<Music> Welcome to Party Politics, where we prepare you for your next political conversation.

I'm Jeronimo Cortina, political science professor at the University of Houston.

And I'm Brandon Rottinghaus , a political science professor also here at the University of Houston.

Thanks for hanging out with us and talking politics and exciting week.

We got lizards.

We got we got fundraising.

Yeah, we got debate coming up between the Senate candidates here in Texas, which may turn into a competitive race.

I want to get your take on this.

Let's start there.

It was announced this week that Ted Cruz, the incumbent U.S. senator from Texas, and his challenger, Collin.

Allred, who's a House member from the Dallas area, have set a debate October 15th.

It's going to be on stations all across the state.

It's going to be on a Tuesday night.

Give me your sense of kind of what the stakes are for this debate in particular.

Battle Royale.

Yeah.

I think they're.

Going to be ugly.

I mean it's going to be very intense, righ Because you know, on the one hand, Ted Cruz knows that these races are becoming more and more competitive.

Just to give you some idea, in 2012, he won the election by around 16 points, against Sadler, 2018, that spread got reduced to 2.6 points.

And we're going to see what's going to happen.

Yeah.

Interestingly enough, when you look, for example, the polls, our friends at the Texas Tribune with, the University of Texas have been doing, you can see that the total disapproval numbers for Ted Cruz have been increasing since April to August.

Right.

So that puts Senator Cruz on the offensive immediately.

And then, on the other hand, you have, Congressman Adler, that he has been gaining some traction.

But, you know, a lot of people have not heard a lot about.

Right, what he's doing.

It's an interesting race, right, because it certainly primes Democrats.

We know, as you said, that you've seen that number shrink.

Democrats don't like Ted Cruz, right.

His numbers are not good among them.

Right, for sure.

But even generally speaking, they're not that good.

And part of the reason is that people don't really know Ted Cruz.

There is still a kind of vagueness about who he wants to be, right?

He has reinterpreted himself as a kind of bipartisan warrior.

He's this week, in fact, even passed or helped to pass the kind of semiconductor act that's been something that he's really trumpeted.

But that's very different from the Ted Cruz who like, picked fights with Big Bird.

Right.

And so a lot of people still remember that Ted Cruz, Collin, already, you're exactly right, is a Democrat.

That might be enough in some circles to get him those votes, but he has to do more.

This debate probably lets him be a little bit more visible on that point.

What's interesting to me about this race is that obviously it's going to be a Partizan battle, right?

And that's going to be pretty hard.

And but there are a lot of kind of swing voters who either won't vote or may vote for one party or the other, right?

It's a very small number of people.

But for Allred, you've got to use the abortion issue to prime women.

We may have a historic gender gap in this election.

That means that you're likely to see that potentially produce a victory for him or some, you know, marginal victory for him.

You want to see college educated voters if you're calling Allred on your side.

So you talk about the common sense policies that you're pursuing, right?

You don't want to alienate Republicans.

And so you talk about oil and gas jobs.

So there is a way for him.

There is a path for him to be that moderate.

The other thing I think, and I want your take on this too, if you've been watching these ads, right, you watching the Texans game, which didn't go as well as we have liked last week?

You certainly see the kind of dynamic, right?

Ted Cruz ads are all about kind of why Collin Allred is wrong on the border, right?

He's wrong on issues of LGBTQ rights.

He sort of embraces, you know, what he says is women playing, or college sports are men playing women's, sports.

So that's something that Ted Cruz is trying to prime his base with Allred is looking at very family focused issues.

Right.

Like bread and butter issues, literally peanut butter in the ad with his wife.

That to me is a kind of clear sense of where they're going.

Allred wants to make it clear that, you know, he is a Democrat.

Who is that kind of moderate?

Ted Cruz needs to prime the base, because the real game here is about turnout, right?

Correct.

Allred has to get high turnout in urban areas to match what Cruz is almost likely going to get as turnout in Republican rural areas.

Right?

So that's very interesting because another point is, and we have seen Senator Cruz reaction is the issue of, you know, working with the other side and these bipartisan, you know, I guess mode of that already really pushing.

Right.

Who's legitimately bipartisan.

Exactly.

Is it selling?

Oh, I think it's selling because Christie's reacting to that.

You know, you just said it.

The semiconductor is like, oh yeah, I work with like I mean sure.

Yeah.

This week ?

Right.

But historically you have not, right?

and it's, you know, highlighting especially in very important issues, for certain parts of the state, like immigration Allred saying, look, I want to work.

Border security is important.

He has distanced himself from the Biden administration and he has attacked, Senator Cruz in the sense of, you know, he didn't want to pass one of the strongest bipartisan border security pieces of legislation that we could have.

Yeah.

So I think that is important.

And then, as you say, the common sense issues that as we know, common sense is sometimes the less common of the senses, but common sense issues and bread and butter, I think that that could resonate very much.

Why?

Because people are up to here.

Right.

In terms of, you know, these issues regarding, you know, very, very polarizing, situations.

Yeah.

And I mean, Cruz's negatives are high, in part because of some of the reputation he's gotten of somebody who only cares about himself.

Right.

The podcast which feathers his nest, or the fact that he fled the state during Uri, the winter storm, to go to Cancun, right, just is a bad look, right?

That's something that, all right can use against.

And I'm sure he'll bring that up.

Oh, yeah.

This debate is a moment, I think, for two things.

Number one, a possible investment opportunity.

Right.

This could be yours.

Right?

Right.

So already obviously is only one cog in this bigger map that the Democrats are looking at nationwide.

We talked about this last week.

But there's a really good chance Democrats are going to lose Montana and West Virginia.

Right?

They're probably going to win in Maryland and Arizona, although that's still debatable.

So that leaves four seats, Florida and in Texas, included in those where Democrats are potentially going to.

Right.

Get some get a seat.

Texas is never really considered to be very kind of, you know, very kind of in the mix.

But if all right can make a good showing and the polls continue to close, like you said, it's possible this could be an investable moment for national Democrats who flood money into his account.

Right.

The other is that this is a pivot point.

They've got to switch from persuasion to mobilization.

Right.

And at that point, it'll be the 15th of October.

It's literally one more week of early voting or something like that.

And the election's very soon after.

It's too late to really persuade more people.

You've got to mobilize your base.

So that's going to be key.

Absolutely.

But when you look at the base composition, that's a very important key factor, right?

Senator Cruz's base, it's very limited in the sense of not going, you know, above and beyond crossing, you know, certain demographics.

Yeah.

For Allred.

I think that it's more challenging.

But he has, you know, his bucket, to put it this way, is deeper and wider in the sense that they can start digging deeper, deeper and deeper.

And for Senator Cruz is like, I need you, all of you guys, to go out and vote, because the balance of demographics and the balance and or the opportunity, at least the potential opportunity for turnout and mobilizing voters, I think, lies higher with Democrats than in this case, for Republicans.

A great point.

I think that at the end of this story, if Allred wins, it will be because they invested early, which means they had to raise a lot of money, and they were able to cement the notion that he was a moderate Democrat, the kind of Democrat that historically won Texas very easily.

So that, to me is going to be the tale, the tape.

Now, if he can hold that line, then he'll be in good shape, better shape than other past candidates have been.

But that takes money, right?

So let's talk about the money fight.

You may have seen this week that, the first gentleman, Kamala Harris's I'm sorry, second gentleman, second gentleman is here in San Antonio in Austin to campaign, raise money and eat a little bit of Whataburger Some of the text you've seen is that he's, ordered a number two.

And I think in what is probably a clear scandal talked about In-N-Out burger, a water burger in Texas.

Yeah, that's a no go.

But he did meet with Willie Nelson, so that maybe saved some of his Texan-ness.

But he raised a lot of money.

And that is in keeping with the kind of thrust of where the Harris campaign has been raising millions, hundreds of millions of dollars since she took over.

Is this going to be a difference maker nationwide and or in Texas?

Money matters.

Yeah.

One way or the other.

You know, which said for mobilization purposes, you need money for ads, you need more money.

So, yes, I do think it matters.

It's, you know, when he was in, in San Antonio, he raised about, a little bit more than $1 million right on, on one night.

And that is a record in terms of, you know, raising that money for a presidential campaign for the Democrats.

So I think it's it's very important in the sense of getting to me, it's, let's say it's a signal or an indicator that the base and that donors are motivated and are excited about a potential out.

Which is a metric of excitement.

Right?

It's not you said earlier, I think it's really important.

You know, the money obviously is something that's tangible and resources are clearly important, but it's the enthusiasm.

It's a big part of it.

Now, in contrast, the Republicans are also raising money here.

Donald Trump is going to be here raising money.

J.D.

Vance was in Austin in a similar time period, raising money.

John Cornyn was helping John Vance raise money weeks before.

So clearly Texas is feeling a lot of what's happening.

But unfortunately, the money is leaving the Lone Star State, right?

It's going to Pennsylvania.

It's going to Montana, right.

In places where Democrats are hopeful they can hold those seats.

But like, realistically may not be able to.

So one argument from Democrats forever has been that we don't want to be your ATM anymore.

We want you to invest in Texas.

That's happened occasionally, but it's been pretty sporadic because, like we've said, it's been hard for the Republicans, Democrats to get traction.

But, the first gentleman also talked a lot about the policy issues at stake.

One was about ballot access, another was about the abortion issue.

Right.

So these are definitely things that are motivators for Democrats.

And we've talked a lot about how this might play out.

But do you think that this kind of mobilization is likely to pay off for down ballot Democrats who are hoping to pick up, you know, a handful of House seats, maybe the US Senate seat, they probably won't win the presidency, right.

But there's a good chance that they can get close enough that maybe next cycle will be seen as investible.

Yeah, I think so.

Why?

Because we have seen, especially in big urban areas that, you know, elections are becoming more and more competitive on the one hand.

And that's tilting towards, the Democratic side.

Yeah.

Then we have seen that, you know, population growth happens in these big urban centers, right?

The Texas Triangle, they Austin area, San Antonio area, and then the Houston, metro area.

Right.

Thats where the best tacos are, right?

Especially the bottom part?

Right.

The top part, Dallas?

Ehh..

Right.

And and you know, that area.

Right.

And that Texas triangle is where the real population growth has, has, has moved forward.

So we have a lot of people coming from other states, and people that come from other states also bring their political ideologies with them.

So that's going to be something that we're going to see in this election cycle.

Even the new movers that the newcomers are going to tilt the balance one way or the other.

But obviously at the end, what it matters is that these issues we have seen in 2022, and in the other, midterm elections of years that we have had that abortion mobilizes people, abortion, especially within, you know, suburban, women and, college educated people who, really, really mobilizes people.

So I think that at the end, about the bottom part of the ballot is going to have a significant impact as well.

It's a great point.

Yeah.

And, you know, Texas women tend to be slightly more conservative than other women, other places.

That is historically been true.

But this might be an issue where you see women shifting their allegiances.

And also some college educated men.

Right.

Because that is part of the kind of dynamic that we're seeing play out in the suburbs.

So you have to really peel that orange, right?

Like because it's a demographic deep dig.

Right.

Like the demographics are not just sort of who you are, but also how well-educated you are.

You know, how long you've been in a particular place like where you live, right?

Because as you know, like geography in large part determines politics.

So, like, these things are all just, you know, hard for a campaign to have to, you know, piece out.

And we saw in 2022, right, that the big, red tsunami was basically stopped right on its foot or I don't know how you stop a tsunami on these foot, but yeah, it was really stop, stop right by, suburban women voters.

I mean, they were the ones that particular demographic wants to one say, we're not going to go there.

And it was part of the, rhetoric that, they were especially Republicans were using and that they did not, felt well with women voters, I think now you are in addition to that rhetoric, you're adding abortion.

And it's a curious issue because it's not about you know, from a religious point or moral point of whatever it is, is just the fact that women do not have that, access anymore.

Yeah.

It reminds me of the health care debate in 18, where that was a big mobilization for Democrats.

And Democrats did very well, as you said.

Beth O'Rourke got very close to Ted Cruz, and you had a bunch of down ballot races that flipped.

So that's a potential point.

And I think that's right.

Right.

The sort of notion of abortion as health care is a big part of it.

So Donald Trump talking about how he's going to repeal and replace and how he was going to come up with a plan, right.

What did he say?

He has a concept of a plan.

Concept of a plan that's going to.

Be hard to sell because people want to have something certain, especially if they already have it.

They don't want it taken away.

But speaking of giving and taking away on the money fight, as you said, Harris is raising big dollars, right?

Like crazy money.

And one of the things it's happening is that she's transferring money to the party.

Right.

So she just last week transferred $10 million to the D triple C, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which is the finance arm of the Democratic Party that deals with House candidates down ballot matters.

There are a lot of races at stake in places like Orange County, places like rural Pennsylvania.

Democrats are hoping to pick up seats or hold seats.

The balance of power here is really critical.

We talked about the Senate.

My guess is it's going to stay or it's going to flip to a Republican.

But the House is really still in question, right?

The number of seats is very it's very small.

The amount of money that Donald Trump has transferred to the RNCC, the DCCC, kind of, counterpart counterpart is zero, not $0.01.

Now, a thin dime.

The problem is that he has got this great persona that can easily raise money, but they're too busy or too preoccupied to do it.

He was supposed to do a fundraiser with the Senate team fundraising team for Republicans and couldn't because he was in court.

Right.

So just logistically, politically, it's become a real problem for Republicans to raise that money.

And it may be a problem down the stretch where they've got to have this happen.

Now, let's bring this back to Texas.

Campaign finance reports, show that the Texas Democratic Party raised four and a half times as much as the Texas Republican Party.

That is a stunning number.

And again, as you say, like looking down ballot is really impactful.

The marginal change here could be really important.

So this is going to be a real money fight to the end.

But obviously that's going to be how much they can open people's wallets.

Can they pry that money from people.

Well I mean yes.

And and and the money and how much you invest has very important implications.

And these implications go beyond the election.

Right.

They get entangle in terms of who's going to be our next speaker, in the Texas House.

It's a great question.

So that creates, right, especially, very important.

You know, mathematical, probabilities models in the.

Sense you lost me with the probabilities.

I know, but it's fine, in the sense that, you know, it's going to matter.

Yeah.

And it's going to matter in terms of who's going to be elected our next speaker of the Texas House.

That's a great point.

And we've got at least two Republican Speaker candidates here who are trying to very finely count those numbers.

We reported last week that the Republicans, who were not feeling supporters or trying to coalesce around, alternative David Cook, a representative from Mansfield in North Texas, has won the endorsement of the non Phelan voters.

They all met at the County Line barbecue in Austin.

But what they weren't there for the smoked meats, they were there for the smoke filled room, which was to make a choice about who they were going to support for speaker, who was Dade Phelan they decided on cook.

Like I said, they got 45 votes of the about 50 or so that were there.

That's about, about little over half of the GOP caucus.

That's at 86.

Speaker Phelan says.

Doesn't matter.

I've got the votes.

But he also says, by the way, this is against the rules of the House.

But that's a different problem that no one seems to worry or care about.

But if you're Dade Phelan, I guess my question is, are you worried about keeping the speakership?

Well, I mean, a lot of variables, right?

Yes.

I would be worried.

But here's where the math comes in.

Yeah.

In order to, you know, be, name or elected speaker of the House, you need 76 votes, right?

That simple majority.

When they open the legislative session in, in January.

However, the interesting thing is that in order to get, Republicans, the caucus instruct GOP members to vote for the candidate that the caucus by a majority has selected.

So that's about, you know, 52 votes.

But the interesting thing here is that within the group that supported, Representative Cook, you have 20 that are not in the in the part of the legislative, I mean, that part of the of the of the of the ledge.

Right.

So it's like those 20 are kind of beefy.

And here's where the money comes in, right?

Yeah.

Here's where the money, you know, especially when you're trying to run in competitive seats currently, you know, held by Democrats, if you're putting more money as the Democrats are doing, then you're losing potentially numbers.

Right?

So Phelan may have some, you know, simulations, mCMC chains just going and running and seeing what happens if this here, etc., etc.. Yeah.

And I think the fact that, you know, reported that Democrats are in some much money in down ballot races, I think that that's, something that benefits, representative Phelan in the sense of being able to, you know, get elected and then fireworks if he gets a like that are going to happen between the House and the.

Senate, no doubt which are likely to happen anyway, even if he's not speaker, but it certainly will be exacerbated because the argument against feeling is that, you know, he's not conservative enough and he's putting Democrats as chairs.

That's a debate that's been a long time coming, but it definitely is something that he's going to have to worry about.

My take is this if it's the case that anybody except Phelan is Speaker, everything slows down that we won't see production from this particular session anywhere near as high as it has been in the past couple sessions.

What's already been sort of historically pretty low.

So that's definitely a problem.

Now, 90% of what the judge does is totally nonpartisan, right?

They're passing bills that are just kind of maintenance and kind of keeping the trains running on time.

The 10% that is controversial is the reason that things gum up, and Democrats will do everything they can to point out everything.

And remember, Trey Martinez Fisher is the caucus chair for Democrats, and he is an expert.

They call him the Prince of Poo.

Right?

The prince of these points of order where it just gums up the works.

The other factor is this, like you said, House, Senate.

It's really an interesting dynamic.

There was rumors that Dan Patrick, the lieutenant governor, wanted John Smith, who was in the running to be one of the non Phelan speaker candidates.

Was being promoted.

That's, an interesting because, you know, again, it's sort of Patrick wanting to be in charge of both chambers.

Right.

He spent a lot of money and time campaigning for some of the people who were anti felon, because I don't feel feeling don't get along.

But that's going to be interesting dynamic to watch too.

So I think no matter how you cut it Phelan needs Democrats to win the speakership.

And that'll be a point of contention for Republicans.

But let's talk about a different statewide official and talk about voting.

This almost turned into The Ken Paxton Show since there's just like so much about Paxton this week.

But Ken Paxton has been involved in several lawsuits, involving voting.

So one involving the, Latino civic organization jolt.

The attorney general had sued them in federal court, basically saying their voter registration efforts were illegal, because they're targeting people who are not citizens.

The attorney general actually got knocked back on an effort to try to keep Bexar County from sending out mail ballots to people who were otherwise eligible for a state district court this last week said that he was not able to do that.

It was kind of moot anyway because everybody sent it.

You know, Bexar County says basically this is something we're allowed to do.

These are all eligible voters.

Ken Paxton says that you're doing this against the laws that have been put into place.

How do you see this playing out in the kind of weeks as we grow into early voting and then Election Day?

I mean, I think that, you know, there is no ground in terms of, of, of this lawsuit.

And the reason behind that is because, you know, the Texas election code, section 18.061.

Okay.

We got a site too?

Okay.

Footnote that!

requires right.

It requires the Secretary of state and the counties ride to maintain the voter roll.

Yeah, right.

So, in the sense of you're mailing something, right?

You're mailing a registration application to of order that may or may not be eligible.

Right.

The Texas election code, section 13.001 has five requirements.

Right.

And you have to show proof that you are going to be 18 years of age, on Election Day, that you are a U.S. citizen.

Right?

So when you process that, I, the system would automatically say, you don't have you're not a U.S. citizen for you cannot be registered.

Yeah.

The groups registering people to vote like you may register people who think they're eligible but aren't.

And then the secretary of state will clean that out because, Oh, you're not actually old.

The county, registers.

Right.

So it's, it's a joint effort in the sense of, you know, who's responsible in this case.

So, you know, Attorney General Paxton, you say, well, the responsible for the counties, but then the counties are going to say like.

Yeah, it's really messy.

It's the other you know.

I've done a lot of academic work on this and you definitely see like a lot of confusion about what's to happen and how.

And just getting guidance from one entity or the other is really a challenge.

So it boils down to this.

It's about politics, right.

So, you know, it's hard to imply intent here, but like Democrats are basically you're saying that the attorney general is trying to mess with who can vote, and that's a designed to intimidate voters, whether it will or not.

We don't know.

But like we've said, there are a lot of marginal cases.

There are a lot of marginal districts here where, you know, down ballot Democrats are hoping to pick up a seat, right.

Hold a seat.

So a couple hundred votes here and there may actually be a big difference.

So we'll see how this plays out because the litigation still ongoing.

And obviously we're just sort of entering the phase of early voting.

But I want to talk about this last thing.

And that's about Ken Paxton and Lizards.

Does Ken Paxton hate lizards?

This week he is suing the federal government over an endangered lizard in Texas oil country.

And in fact, he's suing the Biden administration over a particular law which allows them to protect endangered species, in this case, a three inch long lizard that is living in the Permian Basin, which is around Midland and Odessa, obviously rich oil country.

If you've ever been there, it's just constant pump jacks, right, slurping up oil out of the ground.

I love this because it's the intersection of my favorite things law and politics and wildlife.

Tell me what's going to happen here.

Well, I mean, the whole point is that, you know, that a lawsuit says that the federal government, especially fish and Wildlife Service, has not determined in which areas oil and gas companies can, you know, drill.

Right.

And if they drill in an area that they're not supposed to drill without knowing which area that is, they can get fines up to $50,000.

So basically Paxton is saying it's like, you know, you have, fish.

And wild service, you have to determine which areas we can go and we can guidance.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Interesting.

Yeah, interesting.

But that's going to be a question for next week and see if the lizards survive or not.

I'm Jeronimo Cortina and I'm Brandon Rottinghaus The conversation keeps up next week.

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