Choosin' Texas with Bobby Pulido

Pod Save America

The episode explores the high-stakes political landscape in Texas, focusing on upcoming Senate and gubernatorial races. The hosts analyze Re

Key takeaways

• Republicans are spending heavily in Texas to protect candidates like Ken Paxton and Greg Abbott.
• James Talarico is using a debate challenge against Ken Paxton as a strategic media gambit.
• Gina Hinojosa's gubernatorial campaign focuses on education and data center issues to appeal to rural Republicans and independents.
• Trump's focus on Alabama and Oklahoma could inadvertently harm Republican prospects in majority-minority districts.
• The Cook Political Report suggests Democrats may pick up 5 to 15 House seats nationally.

Main topics

• Texas Senate Race
• Texas Gubernatorial Race
• Trump's impact on swing states

Notable quotes

I am the code.

Conclusion

The episode highlights how strategic issue-based campaigning and demog

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:20) Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. Speaker 4 (0:24) I'm Jon Levin. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. Speaker 3 (0:31) We're excited to be here at TripFest. We're going to get into all the big races across the country and here in Texas. Bobby Polito is here. He'll be coming out soon. Speaker 3 (0:43) And before we get to the news, if you guys are free tomorrow and you want to help elect Democrats, we will be doing two events we'd love to have you at. We're going to be at, we're going to be from one to three, we'll be joining Vote Save America and the Travis County Democrats for a canvas at Pan American Park in East Austin. So come join us. You don't need to sign up, just show up. All right, let's start. With the number one Texas Longhorns. And you know who's excited for the game tomorrow? Donald Trump. But you know what? He's going to Tennessee. And he has no plans to come back to Texas so far. I don't think he's coming back again before election day. He is, however, planning trips to Alabama and Oklahoma. Speaker 3 (1:43) Yeah, I thought I would get some booze there. Speaker 3 (1:47) But no real competitive races in either of those states. He has no plans to come back here. And Republicans, meanwhile, here in Texas, Republicans are spending like the equivalent of the GDP of like a mid-sized country to try to save Ken Paxton and Greg Abbott and maybe even the Republican majority in the state. Dan, what do you make of this new? deep red state tour that Trump is on. Like, I did not expect five weeks out or whatever it is from the midterms, Trump to be going to Alabama and Oklahoma. Speaker 5 (2:27) I think we should just begin by saying it's so funny that if Trump wants to see the Texas Longhorns, he could have come to Texas, but he doesn't want to get booed like Ted Cruz. So I think Trump looks at every problem and sees the solution as more Trump. So he sees his party cratering the midterms. He's like, I got to get out there. I got to get out there. And his party is trying to steer him into the least damaging places possible, which are the quintessential swing states of Alabama and Oklahoma. And even in Alabama, I actually think he could cause them real problems because he's going to Alabama 2, which is the district that is represented by a Democrat, Shamari Figures, which is one of the majority minority districts that the Supreme Court struck down. This is a district that Trump won by 14 points, but 40 % of the electorate in that district is black. And we've seen since post-Kalei huge turnout among black voters. So I think there's a very real chance that Trump could actually, in trying to do no harm, could do real harm even in this very, very deeply red district. Speaker 3 (3:26) Let's hope so. Shout out harm. Let's talk about the Senate race here in Texas. Speaker 3 (3:34) You guys have heard about it. Senate Republican Super PAC is now committed to spending another $30 million against James Tallarico in the final weeks. And one Republican source told Punchbowl today that they think they're going to hit $200 million all in by the time this race is over. Speaker 3 (3:55) And even though Dems, though, are getting outspent everywhere, here in Texas, they are taking James Tallarico's small but persistent polling lead seriously. And last night, Thursday night, they launched a new super PAC called Texas Forever. So, cavalry's coming. Love it. Senate Republican PAC spent more than $20 million supporting John Cornyn in the primary. Did not work. Do we even think that 200 million can rehabilitate a candidate like Paxton, who most voters here do know extremely well? Speaker 4 (4:33) Well, let's just ask people from Texas that question. How many ads would you have to see to change your mind about Ken Paxton? And is there enough time to run those ads before the heat death of the universe? Speaker 3 (4:46) How much would they have to pay Speaker 4 (4:47) you personally? Right, so... There was a focus group. Kristen Soltis Anderson ran this focus group, front of the show. And she had 12 2024 Trump voters who were either considering Tallarico or undecided. And she asked, what is the first word that comes to mind when you think of either candidate? And they were not totally sold on James Tallarico. But these are the words that they said for Paxton. Crooked. Criminal. Crook. Crooked, bad, immoral, disgusting, corrupt, morally corrupt, and womanizer. Speaker 5 (5:24) You know... Speaker 4 (5:25) They're on the fence. You can do a lot of good with an ad campaign for a new restaurant. It doesn't work as well when everybody's been there and gotten food poisoning. Speaker 3 (5:36) I mean, I assume all the money is just going to go. It's going to be hard to Speaker 2 (5:40) prop up Paxton, but it's probably just going to be Tallarico attack ads. Hard negative, yeah. Speaker 3 (5:45) Speaking of Tallarico, I saw that right here on this stage Thursday, he challenged Paxton to a debate on Fox News. Yeah. No dice, no takers for that debate from Paxton. Tallarico did call Paxton's choice low-T. Speaker 3 (6:06) Tommy, do you think there's any chance that Paxton takes the bait at some point, you know, considering like at least Fox News is friendlier territory? And if you're Tallarico, you're the Tallarico campaign, do you keep pushing this challenge like maybe by going on Fox or is that not the best use of time? I Speaker 2 (6:26) think for them, there were like a couple of pieces to the strategy. The first was, how do we get through this interview at the Texas Tribune Fest? and there's a couple ways you can do it. You could come in knowing that there's a bunch of national press here, knowing that they're going to write up some headline about what you say, and you kind of white-knuckle it and hope that the headlines are the best version of your response to attacks from Republicans about your record, or you walk up on stage. with a bucket full of blood and you throw chum in the water. And that's exactly what they did here with this debate thing, saying like, I'm going to debate Ken Paxton and we're going to do it on Fox News. Not that Speaker 4 (7:01) you're all fish or anything. Speaker 2 (7:02) No, the press are fish. And it worked beautifully with the National Press Corps. Like that was the headline he got. And they followed up today with this video of Tallarico calling Paxton's number and leaving him a voicemail to invite him. And it was all very clever and I think well executed. I think bigger picture, when your opponent... is like his whole message against you is that you're a wimp and you're low T and your rejoinder is like, all right, bitch, debate me on Fox news. Like it's a home game for you. That's a pretty good way to respond. Um, and do I think it'll happen? Probably not. Um, if it does, like, I think Tyler Rico can hold his own, but we should just be, you think, well, but at the end of the day, like the end of the day, Fox news is Fox news and they're. they are an extension of the MAGA media machine. And that is true for Brett Baer, who would host the debate, because we all, I think, saw pictures of Brett and his lovely wife at the state dinner at the White House two nights ago, right? Like, he's very much, you know, people in D.C. treat some Fox News hosts like they are straight news men and women, when in reality, they're all sort of working for the same master. But I think it was a smart play. I think it's something he'll probably repeat. Tyler Rico will probably repeat. But I'm not sure it'll be, like, a focus, right? I'm skeptical that it'll happen. It's pretty extraordinary, right? Because... Speaker 4 (8:13) Paxton needs the debate. He needs the help of a debate. The fact that they are so... Speaker 3 (8:19) That's if he performs at the debate in a way that resembles a human. Speaker 4 (8:25) Well, if you trust that... Right. Well, like, if you just... If you believe that Paxton is a little bit behind Tallarico based on all the polls that we've been seeing over and over again, he's got to do something to change it. And the fact that he's so... He has so little confidence in his ability to win that kind of an argument that even from behind, usually the winning candidate, the candidate ahead is not the one demanding an opportunity to have a big stage in which they face the opponent. That's what a challenger does. Speaker 3 (8:52) I think he should go on. I think Tallarico should go on like Jesse Waters' show and do the challenge there too. Speaker 2 (8:57) Take Speaker 4 (8:58) the Jesse Waters challenge. Speaker 2 (9:00) It's all about getting attention. You know what I mean? throwing out the debate idea was a gambit to get attention. It worked. Going on Fox News, it'll get you attention. I mean, it's always, to debate, the version of the interview you're going to get on Fox News is likely to be combative, and maybe that's a good thing, because your supporters like it. Like, I watched the debate, the interview Abdul El-Sayed did with Jesse Waters, and I kind of winced a bunch of times, and I was like, I don't know about that. But then I went out to Detroit, and he did a town hall, and I saw people yelling to the stage, you whooped his ass, Abdul! You know, so, like, people liked it. Do you think Tommy the Tallarico wants the debate? I think so. I mean, if I had the opportunity to stand physically side by side with Ken Paxton and talk about my record, I would do it every day. Speaker 3 (9:42) Let's talk about mogging. Let's talk about the governor's race. It wasn't that long ago that national Democrats and media types were saying that Greg Abbott was a lock. Not us, though. We talked to Gina, you know, it was a long time ago. Speaker 2 (9:56) And now, she's, yeah, Speaker 3 (9:59) we were ahead of the game there. It happens once in a while. Speaker 5 (10:01) Did we see the pulse coming or did we change the pulse? We don't know. Speaker 2 (10:05) Yeah, exactly. Speaker 3 (10:07) So Abbott's running scared now. And one way you can tell is he has completely changed his tune from wanting Texas to be a, quote, epicenter of AI development a year ago. And now he's imposing data center moratorium, or at least on new permits, now that we're getting close to election day. Lubbock, what do you make of Abbott's data center pivot? And why do you think the guy who won his race by 11 points last time around is now in such a tight race this time? Speaker 4 (10:38) Yeah, so I think a lot of Republicans have been caught off guard by the backlash to data centers. I can see it being an especially tough issue for someone like Greg Abbott. The latest data is that the... the request for power for these new data centers in Texas would require five times as much power as is currently peak demand in Texas in a state that, I mean, you all will tell me if I'm wrong. Have questions, concerns, lingering doubts about Greg Abbott's ability to manage the electric grid? Speaker 4 (11:11) The other part of this too is, so it's not just that people really don't like the idea of having a data center in their neighborhood. You think about the kind of people that are maybe older homeowners that might be really bothered by something like this. That's where Greg Abbott has won in the past. That's the one group where Paxton does okay. And an older homeowner is also the kind of person who shows up at a town meeting, fills out the form to provide their feedback. doesn't let something go, and might change their mind when Hinojosa is the one who came out for a moratorium first. I think Greg Abbott wants this to be a pivot. In reality, looking at what he's doing, he is saying that there is a pause. He is allowing a process to unfold that could allow him to have basically... complete flexibility after the election in November to either return to the policy as it was or paper over it with some sort of cosmetic changes and allow it to continue. So I think he's just trying to get through this without losing people for whom this could be a deciding issue. Speaker 3 (12:12) We should talk about Hinojosa's message. She is running an ad where a person who attended the January 6th rally says she's voting against Abbott because he's bought and paid for. by the billionaires and the corporations. Oof, lost to Jay Sixer. Oh, Speaker 4 (12:27) they're famously impressionable bunts. Speaker 3 (12:31) And she's running another ad pushing back on the two woke attacks with a page from the Republican script saying, my pronouns are mom, Texan, and soon to be governor. Speaker 3 (12:43) Good ad. Good ad. Tommy, what do you think of how Hinojosa has positioned herself and her strategy in general? Speaker 2 (12:50) Sure. I was talking to a guy named Matt Angle earlier today who runs the Lone Star Project. He's a long-term Democratic fan. Some fans out there. He said one of his rules for running successfully as a Democrat in Texas is don't get caught being a liberal. And I think Gina is executing on that strategy. I think as much as we all loved Beto and... were inspired by his campaign. I think, you know, there was, he got a lot of national media attention. I think he became kind of like a national media darling, um, and seen as like the great hope of the democratic party. And that probably hurt him back here. And she's, she's not going to make that mistake. I think Gina has a tougher race because, you know, Greg Abbott is not the most exciting candidate. He doesn't have a lot of Riz, but he's got a lot of money and a good ground game that's sort of operating year round. So he's way tougher than Ken Paxton. And so. Her strategy is basically to win about 60 % of the Latino vote, to blow it out in the five big urban counties, and then to get like double digits with independents and then peel off as many kind of rural Republicans as she possibly can. And the two ways they're trying to do that is through issues. The first is education. So Abbott has a bunch of donors that are big charter school supporters. It's one of them is that guy Jeff Yoss. He's like TikTok CEO or something, right? He's Speaker 5 (14:10) a TikTok investor. And at the state dinner the other night, they just listed him on the, he's the guy who convinced Trump to save TikTok. And so he just says, Jeff, yes, TikTok. Speaker 2 (14:21) Okay, great. So Jeff, yes, one of them. And so, you know, he gives Abbott a bunch of money. Surprise, surprise. All of a sudden money is getting routed from public schools to charter schools. And that means that schools are closing in these communities. You've got 150 school districts in Texas. The kids are going four days a week. That's crazy to me. Speaker 4 (14:42) Crazy awesome. Speaker 2 (14:44) And then, you know, like, obviously it's like infuriating for parents. But then also if you live in that community, like you're losing the culture, you're losing Friday Night Lights football. You're the biggest employer in the area is shutting down in some cases. So that's an area where she's really targeting like MAGA moms who are. pissed about this issue. And then the data center issue is another like big opportunity. There's a group called Breaking Ranks or Break Ranks, which is a bunch of like, you know, rock ribbed Republicans, conservatives in rural areas who are furious about data centers. And Gina has gone and met with them and