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

I'm Jeronimo Cortina.

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

A lot going on this week, as usual.

The biggest news is that we had a mayor's election here in the biggest and maybe greatest city in the state.

Yes, debatable, perhaps, But it definitely is a big moment for mayor and for council.

And so lots of shifting sands.

We'll talk about what that means.

But one interesting news, the national scene is kind of what's not happening in Washington, D.C.

I think that our friends in D.C. could use a bit of holiday cheer because they ended up not giving a significant amount of money to the Ukrainian military or to Israel, to staunch U.S. allies that are locked in bitter conflicts.

Tell me why this happened.

What is the core reason why this didn't go anywhere?

Well, because Republicans in Congress won significant reforms to our immigration system and to protect the border, whatever that means.

And they're tying up any support for Ukraine or Israel or whatnot to have significant immigration reform.

And so some of the Republicans are saying exactly that, that they want to have some kind of comprehensive immigration system which has eluded us since 2006.

When was the last time there's any kind of movement on this?

Yeah.

Yeah.

They're saying basically we should take care of the U.S. first and then think about other countries later.

But this is the guns butter tradeoff, right?

This is the classically the way that the country thinks about how we spend domestic.

Right.

Versus spending money in foreign countries.

So this is a relationship which is always fraught with U.S. complications.

Do you think this is a winnable political issue for the Republicans?

Well, I mean, it is a winning.

I mean, they're just waiting, right, for 2024.

Hopefully, Biden doesn't take their word for it and comes up with a proposal because then he's like, oh, what are we going to do?

And become more and more and more and more extreme, right?

So, I mean, I think on the one hand, it's an opportunity if I were advising the White House like, yeah, take their word for it, Yeah, well, and sit down and negotiate some negotiate.

Yeah.

But you can hear the jingling of Santa Claus, right, Because the time is running short and the Ukrainian president was here and he basically said that the country is going to run out of money militarily.

They will be incapable of fighting.

Right.

And that means, obviously, that there's a definite issue to make them move quickly and they really haven't.

So to me, this is one interesting question.

The other is that just getting things done in Washington these days is so hard you have to have 100% approval.

And when was the last time you had 100% approval of anything?

And this time, let me think.

Like World War Two?

Yeah, probably.

I don't even remember.

And so that's the real challenge I think that they face, Right.

Just trying to get all of this done.

In addition to the fact that they didn't get done, at least at the time of recording FAA authorization, they didn't get done the National Defense Authorization Act.

So these are just lingering issues.

Because those issues are not important.

So we can wait a couple of years, especially the FAA.

It's like, yeah, it's completely irrelevant.

Yeah.

And I hate to ruin your holiday cheer.

Oh, I'm putting some, like, pickle juice in your hot cocoa, But we're going to have a serious fight after the first of the year when it comes to the budget.

Right.

Because they kick the can down the road in terms of getting getting a budget.

And so now they're going to have to fight this out in a, you know, thin margin with, you know, kind of even though we'll have a new hopefully a holiday where people are recharged with their, you know, kind of, you know, energy and holiday joy, it's still going to be the same partizanship that they.

Oh, yeah.

Left.

Oh, absolutely.

That's going to be something they have to deal with.

So though, the good news is that I discovered what I am going to get you.

Oh, okay.

I'm interested.

I think about this actually has to do with politics.

Okay.

President Trump, as you know, has multiple indictments.

Yes.

And to commemorate the occasion, he's now offering a bunch of digital cards.

This is the new kind of.

You, Neil.

No, not Neil.

The NFT.

Yes, exactly.

Yeah, it's kind of like that.

And so you have these kind of collectible digital cards.

If you collect all 47, you get not only a physical card, but you also get a little slice of the suit that he wore when he was arrested.

No autographed by Donald J. Trump.

Okay, Now this coming in your stocking.

Okay.

Right.

And, you know, does that break the bank?

It's going to break the bank.

You have to pay $4,653 on the nose for that also.

And six not to give away how much that cost because it's not about the cost.

Right.

When you're giving, you know.

Absolutely not feelings.

Yes.

Yes.

No, I get that.

But just know that it cost $4,653.

You know, I'll put it in a display, you know, very prominent place.

You should.

This is a piece of history.

Absolutely, my.

Friend.

Thank you very much indeed.

This is party politics.

I'm Brandon.

This is Jeronimo.

The big news of the week is that we had a mayors election here in Houston.

Obviously, John Whitmire won big Wit- Mayor, has anyone you know.

Maybe.

Can we have this trademark?

Yeah, I'm not sure which is which.

But anyway, I'm going to go ahead and put that down.

On my CV.

There you go.

But look, only for 17% of the two 1.2 million eligible voters cast ballots.

Low turnout has been a hallmark of municipal elections in Houston for a long time.

But wow, this is really, really low.

I honestly read this is sort of as much a repudiation of Sheila Jackson Lee as it was a kind of promotion of John Whitmire.

What do you think?

Well, I don't know.

I mean, obviously, when you compare them as candidates, you can see that Sheila Jackson Lee is very polarizing figure.

Yeah.

Either and, you know, there's no significant middle ground that you can work with, and that's just her style.

And it's 100% fine and it's 100%, you know, acceptable in any shape or form.

But that has important consequences, especially when you're running in a city and in the state.

Right.

In which, you know, the electorate is not one side.

The electorate shifts on the one hand, but also the electorate tends to be, yeah, perhaps liberal, but not that too liberal or conservative, but not too conservative, at least in the city of Houston.

Yeah.

And then you have Whitmire that tends to be, you know, moderate moving from left to right, etc., etc., depending on the on the on the issue.

And that created a very you no clear picture that voters had in terms of who they're going to pick.

Yeah.

And I think that was something that happened.

That's a good point.

Yeah.

I mean I think that in describing the anatomy of this blowout, you certainly saw him winning big in the council district where you had significant Republican turnout.

That means, especially in G and in E and in G, you had a runoff between Marin and Huffman.

Yeah, Tony Busby, that spiked turnout and that benefited Whitmire, who was perceived to be the more conservative choice in the race, even though I think objectively, he's not that much more conservative than Sheila Jackson Lee.

Correct.

He basically ended up winning big in precincts where you had higher turnout.

And so that makes a lot more sense.

Turnout was about 30% in precincts where Whitmire captured a majority, but only about 17% in precincts where Jackson Lee won a majority.

So her kind of turnout was really lackluster in districts that were Senate districts held by whites with Mara won 84% of that vote.

He won 70% of the districts held by Hispanics and won actually 40% of districts held by blacks.

That was a lot higher than I did.

And probably that's the real difference here, is that she wasn't able to energize kind of even her own kind of core coalition.

And I think part of the reason was that she didn't run a very good campaign.

Yeah, lots of unforced errors.

We forgot to talk about this last week, but they had an ad that was like their closing argument that had the wrong date for when the election.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

It's almost unforgivable.

That and I think your analysis is right.

She tried to make this an ideological fight, right?

Right away she went for abortion issues, immigration issue.

She tried to bring Trump into it and it just didn't stick.

This is not that kind of electorate.

Right.

And she assumed you could rally up this electorate in a way that you can rally up like a congressional electorate in a presidential election.

And that's not the way it was.

It didn't have that same feeling.

And because the type of voters who vote in a municipal election are much older tend to be more conservative.

That was really where John Whitmire understood what the electorate was.

And Sheila Jackson Lee just missed that.

Mark Yeah, no, absolutely.

And that is illustrating terms of the coalition that Whitmire built, right, coalition of, you know, non-Hispanic whites, Latinos and African-Americans.

Yes.

And Asian Americans.

So the coalition was very diverse in terms of that.

And once again, it was focused on the on issues.

Right.

On on issues that not necessarily have a big ideological difference, you know, public safety, you know, fixing potholes, investing in infrastructure.

I mean, things that people say, yeah, okay, I understand that whether you are conservative, whether you are driving a pickup truck or a little car like I do or whatever, right, it is, you know.

I've seen potholes that your car could fall into.

Then I'll be like climbing out.

But those are the important issues, right?

And I think, yeah, you're absolutely right.

When you say this is an ideological stance and perhaps it would have worked in terms of getting, you know, younger voters very enthused and going forward.

Yeah, but that did not materialize.

That's not the Houston electorate.

The other thing that would have helped is money he spent a lot of money.

He spent almost $12 million, which is probably when all said and done, going to be like a record for Houston elections.

We've talked about this before, but the sticker price for elections in Houston is going up.

Oh, yeah.

He spent almost $3 million in the last month.

That's more than she spent in the entire campaign.

So he dropped a bunch of mail, a bunch of digital.

He was able to get, you know, door hawkers, 24 seven.

That, to me is really just the tale of the tape here.

So, yep, I think that was a huge kind of factor in all of this.

But let's talk about Sheila Jackson Lee's political future, because to be honest, surprising me.

Maybe not anyone else, but surprising me.

She's going to run again for her seat.

Yes, Congressional District 18.

But the only catch is that there are a lot of a bunch of people who are running for that seat thinking that she wasn't going to run.

So the problem is, of course, she has to kind of regroup immediately and run in a primary.

She has to raise a bunch more money because the coffers are dry.

Yep.

What do you think about her political future vis a vis the mayor's election we just had?

Well, I mean, I don't know.

It's a risky proposition, but especially because you don't have any resources, right?

You just drained the bank.

You got to go back to the car, right?

Yeah, You have to go back to the coffers.

And as people that you already asked money to give you more money.

Like Bob Cratchit, like looking for some extra soup and that's a stone and some water.

And on the other hand, you have, for example, in this case, Amanda Edwards, that has been pre running a primary campaign, has a lot of money in comparison to Sheila Jackson Lee.

It's a different type of, you know, political persona.

It's a different type of dynamism that she brings, different type of ideas, different type of issues, so on and so forth.

So, you know, I don't think I mean, it's going to be competitive.

Yeah.

Isaiah Martin dropped out who's was another competitor, but it's potentially going to be trouble for her.

But yeah, money is the key here.

And honestly, given how underperforming like her electorate was, I'm just not sure that it's going to be an easier race.

Like she's had before.

Oh, absolutely not.

We'll see how that plays out.

But I also want to talk about city council because we tend to forget that there's a balance here.

Right.

And although Houston's a strong mayor system, we have members of Council, many of whom, yes, are like, yeah, working hard for the city at large as well as her district.

But what's interesting to me is that Houston is a basically a pretty democratically owning city now, not exclusively so like a city like Dallas or El Paso potentially or Austin, but definitely like 6040.

Right?

Right.

But you had three of the four At-Large Council members basically go to Republican or Republican leaning candidates.

The GOP in Harris County endorsed these candidates and is bragging that they were able to be successful, that Julian Ramirez, Willie Davis, Twila Carter all won At-Large positions.

Willie Davis as a pastor, is the first black Republican elected citywide in Houston history.

What do you think accounts for this kind of Republican friendly approach?

I mean, John Whitmire I think too is part of this county where, like, you know, clearly Republican friendly, not Republican, but, you know, in the moderate side of things.

Yeah.

He got frankly also like a kind of congratulations, a thumbs up from Greg Abbott, right.

What was the last time a mayor of a city in Texas.

Got a thumbs up from Greg Abbott.

So what is happening here in terms of the dynamics of power?

Well, I mean, first of all, I think that, you know, when you say, yeah, there tend to be conservative that they're not, you know, extreme, they're not, you know, MAGA endorsed 100% a great point or anything like that.

Yes, they're conservative but once again it wasn't the issues.

Right.

And the issues were, you know, very simple.

Yeah.

Public safety, infrastructure, so on and so forth.

And they had the same thing about drawing our large.

So that's, I think, a very important caveat that we have to talk to to understand here.

If they had brought the, you know, MAGA to this cause here.

I guarantee you, like abortion.

Yeah, no, nothing would have happened.

Right, Right.

Like people would say like, no thanks, but no.

Yeah.

And the other important thing is that when you look at the returns in these three are largest, the difference is not like, oh my God, is 60, 40 or 70, 30?

No, it's, you know, 50.1 to 49.9.

You're talking about, you know, couple of thousand votes here and there.

Yeah.

So that means that they perhaps the local GOP saying, yeah, we indorse them yeah we're taking back the city and it's not so fast my friend you know.

Right.

This is something that if they want to be reelected, if they want to be successful representing the city and delivering to the city, they have to be moderate because the margin is, you know, a few hundred or a few thousand volts point.

Yeah.

It's not as clear as I would say, Oh, yeah, the three conservatives.

Yes, Yes.

But.

Yeah.

Not so obvious.

Yeah.

No I agree.

And I actually think some of this too is in response to the state local battles, right.

Like having a person in office who can speak the language that Republicans speak and at least be friendly in those kind of terms is a useful thing.

And I think perhaps voters are seeing that.

But you have to see also, too, just the nature of the electorate.

The Democrats didn't come out to vote in big numbers and Republicans had a couple of these elections, a couple of these races where.

Turnout they.

They turned out.

Yeah.

And so, you know, it doesn't take much, it seems here, right?

I mean, like we said, 17% of the 2.1.

2 million voters, like that's like a small amount.

And it definitely for them made the difference.

I want to talk about this in a second, but obviously, you've got, you know, kind of the mayor now has to deal with a change dynamic on council, not just in terms of the ideology of but also in terms of the power balance.

But I also actually think that once the city switched from the two year cycle to the four year cycle in 2000, was it 16 to 18, we switched to having, you know, four year cycle.

I think that did change the dynamic for voters.

So now you have kind of less perhaps connections.

And so it's sort of a more frequent election.

You have it happening less frequently.

And so that was, I think, probably partially a way for you know, other candidates to jump into this.

And that's why I think perhaps Republicans were slightly more successful.

But I also want to talk about the controllers race.

Chris Hollins wins on pretty sizable fashion here in the controller is going to be important position.

Right now, Chris Brown is going out of office with a kind of alarm bells ringing.

Right.

He's like the Salvation Army Santa is jingling like we need money in the kitty for people.

Yeah, in this case, they need money in the kitty for the city because there are some structural financial imbalances.

Chris Brown comes into this office with a pretty high profile, but this is not a high profile kind of office.

So my question to you is like, how is he going to make this his own office?

And if he has higher ambitions, what does that look like?

Because the kind of, you know, mayor is a sort of count like a kind of comptroller to mayor.

Pipeline is not very thick with people like Mayor Parker did it, and that's about it.

So like, if he wants to have that high profile, how do you do that?

Well, he has to come up with a plan and work with the mayor, work with city council and fix, you know, the city's finances.

And I think that that's, you know, basically he needs to take that editorial that Chris Brown wrote a couple of weeks ago and just follow it.

Tag it on the wall.

Exactly.

So we need to do this, I mean, and it's a very serious problem because on the one hand, you have, you know, the revenue cap that, you know, basically you're like you have aging infrastructure.

You need more, you know, public safety investments.

But we don't have any money.

The problem is, yes, that there's simply the money is running dry.

Yeah, but that's what I wanted to kind of sort of at least end this thing with.

And that's the sort of question about how the mayor is going to get this done right.

The mayor has got six months now to be able to put a budget together that's going to be essentially meeting all of his promises, trying to close some of these fiscal issues and sort of, you know, trying to put the city on a different footing.

That's going to be a real challenge in a case where, you know, you've got lots of people who want lots of different things.

And he's made a bunch of promises right.

How to get it done.

So what do you think it's going to look like?

Well, I mean, first of all, you know, every change in public administration has to be incremental change unless you decide, like, we're going to get rid of.

These, get rid of every department head an move away.

Yeah.

Like Miller did in Argentina.

Just like, yeah, you're gone.

You're all that you cannot do that.

So I think that, you know, the body has to look a path forward in terms of what it needs to be called, what it needs to be beefed up on the one hand, and then I think is going to be the very, you know, tough conversation of the revenue cap.

Oh, yeah.

Should we raise it?

There's no way he can like politically ask for it to be raised right.

You know, if if we assume Republicans are kind of one of the main drivers of his blowout win, he can't go back and then say, hey, we're going to lift rev cap.

Well, I mean, you need to have that conversation.

I mean, that conversation needs to happen.

You cannot ignore it.

On the one hand, it's like an intervention.

Right.

And the intervention has been- You can't ignore the problem anymore, right.

Exactly.

Speaking to the voters directly and that intervention is like, okay, so here's the problem.

We have to provide these services the city has been growing, etc., etc.. You want nice streets, nice streets cost $2, cost money.

Yeah, we only have $1.50.

One dollar.

Right.

So we need other 50 cents.

So either you want streets.

Yeah.

Or not.

Yeah.

If you don't want streets, fair enough.

That's a.

Tough call.

And in year one in budget, one.

But I think you're right.

They do have to talk about this.

If you don't do it in in year one, that thing is going to be a a massive snowball effect that when you're in year two.

Interesting.

Or year three like.

Yeah well and if we assume that Republicans are kind of rising in terms of success at the local level, then yes, I think it could be a potential problem for him to have these conversations or to have this blow up in his face.

So on the other hand, you can blame them.

Yeah, that's a good point.

That's a good point.

And with a new dynamic on council, it's going to be really, I think, tough sell, right?

You've got people now council now who can basically introduce new measures over the mayor's objections.

And so there's going to be an agenda setting function that the Council has now that they didn't have before.

So this gives the true limits.

But still, the mayor has the power of the purse, of course.

Yes.

So, you know.

We'll see it.

And money talks, right?

Yeah, money talks, baby.

Well, this is party politics.

I'm Brandon.

This is Jeronimo.

We're let's talk a little bit more about Texas politics and whether or not Texas should leave the union.

Maybe that'll solve our problems right?

Supporters of the Texas nationalist movement, the so-called 'Texit' movement, has gotten about 140,000 signatures on a petition to ask the GOP to put this on the primary ballot.

These are non-binding questions.

Which kind of property, you know, your regular ballot.

I don't even know where to start.

This is both unpopular and unconstitutional, and the GOP has been fighting it right.

They had a vote a couple of weeks ago that said, we're not going to do this, but the battle between the federal government and state government has been happening since at least 2000.

Right.

This is a battle over borders.

Yeah, bailouts and Band-Aids, right?

We expand Medicaid.

Who protects the border?

Just how much money is going to pour into the Texas from the from the feds?

The reality is that this is unconstitutional and would not be met.

Well, yeah.

At the federal level and frankly, about a third of Texas's whole budget, including a bunch of disaster money that happens, come to the federal government.

So how are we going to solve all these problems?

You cannot and this is just, you know, preposterous.

It doesn't have any logic or anything like that.

You know, it's like whatever.

At the root of it is this sort of epic fight between state and local government, which honestly, Yeah.

Is this something we have to live with?

That's part of the nature of the federal system.

And even though it's not a perfect relationship, it at least does function for, you know, as long as the Republic is about to live so well, I don't know that it's going to go anywhere.

But another issue that the state and federal government have fought over is the issue of abortion.

And one huge issue this week was that a Dallas woman was granted permission by a lower court to receive an emergency abortion.

She had had serious medical problems, which would have increased the likelihood of a problem for her baby if it were born.

The Supreme Court, to overturn that order, saying effectively that the doctors should use reasonable judgment in this.

So she fled the state and decided to have an abortion someplace else for her non viable pregnancy.

Abortion is banned in Texas, but doctors can use their discretion here.

But can they?

No!

Basically, yeah.

And so the kind of court said that that, you know, the Texas Medical Board should provide some guidance here.

But with all the political fray on this, it's unclear that doctors are going to want to take a step in that direction.

Well, I mean, yeah, because the law is very, very, very vague.

So even if, you know, doctors come up and say, well, these are going to be the cases.

Yeah, I know someone in Austin that is going to start suing them.

Yes.

And tomorrow.

Yeah.

I think you're talking about Ken Paxton.

Exactly.

Who did, you know, jump on top of this, obviously.

Oh, yeah.

In the hatchet man on the abortion issue for.

Oh, yeah.

For a long time, which is a really dicey issue for them.

Right?

This is an issue that doesn't sit well for women, for college educated voters and for moderates, especially when it comes to having abortion access for non-viable pregnancies or for the health and life of the mother or for the fetus.

And so this is really a potential problem, but it doesn't seem like the Republicans are acting like it is.

Right.

They're acting like we're going to go all the way on this and just sort of see how it goes.

But in a presidential election year coming up.

'24, yeah.

Could be a real problem.

We've seen in Ohio.

Yeah, right.

In other states.

And so it's possible that's the case.

In fact, the Texas judiciary is really where this is going to get fought over.

And the Democrats announced that they're having a basically a contested election in all of those.

So, you know, this was an unsigned opinion, although you had Justice Devine and Justice Babcock, who one of whom Babcock was an Abbott appointee who signed their name to it.

So you've got a big target on your back, Right?

The abortion issue is really impressive and it's going to be a political driver no matter what.

Well, absolutely.

Absolutely.

And in the meantime.

Right.

You don't give certainty to patients.

You don't keep sending it to women, you know, beyond Roe v Wade.

I you know, it's once again, you need certainty in terms of what you are allowed and not allowed to do on the one hand, and also medical doctors to do what they're supposed to be doing.

And it's just like, yeah, your hands are completely 100% tied with these, you know, threatened that, you know, you can be liable for a first degree felony know is okay Yeah.

No they're not going to act.

And I think even with some guidance, it's still going to be something that's vague enough that they're not going to want to do it unless they have some very clear guidance.

And I think even less clear than the medical part of this is the politics of it.

And the Republicans don't seem to think it's a problem, but I think it could be a motivator in 2020.

Oh, absolutely.

Absolutely.

It's going to be a motivator.

And speaking of 2024, you know, this is it for this week.

We're going to take a little break, but we're going to see you next year in 2024.

So to you and all yours, Happy holidays.

I'm Jeronimo Cortina.

Happy holidays and have a great New Year.

I'm Brandon Rottinghaus.

We'll see you in the new year.