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- [00:00]
A
Why am I blanking on the biggest city in South Carolina?
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B
Charleston.
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A
Charleston. I've taken cold meds. Hold on. I need to get my.
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B
Oh, man. We did the Galen Drunk podcast. This is the Galen High Podcast.
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A
Yeah. This is the Robo Tripping podcast. Okay, let's do it. Hello and welcome to the GD Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Drouke, and I'm officially back on the right side. Sorry, I mean American side of the pond today. And we've got a lot of election news to catch up on. As you might have heard, Democratic Representative Jasmine Crockett has jumped into the Texas Senate primary with just three months to go until primary election day. She's controversial at times, outright offensive, and and gets the cable news part of her party very excited. She also appears to be leading in some early primary polling. Sound familiar? So is the candidate the Atlantic called a Democrat for the Trump era up to the task of flipping Texas? We're also gonna take a broader look at some of the midterm math beyond Texas. Competitive primaries are taking shape in the House and Senate. New York City Council member Chi Ose launched and ended a bid to challenge Democratic House leader Hakeem Jeffries in less than a month. But elsewhere, challenges from the left are still emerging. Should we call it a Democratic Tea Party? Plus, a case at the Supreme Court this week considers how much money the political parties can spend in coordination with candidates. Should the relatively low caps be kept in place or should the floodgates be open? And if we have time, we'll get to some actual election results. A Republican underperformance in Tennessee and a Democratic victory for the first time in nearly 30 years in. In the Miami mayoral race. Here with me to talk about it all is deputy editor of Inside Elections, Jacob Robashkin. Jacob, welcome to the podcast.
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B
Thanks so much for having me.
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A
Let's dive right in. Jacob. Can Jasmine Crockett win a Senate race in Texas?
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B
Maybe. I don't know. I mean, tell me what the world looks like in 11 months. I think she can certainly win a primary. And look, ultimately, I think what it comes down to is that the circumstances under which a Democrat, any Democrat can win a statewide race in Texas, like a Senate race, are pretty candidate agnostic, right? If you're thinking about it like a race, like a foot race, it's 100 meter dash. The first 90 meters at least, probably are all about environment. They're all about what does the country look like, how do people feel about President Trump, the economy. What's the economy in Texas like? What is voter enthusiasm like? The next, you know, five meters are probably about who the Republican candidate is. Right. If it's John Cornyn, that's one thing makes it difficult for any Democrat. If it's Ken Paxton, totally different story. That creates an opportunity for Democrats to win in a state where they have not won in a very long time. And then it's kind of the last five meters where it's going to come down to who the candidate is. And if that's Crockett or Talarico, those seem to be the two options at this point. You know, I think it'll matter, but it doesn't matter in my mind nearly as much as all the foundational parts of the race that need to be in place for Democrats to make a run at it.
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A
But it sounds like you do think who the Republican candidate is makes a big difference. Cause you said, I mean, you allotted them both 5 meters, so maybe numerically speaking, similar amounts. But you said it's a totally different story if Ken Paxton wins the Republican primary. Why is it not then also a totally different story if it's Jasmine Crockett versus James Tallarica?
- [03:50]
B
Well, a couple of reasons. Right. I think that first of all, while we all know who Jasmine Crockett is, you know, I'm using we to refer to, you know, the people here in D.C. and perhaps the people within your couple square blocks in New York who pay attention to this kind of thing. I think, relatively speaking, nobody is well known in Texas until they've been around for a very long time. And so I think that Crockett has and Talarico. Right. I'll put them both in this situation. They're going to have an opportunity and a window to define themselves and introduce themselves to the electorate in Texas. That isn't afforded a guy like Paxton. Right. Paxton is universal name id. He's been on the ballot several times before. Everybody knows him, and people don't necessarily like him outside of the Republican Party. So I do think that he starts out in a different spot than either Crockett or Talarico. The other thing, I think we'll see how it develops. But right now I would anticipate that the Republican primary will be more expensive and far more nasty than the Democratic primary will be. Right. You know, obviously there are big personalities on the Democratic side, but so far there has not been the kind of mudslinging and punches being thrown that we've seen on the Republican side. I mean, the pitched battle between Cornyn and Paxton and Wesley Hunt has already drawn Tens of millions of dollars, all sorts of accusations about criminal activity and marital infidelity and all sorts of things that's only going to intensify over the next three as we get closer and closer to primary day potentially, and probably likely for another two months after that with a runoff if no candidate reaches 50%. And so if it's Paxton in the general election, it's going to be Paxton having had $100 million dumped on his head in terms of negative advertising. If it's Crockett, she's got vulnerabilities. I don't think anyone is denying that. But I don't think that you're going to see her take the kind of walloping from Talarico or anyone else in that Democratic primary ahead of the general election. And we know if nothing else, she's a very strong fundraiser. She will have the resources that she needs to get out there and define herself. Certainly, if she's the nominee in March and the Republicans don't have a nominee until May, that two month window is going to be very important for her or Talarico again to define themselves ahead of the general election matchup.
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A
Because there is a runoff in this primary if neither candidate on the Democrat. Well, it looks like there's going to be two candidates on the Democratic side, so likely somebody will get to 50 plus one. But there being three candidates on the Republican side could be totally possible that nobody gets to 50% plus one. To that end, talking about Tallarico versus Crockett in a primary, what should we expect the race to look like? What parts of the party do they represent or what are their postures for the people outside of D.C. or the couple blocks that you mentioned around me in New York City who don't know these guys?
- [06:53]
B
Yeah, it's more nuanced than I think a lot of the national coverage has been so far. And it's more nuanced than a lot of Democratic primaries typically look in terms of the ideological or generational or geographic divides might suggest. I mean, ultimately, I think of this coming down to a difference of approach, a difference of kind of theory of the case for, for how to win an election in Texas. That to me seems like the major distinction between these two candidates. So on the one hand, you've got a guy like Tallarico who is a state legislator. He's been in office for eight years now, but he's very young. He got elected in his late 20s. He's a Presbyterian minister. He has very much that ministerial affect. He speaks in Bible verses And his whole shtick is about bringing new people into the tent, about appealing to voters who have not voted for Democrats in a long time in Texas and expanding the coalition that way, and kind of going everywhere and talking to everyone and pitching himself as a different kind of Democrat, one who can appeal to more culturally conservative voters across the state. That's Talarico's approach. And he has found a willing audience there, certainly among Democratic donors. You know, I think he raised $6 million in his first six weeks in the race. He's proved to be capable of getting national attention. He, you know, he went on Rogan, which is, you know, importantly, famously.
- [08:34]
A
I mean, according to the analysis, that means he's going to win. Right.
- [08:38]
B
Depending on which reporters you read. But look, I think that that is. That is the Talarico approach. You know, Jasmine Crockett has a different approach. Her theory of the case rests on the idea of activating non voters and the belief that the Democrats can win in Texas not by winning over Trump voters, but by motivating Democratic non voters to show up and vote, by being unapologetically who she is, unapologetically a Democrat. And look, I think the unfortunate reality for Democrats in Texas is that neither of these strategies have worked before because it's a really Republican state.
- [09:22]
A
Yeah, Wait, I was gonna say, you said this is, like, more nuanced and very different from other Democratic primaries. This sounds like a movie that I have seen before, and frankly, a movie that I've seen before in Texas. Right. We had Wendy Davis, the, you know, Democratic lawmaker in Texas who filibustered on the issue of abortion and became a Democratic, you know, sort of mini star and then ran for governor and was absolutely walloped. And her theory of the case was lean into her Democratic cultural values. Beto o', Rourke, lest we forget, because his presidential race was more to the left when he originally ran. It was more sort of reach, everyone go everywhere, be affable. And, you know, he got much closer than Wendy Davis did. Obviously, it was also a different environment in which they were running. Wendy Davis was running during the Obama years where there wasn't a backlash to President Trump like there was when o' Rourke was running. But it seems like the evidence that we do have is that trying to be affable and appealing to a broad cross section of Texans seems to work better than supercharging partisan affiliations, because at the end of the day, there are just a lot more Republicans in Texas than there are Democrats.
- [10:37]
B
Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, I think if you're going by that particular metric. You're absolutely right. And I think the rejoinder to that from Team Crockett and her allies is, you know, close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. You know, Beto. Beto didn't win. And Beto got a lot further. You know, he lost ground in between his 2018 Senate run and his 2022 gubernatorial bit. Right. And so whether that's right or not, I think that's the attitude. And the approach from that part of the party is that, yeah, they may have gotten close once or twice, but it still didn't work. And we've never had someone like Jasmine Crockett, who has a national profile, who cuts a different profile just demographically as a black woman from Dallas than like a Wendy Davis did, who, you know, is. Is a really stark contrast to, you know, the types of candidates that Democrats have run in Texas before, like your Beto and like your Talarico, who shares a lot of at least superficial commonalities with, with Beto. But I guess my, my, my larger point about kind of how it's a little bit more nuanced is that there's no general generational contrast in, in this race. Right. Crockett is 44, Talarico is 38. These are both young, relatively new members of, of the, the Democratic brand. Essentially, ideologically, there's. It, there's not a clear cut, moderate progressive angle here. Talarico probably a little bit more to the left than Crockett on a number of things, but again, that kind of cuts against some perceptions. Right. People tend to look at black women politicians as being more liberal than their counterparts, even if that's not actually the case. We'll see. I guess there's been kind of a big blow up on Twitter and elsewhere among certain kinds of Democratic pundits and thinkers who feel that Crockett is an unwinnable candidate. Right. And the Republicans actually took a victory lap. The NRSC took a victory lap earlier this week, basically claiming credit for luring Crockett into the race. I don't know how true that is or not. They were the first ones to put out a poll with her in the race and in the lead. To what extent that helped push her into the race six months later, I. I don't know.
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A
Yeah, they went on the record saying that it was something of an astroturf campaign, of course, as opposed to a grassroots campaign where they had synthesized all of this support for her getting in the race and urging active Democrats to call her office and urge her to run and things like that. Obviously, both parties get involved in trying to prop up the candidate they think is easier to win against. But also, if folks are going to call her the Democrat for a Trump era, Democrats in 2016 very much felt that Trump was far more beatable than his counterparts like Marco Rubio. And then he ultimately ended up winning. We all know how that story goes. I was actually going to ask you, my follow up question was, you know, she has been sort of outright offensive, calling Governor Greg Abbott, who uses a wheelchair, Governor Hot Wheels. She referred to Marjorie Taylor Greene as bleach blonde, bad built, butch body in Congress, which she then turned into a T shirt or something like that. Trump had a certain appeal that much of the mainstream media didn't recognize early on. Do you think there is the same appetite for that kind of appeal on the Democratic side or is this a real party distinction?
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B
We'll see. I think there's evidence to suggest that there is an appeal on the Democratic side. There's a reason why Crockett polls well in the Democratic primary in Texas. We'll see if that persists now that she's an actual candidate and she's gonna have her candidacy placed under a microscope and challenged by Talarico and his allies. But at the moment, clearly she's striking a chord with Texas Democrats with national Democratic donors or national Democratic grassroots donors. And that can't be ignored. And to your point, we in the business like to think that we know what electability is. And I would say a lot of the time, probably most of the time we're right, we know what we're talking about, but not always. And you don't have to look very far to find any number of Senate candidates who were seen as the least electable option, who got support from the other party because of that, and then went on to win.
- [15:28]
A
Right about like John Fetterman or I guess. Who are you talking about?
- [15:31]
B
Oh, I, I mean the one that's I'm thinking about right now is Bernie Marino in Ohio, who Democrats did a little bit to help prop up in the Senate primary last year. And then he went on to beat Sherrod Brown. You know, like same thing with J.D. vance. You know, I think a lot of Democrats thought that J.D. vance was kind of the least electable of the various Ohio Senate candidates in 2022. And then he. Not only did he go on to win that race and now he's vice president. It's not just.
- [16:04]
A
There are equally many cases where particularly Republicans have sort of gone with their hearts against their brains in nominating some poorly suited candidates in places like Arizona and Nevada and New Hampshire and forfeited Senate seats that should have otherwise been easy to win.
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B
I am not going to sit here and argue that candidate quality doesn't matter. Right. I think candidate quality matters a lot. I'm just saying that our first assessments of who is a good and who is a bad candidate are not always correct. Sometimes it's easier to say than in other cases, you know, you. But I think it's a clear cut case to say that Blake Masters had some real issues that, like a Jasmine Crockett doesn't necessarily have. We'll see.
- [16:47]
A
We've gone a particularly long time without citing any polling for the GD Politics podcast. I will just say, you know, a recent University of Houston poll that looked at the Democratic primary in Texas found 31% support for Crockett, 25% support for Talarico, 25% support for O', Rourke, 13% support for Allred, who has dropped out of the race now, and percent unsure. You know, we still have relatively limited polling in the Texas Senate primary on the Democratic side. Before we move on, I did want to ask. I recently talked to friend of the pod, Lenny Brauner about the Republican primary in Texas, and we said it seems pretty up in the air at this very moment. The averages have ken Paxton at 32%, John Cornyn at 27%, Wesley Hunt at 23%. I mean, truly a tight race and seemingly could go either way. But do you have a sense from your close reporting, like if you had to pick, who has the advantage, who would it be?
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B
I'll tell you who it wouldn't be, and that's John Cornet, an incumbent.
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A
You don't think it's going to be.
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B
John Cornyn, an incumbent at 27% in his own primary, an incumbent who's been in on. He's not a. He didn't win a special election two years ago and nobody knows who he is. He wasn't appointed by Abbott yesterday. This guy has been in the senate for almost 30 years. 27% in his own primary. Come on, come on. Not only 27% in his own primary, but 27% after his allies in the national Republican apparatus have poured tens of millions of dollars into the state trying to boost his image over the last eight months. Right. This is not, we're not at the starting point of this race. We are well in the thick of this race. We've got three months to go before Election Day. And if Anything. His position has gotten worse as Wesley Hunt got into the race and started sucking up some of the anti Paxton vote. That wasn't entirely sold on Cornyn as well. But I don't know how you look at the shape of this election and feel comfortable if you are on Team Cornyn right now when you are still at best tied for first in the low 30s in a state where everybody knows who you are and everybody knows who your opponent is and you've had a massive spending advantage. Now, look, maybe he could pull a rabbit out of a hat if he gets into a runoff with Paxton and they drop another hundred million dollars on Paxton's head. They haven't really started doing negative on Paxton yet. And that's what they keep saying, is that that's coming and there's going to be so much more that's worse, that's going to turn voters off. But nothing seems to have worked so far. And I just think that's a really uncomfortable position to be in as, as an incumbent who it'll be. I think, you know, if it's not going to be Cornyn, I think it's far more likely that it's Paxton than it is Wesley Hunt, just because Hunt is regularly in third. But gosh, I like an incumbent at that level in his own primary. Staring down the potential for a runoff is just. That's deeply uncomfortable.
- [19:57]
A
Okay, let's move on. If Democrats are going to flip the Senate, they have to hold their seats in Georgia and Michigan. John Ossoff is defending his seat in Georgia and Michigan is open. They also have to flip Maine and North Carolina and then find two more seats amongst Ohio, Iowa, Texas, maybe Alaska. We've talked about Texas. Let's talk about some of these other seats. Where is the primary competition most heated? On either side, really.
- [20:24]
B
I think top of the list. You've got two races, both on the Democratic side of the aisle that come to mind. Right. The first is Maine, where we're seeing a very pitched primary battle between Governor Janet Mills and Oysterman Graham Platner. That contest went off the rails very quickly and it's an incredibly important race. Democrats have to beat Susan Collins in order to have a hope of flipping back the Senate next year. And they don't know which candidate they're going to battle with all sorts of stuff going on there. The other one, I mean, we've talked.
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A
Let me just stop there. We've talked quite a bit about the drama that has unfolded in the main. Said it. Democratic primary.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And we sort of said we have to wait a little bit for this information to marinate amongst the main electorate. After a month plus of marination, can we say how the public has reacted to the Nazi tattoo and the, you know, all of the Reddit posting and and the likes? Well, I guess I'll all right, that's the end of today's preview. Head over to GDPolitics.com to become a paid subscriber. Listen to the full episode. Jacob and I spoke for another 40 minutes and we covered a lot of ground. The competitive Senate primaries in Maine and Michigan on the Democratic side, Georgia on the Republican side. We also covered some of the dividing lines emerging in House primaries. Is it mostly generational or ideological or simply a fighter mentality? We disagreed a little bit there. Then we got into recent elections in Tennessee and Miami and what this week's campaign finance case at the Supreme Court is all about. Like I said, head over to GDPolitics.com to become a paid subscriber and catch the whole thing. Paid subscribers get about twice the number of episodes, can join in the paid subscriber chat, and most importantly, keep this podcast going. When you become a subscriber, you can connect your account to wherever you listen to podcasts so you'll never miss an episode. There's a link in the show notes explaining how. Again, head over to gdpolitics. Com. See you there.