I think there are a couple of outliers I do want to mention like Drew Darby faced Stormy Bradley that was a huge race lots of profile there he emerged fine he's coming back to the house

darby is certainly um anti-school choice uh a lot of you know bradley has a pretty high profile just she's run previously a lot of folks know her name um and he emerged just fine. Now, what was Abbott? Abbott came out in support of Bradley, but it was kind of late in the game. It was a little later, yeah. It was not when he issued all the rest of his endorsements. It was also the closer race than Darby's had in a while. Certainly. It shows you the potency of the moment, whether that's Abbott or just school choice in general. Totally.

That race especially was about school choice. Yes. That was, yeah, that was the sole issue there. I'll say Paxton's big wins here. Abbott's big wins are just all the school choice candidates that are coming down the pipeline. I think we talked about this earlier, but the House is certainly getting dangerously close to having a school choice majority.

These runoffs will tell us a lot. There's a lot of moving parts in this, a lot of different proposals that could be on the table that could alter how the votes are counted at the end of the day. So coming out and saying, hey, we're good, like school choice advocates are excited and it's going to pass, not necessarily the case, but it's getting closer for sure. And these victories are huge, absolutely huge. And I think even far more than we expected leading up to the election. I know all of us were hearing different things from pollsters about, oh my gosh, this incumbent's really underwater.

You hear that every cycle. So how much validity do you give it? There's certainly validity to be had. That's a temperature that you can take in a district at a given point in time, but how will that wrap up on election day? Usually entirely different. Usually you don't have nine incumbents losing. maybe it's like three or four. So I was surprised, a takeaway of mine was how these incumbents, the polling that we were hearing really did kind of stand up on election day. Like it stood the test of time. Usually, even if in January an incumbent's polling by double digits down on a challenger or, you know, facing the major challenges, they can overcome that in a couple of weeks with a big ad buy,

right? Like that's something that can happen. And we didn't see a ton of that. Like there are a lot of incumbents lost. This is a wild cycle or a forced runoffs. This is like crazy. So just seeing that polling kind of stand the test of time, quote unquote, with the two months, pretty impressive to watch these challengers to go up against them. A lot of this has to do with his ability to prosecute election fraud and a decision that was made a few years back. And all three of those challengers won. All three. Two of them by a wide margin. Yes. And the one that was close made sense. It was Michelle Slaughter, Lee Finley. Lee Finley has had some negative press, some issues surrounding his campaign. Michelle Slaughter has set records for the amount of votes she's received in primaries previously, has a pretty high profile for a court of appeals judge. So that one made more sense that it would be closer. And there

were points in the evening when we weren't sure how that race was going to go down. But huge win for Paxton. That was where he was putting a lot of his political capital. And we saw Donald Trump Jr., right? National pundits that you're talking about, Cameron, talk about the Court of Criminal Appeals in Texas. Crazy. Wild. And the attorney general certainly saw results that he was excited about. And the other big win, he had several other than this, but I think by far in the House, the biggest win for Paxton is Mitch Little. This is somebody who was part of his legal defense team during impeachment, had a lot of huge moments on the mic making arguments for the attorney general and questioning whistleblowers and former employees who went against Conda Timich, a House incumbent. I think this was her first reelection cycle.

She was a freshman this last year. He was her former campaign treasurer. We talked about this ad nauseum. They went to the same church. Like there's a lot of closeness that these two people used to have. And Mitch Little ran against her after she had voted for impeachment and took her out. That's a huge win for Paxton. Oh, yeah.

Huge. That's the biggest one, I'd say. Just behind that are the, well, I'd probably say pushing Phelan to a runoff. Yes. That's up there. It's like 1A, 1B, 1C here, these three. The CCA, the Little Race, and then Speaker. Yeah.

One other one, though, that I'd add there for him was HD53. That was Andrew Murr's seat. Although Murr retired. He didn't straight up. But Hatch Smith, the runner-up. The other candidate, yeah. The other candidate behind Verdell, who didn't win, was backed by the same kind of infrastructure establishment in the district as Murr was. Yeah.

They put up their guy, just like usual. And a lot of money went into that race. That one was truly a test of top-level endorsements, which Verdell had. He had Trump. He had Patrick. He had Paxton. And why Murr mattered, why the district mattered, is Murr was the chair of the House General Investigating Committee. Well, currently still is, but he's finishing out his term.

Of the House General Investigating Committee, where all the still is, but he's finishing out his term. Of the House General Investigating Committee where all the impeachment charges first started. Yeah. It all started there. And he was kind of the face during the trial, other than Paxton himself, of course. Yeah. But then in this race, it's a test of those top-level endorsements for Vrdal and the sheer amount of money that was dumped in from organizations like Texans for Lawsuit Reform, I think came in big.

Associated Republicans of Texas, which I think is Joe Strauss' group, they came in big. Joe Strauss, a former speaker, highly disliked by grassroots Republican folks. He's the second Republican elected official ever to be censured, I believe, Cameron. Is that correct i think so yeah so um and he was speaker for five terms was there for a long time uh it's like the longest a texas house speaker has ever been in office but certainly uh uh not a fan uh or he does not have many fans in republican primary circles yeah yeah. Wild. Okay. Also, this is my last takeaway

before we move on to individual races. A lot of rematches that we've seen before of, you know, the Olcott, Rogers, we had Hopper v. Stuckey,

Matt Morgan, JC Jeton, all these people who had... Click and low. Click and low. Yes, thank you. I missed that one.

All had previously run against the incumbent before. This has been... There's had previously run against the incumbent before. This has been these. There's a matchups that the voters in these districts are very familiar with. Now, Hopper has taken Stuckey to a runoff before. So I'll state that. But regardless, this is fascinating in that finally a lot of these challengers were able to either be victorious or push the incumbent that they've challenged for so many years to a runoff? I think it shows two things generally. The general direction of this political moment we're in, the general attitude of the primary base,

but also how important it is to get name ID. And another one that I'll mention, Dennis London in HD33. That's right. Yes. He ran against Holland in 22 and lost pretty handily, I think. But he also finished third in this year's race, but he pulled 22%. For a third-place challenger to pull 22%, that's a guaranteed runoff, basically. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. That's guaranteed.

I don't see any other third-place challenger that got even close to that level of the vote. He clearly benefited from his previous run. So throw in another high profile candidate like Katrina Pearson and Holland's in trouble, right? That's a tough race for him to run in, even if there's a lot of support behind him. So that was fascinating. I think there are a lot of support behind him. So that was fascinating. I think there are a lot of races that kind of followed that trend. And they were able to, like Brad said, kind of, you know, go along with that name ID that they've garnered in the past in their districts

and take advantage of this wave of momentum against incumbents and support from big statewides like Abbott, like Paxton, like whoever else. If you could describe this changing wave of the political base, how would you describe it? That's a good question. But here's the thing. I don't know how, I think this is a very temporary change. I don't think this stays this way for very long in terms of statewides being this involved in primaries. I think at large, I think this was an exceptional political year last year. We had, I don't know what next cycle looks like. I could be totally wrong, but this cycle's exceptional. It's not normal. So I don't quite know. Now, a lot of the grassroots folks who supported these challengers have long supported challengers. It's those middle of the road people that had enough

distaste for the incumbent, um, or support for the governor or support for school choice or frustration with impeachment or excitement about Trump engaging with their local race that they were able then to cross over and say, okay, maybe the incumbent, maybe I need to like kind of get involved with all these other voices that are coming into my area, right? But the grassroots folks who are conservative or Republican primary voters involved at the grassroots level, a lot of them have had distaste for incumbents for many years. That base has not changed that much. Now, how much distaste? It's the undecided. Yes, and it's the momentum.

I think there's a huge, there's a lot to be said about the momentum that was harnessed by those running against the incumbents. The confluence of these top level issues, school choice and impeachment, had a lot to say about the general momentum. Then you throw in this wild card of Trump. And you have this supercharged environment that's, you know, just rearing for voting against the status quo, I'd say. Yeah. And I don't know if this environment will ever be replicated just because.

So you don't see it as sustainable? No, no, certainly not. Now, again, that's why I'm curious how much Abbott involves himself, how many like how Patrick involves himself in these kinds of races going forward. But they all can see a moment coming when it's coming and they took advantage of it. Well, it'll be interesting to see if it translates into policy changes because you don't want the anti-establishment sentiment to continue if- If you're all elected to office. Yeah. If they're elected and then the policy changes in such a way that the people who voted them in agree with it, you don't want them to then be voted out. So it'll be interesting to see, you know, do these anti-establishment voters, do they change how then they vote? They turn into

more wanting to support the incumbent because they're aligning with the policy changes. But also note that a lot of these people who are voting in these quote unquote anti-establishment ways are doing so at the behest of Abbott, who has been in office for a long time, who's aligned himself with establishment. Again, what does that even mean in these political times? I don't know. But if anyone's establishment in Texas, it's Greg Abbott. Right. I mean, he's the biggest. He's a campaign machine.

He's a fundraising machine. He's the biggest political factor yet to 100 percent. So does that make sense like the branding here is what's so fascinating about it because abbott and brad are a piece of this a while ago has really become he used to have you know really draw the ire of the grassroots republicans in this state and all of a sudden he's changed to be their darling largely over border issues in school choice yeah it's an entirely different political climate so each cycle changes. Whereas during COVID,

that was not the case. He was hated by the grassroots conservatives. If he was running a primary during that, he probably still would have won just because of the amount of support he has.

The amount of money. But you would have seen a much closer race, I think, in a Republican primary for governor than you did two years later. Yes.

When things had calmed down. Which a lot of those challengers did cite COVID as part of their reasoning for running. Well, I think that's an interesting thing to note is how quickly issues transition. Yeah. Like you were just saying, if the election was happening during COVID, it would have been completely different. People were all focused on the lockdowns and vaccines and things of that nature. But now it's all about school choice and the border. Those are the hot issues in the news, what people are focusing on.

You know, it's going to be hard. We can't really predict right now what are going to be the issues. Which again, like the 85th legislative session, this was 2017. Abbott and Patrick and whoever else were on the steps of the state capitol rallying for school choice with all their yellow scarves. Huge rally for school choice in the 85th. 86th, 87th, you don't hear a peep. That's not the issue that people are talking about it really was dormant for a couple of years until Abbott decided like I'm gonna do my crusade so it changes very quickly but it's always been part of the conversation um well I what I what I'm saying like it's what's happening in the news at that time exactly right and so so what will be in the news in two years, next year. Well, that's what I'm what my big takeaway was, was the influence of social media. Right. And so will social media personalities who had influence, will they keep these certain issues in the news because they have the ability to. You know, how news was distributed in decades past, it's a small cadre of people that are driving stories.

It's the editors at these major newspapers that choose what the headlines are. But now, with how people are getting their information in these news cycles, you can have issues stay in a news cycle for longer periods of time, and they can get brought up at the opportune moments. And so will we see that continue? Only time will tell there. Another thing I want to add is that, you know, here people talk a big game in these races about running for something instead of running against something. And there absolutely was some of that here,

voters choosing the candidates that are for school choice rather than against it. But I think it's also the reverse is true, and I think the more motivating factor is voting against something in most of these primaries. You know, it's really easy for, it's a lot easier for voters to just, if things are going well, if you're supporting whatever it is that's the status quo that you're happy with, it's a lot harder to get them off the couch and to vote. But when you have a bunch of things like this that you're voting against, I think that's a more motivating factor. You know, maybe that's... You're trying to preserve something or protect

something that's very important to you. And I think it was marketed very well to Republican primary voters by the big figures involved in each race. Okay. We have to talk about the races. Let's get to the specifics. Let's spend like a minute on each race. Okay. We have to talk about the races. Um, let's get to the specifics. Let's spend like a minute on each race. We're going to be quick here. Rapid fire. Brad, we're going to start with you. Uh, top race.

See, we're watching. HG 65. Um, we've already talked about it, but it's big. Yeah. As Cameron said, it was, to mesh was up by a decent cushion for a while. And all of a sudden she wasn't. And that came through kind of in an instant and it was clear which way it was going to go after that and um it was clear paxton had

notched arguably his biggest victory of the night and now mitch little is uh you know going to be in the house and causing chaos as he promised to do for speaker feeling. It's feeling manages to keep his seats and keep his speakership. Yeah. Um, you know, little be in the house as he promised on the back mic constantly. He'll cast a huge shadow to,

um, in a way that I think other members who come in critical of a speaker have not been able to with the history of him having been in the Senate defending the attorney general that phelan has been overly very very critical of um it's it's an entirely different situation wild okay cameron what do you got uh sd30 surprise surprise i know we've been covering this race extensively, but we got a runoff. We got Brett Hagenbaugh and Jace Yarbrough. And, you know, it was interesting throughout the night. You just started seeing Hagenbaugh and Yarbrough pull away,

each battling with Hagenbaugh hanging around 40%, 39%, Yarbrough just kept gaining, you know, 30%, 31%, 32%, 33%. And so throughout the night, those two just pulled away. And Hagenbaugh released a statement saying the runoff campaign begins tonight. Yarbrough followed that up saying he's eager for a runoff fight. So we'll see the two duel it out. It'll be interesting to watch. And Hagenbaugh, leading into the race, has had all sorts of accusations thrown his way about his residency in the district, court cases, legal filings. Voters seem to stick by him, you know, for the most part. Some went over to Yarborough and, you know, Kerry DeMore, I'll mention, picked up around 17 percent and Cody Clark was the fourth

candidate, picked up around 11 percent. So Kerry DeMore hasn't endorsed in the runoff, but Cody Clark has said he's endorsing Yarboroughough so we'll see if that 11 percent goes to Yarbrough or they split not sure but something we're definitely going to be following heading into Tuesday night I know we'd heard polling initially everyone was like the runoff if it does happen will be between Damore and Hagenbue and Hagenbue I think that's how he says his name we go back and forth on this but um he and carrie demore were the two that were rumored to be going to a runoff especially would have asked us like a month and a half two months ago after yarbrough came in um everyone was like oh he's got some

credentials certainly a formidable candidate but he kind of got in late i don't think he'll make the runoff carrie demore is kind of shored up the support he might go for and we started hearing closer to closer to election day that that was not the case, that he was polling well, that he might be the one to go into the runoff with Hagen-Boo. Turns out that's the case. And wild to see that happen. Wild. Wild.

Okay. Oh, look at me. I'm next. House District 55. I don't think you could get a much more school choice centric race than House District 65. It was in so many ways where Abbott has really kind of made the effort. He's been in the district. He's donated. There's been so much effort.

This is Hillary Hicklund versus Hugh Shine. Hugh Shine's the incumbent, very vocally anti-school choice. Hicklund is very pro-school choice. And Cameron, you covered this race. She has become involved at the local level as a mom, concerned about the direction of her local school district, very pro-school choice. And that really is where Abbott spent a lot of his time. It was obvious the governor was excited about her candidacy and wanted to see her in office in very much a race in which he staked his political capital.

Went to multiple campaign events for her. I went to one that was right before the election, and there was a big turnout of people. Abbott spoke, Hicklin spoke, and we saw that translate into primary now. You rolled off the red carpet yeah absolutely bradley what about you another ace uh i talked a bit about hd33 already um a couple things to note there uh the london amount of vote that he got dennis london does that go to

pearson he this morning he i saw him put out a statement thanking his supporters and basically lauding the fact that he pulled in the sheer amount that he did, but he didn't endorse Pearson. However, you know who did just endorse Pearson as we were sitting here recording this? Greg Abbott, who had sat out that race for a while. That was a notable dynamic. Holland has been very close to Abbott. He was the chair of Abbott's inauguration committee last year. And those two have just been very close. But Holland voted against school choice. And so the question was, would Abbott jump in against his friend or at least political friend, because of this one vote. He stayed out of it during the primary, but now he just jumped in and endorsed Pearson,

the former Trump campaign spokeswoman. Now, Abbott was stopped short of endorsing Holland's opponents in that race. But he, on his account, like his Twitter accounts, his Facebook accounts, would make criticisms of Holland often. Like it happens two or three times during primary cycle where the governor vocally, and he did not do that with many other members of the legislature. Well, because he endorsed those other ones, or he endorsed against those other ones. Yes, he made it very clear. Yeah, tread the legislature. So he made it. Well, because he endorsed those other ones, or he endorsed against those other ones. Yes. He made it very clear.

Yeah, tread the line. It's so interesting that obviously they had a close relationship. You said he was a part of his what committee? Inauguration. Inauguration committee. He wasn't a part. He was the chair of it. The chair.

So they have a personal relationship in with a line abbott has drawn on school choice for holland to vote against it i it's just interesting to me if there was conversations had and like or whatever i'm sure there were you know holland's opposition is on the policy um you know he definitely wasn't taking that stance to get one over on the governor. Yeah. You know, he's explained his vote multiple times. And whether you agree with his line of reasoning or not, you know, that's a different question. But his argument was that he, A, doesn't feel like Rockwall schools need school choice because they're all performing well.

Obviously, this policy would affect far more than Rockwall schools, but that's what he represents. So that's his argument. Along with he doesn't want the financial outlay to affect the amount of money that these public schools bring in. And so, you know, obviously the governor disagrees with that line of argument, but that's the general, the gist of his defense of that vote. Yeah. And Holland was very much at the forefront of that pre-vote media tour by members. He wasn't quiet. He was not quiet. And before the vote even took place, when everyone on the outside of the Capitol and even the inside of the Capitol was wondering, oh my gosh, does school choice have the votes?

It's finally coming to the floor. What's the deal? Holland, I believe, was really the first member whose interview dropped before the vote, criticizing the legislation very vocally. And it was very notable. And I think a lot of people saw that interview and were like, okay, school choice is dead. It's not happening. So he was at the forefront of a lot of people saw that interview and were like, okay, school choices is dead. It's not happening.

So he was at the forefront of a lot of that. Okay. And one more thing on this. Yeah. Interesting. Trump did not endorse Pearson. I was just going to. Yes.

I'm so glad you brought that up because that's also the fascinating part of this. Yeah. A former staffer. And we'll see if anyone from Trump world gets involved in this runoff. But it's been very quiet. For or against her we shall see yeah but among those endorsements we mentioned for trump she his former spokeswoman was not on it which is just i'd say shocking yes um i'm sure there's behind the scenes there's something going on uh you know yes something, something. Yeah, something. Okay, Cameron, what do you got for us?

Kind of going with the same theme that I keep bringing up, the social media influence. We saw in Texas 23, Tony Gonzalez is going to be in a runoff against Brandon Herrera. And Brandon Herrera, he made his name on social media. Giant YouTube following as the AK guy. The AK guy. You know. Into a runoff. You can see him, photos, holding guns and all sorts of stuff.

Like that's his whole shtick. But someone who was not involved in politics decides to challenge Tony Gonzalez, someone who was an incumbent, someone who's had lots of support in the past, but has found himself sort of embattled with local grassroots groups. We saw Tony Gonzalez be censured by the Medina county republican party then the republican party of texas censured him so he's sort of been in this weird spot with how grassroots groups want him to vote and then how he's actually voting yeah in the um in congress so brandon herrera picked up around 23 percent pushing this to a run-up i just thought that was very very interesting 23 percent in district 23 boom boom um i'm going to talk hd2 this is a

district that um was vacant after the expulsion of uh state representative brian slayton in a unanimous vote by the other members of the te House after he carried out an inappropriate sexual relationship with an intern of his. Wild to watch that all happen. That's when last year when we thought that would be the craziest news story of the year and it got overshadowed like nobody's business. But regardless, special election happened. When did it happen? Earlier?

It was November. It was November. Oh, my gosh. Okay. That was the constitutional amendment. That's right. That's right. But Jill Dutton won that special.

She won the runoff. She won the runoff. In January. That's right. Oh, my gosh. The general was November, yeah. Yeah. They've been campaigning for 10 months.

I guess that's so wild. Because as soon as he was expelled, they jumped in the race and 10 straight months of campaigning. But that's where, if you're money, if you're Brent Money or you're Jill Dutton and you want the seat and you're like, well, I'll just run in March when it's the primary and it's normal and we get on the same schedule as everybody else, you'd be at a severe disadvantage because you've not been on the ballot in front of people

for 10 months. Not just on the ballot, yeah, not just on the ballot. But in campaign signs and campaign ads and mailers and everything else, like you kind of, if you want that district, you kind of got to enter when everything begins. But wild in that Jill Dutton, who won that race and is the incumbent, technically, like Brad said earlier, she's been in office for a little while and will finish out the term until the start of next session as the city and state representative because she won the special runoff. Has not been defeated by the guy she was running against in those other elections, Brent Money. Now, this was very much a, like, Cruz-endorsed Money. Jill Dutton was criticized for her kind of milquetoast stance on school

choice. She didn't even come out and say she was anti-school choice exactly. She had qualifications she made on the campaign trail. Money was more absolute in his support of school choice, which I think moneyed the waters a little bit in how the support was drawn in the district. But again, that's another race where a lot of that happened. And money spent on both sides was kind of the first litmus test of the post-impeachment TLR versus Defend Texas Liberty money that was spent. It became a massive proxy fight. Yeah.

I think Jill Dutton's stance on school choice was pretty much the same as Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick's at the outset of the legislative session last year where bracketing for rural districts. Now, it didn't end up being the case in any of the final bills, I don't think, but that was the original position. But it was still a very limited proposal for school choice. It was still very limited. Especially compared to what the governor wants.

Yes. But notable nonetheless to watch that district flip incumbents so quickly. And Jill Denton will have been an incumbent without ever having been in a legislative session like she's been elected as a state representative and never governed as a at the state capitol pretty wild okay bradley uh house district 121 in san antonio that's actually jim strauss's former district and this was going into You know, we'd heard rumblings about polling, as you mentioned earlier. This one, we didn't hear anything. And a lot of the people involved had no idea which way truly this was going to go.

Ultimately, though, Markle Hood, the challenger, basically trounced Steve Allison, the incumbent. And it was, um, high profile race. Um, you know, Abbott backed the hood. Uh, Allison didn't really have any backing of anybody. He's one of those incumbents that voted for impeachment and against school choice. and so he was left in the snowman's land in terms of endorsements. But he got a lot of backing from, you know, art. And I'm not sure if TLR gave to him, but a lot of money floated into this race. And ultimately, LaHood won by like 14 points. It wasn't really that close. But that was also more it's an urban

district in san in bear county uh more consolidated tighter not like hg2 or uh you know these rural districts suburban counties yeah this was this election was played on tv and on the radio mail as well but like But they could buy. They could make media buys that made sense for them. Right. And so that is an explanation for how much money came into this race because it's a lot more feasible to blast this district with TV ads than Andrew Murr's district.

Totally. That's an interesting one. And also notable that Allison was the one whose amendment changed, reduced the voter fraud felony penalty to a misdemeanor in the 21 special session in that election omnibus bill that finally passed after the quorum breaks. But that was his amendment. He put out an explanation, gave a speech on the House floor basically when they raised it back up to a felony. I think it's a felony for illegal voting. That's the penalty for it.

And that's another notable instance that Steve Allison's name popped up in addition to the school choice vote. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Big race there. Cameron, back to you. Travis County DA race. Everyone online, at least, thought Garza was going to get challenged a bit more by Jeremy

Silestine. But in the end, Garza got up to 67% of the vote and Silestein just around 33%. And we saw big names come out for Silestein, you know, someone like Elon Musk telling people to go vote. Wild. Wild. Big names, lots of money, like millions of dollars coming out for Silverstein. But still, Garza has Austin. He has the Austin base, and they came out for him. And we saw commentary online about, you know, there was a lot. It seemed like there was energy behind Silverstein, but it just didn't translate. Yeah, And it is a Democratic primary at the end of the day, right? In Austin. And you're not

dealing with general election voters or Republicans in Austin, although a small number still would have voted if, you know, Celestine. It would just be a different thing if it was a different pool of voters. But we're dealing with Democratic primary in Austin. And this is progressive Jose Garza, more moderate Jeremy Celestine. And this is progressive Jose Garza, more moderate Jeremy Silverstein. And this is, in a lot of ways, a race that mirrors that in Harris County that Holly Hansen has covered extensively. Sean Teer, progressive challenger to more moderate incumbent Kim Ogg. So a little bit of a duality there compared to Travis. But regardless, Kim Ogg lost handily to Shantier in Harris County, and we'll see an entirely different approach to the DA's office.

So a more progressive DA won in Harris County. Yes. Interesting. Yeah, wild. So lots of, and this is just a trend we've seen all over the country with DAs, and Texas is no different in these urban areas. Okay, I'm going to talk. Oh, my gosh, this is a wild, wild race. And I think to just one that I mean, so many are wild. But at the end of the day, this one was kind of one of the quick results we saw we're going to talk House District

11. This is Joanne Schaffner, who defeated incumbent Travis Clardy. Handily, this one as well, it's like 62% to 37%. Seriously, a crazy result there. 63% to 37%. Now, Clardy was one of the House members who voted in favor of stripping the ESAs from the Education Savings Accounts from the Education Omnibus bill. So he was certainly on Abbott's list of incumbents he wanted to oppose. But the interesting part of this is that Clardy voted against impeaching Ken Paxton as a much more moderate member of the legislature. He was very notable on the list of members who voted against impeachment because of his tendency to be much more moderate to liberal on the Republican spectrum of things compared to other members. I believe he even made a speech on

the House floor when impeachment was going down, saying that he opposed the effort. Now, Schaffner had Abbott and Cruz's support as well as Trump's. So lots of big endorsements on that side. She also had TLR jumping in big for her on the money side against Clardy. Which TLR and Paxton have been diametrically opposed rhetorically for many months now and for many years actually now. But regardless, it's fascinating. So that race was interesting, very much an impeachment centric race in a lot of ways just because of clardy's uh break from maybe other members of his uh political stripe uh you might say but uh you know education savings accounts and school choice still played a big role in this race so very interesting one definitely go read cameron's piece about this at the text. Okay. Bradley.

Yes. HG60. What do you got? Didn't realize it was my turn. This was a notable one. We talked about it a lot. Glenn Rogers against Michael. We actually haven't talked about it that much considering how big of a race this was.

That's fair. Round two. Rogers won narrowly in 22 while he had the backing of abbott abbott uh famously or infamously depending on your position on this uh switch sides this go around backing olcott and this is another one we knew early on it was fast fast. You know, as soon as I saw Palo Pinto, which is Rogers' home county, come in and he won it by only seven votes, you knew what was coming. Totally. And especially that happening at the same time that Olcott was running up the score in Parker County, which I think is the more population center in the district.

And would you say it would be fair to say that if you would have asked us on election night, which incumbent for sure, if one incumbent incumbent for sure was going to go down, we'd have said Rogers. Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, so the the the right flank of the party, you know, got a scalp there, absolutely, and that happened fast, really fast. And to your point, I don't know when this was drafted, but it came off as if it had been planned or at least understood this was going to be the outcome. Rogers penned a column in, I think, the Weatherford Democrat, it's called? Yes. Local paper. And it was fiery.

He was. To say the least. Oh, yeah. I mean. Which Rogers has been known to be, right? This is, yeah. I mean, that's one of the reasons he became such a big target. He was a massive opponent of, at least rhetorically, of the school choice issue.

He was against coming out against vouchers, school choice, ESAs in 22 when Abbott endorsed him before this was Abbott's big crusade. And this time around it wasn't close and in this

column Rogers took to criticized a lot. He didn't spare any ink on this. He accused the governor of malpractice, basically, trying to strong-arm members in order to get what he wants, things like that. He also remarked on the dynamic of Defend Texas Liberty and its funders, Tim Dunn, the Wilks. I think Rodgers has butted heads with that group of people more than anyone else because in 20, when he first won, he defeated in a very contentious primary and runoff John Francis,

who is the son-in-law of Ferris Wilkes. Then he had Olcott come in last cycle, defend Texas Liberty at the time. Obviously, we've talked about they've since rebranded, but DTL at the time, they pumped in a ton of money to help Olcott. Couldn't quite get the job done. And this time it was a round three, essentially, even though Olcott's only been on ballot twice. And this time, third time's the charm for that group of – that flank of the party. And they knocked Rodgers out. And a lot of things were said on both sides after that, including from Rodgers. And then, you know, like Texas Chief up here, BGOP chair, Matt Rinaldi, excuse me.

I sneezed. It was definitely an outcome that both sides were looking at. And one side in particular was licking their chops over. Yeah, absolutely. Wild race. I'm going to talk about the Criminal Court of Appeals really quickly. Matt wrote a great piece on this for our readers at thetexan.news. Make sure to go read it.

This is where we talk about Paxton getting involved in judicial races that previously were very low profile and all of a sudden skyrocketed to the top of folks' awareness pretty quickly here. So we have three challengers backed by Paxton, backed by Trump World, Gina Parker, David Shank, and Lee Finley, all unseating incumbents. Parker unseated Barbara Hervey, Shank unseated Sharon Keller, and Finley unseated, Barbara Hervey, uh, Shank unseated, Sharon Keller and Finley unseated, Michelle slaughter, wild race.

Definitely worth going and checking out. Uh, Matt's piece goes into much more detail about that race of the Texan dot news. Cameron, last but not least. SD30. SD30. SD16.

It's been a long week. People. It's been a long week. That. It's been a long week. That's actually our bad on our end because we'll have to fix that. But yeah, SD16. This is incumbent Nathan Johnson. He was being challenged by a current Texas House rep, Victoria Niave-Criotto. And Criotto, very much a rabble-rouser, progressive voice in the House. Nathan Johnson sort of positions himself more,

sort of the more moderate between him and Niave-Criotto, and voters came out for him. You know, they wanted the moderate voice they were used to. And, you know, Johnson said in a statement that the voters have responded. This is him saying they overwhelmingly approve of what we've achieved and have said they want me to get back to work. And so Dan Patrick knows who's going to be in that SC-16 seat. It was just interesting to see because we've seen progressive voices win in some of these races where, in this instance, Nathan Johnson. Yeah, was victorious. Yeah, was victorious.

And certainly Dallas is a different animal politically in that regard. We saw the mayor flip parties from Democrat to Republican very recently. So an interesting dynamic at play, certainly. We're going to very, very quickly talk our tweetery and then we can get out of here. It's going to be a long podcast, folks. Thanks for listening in. There is a lot to talk about. Brad, what do you got so on wednesday morning attorney general paxton joined

mark davis dallas radio host and uh he discussed the results and basically did a victory lap um on on all these races one thing that stuck out to me, though, when talking about the Collin County races, Paxton's candidates didn't fare too well. There was the one runoff with Frazier. He'll definitely count that as a victory, whether they win or lose it. But it's not looking good for Frazier in that. And Collin County was an area where Abbott and Paxton were opposed in a lot of the races. So that was a factor, an interesting dynamic for sure. Each of them voted for school choice, so I have it back to them all.

Yeah, totally. But he said they were talking about Representative Jeff Leach. And Leach was, of course, court of criminal, the committee on criminal jurisprudence chair that kind of has oversight of the attorney general's office. And one of the things that sparked the impeachment investigation was, um, Paxton not showing up and testifying about the whistleblower settlement to Leach's committee. Leach became, then became one of the more outspoken ones. He's also from Collin County. But Paxton said, you know, even though Leach won pretty handily, he still had

to run a race. And in my book, that's a at least halfway victory. Now, he also said, this is what stuck out to me, I guarantee those races like like representative leeches are not over forever just because he won this one doesn't mean we're done forever another round in in 26 possibly we shall see we shall see that's exactly right Cameron, what you got? We are recording this on March 7th, and we're going to have Biden's State of the Union tonight. I just think it'll be interesting to see what he talks about because Biden's approval rating is underwater. And the biggest issue on voters' minds, all polling says it's immigration and the border. So I'll be paying attention to that to see how often he touches on that, if he becomes more strong in his stances on securing the border, or if he takes a more milquetoast position.

As we know, he's been fighting with Abbott over securing the border and how different laws are being carried out or not being carried out. And so I'll be paying attention to that. It'll be interesting. Absolutely. Lots of reactions. OK, well, folks, with the primary complete and runoffs ahead, we also have the general to keep in mind, Colin Allred, who emerged victorious. We really didn't talk about this at all, but the emerged victorious in the Democratic primary against several other challengers, including State Senator Roland Gutierrez, will now be pivoting to the general facing Senator Ted Cruz. All Red's team released a memo this week basically saying, hey, we're in a good position to challenge Texas' junior senator. So people are already getting excited about this matchup. A lot of money is going to be spent.

Yeah, well, All Red's been amazing at being able to raise money. You talked about that on that podcast that you did. You guys were talking about Allred's ability to raise funds. Yeah, I mean, it's not quite to the level that Beto O'Rourke did in 18, but he's kept pace with Cruz in large part, or at least remained competitive on it. And before Allred even officially won the primary,

Cruz is already positioning himself as, or positioning All red as his opponent and saying, yeah, this is the guy I'm going to be running against. So let's already start hitting them on what we, what we know. So. And all reds already started running to the center after a democratic primary of, at least from his previous position, running to the left. Um.

Which Gutierrez was hitting him on, right. Saying like, I'm the more progressive candidate in the Democratic primary. It'll be interesting. Allred's a former NFL player. He's from Dallas. Great on the team. I think it was Baylor, right? I think it was Baylor.

Oh, just kidding. We'll find out. Colin Allred, football. Did he not play in the NFL? Am I totally pulling that out? No, no, he did. Okay. I'm just saying.

Oh, you're playing. God. I was like, he definitely played in the nfl am i totally no no okay i'm just saying you're oh you're playing god i was like he definitely played in the nfl i'm not yeah he did crazy yeah baylor and then he went to berkeley school of law uc berkeley um but it'll be a fascinating matchup probably the biggest one we're watching here in texas come the general um it'll be interesting to see how that all comes down and all the you know it's a cyclone which there's a democrat in the white house that bodes well for republicans here in texas but also will be interesting to compare numbers uh with beto running in previous statewide positions for both for senate and for governor and compare it to all roads numbers off we go

gentlemen oh yeah go ahead brad you said no i didn't oh i was just it was agreeing with great analysis on your part wow wow bro we didn't get into any fights today primary giving the people what they want we aren't do you want to say something mean no wow cameron we should clip that too i think it was the the delicious sourdough that you brought in you know he's being nice yeah maybe or maybe he's just tired maybe you're just feeling feeling a little sleepy well gentlemen thanks for all your hard work you guys killed it and folks definitely go to the texan.news. We have dozens, literally dozens of articles with the results from this primary from our incredible team all across. Oh, I do want to also say Mayor Johnson in Dallas, the mayor I just talked about who flipped from Democrat to Republican, facing a recall petition. It's been withdrawn. Not happening. Kim Roberts wrote all about that at the texan.news. So definitely go read that as well. But thanks to our team. Y'all killed it.

Thanks to our readers. Thanks to our listeners for checking in with us and watching and just keeping track of all the work we're doing here. We appreciate it. And we will catch you on next week's episode. Thank you to everyone for listening. If you enjoy our show, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

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