The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - May 27, 2022

Episode Date: May 27, 2022

This week on The Texan’s “Weekly Roundup,” the team discusses the results of the primary runoff elections, including the runoffs for statewide races like attorney general, lieutenant governor, land commissioner, and railroad commissioner; federal and Texas House and Senate races; and local elections in Harris, Bexar, and Tarrant counties. The team also addresses the school shooting in Uvalde and the confrontation between gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke and Texas state officials at a press conference.  Got questions for the reporting team? Email [e-mail] — they just might be answered on a future podcast. 

Well, howdy folks. Senior Editor Mackenzie Taylor here on the Texans Weekly Roundup Podcast. This week, the team discusses the results of the primary runoff elections, including the runoffs for statewide races like Attorney General, Lieutenant Governor, Lane Commissioner, and Railroad Commissioner, federal and Texas House and Senate races, and local elections in Harris, Bexar, and Tarrant counties. The team also addresses the school shooting in Uvalde and the confrontation between gubernatorial candidate Beto O'Rourke and Texas state officials at a press conference. If you have questions for our team, DM us on Twitter or email us at editor at the texan.news. We'd love to answer your questions on a future podcast. Thanks for listening and enjoy

this episode. Well, hello there, everyone. This is Mackenzie Taylor with Hayden Sparks, Daniel Friend, Brad Johnson, and Isaiah Mitchell. Happy runoff election week. Right off the top of the podcast, we wanted to talk about the story that has rightfully consumed so much of the news coverage this week. And Hayden, you have covered the Uvalde shooting story and all that has been going on down there. So we just want to start off with that story, talk through what happened. So why don't you go ahead and lead off with just the circumstances surrounding this unspeakable tragedy? Well, as has been widely covered, 19 children and two teachers were tragically killed at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, which is a

very small town, less than 100 miles west of San Antonio. And this is still an ongoing investigation. So there are a lot of details that are not known yet. But authorities have provided a few updates, including one update by Texas Department of Public Safety spokesperson, Lieutenant Chris Alvarez. And the governor also held a news conference yesterday, giving the public some details on the investigation and what they know so far. What happened was an 18-year-old male went to the school after being in a domestic disturbance with his grandmother and shooting his grandmother. He crashed outside the school and went inside and began killing children and teachers in that school. Of course, the killings are still under investigation,

but what happened ultimately is a border patrol agent was able to kill the perpetrator before he took additional lives. And Lieutenant Olivares indicated when he appeared on the Today Show Wednesday morning that there was a long rifle used in these killings. And Governor Abbott later stated that it was an AR-15 style rifle. There were also additional details revealed about the circumstances of how the weapon was purchased. The director of DPS, Steve McCraw, stated that he purchased two rifles or two weapons at a sporting goods store in March. But further, he had purchased more than 350 rounds of ammunition, and this was an AR-15 style rifle chambered at 223. Abbott emphasized at the press conference yesterday that he believes that mental health was at the center of this and that the state needs to

emphasize its mental health programs. But there are also a lot of resources being made available to the survivors of this unfathomable tragedy. The Attorney General's Office has encouraged the families of the survivors to reach out to programs such as the victim notification program, the crime victims compensation program, and the address confidentiality program. And of course, this has been a point of intense grief for the people in that community. But there unfortunately have been, as there usually are, politics coming out of this and people making comments and remarks. And there was something that happened yesterday at the news conference that has drawn attention away from the victims

and to politicians instead. Yeah. So, let's talk through that. I mean, we, you know, state leaders are tasked in large part with informing citizens of the circumstances that happened, right? Those official statements coming out from, you know, elected officials or just, you know, Texas authority figures really in law enforcement is really where a lot of the information comes from. So walk us through a circumstance surrounding a press conference yesterday giving information to the public. Well, as I mentioned, Governor Abbott, as well as other Texas elected officials, the state was taking the lead at this event. Governor Abbott was with Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick

and Speaker Dade Phelan at the front. And in attendance also were other officials such as Senator Ted Cruz and Mayor Don McLaughlin there in Uvalde. But they were speaking about the investigation with Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw, updating the public on what was going on. And as Governor Abbott concluded, his, first opened with providing condolences to the family and detailing some of the resources that families can access at the county fairplex there in Uvalde. Abbott turned and he was trying to give the floor to Lieutenant Governor Patrick so that he could make remarks. And the Democratic nominee for governor took that opportunity to stand at the front of the room. And he began to make a speech

toward the governor. And as he began to speak, he was seeking to draw attention to himself and shout down the governor and lieutenant governor and of course everyone reacted strongly to better auroric interrupting this news conference but the strongest reaction was from mayor mcclaughlin of course this tragedy happened these murders happened right in his backyard and he more or less uh he he expressed the full anger that he felt at the the gubernatorial candidate for interrupting this news conference but mclaughlin told after lieutenant governor patrick had told him that he was out of line. And Senator Cruz had had told him to sit down. But it was at this point that Mayor McLaughlin, probably his voice was a lot louder than everyone else's. And when I was watching the video, it overpowered the room. And

you could hear the energy even through the live stream of what he said. But his quote was, no, you need to get his ass out of here. This isn't the place to talk this over. Sir, you are out of line. Sir, you are out of line. Sir, you are out of line. Please leave this auditorium. I can't believe you're a sick son of a bitch that would come to a deal like this to make a political issue, end quote. And it was at that point that the security began to whisk away Beto O'Rourke. And when he turned and tried to speak again, the mayor once again said, it's on assholes like you, why don't you get out of here, end quote. And at that point, things died down and the news conference proceeded.

They continued to give updates on the situation and reiterate some of the details that they provided. It has been, to say a difficult week for Uvalde would be an understatement. But the horror of what happened in Uvalde is unfathomable. And I cannot imagine the grief of a family waiting in a convention center all night, only to find out that their child had been murdered. And so our hearts are with them and has definitely cast a shadow over everything else that has happened this week. Absolutely. And I, you know, we started the week knowing it was going to be a crazy news week, knowing that the runoff elections would be consuming so much of our time. And needless to say, this unspeakable tragedy happened. And so, suddenly things were kind of put in perspective. Let's pivot to that slightly and talk through, okay, so, you know, like I said, the news cycle started with

runoff elections. How did the, you know, this tragedy, the shooting affect the runoff elections? What did that look like in terms of coverage and what was being talked about? The shooting itself happened in the morning, began in the morning. And I think the timeline is still unclear. One of the facts that Lieutenant Alvarez disclosed was the timeline is really what they're working on right now. And it is unclear at this point what exactly took place in the timeframe after the perpetrator entered the school. But this happened as the polls were open on runoff day. And the details of just how many children had been murdered did not fully, were not fully published until later that day. So it affected the runoff in the sense that there were candidates expressing their condolences. And it really, it really took away from the, you know, the perceived importance of the runoff because because this was just so on another level. Yeah,

it was it was completely, completely overshadowed the runoffs. But there were, of course, most of the candidates, I would say kept it focused on the families and their, their situation. But of course, there's always a little, there's always bickering and political commentary that goes back and forth. And some people trying to jump up and offer solutions, whether it's gun control, or I believe the Attorney General said something about people being armed as teachers inside classrooms, but most of it was focused on, you know, supporting the families of those involved. Yeah, certainly. Daniel, I know you were at Attorney General Paxton's watch party as were several of our team members. What did you, you know, what was kind of the response that you saw there? It was really interesting going to a watch party on a day like that because there's still an event going on. But when we got there, you know, usually you get to a watch party like that and everybody is

really cheery and there's a big party going on and you have a tv or some kind of a screen with election results there's anticipation and excitement there was a lot of that and and that's what you kind of expect going to a watch party but it was a lot different uh with the events that happened that day you get to the watch party and they're playing news coverage but it's not of the election cycle it's of the stuff in uvalde there's uh keep on getting updates um about the the number of people who were killed at the school um and so it really did uh kind of change the way that i think candidates approached the election results um and so, the, the screen was playing the whole time. Uh, you know, they didn't have election results on the screen. It was all the news

throughout the night. Um, and then, uh, when Ken Paxton attorney general Ken Paxton did come up to, to give a speech, um, I think it was a house chaplain or some kind of a chaplain, uh, kind of introduced him and they gave a moment of silence and prayer uh beforehand like that was the first thing that they did was you know recognizing the the event that happened um and so kind of setting that apart and uh even from the other candidate in the race george p bush he didn't have a watch party he wasn't planning on having one then but when he did give a put out a statement uh the first thing that he said was things didn't go as watch party. He wasn't planning on having one then. But when he did give a, put out a statement, the first thing that he said was things didn't go as we planned. But after the tragic events of earlier today,

it's important to keep life's temporary disappointments in perspective. There are grieving parents in South Texas today. My family and I are grieving with them. So this is really just like, it definitely put things in perspective, I think for a lot of people. Absolutely. Well,

Hayden, thank you for covering that story. Very difficult. And I know our readers are appreciative of coverage that, you know, waited for the facts to come out as well. So thank you so much for being dedicated to that story. We will continue to follow it as necessary and are praying for the families in Uvalde. We are going to do our best to respectfully and awkwardly pivot now to run off election results and talk through what happened electorally this week in Texas. The election still went on and results are still there to talk about. So we are going to pivot to that now. Daniel, let's just continue talking about the attorney general's race, that contest. This was, I'd say for sure, the number one race Texans are watching on runoff night for both parties.

So what were the results? What did we end up seeing? Yeah, I think I kind of gave a prelude to this last week when we were talking about a preview of election results. And you're asking what the hottest races are. And you like well the attorney general's race of course and i said well it's actually not that exciting and it turned out that turned out to be true um paxton was definitely leading in the polls leading up to the race and the election results did did reflect that um so paxton walked away handily uh uh, throughout the night. Usually you have, um, big election night, uh, coverage analysts that wait a little while to give results to, to call an election.

Um, we use decision desk. Those are the people that we've been working with to power results. We do a, they do a fantastic job of just making sure that the, the, the results get in as they are um and so they actually do do the calling of the races and um you know i expected them to wait until at least the polls closed in el paso before they called the race i even texted back i was like hey like we should get an article prep they're gonna call it right after the polls close in el paso and they closed it around like uh 7 45 yeah central time they, they called it for

Paxton just because he was that he was in a clear lead. He was obviously going to win. Um, so that was a pretty clear result early on. Um, and so that was interesting. Ken Paxton was there, his wife, Angela Paxton was there, introduced him as well. Um, yeah that happened there you go what happened on the democrat side so in the democrat side you had uh similar results it wasn't quite as as far apart it was a little bit closer but it was still a clear win for rochelle garza she's a former american civil liberties aclu aclu yeah I think I was getting the acronym right. Anyway, she's a former lawyer for them. She did use, she's known for one of her cases that she actually argued before the Supreme Court, arguing for abortions for illegal immigrants in custody. She was arguing in favor of a minor who was in custody trying to seek an

abortion. So that was kind of an interesting background for her that's obviously going to become a big issue in the general election going forward with the Supreme Court and everything going on with Roe v. Wade. So that's interesting. She definitely won handily against the other candidate in the race, former Galveston Mayor Joe Jaworski. And unlike the Republican race, there's definitely a little bit more of a solidified party behind Garza. Jaworski has come out with a statement supporting her, whereas we haven't seen that quite the same way on the GOP side. We might, but who knows? Yeah, certainly. Well, thank you, Daniel Hayden.

We're going to come right back to you, talk about the Lieutenant Governor's matchup in the Democrat Party. Who won and who will be facing Dan Patrick? We're going to have a rematch in Texas politics, Mac. Businessman Mike Hollier defeated State Representative Michelle Beckley. It wasn't a landslide.

He won with 55 55 of the vote and as we talked about before there was some polling that showed beckley might have the upper hand she had pulled that 31 in a poll where he had he had received 19 so i wasn't sure what was going to happen but collier got 55 of the vote um polling wasn't accurate? Oh my gosh. Well, and 44% of that poll were undecided. So I guess the margin of error is a little different there. Yeah, it was definitely up in there who's going to win. But of course, Collier lost to Patrick in 2018. He received 46% of the vote, falling about 400,000 votes short of unseating the incumbent. But I do want to draw quickly attention to his interesting victory statement because he said, Collier said, quote, with exploding property

taxes, chaos at the border, a rickety power grid, our public schools suffering, and our constitutional rights under assault. The fact is Texas cannot bear former years of Dan Patrick, end quote, which was interesting because that almost sounded like a Republican talking. But when you take a look at, he doesn't mention which constitutional rights, I would imagine he's referring to the Roe v. Wade announcement, but there was a little bit of dust up on Twitter about him, you know, and at the risk of citing Twitter. But he, yeah, Isaiah's grimacing. I think that phrase, at the risk of citing Twitter, I'm going to use that.

But it was interesting that Collier is attempting to run more of a middle-of-the-road candidacy. And he'll face Patrick, who easily won the Republican nomination on primary day. So he didn't have a runoff that Patrick and Collier will face off. But this year, I think it's going to be it's more favorable territory for Patrick because he's running with the benefit of having a Democrat in the White House and voters usually are looking for a change two years into a new president's term. So we'll have to see what, if Collier does any better this time around. Absolutely. Thank you, Hayden. Isaiah, the race for lane commissioner to replace George P. Bush has been kind of a mixed bag. Walk us through what happened on the Republican side and the Democrat side. Yes. And this is the most exciting race of Texas politics.

To summarize both parties, the party favorites from each party won, just to put it that way. So Don Buckingham, current state senator, won the GOP runoff, and Jay Kleberg won the Democrat runoff. So on the Republican side, Buckingham had been facing Tim Wesley, whom Allen West had appointed as party historian for the Texas GOP. And she finished, I mean, I don't know what constitutes a landslide, but she finished with just under 70% of the vote. So that's a solid victory, pretty definitive. And there was a, if y'all remember this,

this is the only open statewide seat in Texas right now. And so on the Republican side, there was a pretty crowded field of candidates. I want to say eight. And Buckingham placed first and Wesley second in the March 1st primary. And I don't have the results on hand for those statistics at that time, but in the, at this point in the runoff narrow down to just the two of them, um, it was, it was pretty definitive on the Democrat side. It was a little bit less. So, uh, although Clearberg was the clear party favorite, uh, he won with 52% of the vote.

Um, and once again, uh, Mark Jones has, has kind of weighed into this on in some research as well but um i think it's kind of amusing that uh clebrook so vastly outspent martinez and had such an obvious endorsement advantage but um still came pretty close to not snagging it yeah um which is funny also if you look at the map, we've got maps for each county results on our results page. And Kleberg lost great swaths of South Texas, except for Kleberg County, which is pretty funny. And that is not a coincidence. It is certainly not a coincidence.

He grew up on the King Ranch. The county, his family has a deep history with the county. So it's not just a coincidental similarity. But so it's going to be Kleberg and Buckingham in the general election. Very good. Bradley, we're going to come to you for the state over the last statewide race we'll talk about on this podcast. The weird and wild race for Texas Railroad Commissioner. Talk to us about what went down there.

That is the way we've been describing this, isn't it? And it is apt for it. Wayne Christian, the incumbent, dispatched his challenger, Sarah Stogner, pretty easily. It became clear fairly early on that it wasn't really going to be close. I wasn't expecting it to be so wide of a victory i thought it'd be a little bit closer but i'm not surprised that the incumbent won um you know as we talked about last week stogner had the unorthodox campaign that involves getting naked and riding an oil pump jack for publicity which works it got into the runoff yes wild uh

this race also saw tragically um one of the candidates die during the race and on top of that that candidate sarge summers did not finish last in the primary on march 1st um there were rhetorical bombs thrown every which way during this race, accusations of bribery because of political campaign donations, accusations of the other way of Stogner being a Democrat in Republican clothing. It was just a no holds barred race and, uh, came out about as, um, the result as you'd expect with Christian winning. Yeah. Um,

and he won, like I said, by quite a bit. So now he will face Democrat Luke Warford in the general. Warford is a former Texas democratic party staffer. Uh, he served as like in a, in a consultant in somewhere in the energy industry

it was more for like renewable stuff and democrats especially will try and target this one as they did in 2020 because of the environmental implications of the agency that regulates the oil and gas industry we saw saw Michael Bloomberg dump $2 million, I think it was, into the race last time. And Jim Wright, the railroad commissioner currently, still won by a lot. So Democrats are fighting an uphill battle on this one. And so we'll see how it turns out. But yeah, long wait till November. Awesome. Well, let's pivot now to the federal races. Highlight a couple of congressional campaigns that were interesting. Hayden, let's start with you. Specifically, Jasmine Crockett's race. runoff for Congressional District 30, which is being vacated by Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson, who's been there for several decades and chose to retire. Crockett defeated her opponent,

Jane Hope Hamilton, with 61% of the vote. That race was interesting because there were some high-profile Democrats in Dallas who fell on opposite sides of that runoff, but it looks like Jasmine Crockett is poised to be the next congresswoman from Texas 30, which is a heavily Democratic district. Yeah. And that race has certainly gotten a lot of national attention, too. So thank you, Hayden. Daniel, what's going on in South Texas? There were three other important congressional races in Texas. Two of them. I wish I could give you the results, too, but I can't yet because I don't know

what's going on. You have really close races in Texas' 28th congressional district for the Democrats as well as for the Democrats in the 15th congressional district. Those are both South Texas seats where you had more of a blue dog Democrat type candidate running against a more

progressive candidate. In the 28th district, you have Representative Henry Cuellar, who is a little bit ahead of Jessica Cisneros. He has claimed victory over her, but she's not conceded yet. And kind of a close race. I think they're only like 200 votes apart. So really close right there. Even closer in the 15th congressional district where you have not even 30 votes apart from the candidates and uh you have in that race you have michelle vallejo i think i pronounced her name right uh ahead of uh ruben ramirez i think there's there's ruben cortez too and i get them mixed up um one of the rubens uh anyways vallejo was more the progressive candidate in that race. And so she was actually ahead by a little bit, but that's still way too close to call.

And then the other race in South Texas in the 28th Congressional District for the Republican side, you had a clear victory for Cassie Garcia, a former Ted Cruz staffer. So all the Republican candidates in those competitive South Texas seats are lined up. We're just waiting to see who the Democrats will be. There you go. It will be interesting to see. If you always want to know more about that race with Cuellar and Cisneros, it involves FBI raids and all sorts of crazy rematches. So go to the Texas.news to read more about that. We're going to pivot now to the Texas Senate.

Isaiah, we have a familiar face in Senate District 24. Yeah, former State Senator Pete Flores, who previously represented a different State Senate District from 2018 to 2020, has gotten one step closer to returning to the Capitol after he won the GOP primary runoff for Senate District 24. And that spans a big swath of Central Texas, kind of curving around the I-35 corridor on the west side of it, up to Coriel County in the north and Atascosa County in the south. But what was interesting about this race was that we've seen top Republicans during the primaries kind of endorse against each other a little bit. Abbott's endorsements compared to Senator Ted Cruz's endorsements have been especially illustrative. But they both endorsed Flores over Reyes. And he had pretty, you know, almost unanimous support from major top Republicans in Texas and also former President Donald Trump.

And so his opponent, Raul Reyes, was kind of left in the dark with regards to support from major groups, major Republican leaders. And that was different from what we see with other Republican primary runoffs where it's a little bit more split. This one, Trump, Abbott, Dan Patrick, Cornyn and Cruz all endorsed Flores over Reyes. So that's kind of an interesting dynamic. But he won with 59% of the vote. There you go.

Well, thank you so much. Now, Daniel, let's talk about, speaking of blue dog Democrats, let's talk about the race to replace outgoing Senator Eddie Lucio. What's going on in Senate District 27? Yes, so in the Republican primary back in March, you had Adam Hinojosa win outright,

but he had a runoff between Morgan LaMontia and Sarah Stapleton Barrera on the Democrat side. So in that runoffoff between Morgan LaMontia and Sarah Stapleton-Barrera on the Democrat side. So in that runoff, you had LaMontia actually take the lead, a clear lead in SD27 in the runoff on Tuesday. This is actually probably the biggest lead out of any of those competitive South Texas seats where you had a little bit more of a blue dog type Democrat, which would be LaMontia in this instance, versus a progressive challenger, Stapleton Barrera, who had mounted a challenge against Eddie Lucio Jr. in the last election cycle. Now, it is interesting to note that I don't know if these candidates are as far apart on issues as in the other races. LaMontia has been more vocal in support for a pro-choice view.

And so that's definitely been something that there's not as a clear difference between LaMantia and Stapleton Barrera. But LaMantia was still viewed as more of the moderate in the race. She was backed by Lucio Jr. and also a swath of lawmakers down in the Rio Grande Valley. So that was interesting. There you go. Well, thank you so much. We are now going to pivot to the Texas House. So many races to talk about.

So we're going to bounce back and forth here. Isaiah, we'll start with you. Tarrant County was a hotbed for a lot of races this cycle, particularly in, I believe it was House of Turk 91. Talk to us about that race particularly. Yeah, so there was a runoff for 91 on the GOP side between the incumbent Stephanie Click and a primary challenger, David Lowe. And we said before talking about in the state Senate Flores and Reyes, that one not being very divisive for top Republicans. This this one was the opposite.

This was really more of your classic grassroots versus establishment symbolism that you tend to look for in these primary races, especially in the runoffs, but it narrows down to just two candidates. And so you've got Lowe, a law enforcement officer, who's a little bit more on, I think it would be charitable to say that just the purist side. I think that's accurate. it. With regards to abortion, for example, Lowe has been critical of abortion bills that the Texas legislature has passed in recent years, a lot of them going through Click's public health committee, because he believes that they're compromised and inadequate. And so he's in the abolition camp, where nothing short of a bill totally banning abortion or elective abortion in Texas, he would reject all other ideas. And Click is a little bit more of an incrementalist where, you know, one successful bill that

she carried this session, successful meaning it passed, is a bill that bans the delivery of abortive fashion drugs by mail. And so she sponsored that one in the House. And child gender modification was one of the big if not the biggest hits against click on this race to get to that yeah so i mentioned that click shares the house public health committee um and in her role as committee chair uh that committee you could say sat on all of the bills that either that came from the senate or that originated in the house that would have banned child gender modification in Texas.

Only one of them, I want to say that there were six or eight, depending on if you count House and Senate duplicates as one or two. There were a lot. There were several bills. They all kind of rolled to the bottom of this committee. Only one of them passed through, and it had been sitting in the committee for a month from the time where it made it to the committee and the time when it was passed out. And after that point, it died for lack of a floor vote after the Calendars Committee set it very low on the House agenda.

So these two committees, their actions together made it such that the only bill that passed out of Click's committee never made it to the House floor. So that was a big millstone for Click in this runoff, and L low hit her hard on that um but nonetheless uh click one pretty handily actually according to statistical unofficial results there you go very interesting awesome thank you isaiah hayden let's talk about another race um kind of similar where a an incumbent was uh had an opponent that ran very much to the right of them. Talk us through House District 60. In HD 60, incumbent Representative Glenn Rogers defeated opponent Mike Olcott, not again by a landslide, but by 52% of the vote. It was just a few hundred votes margin, but this race was notable because of the amount of money that Speaker Phelan's campaign put into Representative Rogers in an effort to preserve Rogers in that race. It was also a school choice notable race because Rogers came out opposed to vouchers as Governor Abbott seeks to make that school choice

an issue in the upcoming legislative session. So that foreshadows a bit where things stand in that district in terms of school choice. But Mike Alcott has had the backing of some notable players in Texas politics, such as the Wilkes family, who's given millions of dollars to conservative political causes in the past. He also had the support of former gubernatorial contender Don Huffines. And in fact, he even received a donation from Representative Rogers' 2020 opponent. And Rogers won his seat now in a contentious runoff with John Francis in 2020. So he has he has again won the seat in a narrow narrowly decided runoff but this time uh the district is really in in three counties palo pinto stevens and um uh i'm blanking on the third one but three counties texas district uh i believe parker

county is the third county yes so rogers uh will go on to likely face a comfortable or have a comfortable win in November. There you go. Thank you, Hayden. Daniel, we're coming to you. What happened in House District 37? House District 37 is one of the two most competitive house districts in Texas, based on the Texas Partisan Index. It is a 50-50 split between Republicans and Democrats. Republicans, Janie Lopez won the nomination in March, but there was runoff between two candidates in the Democratic runoff, which was really an interesting race. It got to be a little bit fiery with, you had Ruben Cortez, who's actually the one who filed a lawsuit against the redistricting plan that drew House District 37, alleging that it violates the county line rule. That lawsuit is still ongoing, but probably won't be resolved until next year. But he's running for that seat.

He was the more progressive candidate versus a more blue dog Democrat in the race. You had Luis Villarreal, who is a former Eddie Lucio Jr. Staffer. He is someone who has contributed money to, uh, in 2020, he gave $2,800 to John Cornyn as well as $5,000 to the Texas GOP. Um, so he contributed money to the Republican party. Um, and he's running as a Democrat in the Democratic runoff. Uh, and he actually won the race for that seat. So it was really interesting to see that play out that way. So you have someone who is a lot more moderate as the Democratic nominee, who's given to Republicans in the past, versus a Republican in one of the most competitive seats in Texas. So that will be a very interesting race to watch. I love it. Brad, we're coming to you. Another interesting race, this one where an incumbent

may not have had as much success as in other seats. Yeah. So the only incumbent that went down this time was Representative Phil Stevenson in House District 85. And he lost to Stan Kitzman, who was supported by Governor Abbott, an unusual instance where the governor supports a challenger to an incumbent. But the reason this happened was because Stevenson's campaign in the homestretch was touting the governor's endorsement, but in the

materials they put out, they were citing the governor's 2020 endorsement of Stevenson. And while they didn't say as much, this at least looked like it prompted the governor's endorsement for Kitzman. And in the end, Kitzman won pretty handily. And so in this heavily red district, Kitzman has an easy path through November into the Texas House next session. Very interesting to watch an incumbent not receive a lot of the support that is traditional for Republican incumbents in the Texas House. Thank you, Bradley. Isaiah, we are coming back to you. Talk to us about a very contentious speaking of support from Republican leaders in Texas and other elected officials. Let's talk about House District 63. Yeah, so this was between firearms businessman and current Flower Mound City Councilman Bum

Garner, who won defeating his opponent Jeff Younger in the GP primary runoff for this House District. He finished with a comfortable 62% of the vote, even though previously Bumgarner and Younger had emerged from the four-way primary on March 1st to take first and second place, respectively, within just two points of each other, 29 and 27%, I want to say, either that or 27 and 25. But they were very close after March 1st. And that gap just really widened since then. And I don't want to say that this was entirely a referendum on child gender modification. But that is the whole reason why Jeff Younger is in the public eye right now is his public efforts to ban that procedure in Texas, and his personal custody battle over his own son,

James Younger, that's been in the news for a while. So, but Bumgarner, interestingly, once again, a lot of illustrative endorsements here. He had every major endorsement from a lot of incumbent Republicans, Governor Greg Abbott, Speaker of the House, Dade Phelan. But what else is interesting is that there are a lot of state politicians that personally showed up to volunteer for him, including State Senator Drew Springer, State Reps Jared Patterson and Reggie Smith, and I believe some others. But you've got these politicians personally coming up to this House district to stump and help Bumgarner in his efforts. He's also endorsed for Texas Alliance for Life. That group tends to

endorse incumbents, as Brad has read about before, often opposing Texas' right to life, which endorsed Younger before March 1st. There you go. Thank you, Isaiah. Hayden, we're going to come to you. What happened in House District 70? And give us quickly a little bit of an idea of the partisan makeup of this district. This district was redrawn to be one of the few purple districts in the state of Texas. It is a toss-up according to the Texans Texas Partisan Index, but the finalists in this district

are Republican Jamie Jolly and Democrat Mahala Plessa who they, I say Plessa would defeat her challenger a little bit more comfortably than Jolly, who defeated her runoff and Ted Cruz had endorsed Olcott. This is another race like that. Abbott endorsed Jolly and Ted Cruz endorsed Eric Bolin.

But Jolly will be the Republican nominee for this district. And unlike other districts where it is pretty clear who the winner will be based on past electoral behavior of these districts. This Collin County seat is either party's race. There you go. Thank you, Hayden. Brad, I'm going to talk to you about two races in the Hill Country here and kind of walk through both of these at the same time. Well, separate, but at the same time, you know what I mean.

House District 73, very contentious. Both of these are open seats, by the way. Walk us through what happened there. Yeah, so in that race, Kerry Isaac beat Baron Castile. It was a very contentious race. A lot of bombs thrown on both sides at one another. I was actually down in the district that Tuesday night. And it was pretty interesting the way it unfolded, because most of the night Castile, uh, was in the lead. There were fewer points where Isaac had, uh, tipped in the lead for, um, for the race. And, uh, but I was at Isaac's, um, watch party, uh, along with her supporters watching the results come in and um it looked like castile was going to

emerge victorious and that was the feeling of everyone there i just based on returns yet to come in it looked like she wasn't going to pull it out so i made my way over to uh castile's and i see him with his close supporters celebrating uh they hadn't called it yet, but they were very happy and giving celebratory hugs. And so I was like, all right, I'm going to make my way back to Austin. And halfway to Austin, I get a couple texts saying that the results flipped. And it was just quite a dynamic of putting the cart before the horse on castile's side and um what was very a very despondent moment for isaac turned uh celebratory so very interesting the way that turned out the other one ellen tracks claire beat justin berry quite handily uh these

two are former allies in the aust political arena. She's a former Austin city councilman. Barry is a current Austin police officer among those 19 that are indicted for firing their less lethal munitions during the 2020 protests turned riots. I thought this one was going to be a lot closer turns out it wasn't um there was some indication of that when trucks claire uh was beating barry in trap the small sliver of travis county that's in the district in early voting uh that turned out to be kind of a uh an ode to this what would come out an omen what would uh result in this so trucks claclare wins by quite a bit and now Gary Isaac and Ellen Troxclare

will be representing their respective districts in the House next session because both are heavily Republican districts. Very good. Thank you so much. Isaiah, we are coming back to you now to talk about House District 22. Give us some insight there. Well, we don't have an article on

this yet because the story here is that it still has not been called. This is a Democratic primary runoff for the Texas House between Christian, nicknamed Manuel Hayes, and Joseph Trahan. The district covers the Beaumont and Port Arthur area, and it leans very strongly Democratic. So one of these two guys, whoever wins this runoff, is likely going to take the seat in November. But they are currently about 100 votes apart. And Decision Desk, judicious but normally eager to get the results out quick, days after this primary has still not called it. So Hayes is at 50.86% in votes. That's 3,602 votes. And Trahan is at 49.14%, and that's 3,480 votes.

So it's still up in the air right now. One of the few races where that's the case in Texas at the moment. There you go. Thank you so much. Hayden, let's talk about House District 61. House District 61 was not as close to some of the other districts that we're talking about. Frederick Frazier defeated Paul Shabbat with 64% of the vote. I believe Frazier is well connected in the law enforcement community.

And he is a law enforcement officer himself. This race was marked by less substantial policy differences so much as it was quibbling over sign stealing accusations. And of course, that's always frustrating for many when things get sidetracked into instead of discussing policy differences that that may be have between candidates. But there were, you know, reports of of Shabbat making accusations of of sign stealing against Frazier's campaign.

And there was an investigation, of course, because, you know, anything has to be investigated when there's an accusation. But this race concluded with Frazier defeating Shabbat with 64 percent of the vote. And this one is our 58 percent on the Texans partisan index. Not a toss up, a little bit more favorable to Republicans and likely to go to the GOP in November. Very good. Thank you, Hayden. Brad, we're going to come to you and talk about a district north of Austin and walk us through what happened in House District 52. So in another very close race, Caroline Harris, who is currently a Senate staffer for Senator

Brian Hughes, edged out Patrick McGinnis, who is a GOP active and conservative activist, uh, especially volunteered a lot for Ted Cruz. Um, this was one of the races where Abbott and Cruz came on, on different sides and Abbott's candidate emerged victorious on this one. Um, it was, like I said, very slim margin. Um, this is the district that, uh, James Tallarico left to go run in a different district because redistricting made it slightly favoring towards Republicans. And so that's the general dynamic of this, but it won't be unlike some of these other ones. It will not be a shoe in in November. Harris will have to be a Democrat in a relatively competitive seat, even though it slightly leans towards Republicans. There you go. Thank you. Daniel, we're coming back

to you. Another kind of Abbott v. or rather, well, Cruz had a lot to do with this very specifically, and I can't remember if Abbott came out and endorsed Casal, but regardless, this was a very heated challenge against a Texas House incumbent. Walk us through what happened in House District 12. Yes. Representative Kyle Cassell was actually endorsed by Governor Greg Abbott. I think that was a long time ago. I don't know that he was really active in campaigning necessarily, but it was kind of at least a pat on the back. Whereas Senator Ted Cruz came out and did endorse his challenger, Ben Bias.

You also had some other lawmakers in the statehouse endorse Ben Bias as well. You had Representative Ben Lamon and Steve Toth also supporting Bias in this challenge to Kyle Cassell. So that was interesting. One of those races that we thought maybe the incumbent would not win that reelection. Oftentimes when incumbents are forced to runoffs, lots of times that's not a good sign for the incumbent. They're likely to not win this election cycle for runoffs. We actually saw quite a few incumbents do quite well compared to historic trends.

So, you know, when you only had one incumbent lose out of the seven who were pushed to runoffs, that was interesting. Absolutely. Thank you, Daniel. lose out of the seven who were pushed to runoffs that was interesting absolutely thank you daniel okay brad last texas house race to talk about what's going on in houses of 23 this is the galveston area state house seat that maize middleton is um leaving to go run for state senate and he is unless something shocking happens going to be in the senate next session but this was another one of the abbott v cruz dividing lines but i think more interestingly middleton backed terry leo wilson in this race and she won the race pretty comfortably over challenger patrick or opponent patrick gurs. But Middleton was, he spiked the football a bit on Twitter afterwards,

celebrating Leo Wilson's victory and kind of jabbing the more establishment Republican pack that supported Gersky in the eye a bit. But, you know, now it's Leo Wilson as the heir apparent for Mayize middleton as he would have hoped there you go very interesting to watch that endorsement kind of uh follow through here with a victory let's pivot now gentlemen to the local stories the local races that we have been following particularly here at the texan daniel i know you're going to cover this

one for our holly hansen down in harris County. The Harris County judge race has been heated for many reasons, both between Republicans and because incumbent judge Lena Hildago is not loved by many in the Republican Party and very controversial. So walk us through the runoff here. Yes. So like you mentioned, Holly Hansen has done a fantastic job covering all the shenanigans going on in Harris County. So if you're not following her, go follow Holly Hansen in her writing of the Dixon.News. She did an article on the results of this race. You had a runoff for the Republicans between Alexandra Del Moral Miller as well as Vidal Martinez. And Miller definitely came out on top with quite a big lead with capturing more than 75% of the vote. So that was definitely a strong win for her and kind of a

decisive victory for Republicans on who they want to nominate. And so Mueller will be going forward against Harris County Judge Lynn Hidalgo in November. This will be an interesting race to watch. I would say this is the local equivalent to the Ken Paxton versus Rochelle Garza race. Kind of the inverse as far as which party is in control versus which party is challenging.

And that's kind of the, just based on the party numbers that I like to look at. Yeah. Because with the AG race, you have an R54 favoring the Republicans with the incumbent. And in the Harris County, Harris County itself is D55. So very similar numbers there. And you also have kind of that these scandals covering both of these candidates.

So Ken Paxson has all of his stuff that we've talked about that I'm sure Rochelle Garza will also be talking about quite a bit. But then you also have in Harris County, you have a lot of stuff that Holly has been writing about as far as some indictments on Hidalgo's top staffers. So there's definitely been a lot of criticism over her and some funding questionable stuff going on in Harris County that has been looked at. So it'll be interesting to see how those two races play out. And this will definitely be one to watch in November.

Allegations, legal problems, partisan infighting. It's quite wild. Thank you, Daniel, for covering that for us. And Holly, thank you for being such an awesome Harris County reporter. Isaiah, we're coming to you. So Bear County, what is going on down there? Also a county judge race that we have been watching. Yes.

The Democratic primary runoff of Bexar County judge ended with a victory for family court judge Peter Sakai. He defeated opponent and outgoing state rep Ina Minhares, who has represented the swath of San Antonio for some time now in the state legislature. Sakai won with a solid 58% of the vote. And absentee early and election day voters all favored Sakai. But his advantage was narrowest among election day votes, which is somewhat interesting. I think more interesting is the fact that both Sakai and Menjarez both came to the race with considerable experience in family issues, but from their respective branches of the government. Sakai had been managing the Bexar County Children's Corps for over 25 years, and Minhares has focused a lot on foster care, Medicaid for children, and other adjacent issues in the state house during her time there. Since Bexar County leans Democratic, well, get ahead of myself.

Sakai will face Trish DeBerry, the Republican nominee for county judge in November. But the current county judge, Nelson Wolf, has kept the office for two decades. And Bexar County has been Democratic for a long time. And the county's blue tent has deepened over the past four years, according to, once again, our very own Daniels Texas Partisan Index. So, in other words, the voter data indicates that Bexar County has gotten more Democratic, slightly, but I want to say their TPI is about 67%. Yeah. So, Sakai will likely just take the baton from Wolf in November.

There you go. And interesting, or rather worth noting that the county judge is not really a judicial position at all. It's really the executive of the county, the mayor of the county, mind you. Yes. Yeah. Sakai's current job is an actual district judge. It's a very different job. Yes.

Thank you, Isaiah. In Tarrant County, we've had kim roberts diligently cover this race for tarrant county district attorney uh brad you're going to take the baton for her and talk about what was going on yeah this was one of the most if not the most high profile local races in the state this cycle because of who decided to wade into it um but in the travis county da race gop runoff phil sorrells beat state rep matt krause pretty handily and became fairly clear early on when early votes rolled in but um yeah it was notable because donald trump weighed in this race, endorsing Sorrells. It was one of the most surprising endorsements of the former president in Texas this year.

And it had some effects, clearly. Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, that was go check out Kim's coverage more for that. But that was certainly one to watch. Dueling endorsements of trump v cruz very interesting thank you bradley okay gentlemen let's talk about what we saw on twitter this week and um yeah there's a lot of fodder here as a runoff sir been have been quite the quite the thing going on isaiah you look very poised to chat about your tweet what did you see on twitter this

week i am poised to chat about it. I'm especially poised though. I misspoke. Bear County does not lean Democratic by 67%. It's 57% under the current TBI. Very big difference. So I just wanted to correct that. You had 50% of the numbers correct. You had one out of two of the numbers

in that numeral correct. Yeah, I'll make that pie chart later to defend myself. Thanks for correcting. Yeah, so with regards to some twitter fun um this naturally happened uh before the runoff results uh on the 23rd so right before but um tim wesley resigned as texas gop party historian citing interference and influence from senator Don Buckingham's office. And he put out a press release about this. But if y'all recall, Alan West, when he was leading the Texas GOP,

is the one that appointed Wesley to this position. And now there's a new chair, Matt Rinaldi, for the party. But his release, Wesley's release starts off thusly. He says, due to external interference and influence from the office of Senator Don Buckingham and other previous candidates for Texas land commissioner, Dr. Tim Wesley is resigning effective immediately. One interesting dynamic in this race is that almost all of the former candidates for land commissioner on the Republican side ended up endorsing Buckingham. By this point, it might be all. It's hard to keep track of all eight of them, but it's six or seven or eight of these candidates all decided

to endorse Buckingham. So it's interesting that he says that for one buckingham has somehow interfered with his role forcing him to resign but also that other previous candidates have have joined in that effort but um i shared this one on my twitter so y'all can scroll down there past all the election results and take a look at take a look at the release um you can also go to i guess to his website texansfortim.com if that's's still active at this point. There you go. He's a little bit vague, so I can't really elaborate much more on it. Wonderful. Well, thank you, Zane. Daniel, what did you see on Twitter this week?

So I saw something from one of the races that Brad was covering. He mentioned this earlier out in House District 23, which is representative of Mace Middleton's seat. He congratulated Terry Leo Wilson. He said, quote, on her decisive win, the grassroots and conservatives won big. Terry will be an outstanding member of the Texas House. I'm proud to have her take my place for HD 23. So that was just expected from a candidate congratulating someone they endorsed but then he followed that up with another tweet that just said at art texas pack which is the big associated republicans of texas

pack that funded terry lee's leo wilson's opponent so that was just kind of a funny jab to see on twitter yeah middleton and in art uh sparred in multiple house races. And so that was obviously the one that hit closest to home to Representative Middleton. But that was not the only one where these two were going at it, going head to head. Yeah, absolutely. I'm curious, do you know if, I know Maze Middleton, one of his big things was the taxpayer funded lobbying. Is this one of those issues that Art would probably be on the different side um it's certainly possible i don't know art's position on that so um i don't know i don't know that answer that question and anyways there's no lost love

no yeah certainly and for context art is typically the pack that will endorse and support um very uh in terms of ranking of political persuasion in the Republican caucus, the more liberal members, according to rankings by Mark P. Jones, et cetera. They typically support those kinds of Republicans. So interesting to watch that play out here in this Republican primary.

Very good stuff. Okay. Hayden, what did you see? Well, I will draw attention to a portion of Michelle Beckley's concession statement. She said, I respect the voters decision and congratulate Mike Collier as our Democratic nominee for Lieutenant Governor. Let's beat Dan Patrick, which struck me as uncharacteristically graceful, I would say, for a statement from Michelle Beckley to an opponent, especially given that she called on Mike Collier to drop out of the race shortly after advancing to the runoff for no reason

other than she wanted to win and didn't think that the party should nominate another candidate like Mike Collier, especially since he had been nominated before. So, you know, not that candidates don't snipe at their opponents all the time, but it seems that Michelle Beckley has had a particularly acrimonious dealings with some of her colleagues and many of her House colleagues endorsed Collier in the runoff, not all of them, but many of them. And I thought it was a very calm end to what has been a campaign with many twists and turns. Beckley didn't originally want to run for Lieutenant Governor. She was seeking a seat in Congress and then the legislature drew her

unfavorably in that district. And so that, that will conclude Beckley's campaigns, plural. And, and she doesn't seem to be making a lot of noise on her way out this campaign season. Can you still get on the ballot

as an incumbent is that is that time passed i don't know what you're meaning what do you mean can you like maybe her campaigns aren't done maybe she jumps in as an incumbent sorry independent maybe that's why she's not you know say putting up much of a fight i mean i expected something like you know i can't believe you know our party's gonna nominate mike collier again or i don't know something more spicy spicier yeah less less uh just kind of conceding that's kind of a standard concession you know respect the voters decision yeah it's totally standard and um but yeah she made a lot of hay this this cycle about uh collier being a white man right uh that's who democrats were going to nominate she was very upset that uh they wouldn't

choose a woman in this in this race mainly because she was the woman in the race and also you had a candidate in the race who dropped out because he was a white male oh yes that's right matthew doubt oh my gosh i forgot about that. Yeah. Yeah, quite wild. He put it right in quickly. But to go back to your comment, Brad, can you imagine if incumbents who are retiring after the primary could just be like,

hey, I want my seat back, and then all of a sudden the race is done? That'd be wild. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. There's got to be something preventing that. Oh, well, yeah, once you're not on the ballot,

you're not on the ballot. But can you imagine if that was a stipulation that you could do it's like at any point you'd change your mind and you could just take your seat back and you end people's campaigns just you're done i want my seat back well i mean that's always the gamble that uh incumbents take and i wonder what paul you know do i give up the seat i have where i have an advantage for re-election or do i try for something else um but i wonder what politics would look like if they could just say wait never mind yeah well like louis gomert comes to mind right as attorney general a bit like it's just interesting yeah you probably have a lot

more people a lot more lower level candidates making runs for higher office all the time it should be a lot less risk um broad what did you see on twitter so harkening back to one of the races the first race i discussed on this podcast the railroad commission race um it appears that sarah stagner is not going quietly into the night she uh she tweeted yesterday a video of a tiktok video which is the way she has made most of her announcements during this race, including the infamous one. She tweeted with the video, 300,000 wasn't enough,

referring to the number of votes she got to fire Wayne Christian, but 800,000 will be enough to fire Christy. Time for me to get back in the field. Let's plug some wells. And in the video, there's a picture of the oil pump jack with an outline of a woman on it it's very strange um but clearly up to up to snuff on her branding so um she is going to run and at least for right now against christy craddock the another one of the railroad

commissioners in 2024 and um i had a feeling she wouldn't uh just disappear especially with as much money as she had backing her in that last second tv buy by uh west texas rancher ashley watt um yeah she'll be she shall return she shall return like arnold schwarzenegger oh my gosh oh brother very good well thank you bradley real fast before we let our listeners get back to their lives and do more important things and listen to us bloviate why don't we talk about biggest takeaways from this election particularly the runoff what are you looking forward to this no actually no we're just gonna start with that biggest takeaways anything crazy my biggest takeaway is that there really weren't that many surprises i think the biggest

surprise for me was the carrie isaac win after we thought baron castile would win and take that that seat down there particularly in home in comal county um and hayes county i think it was interesting too because baron castile won hayes didn't he? I believe he won Hayes, which is where Isaac had previously campaigned. And Comal was won by Kerry Isaac, which is where he was mayor. So total swap there, which is very interesting.

But that was probably the biggest surprise. I mean, everything else kind of played according to what we thought. It wasn't even really a surprise that Stevenson lost the incumbent. Now, it certainly was not was certainly notable right and very

interesting right yeah but especially how the way things played out in the final week of the campaign it's not really that surprising especially because stevenson didn't have much of any of the support that the other incumbents got uh specifically from like dade phelan or or greg abbott because he didn't get the endorsement um so yeah i thought that was not as surprising as an incumbent getting knocked off would normally be another one that i would say is there were some there was a mixed bag on the the school choice dynamic in the texas house among those candidates you saw some uh some big wins for that issue. Kerry Isaac is one of them. Ellen Trox Claire is another. Terry Leo Wilson.

But there are also losses for the faction that wants to push school choice next session, most notably being incumbents Kyle Casale and Representative Glenn Rogers that are very outspoken, especially Rogers, about opposing any kind of voucher system. And they both won there. Yeah, one against their challengers. Yeah, and one pretty handily too.

Gasol especially. I think Rogers won by a sizable margin as well. It was closer. It was closer. Yeah, so, but in those spots, that's, I think, actually, I haven't analyzed it based on what the incumbents currently would have voted or would feel on this. But I have a feeling they gained, the pro-school choice faction gained at least a couple seats.

And so, we're going to see more of a push, especially with the governor backing it so publicly well it's interesting watching what kind of aligns and school choice is certainly a big part of it particularly with senator ted cruz's endorsement um but we're also seeing you know former texas house member jonathan stickland way you know kind of weighed into these contests and you know his endorsements align with a lot of those same candidates um and endorsements might be i don't know if he explicitly endorses or if he just gives if his pack defend texas liberty gives to these candidates um but i think you put out a tweet brad about his kind of win-loss record and there are more wins um than losses yeah and now there was um you know that there were some where they didn't pick the candidates

like obviously they chose to back this candidate but like uh you know backing there were some where they didn't pick the candidates like obviously they chose to back this candidate but like uh you know backing ken paxton in the ag's race that's or don buckingham don buckingham does that really count in this win-loss record um i don't know i mean yeah they certainly gave him money so there's that yeah but uh they certainly didn't have as much of an effect as they would have at these lower races yeah so i So I think Patrick Svitek at the Trib tweeted out something about, you know, Defend Texas Liberty, the Twitter account was tweeting out graphics of like congratulating candidates. And I think Patrick said, well, I guess this pack's not going away anytime soon.

Like they're tweeting out graphics, right? Like that's like, that's like the next step in solidifying your, you know, prominence on Twitter is having some sort of graphic apparatus, which I thought was really funny. Yeah, very good. What about anybody else? Big takeaways from Tuesday night. What were you going to say, Daniel? I have two quick things.

First thing, kind of alluded to it earlier. It's just kind of interesting that South Texas is kind of this swing area of the state where Republicans are really pushing hard to win in November. You know, it's been swinging towards Republicans and they're putting up a fight for that. But it's interesting that the Blue Dog Democrats in South Texas are also putting up a big fight to try and hold off progressives from winning those Democratic primaries. So that has been interesting to see how hard of a push it is there, even within the Democrat Party for blue dog Democrats versus progressives. So that's fascinating. The second quick thing, I'm trying to figure out a way to cleverly loop in a shameless plug for my podcast that's launching Saturday. So go follow the testimony of Calvin Lewis on wherever you're listening to this podcast. There we go. Very good. Isaiah? A couple things. So go follow the testimony of Calvin Lewis on wherever you're listening to this podcast. Very good. Isaiah. A couple of things. One with the Bexar County dim

County judge runoff. I'm left wondering from my, my ivory tower in the statewide publication and not a local publication, how Menjarez lost, because for one, it's a known political fact that ballot names matter. And I mean, we saw this with Sandra Grace Martinez, like doing little to no campaigning, but still winning huge swaths of Texas along the Rio Grande, where there's a large Hispanic voting population. You know, her name was a huge advantage to her. And you've got Ina Menjarez versus Peter Saketer sakai in bear county hispanic heavy bear county right and on top of the the name on its own manjardes is well funded and she's a very established figure

in terms of um i mean they're both established public figures because he's he's been there forever um but she's in the news a lot more right in her role as a state legislator so i'm just curious about that one well it's kind of mirrors in a not not the same way because it's endorsements played heavily in the tarrant county da's race right but matt krause very prominent tarrant county uh state representative and phil sorrell's kind of just showed up yeah yeah trump endorsement and off he goes yeah and i don't think peter sakai got a trump endorsement that's why i said it was different exactly that's why i said you're exactly right daniel that would have been weird that would have been a little odd he probably would not have won had he gotten a trump endorsement i'm thinking that would have been a detriment in a republican

or excuse me in a democrat primary bit of an albatross to get the trump endorsement but um yeah it sets on the d side on the r side uh there was more than one race that really just did deal directly with child gender modification and again more of a question than a conclusion i'm left wondering how these races might have turned out if um there had not been the whole back and forth with abbott sending letters to the dfps and paxton issuing his opinion all of all these things culminating in the dfps effectively outlawing some of these procedures on their own. Yeah. Right.

If none of that had happened and there was no state action on this issue, would we see like younger and low winning tonight? Good question, because it's not the only issue in their races. Local voters have other concerns as well. But I'm just wondering. Yeah, absolutely. And it's a very big issue and i think that's um pivoting to you know november i'm looking at okay what are these hot topics that

have been big issues in republican primary races and conversations had among republican voters like child gender modification is that you know is any momentum continued and through the general when they're facing democrats where the issues are so different when you're not facing someone of your own party going into a legislative session right will these issues continue to be hot will they continue to be talked about going into uh january 2023 it'll be interesting to see right i mean who knows um and like the discussion will invariably change like that just as part of the deals we head into a general election and pivot from the primary. Hayden, what did you take away? Any takeaways? What are you looking forward to now that November is on the horizon?

It's odd because now we have the summer. Summer typically is a lot more quiet on the campaign front. So we'll see how quickly these races heat up. Right. And last, of course, last time was different because the runoff was delayed and the summer was a little bit more ruckus, but it's always hard to gauge general political sentiments based on a runoff because of course, turnout is not at its zenith. But I really did expect the, I don't know how to describe the crowd I'm thinking of, but the pro school choice, Ted Cruz endorsed candidates to do a little bit better. I really, I'm a bit surprised that Rogers was able to fend off Michael Cott. I sort of thought that Michael Cott was going to win, and I thought Bolin was going to win in HD70. I thought that the arguments that they were making

would resonate at this time. But of course, it's difficult for any candidate to sustain interest through really several elections that we've had this year. This month was strange. Electorally, we had just statewide propositions on property taxes just recently, and runoffs are difficult from a turnout perspective. So they are hard to gauge, but it interested me how some of the, and I hesitate to use this word, but the more established candidates who perhaps have more name ID were able to sustain their influence. But that did surprise me a little bit. Other than that, I think Mackenzie's right that this was not a shocking election really in any regard. But the name ID of the candidates in the Democratic runoff for Lieutenant Governor was probably a bit low. And so it made sense that

neither candidate really overwhelmed the other, like Beto O'Rourke did in the Democratic primary for governor. But those were my general observations. Very good. Any final thoughts, gentlemen, before we sign off and let our readers get back to their lives? Very good. I like it. Well, folks, thank you for bearing with us on this podcast lots to talk about and we appreciate you bearing with us and listening we will catch you next week with all sorts of new texas news 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.