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- [00:00]
A
I do think something that I've been picking up from voters is like in Maine specifically is a he's still got my vote, but I'm nervous about what else might be out there. As long as nothing comes out that's prosecutable against him, then you know what? He has my vote and I wish him well. Hello everyone and welcome to the focus group podcast. I'm Sarah Longwell, publisher of the Bulwark, and this week we're covering two of the most talked about races this year, both because of their massive implications for the country and because of the massive personalities on the ballot talking about the Senate races in Texas and Maine. This is the episode you've been waiting for. So we've been talking about these races for a while, but for the first time you're going to hear from the kinds of voters in Texas, you're and Maine who are actually going to decide these elections. But you got to stick around to the end for the Maine stuff. I also want to survey the landscape on some other quirky down ballot primaries. My guest today is Patrick Zvitek, national political reporter at cnn, who was previously at the Washington Post and Texas Tribune, so as well plugged into what is going on in Texas. Patrick, thanks for being here.
- [01:18]
B
Thanks for having me, Sarah.
- [01:19]
A
I'm pumped for this conversation. A couple days after the show airs, there's going to be some very interesting primaries for Congress in New Utah, Maryland, as well as a runoff in South Carolina. You're a national political reporter. Which races are you excited to cover in the upcoming primaries?
- [01:36]
B
There's a lot of really notable primaries coming up, I think in the New York House primaries where the new mayor there, Zoran Mamdani, has endorsed candidates that are more ideologically aligned with him than the incumbents, at least in two of those races. He's endorsed primary challengers in two of those races. And so he's clearly trying to put his ideological imprint on the New York City House delegation with those primaries. And so I'm watching those pretty closely. And then in the Maryland primary, you have just a mega expensive battle going on right now between Congresswoman April McClain Delaney and a primary challenger, David Trone, who many of us have probably known from his last few races, including a Senate race. And he has loaned himself, I believe, as of recording this, at least $25 million. And so he is running hard at her, challenging her from the left, you know, trying to attack her over her vote for the Lake and Riley act, which has become a political vulnerability for House Democrats all over the map right now as they've run in primaries. And the Democratic Party has kind of expressed regret in some cases for how they voted on that or how they positioned themselves around that. So those are some of the primaries coming up that I'm most interested in.
- [02:50]
A
What's the one with George Conway and Schlossberg and some of the local guys? How's that one shaping up?
- [02:57]
B
That's a really competitive one. I mean, there hasn't been a lot of public polling that I've seen. You know, you see the private polls every now and then get leaked out for, you know, but you got to take them with a grain of salt. But you have three or four very serious contenders there, all of them raising significant money on their own. And there's also massive amounts of outside spending in that race. The AI industry is heavily engaged in that race. Different factions within the AI industry are engaged in that race. And you know, you have Michael Lasher is a former aide to Jerry Nadler, who's the retiring congressman that district. He's one of the leading candidates in that race. And it's just an all out battle. But I would say that the primaries, the separate primaries I mentioned, where Mamdani is engaged, they kind of strike me as more about like the ideological, you know, fissures inside the party right now. The one that you mentioned, you know, a lot of money, a lot of back and forth. But, you know, the candidates all seem relatively ideologically aligned. The ones that Mamdani are in seemed a little. Seem to strike a little more at the heart of where the party is at ideologically right now.
- [04:03]
A
And when you say strike at the heart of where the party is ideologically, do you mean that there are sort of DSA progressives or people who identify as more Democratic socialists?
- [04:13]
B
Yes.
- [04:14]
A
And is that basically who he's endorsed? Actually haven't focused on this as much. So I'm interested he is focusing primarily on endorsing DSA candidates. And are they faring? Well?
- [04:24]
B
I don't want to say all three of the candidates he's endorsed are the DSA pick because I think there are maybe some differences with the local DSA chapter in New York. But there's no doubt that the candidates he's back in these three races are running to the left of other candidates, you know, and so you're seeing more, I think, pronounced divides in those races on issues like Israel, for example. I mean, especially with, you know, Brad Lander running against Congressman Dan golden, who's been a relatively reliable pro Israel voice in Congress, who Talks about being supported by aipac, but not agreeing with every position on aipac. And so it is those races that strike me as a little more potent ideologically right now in New York.
- [05:13]
A
I'm gonna tap in on those. That is interesting. Okay, so for this show, we went down to Texas and we convened. And by that, I mean we did a zoom with a bunch of voters from Texas. And you watched the footage of the focus group. But are 2024 Trump voters who disapprove of his job performance? Was there anything that jumped out at you about the group overall?
- [05:39]
B
Yeah, I mean, the extent of the disapproval, definitely. I mean, we're seeing this across the map, even in red states like Texas, where people who voted for Trump in 2024 just feel like he has not made a lot of progress on his campaign promises, on getting down the cost of living campaign promises, on avoiding foreign entanglements. Obviously, Trump, I think, in many people's account, has gone in the opposite direction of that with the war in Iran. But more broadly, looking at the group, I think that I was struck by how, you know, it wasn't necessarily any particular policy issue that was driving their opinions. There was a lot of them. There were a lot of them who just said they want to change. Some of their responses on the governor's race, for example, I thought were really interesting for the people who were kind of sour on Greg Abbott. They didn't necessarily seem to have any, you know, acute policy concern. There was just a feeling of like, he's been there too long. Yeah, I'm over the new leadership, you know, and I don't care. It almost seems like they were saying like, I don't care if the new leadership is Republican or Democrat. It's just this guy's been there too long, and we need new leadership. That stood out to me, in addition to just the extent of disapproval of Trump.
- [06:44]
A
Yeah, I would say for this group, they were sort of roughly the median voter in Texas, because Trump won 56% of the vote there in 2024. But his approval rating now is split about evenly. And so I want to start by playing how these voters talked about Attorney General Ken Paxton, the Republican nominee for Senate, who you may remember for getting impeached, having a big situation with his wife, who's divorcing him for biblical reasons, and for using his office to help out his friends. And I don't mean in a good way. I mean in a corrupt way. So let's listen to how Texans in our focus group talked about him.
- [07:23]
C
I was frankly shocked When I heard that Paxton won the primary, I feel like there was such a strong negative impression that his trial made on a lot of people. I remember working at a law firm and working on a lot of lawyers at that time who were watching the trial and who were just like shaking their heads because it was just wild that he was able to get out of that pretty much scot free.
- [07:50]
D
Whether I agree with who Ken Paxton is as human being, that's, I hate to say, yes, it affects my opinion, but it can affect on what you think he can do for the state.
- [08:05]
E
I wasn't the biggest fan of Ken Paxton, and I know it's going to sound really feminine, I guess, because I guess when the reports started coming out of the affair, the money laundering, all of that, and I was like, that's who we have in office. Are you kidding me? I'm not a fan of either of them. But it's. What's your options here? You don't have very many options. You got two candidates. Here's this one that's under money laundering affairs, all that extra stuff. And then here he is, two options. It's either the former, you know, criminal, or this.
- [08:40]
C
I feel like I'm leaning more towards PACs and just based solely on. Not deep knowledge, but more so I know that he leans more towards the conservative side. Don't, you know, agree so much with, you know, his hard stance on. On immigration and, you know, some of those smaller issues that we see. Trump, I don't like to call myself left or right. I'm somewhere more in the middle, but closer to the right.
- [09:07]
A
So you may not know this about me, Patrick, but I do a lot of fighting with conservatives online. My old. My old chums about Ken Paxton and how Republicans have just decided to especially sort of the national pundit class, conservative pundit class, have decided to be like, all right, well, Paxton, yeah, he's really bad, but we're all in. How do you see Republicans in Texas handling the fact that Paxton is on the ticket?
- [09:34]
B
They're mostly rallying around him. They just had their state Republican Party convention over the past several days in Houston. They strove for the overwhelming theme to be unity drives victory. The governor took the lead on that branding. It was a big part of his speech. He paraded an elephant through the convention hall that had this blanket draped on the elephant that had that tagline on it. So they were really trying to bring the party together after this divisive primary. Primary.
- [10:00]
A
That elephant peed on everything.
- [10:01]
B
Exactly. You may have seen that a Couple of videos showing that. And I do think most, you know, most leading Republicans in Texas have gotten the message and are rallying around Paxton. Now, of course, the major outlier is Cornyn, who has said only that he will support, quote, the Republican ticket and has explicitly said he won't campaign with Paxton. And so Cordyn's the outlier there, no doubt, and that's a very notable outlier. But otherwise, I've seen leading Republican figures really rally around Paxton since the runoff.
- [10:29]
A
Does Cornyn have any juice with people who might kind of not love Ken Paxton? Like, would they? Are they looking at Cornyn to see what he does?
- [10:39]
B
I think, number one, Cornyn is still very well respected among certain major Republican donors in Texas, the business community in Texas, people who have long been responsible for funding Republican efforts and efforts to keep Texas red. So I think in the donor community, he's an influential voice. And, yeah, there's definitely a relatively small sliver of the Republican base, but a sliver nonetheless that Ken Paxton may not want to leave on the table in the general election that Corning could be influential with.
- [11:07]
A
All right, let's talk about James Talrico, who's going to need no introduction to listeners of the show, but it sounded like the voters in our focus groups, they got a suboptimal introduction to Talarico. Let's listen.
- [11:20]
D
I'm not a Talarico fan. It reminds me too much of Beto. Like Abigail said about the transgender issues, the whole God's non binary.
- [11:32]
B
I just.
- [11:33]
D
I just can't get on board with that. I don't believe that God is non binary. He's. He's. He's talked about all those things. And I have not gone to the depth of looking at YouTube and seeing the entire speech. I've just caught the clips. So I don't know, you know, in what context that was, but it still just doesn't sit right with me.
- [11:52]
A
I guess he's, you know, heard that he's like type 1 diabetic and has, you know, you know, he's a former teacher and stuff like that, where he just kind of makes himself seem like a better person or like a more real person. But I would agree that he's probably the lesser of two evils if you had to choose.
- [12:10]
E
I don't know enough to say all of this about him. So it's just more so of like, hey, you see, you see the commercials, you see the commercials constantly, and you're like, okay, I don't want that to make your mind up. But at the same time, you kind of have starting to make thoughts of its own.
- [12:28]
F
I will be voting for James Talarico. I like him a lot, even though I disagree with him on some things I strongly prefer him to. And Paxton, he supports like transgender people being in sports with people of their born genders. And he, yeah, he would, he would vote for like kids being able to transition, which I disagree with things that are, that he's famous for, that people are, you know, focusing on about what people have said, like God is non binary. Obviously that's amplified because his opponents think that that will, you know, sway people. To me, whether he's a Christian or not is not a huge deal. That really doesn't influence it me at all. I'm looking for integrity and character. And at this point, I think I really like that he has agreed not to take any pack money and he has no scandals or like, he seems like a really honest fellow, not just the way he talks, but his, his record. He doesn't have scandals and he seems very much like he's trying to make the world a better place. Even though, like I, I disagree with him on the transgender issue. He's, you know, said some things that I'm like, I don't know what you mean by that about God is non binary, but I'm like that that's not gon. I don't think that's going to make a huge difference in the country of how you vote in the government.
- [14:17]
A
Okay, so we played the full thought process of that last woman because I gotta say, just the way that I have sat and listened to so many Trump disapproving groups and felt like this one was a very strong Trump disapproving group. I was surprised that a number of people in the group, their top line perceptions of Talarico were not the best. And the God's non binary stuff, you hear it, that has landed. It is imprinted like ducklings on their mother. Like it is imprinted in people's brains. And yet the majority of the group was still going to vote for Talarico anyway.
- [14:58]
F
Right?
- [14:59]
A
These are Trump voters and they're going to vote for Talarico. Did that surprise you?
- [15:02]
B
Well, it surprised me how much it seems like the messaging on his support for various causes in the transgender community has, has burned in already. And I think that speaks to just how ferocious the GOP messaging against him has been, not just since the primary runoff on their side, but since the March 3 primary in Texas where he emerged as the nominee. You know, I feel like Obviously, to an extent, reporters live in a bubble. But I do feel like, you know, in the first 48 hours after that primary, you know, my social media feeds were just filled with Republican accounts tweeting out all these video clips. And I thought maybe I was in a bubble. But you, you hear these focus group participants talk about it and it seems like those clips have really made their way through to them as well. One of them, I think that you just played, said that they would vote for Talarico as the lesser of two evils. Which is, is pretty amusing to me because I've, I've have followed Talarico's rise through Texas politics and I've seen in the Texas House how, you know, he has been a well regarded but relatively inoffensive player. And so to see him go from that to being someone in a statewide race who's regarded as the lesser of two evils probably shows you just how polarizing this choice has already become for these, these key voters.
- [16:14]
A
Well, I want to say a couple things because this is going to matter for the main groups too. One is I've now been through enough cycles of focus groups going into elections to know that as far out as we are, you really have to take people's preferences on the races with a grain of salt.
- [16:30]
F
Right.
- [16:30]
A
You are really dealing right now with people's first impressions of their own choice that they're going to make. And the second thing is as small of an issue as like trans people in sports is relative to its actual impact on people's lives. The amount that it comes up as either a tipping point issue that is like the thing that tips somebody over when they've got a tough choice to make or the thing that people overcome or overlook in order to vote for a Democrat is like, continues to sort of just surprise me. Not surprised me because I hear it so often. But that is not uncommon. It is not. Just like the reason that they are going so hard at Tao Rico at that is that it is an issue that does play a weird tipping point role in voters perceptions of a candidate. Because for voters it seems to go to whether or not they view the candidate as normal. Like, like, right. And then, and that's that I'm using their words, not my own. But like that is a way that people judge them. Whereas she's saying that sort of his more liberal to I'm not taking any PAC money. And you know, I think health care for everybody, like that's what's winning her over, which was just interesting to me.
- [17:53]
B
It's all about issue salience. And I feel like sometimes in political reporting or analysis, we lose sight of this. We just see that an issue is unpopular. We see a candidate on the unpopular side of that issue, and we think, oh, people cannot vote for them on that based on that issue. It all comes down to where. Where are voters actually ranking that issue on their list of priorities? For some of these voters, they may strongly disagree with him on some of the statements he's made about transgender people, but, you know, their concern about transgender people is Maybe issue number 15 for them on their list of priorities.
- [18:24]
A
What's your assessment of this race? Like, sort of irrespective of the groups you just listened to, do you think he's got a better shot than Beto? Because one of the things, and this will go back to my point about how early it is, but I know we were kind of, you know, because we kind of make people choose in these. And there was a couple Paxton people. But. But I do get the sense that actually the. The route to victory for Talarico is really with the, like, Republicans staying home because they're like, this is a sucky choice. I'm not going out there. Do you think that is true? Do you think that Talarico has a better shot than Beto did?
- [18:58]
B
I think that he has a chance to make it as close as Beto did. I know that's maybe an unsatisfying way of dodging your answer, but I'll. I'll go further and say, you know, there's some really key similarities to the 2018 race and some very key differences. So I think key similarities is that the environment nationally is very similar. It's a midterm under Trump. Trump's unpopular Democrats are energized. Independents are siding with Democrats. It's very different to me in that I think people tend to forget that o' Rourke was relatively undefined in his Senate race until basically the summer of 2018. And he remained, you know, kind of a blank canvas for Texas voters for really the first year of his Senate campaign. And I think that allowed him, you know, to really become comfortable to all kinds of voters across the political spectrum. In Texas, Ted Cruz also deliberately, you know, chose not to attack him because they saw that he was relatively unknown and they didn't want to elevate him. In retrospect, you know, Texas Republicans probably would say that that was a mistake. This time around, you're seeing really something totally different. Talarico became known to a much wider swath of the Texas electorate early on, not just because of the Republican messaging, but because he went through a very competitive Democratic primary. O' Rourke did not go through a very competitive Democratic primary. So Talarico has become very familiar to Texas voters sooner than Beto O' Rourke ever did in that 2018 race. And you're also seeing Republicans more unified in their commitment to taking this race seriously. You know, 2018, as I pointed out, Cruz kind of deliberately held off on attacking o' Rourke and a lot of the rest of the Republican ecosystem in Texas followed his lead and they said, you know, they figured, you know, okay, Cruz does not believe it's worth attacking him right now. You know, we're gonna, we're not gonna spend money against him, we're not gonna incorporate him in our stump speeches. We're going to let him do his thing. But this time around, you are seeing the entire Republican ecosystem in Texas fully engaged in defining Talarico, you know, from the governor on down. So those are some of the key, I think, similarities and differences from 2018 that come to mind when you, when you ask that question.
- [21:06]
A
Yeah, I mean, the other difference though is that the, I mean, people don't like Ted Cruz because Ted Cruz sucks. But like, they don't, they're like, he doesn't have the liabilities that Paxton has. I enjoyed that woman who was like, maybe this is feminine. Like, is it feminine to dislike corruption? And I don't think so. I think, I think everybody can disapprove that. So, I mean, yeah, I guess there's that. The biggest thing that I'm trying to get my arms around in Texas is, is Paxton sort of enough of a scumbag that it does depress Republican enthusiasm at a time where they're already mad at Trump?
- [21:42]
B
I think some Texas Republicans, I speak to acknowledge that they are going to have a base mobilization problem in this election. And, you know, how do you combat that? You have these really attention grabbing attacks on the Democratic candidates. You know, they have all these nicknames against Talarico already. They're talking about him being a vegan, even though he isn't a vegan. And so it's actually kind of. Once Cruz decided to engage with her work in 2018, it's really kind of the similar playbook is, you know, the base is sleepy. You gotta wake them up with attacks that really stick and shake them awake. And then you also have to get Trump involved because Trump is, as we know, one of the biggest Republican base motivators in the country, especially in a red state like Texas. Where he remains very popular with the Republican base. And so that's why I think you're already seeing Paxton openly say, yeah, I've talked with the president, he's going to come here and do a bunch of rallies. They've clearly made the calculation that, you know, whatever alienation of swing voters or independents comes with Trump getting involved in the race is worth it for the energy that Trump could bring to the turning out the Republican base.
- [22:46]
A
All right, I want to go to Maine, which is also another big critical and probably much more likely of a potential pickup for Democrats. But of course, now you've got the reverse situation there, where the Democrats got all the baggage. I don't think people need me to lay out that this is a race between Susan Collins and Graham Platner. Now, everyone you're going to hear today in the main focus groups voted for Joe Biden and Susan Collins in 2020, and then. And everybody except one person was a Harris voter in 2024. So these are mostly people who vote nationally for Democrats, except for one guy in one case, and vote for Susan Collins. So because these are Susan Collins former voters, let's listen to how they talk about her.