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, also political science professor here at the University of Houston.
Thanks for joining us.
And talk a little politics.
Obviously, we had a lot of sort of Thanksgiving between when we last saw each other.
And so hopefully people had pleasant and polite conversations.
Absolutely.
Because isn't that the norm today?
Yes.
That we all agree and things go smoothly.
Well, let's talk about.
They disagree, by the way.
But you know what?
That's fine.
You can keep your disagreements to yourself.
No more sweet potatoes for you.
All right.
So the big news, obviously, of the week is that we have a mayoral election in Houston that's been occupying a lot of interest and time, but not as much as you might expect.
Right.
We'll get into some details about that, as well as a poll that you and I conducted with Houston Public Media and the Houston Chronicle and get some details there.
But let's talk about first about a kind of big national story, and that's that we have a kind of ongoing cease fire, hostage negotiation between Israel and Hamas.
The U.S. is obviously involved in this.
Hamas released a more than a dozen hostages from Gaza this week, including one American, very young American, four years old.
American officials believe that there are about nine more people who are Americans who are being held hostage, but there are still hundreds of other hostages who are being held.
Obviously, this is a good because you are able to kind of facilitate this kind of humanitarian response.
But obviously pressure still on the Biden administration because they've been very close to Israel on this welcoming and backing some of the military interventions.
But obviously, they need to be able to kind of balance this with the need to get the hostages back.
How do you see this playing out geopolitically and for the Biden administration?
Well, geopolitically, I mean, part of the ceasefire agreement was broken by Qatar.
Right?
So Qatar and Egypt have been extremely, extremely involved in the process.
So I think that that keeps that credibility to, you know, these, I guess, cease fire negotiations on and so forth.
Right.
So you see, you know, leadership within the region are obviously stepping up and trying to resolve this conflict in a way that is, you know, diminishes and reduces the loss of life on both sides.
So that's one issue.
The other issue is the role of the United States, you know, has been there.
But obviously that's, I think, a strategic from a strategy from Hamas not to release as many American citizens just to keep pressure.
Right.
But I don't know if that's the right strategy for them, because the U.S. and obviously the Obama administration are going to heed a threshold in which, you know, they're not going to be able to support anything else in terms of, you know, more aid or so on and so forth.
The last thing is that that can become a domestic political issue for the Biden administration.
And in previous election year, quote unquote.
Right.
That could have very, very, very important implications.
They were always in an election year, it seems.
Right.
I mean, no matter what the day of time and year is, it's always something that's political, irrelevant.
But I think your last point is really telling.
And that's that, you know, we do have the Biden administration is kind of stuck in the middle of this.
They need to have this humanitarian intervention.
They do encourage the sort of ability for the, you know, the kind of world to be able to have the sort of supplies sent into Gaza.
But at the same time, obviously, they've got to be able to back Israel on some of these military things.
So the question is sort of how long can Joe Biden keep this at bay?
And I don't think that it's going to happen for very much longer.
And so that's going to be a real kind of political struggle for the Biden administration that frankly cannot afford to have too many more foreign policy jammies on their on their card.
Right.
They've already taken massive hits on this.
And I think although foreign policy isn't the kind of thing that's going to affect domestic politics directly, you're certainly to see it indirectly.
And I think, too, like you're going to see a bunch of attack ads against Joe Biden saying, you know, he can't handle the kind of foreign policy crises.
But on the kind of more direct point, the fact that you've got a lot of pushback inside the Democratic caucus about the sort of the Hamas and Israel war means that there's going to be a potential political problem for the president.
Right.
So places like Michigan, Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, there's a significant percentage of people in those places who are Palestinian or pro-Palestinian in the Democratic caucus.
That's going to be a problem because although polling suggests that they're getting about 59% of those votes, it's also the case that they're turning quickly against Joe Biden.
And you're talking about a few hundred thousand votes in each state that could really flip the state.
That's how close things are.
So that's an issue for the Democrats and for Biden going forward in a period where, you know, they're hemorrhaging support, especially among young people.
So this is going to be an issue going forward, but.
I think complicated.
You know, the Biden administration has changed their discourse, Right?
I mean, eventually, you know, the support towards Israel and, you know, the attacks on on Gaza, you know, were very clear.
Now that this course has changed and that discourse has changed in the sense of the Biden administration saying, you know, Israel, you need to be more careful, you need to be more precise in terms of what are you doing in Gaza.
Right.
Because we don't want to see civilians hurt.
And I think that here no one, you know, supports Hamas.
Right.
But the problem is that you're you cannot distinguish in, you know, in the battleground, right, between Hamas and innocent civilians.
Right.
And innocent civilians are the ones are pain, you know, the broken plates.
So the problem here is how you distinguish between one or the other.
Yeah.
From a military perspective, but also from a political perspective.
And I think that the Biden administration has to come up with a way of saying, yes, we need to get rid of Hamas 1,000%.
No one disagrees with that.
Yeah.
How do you allow or control for the loss of civilian lives?
So this problem.
Yeah, in like just that sort of tactical military approach is.
Yeah.
Very challenging.
Exactly.
And I think knowing that there's a domestic implication to this does put the Biden administration in a bit of a bind.
Right.
It gives some ability for people on the ground there to be able to manipulate that.
So, yeah, we'll pay attention.
This as it comes.
Obviously, a very fast moving lots of things happening.
But let's talk about the race to succeed, succeed Joe Biden.
And that's the Republican side of things, especially Nikki Haley this week got a pretty big endorsement from the Club for Growth.
This is a Koch backed kind of enterprise that basically he's got almost endless money to be able to support the candidates that they like and they like Nikki Haley.
Is this going to be the game changer that that she needs to be able to make some gain on Donald Trump?
Well, I think so.
Right.
I mean, because it opens the door to a new network.
Yeah.
You know that she did not have access.
It opens the door to money, like significant amount of money.
Like, money matters in elections a lot.
I'm very.
Andrew And then.
Right.
It also signals that the establishment you know like the Koch brothers that used to support President Trump are like, yes, but no, thank you.
Yeah.
Not anymore.
Yeah.
So I think that it has two important things.
One is that they see Nikki Haley or the establishment sees Nikki Haley as a potential winner one and two, they are fed up with President Trump.
Mm hmm.
And three may signal the Republican Party, right, that they might need to step away from Trump.
Now, interesting.
Okay.
Because now they have the money to do so, right?
I mean, yeah, in my humble opinion.
I agree, actually.
Thank you.
If you can imagine.
Yeah, like, I think that's probably right.
It's death by a thousand paper cuts for Donald Trump.
Right.
Obviously, the front runner, he's going to get a lot of his attention anyway.
But being Donald Trump only exacerbates that.
Yeah.
And if you start to see the kind of trend, the kind of more traditional Republicans coalescing around a particular candidate, then that's going to be where the fight is.
And with this antis basically kind of bleeding support Donald Trump and Nikki Haley is kind of where the new action is.
And to be honest, like we're not that far away from Iowa, right?
I mean, after the first of the year, it's only a few weeks until the Iowa caucuses, where organizing matters and where presence is going to be a huge factor.
So this is going to be, I think, the kind of next real battleground, and it'll happen really fast.
So, yep, that will be interesting to see another kind of comings and goings, I guess.
The national scene is from Representative George Santos, who has been obviously much maligned and possibly for good reason.
According to the House Ethics Committee, the Ethics Committee released a report that effectively provided for significant evidence of criminal wrongdoing on a range of different things.
We've reported on this many different times.
The upshot here is that now that the Congress is serious about expunging him and bolting him from the body, he said he won't resign.
We've talked about this before where scandals are no longer as kind of impactful as they used to be, Right.
Whereas in the seventies, you certainly would have seen this happen in modern political times, candidates and incumbents will hold on and keep running.
So that's effectively what he's doing.
So we'll see if the House decides to move on.
This recording.
Right.
We're still kind of figuring this out, but this is certainly a pretty big deal because the House rarely kicks out its own members, and when they do, it's because of a conviction, like a long history of their being.
Right.
So absolutely right.
I mean, but besides, I think that the losers in these political battle is going to be the Republican Party.
Yeah.
Whether they expel them or not is the if he goes if he goes out, you know, the Democrats have a decent chance to reclaim that in a special election.
Good point.
Yeah.
And if they do that, the majority of the party's going to go, you know, to very, very, very dangerous numbers.
That's one.
If they keep him, given the ethics report in the House that he's controlled by the Republican Party, that basically said that he blindly stole money from his campaign period.
Right.
Is like, are you protecting a someone that stole money for his campaign to do that's good for so.
Democrats have it easy right?
Just going to bold and say like expel him.
Like, why not?
Yeah.
And then the other wrinkle in this thing created by George Santos is that, well, I'm not running for reelection in 2024, so I don't know why.
You know, the Republican conference in the House.
Yeah.
Is going to do.
Yeah.
Like, what are we fighting about?
Yeah.
Republicans with a very slim lead, a four vote lead.
And so that's in jeopardy in the near term.
But in the far term, as you say, obviously politically, this could really be a problem.
One of my favorite things of the week was seeing MoveOn.org put up a giant inflatable like George Santos balloon, the capital grounds floating around in the high winds, amazing theater and all brought to you by, you know, the U.S. House of Representatives.
Thank you very much for that.
This is party politics.
I'm Brandon.
This is Jeronimo.
We're talking about the massive amount of things that are happening on the political scene.
But let's talk Houston, because that's something that we've all been focusing on.
We did a mayor's poll with the Houston Chronicle and Houston Public Media.
We found effectively the race hadn't tightened that much.
Actually, it was very similar to where things were at the beginning of the end of the at the normal voting.
So what does this mean, Like people just entered in this race?
Yes.
Next question, please.
No, I mean, I think that.
Why is the next question?
I think that there is interest by.
But, you know, this campaign was pretty mell ride.
We have seen that, you know, political theater attacks, so on and so forth, gets the bases riled up and then they go out and vote.
Right.
And this campaign overall, since the beginning has been, you know, pretty civil in terms of what it is.
So you're saying it's been too civil?
I mean, we need some fun.
No, no, no.
I think it's it's what we need.
Right.
Maybe that's what we need is what we need.
There were some fireworks, though, this week in debates, right.
You did see kind of an emphasis in terms of race and ethnicity from Sheila Jackson Lee arguing that, you know, John Whitmire was doing enough and you saw John Whitmire basically accusing the outgoing administration of being kind of sort of inattentive to some of the fiscal matters.
So there have been a little bit of friction, but like you say, not a lot.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's like those, I guess, fireworks that you drop into the ground and the.
Ones you have to throw.
Yeah.
Not the ones you like.
Yeah, like Chuck.
Chuck.
I think you're right.
But.
And you know, this nonpartisan race.
It's two Democrats running, so Republicans kind of don't have any place to go from.
So lots of reasons why I think it hasn't been kind of that much of an interest.
But like, let's dig deeper.
Like, what does the poll say about the race and about kind of what he saw Nunes care about and how they live and how it relates to the kind of politics of the race.
So there's obviously an interesting divide, right, when you looking, for example, who is supporting who and you see that most of voters are supporting, Senator Whitmire are, you know, non-Hispanic whites tend to be a little bit older in comparison with Maya, also has a big chunk of Latino support.
And then in comparison, Congresswoman Jackson Lee has a significant or the majority of the African-American vote has a little bit more of a younger base supporting her.
And obviously, in terms of issues, there's also some debate issues, obviously crime, etc., etc..
But supporters of Jackson Lee worry a little bit more about housing affordability and, you know, other issues in comparison to those are supporting Whitmire.
Yeah, yeah.
Her voters lean a little more left on.
The problem is that in Houston mayoral politics, it's sort of more centrist.
And so I think given who votes, especially people who are older, 55 and over, they're supporting what wasn't.
So, you know, I definitely agree.
I said older trust.
It was definitely sensitive to that.
But yeah, so I think for her kind of motivating that base is going to be really critical.
So that's what they have to do in the next couple of weeks until we've got Election Day.
I think also it's interesting, and you pointed this out to me that they really split among women and that's something that was surprising to me because, you know, typically women candidates get at least a you know, at least a majority of if not slightly more of the female vote.
But in this case, she's not getting it.
One reason that I speculated is that we asked in the poll about her tape that was released right in the sort of audio recording of her berating a staffer.
It actually hurt her among younger women, the younger people in general, but younger women especially.
Yeah.
And so it's I think partially the case that those sorts of things are hurting her among her base that she needs to turn out.
But in general, those folks don't turn out anyway.
Younger people aren't voting.
They need to vote, but they are not doing it.
And municipal elections are a perfect time to be able to kind of, you know, express your opinions on things.
But our polling suggests that they have different opinions, but they don't go vote.
And as a result, their opinions are less kind of impacted at city hall.
No, Absolutely.
Absolutely.
And, you know, obviously, other issues that we discussed in the poll have to do with the CDS, finances and and that is also extremely important.
And also you see a very important divide, right?
Young people saying like, yeah, whatever.
And then older folks saying, oh, my God, we have a problem here, Houston.
We have a problem, right?
Yeah.
Well done.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Did you make.
That up.
On the spot?
Exactly.
I just.
And just drop it.
So I think that that's, you know, extremely interesting.
And also another part of the of what we did that I think it's also very interesting is we asked voters in terms of life satisfaction and quality of life.
Yeah.
So that brings a very interesting picture, Ryan, And that brings an interesting picture in terms of how Houstonians see their life satisfaction and quality of life that is especially tied where they live.
Yeah, right.
And we see very interesting difference in pride.
We see that the city has had, you know, these you know, separate experiences in terms of experiencing good infrastructure, experiencing floods, experiencing other issues and that, you know, spatial realities, something that interesting.
You know, the next mayor needs to pay significant attention to that.
Yeah, because there's many Houston's in terms of at least at the very least in terms of urban infrastructure.
Interesting quality of life.
That's a great point.
The many Houston's I like that.
Yeah.
Because it does reflect the fact that there's a difference in terms of what people care about.
Yeah, voters are more interested, like you said, in the housing affordability and the gap between rich and poor beautifying the city, adding bike lanes and older voters are more concerned about crime, city finances.
So there is a real divide there in terms of how it unfolds and the next mayor is going to have a very expensive problem on their hands.
So, Oh, absolutely.
It's going to be a real fight.
But the other thing in terms of expenses is that the poll also asked about the controllers race, which is, yeah, in a runoff, you've got Chris Hollins versus Orlando Sanchez.
Sanchez and obviously kind of known Republican Hollins, a known Democrat.
So that's a more kind of traditional race in terms of Partizanship It shows Hollins in the lead, but a lot of undecided.
So and the same is true for the mayor's race, too.
So I think everyone is sort of panicking at this point, thinking like, if we change the electorate significantly, then it's anybody's game.
And I think that's still largely true.
I'd still put my money on Whitmire and Hollins to win, given where the polling is.
But at the same time, if things shape and change a little bit in the next couple of weeks, then you could see a very different outcome.
Oh, absolutely.
And also, you know, the control is very easy, right, Because that's going to be the person that needs I mean.
They're the financial brake.
Right there, the financial break.
And, you know, even though that they don't have any, let's quote, let's say, spending authority or anything like that.
Yeah, they're in charge of like, hey, like, yeah, you need to start, you know, paying attention to the money.
So it's going to be important.
I think that both candidates are, you know, very solid candidates.
Sanchez has a lot of of of experience at the county level.
Yeah, he was the county treasurer before.
He has been in city council.
So he knows the city and he knows the numbers right.
And Hollins, on the other hand, brings that energy and also, you know, solid can in terms of he knows what he's doing, he's not like, oh yeah, you know.
Creative and experimental in a way.
Yeah, creative, experimental.
But I think he, I mean speaking like, you know, does he understand numbers?
Yes, he does.
And both candidates understand numbers.
And I think that's, you know, also important.
And as you say, that difference is is going to be important.
But here we're going to see, you know, an African-American running against a Latino that also going to be, you know, interesting in terms of, you know, how the the electorate perceives this very particular race in terms of support.
Interesting.
Yeah.
We'll see how this plays out.
We'll talk more about this next week because we're in the thick of early voting.
This is party politics.
I'm Brandon.
This is Geronimo.
Let's continue to talk about what's happening in Houston because the vice president was here and Sylvia Garcia is district.
She did a headline event for the Hispanic Caucus and then raised some money as politicians are want to do, especially in the middle of an election cycle.
But it comes at a really important moment for the Democratic Party, especially in Texas, because they are losing support among Latinos.
And we've debated this a lot.
Right.
Just some numbers here.
In 2016, Trump won 28% of the vote, Latino vote against Hillary Clinton.
Four years later, he won 41% against Biden.
So that means that there is definitely some slippage.
And if the Democrats are ever to win Texas in a significant way, they need to have Latinos on their side.
Well, yeah, of course.
I mean, and the caveat on that is that, you know, perhaps those numbers might seem like huge, right from 20 something to 40 something percent.
But the real issue is that we have to also take into account who is actually voting.
And the reality here is young voters, young voters tend to be more Democratic oriented and they're not voting.
Yeah.
So when you do the counterfactual, I see Wow.
I'm saying and say, like if these march of Latino young voters would have gone out and vote, yeah, yeah, we would have seen the opposite.
Right?
So I think her benefit is key and he's not talking to those that are already voting, you know, the Gen Xers, etc., etc..
But he's talking really talking about young voters.
Great point.
And she actually specifically mentioned.
Oh, yes, right.
She said I am Gen Z for instead.
So it's let's forget about these folks that.
Sure.
And a big chunk of the Latino electorate has always voted for for Republicans.
And that's true in Texas for a long.
Oh, yes, I'm going.
Back to the, you know, early nineties.
This has been something that's been common and they need the help because like Kamala Harris, his numbers are not good in Texas.
Let her support her fave UN fave is very much under water overall 32% fave 40 53% on fave among Hispanics, 36%.
Fave 46% on fave.
So they need to do what they can to kind of rev it up because whether they vote for Biden or not is a today question.
But when they whether they're going to vote for Kamala Harris in the future is a tomorrow question.
And that's going to be kind of how this is presented in the future.
So we'll find out how that works.
And I mean, it could be a very dangerous proposition, right?
Because you're wooing courting young Latino voters.
Right.
But we have seen these every single election since George Pataki was elected in New York.
Right.
With the Latino electorate.
But if you don't follow through.
Right, you need to deliver.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
And that's why she spent a lot of time talking about infrastructure.
Oh, yes.
She that like our polling suggests that they really care about.
Yeah.
Let's talk about the courts for a second.
This week, the all Republican Texas Supreme Court heard arguments on the state's abortion restrictions.
This is what is presumed to be the first lawsuit brought by individual women against the abortion restrictions at the state level.
This is not really a fight about whether it's legal or not.
It's a fight about whether or not they can sue.
And so it's sort of a step towards that.
But as it is now, the case basically challenges the state's exemptions for abortions for Texans with medical complications.
So women basically say that their abortions are denied or delayed, which cause because of an unclear wording in the state's ban.
And so basically what the plaintiffs are asking for is to have some clarity.
The court didn't seem to be that interested in making these arguments clear because, as they say, they don't want to step into that kind of political fray on this.
And they argue it's not their job to do that.
But in some sense, it has to be sort of clarified because as it is now, it's unclear and doctors are not sure what to do.
And so they're going to potentially get sued as a result.
So what is going to happen in all of this?
Well, I think what's going to happen is that at the end the court is going to say, yeah, no thanks.
Exactly.
And is going to kick it back to the state legislature.
And the state legislature is going to say, like, you need to fix this thing.
And then I think eventually state legislature has to come up with these things because I think, you know, the question is, is if the states abortion law are harming women when they face pregnancy complications, that isn't very clear.
The question.
Yeah.
And it should disturb a very clear answer.
Yeah.
And I think the court knows the answer.
But they opened the can of worms and say, well, maybe we can pick out two or three warms.
They open and certainly older ones going to jump out and say like, yeah, no, this is your problem.
It's a good point.
No, and they want to stay out of the partizan fray if they can.
Yeah, but as I said, it's the all-Republican Supreme Court.
And we know from history and from out of political science theory that like the majority party often is aided by the courts when there's a synergy.
And so my guess is, yeah, they're going to block this.
Board, the electoral complications or implications are extremely important because as we have seen in other states, as we have seen in Ohio, for instance, right.
The abortion issue is extremely important to motivate.
So if they don't do something.
Yeah.
Now before 24, yeah, that could be something that.
Democrats activity political trouble.
Oh yeah, absolutely.
But let's talk about the holiday season right around the corner.
On a fun note, the Christmas tree that's usually ginormous that goes in the House chamber.
This year is a little smaller.
The concern and the complication is that they're in special session.
So they have to have a smaller tree because they have to maneuver around it.
Right?
Otherwise, it's too big.
But I think a lot of people are going to find coal in their stocking.
Right?
You've got teachers.
We're not going to get a raise because this special session imploded.
You're going to have voucher advocates who aren't going to get anything because the House just decided not to move on that.
So are we going to have another yet?
No special session.
What do you think?
Are I don't know, the trees there?
Right.
So it's like they still have time to be on the on the good side.
There's still time.
Not on the naughty list, but random for this week.
That's it.
I'm Jeronimo Cortina.
And I'm Brandon Rottinghaus.
The conversation keeps up next week.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7sa7SZ6arn1%2BrtqWxzmiuoaddrLatuIywoKdlpJ2ybrTOrqqtp55iuqLFzquqZqqRmLJuucJtr62qXw%3D%3D