AUSTIN, Texas — In this edition of Texas This Week, Scott Braddock, editor of The Quorum Report, discusses the candidates running for some of Texas's top political positions.
Three things to know in Texas politics
1. Texas schools can implement mask mandates
A federal judge overturned Gov. Greg Abbott's mask ban for schools. The judge ruled on Wednesday that Abbott's executive order banning school districts from requiring students and staff to wear masks violates the Americans with Disabilities Act. In his opinion, the judge wrote the order excludes disabled children from "participating in and denies them the benefits of public school programs, services and activities." The order stops Attorney General Ken Paxton from enforcing the order. Paxton has already sued several school districts, including two in Central Texas, over mask mandates. Paxton said his office is considering how it will move forward.
2. District judge hears arguments on Texas abortion law
A state district court judge heard eight hours of arguments on the constitutionality of Texas's new abortion law. Senate Bill 8 bans doctors from performing abortions once fetal cardiac activity is detected, which is typically six weeks into a pregnancy and before many women know they are pregnant. The law lets almost anyone, anywhere sue a doctor who performs an abortion or anyone who helps a woman get an abortion and recover at least $10,000. More than one dozen lawsuits from Planned Parenthood, doctors, social workers and more were consolidated into this one case. The group Texas Right to Life, which has vowed to file lawsuits against doctors and clinics, argued it hasn't sued anyone yet so the plaintiffs have no grounds to sue. The judge didn't make a ruling on Wednesday, but is expected to soon.
3. Gov. Abbott creates event task force
Gov. Abbott is responding to the tragic events of the Astroworld concert in Houston that left 10 dead and hundreds injured by creating the Texas Task Force on Concert Safety. The group of safety experts, first responders, music industry leaders and others will host several roundtable discussions and give recommendations to lawmakers.
Scott Braddock weighs in on primary races
The filing period to run for a political office officially started over the weekend, which means the race to the March primary election is about to pick up steam. Scott Braddock, political analyst and editor of The Quorum Report, sat down with KVUE to talk about some of the big races.
Ashley Goudeau: So we are less than four months away from the primary election. Let's talk about the races. The big one, of course, is going to be for Texas governor. And as of right now, as we are recording this interview, we are still waiting for a well known Democrat to announce in the race.
Scott Braddock: "Well, and it's interesting, the well known Democrat is one who has universal name ID. You don't even have to say the guy's entire name, just Beto, and everybody would know who you're talking about, not just in Texas, but around the country. And it's really sort of frozen the Democratic field and that happens up and down the ballot, not just for governor, but for, you know, for some other races as well. Some Democrats who might want to throw their hat in the ring for other offices might be waiting to see what's going to happen with former Congressman O'Rourke. But, as of now he hasn't announced, but we keep hearing of an announcement being imminent. But we'll see. This is very frustrating to a lot of Democrats I talked to all across the state who feel like somebody should have been running already. But I went back and checked the history on announcements over the last decade or so. It really is right about this time of year that those announcements generally happen."
Goudeau: He took some liberal stances when he was running for president. In fact, whether or not he's running against Greg Abbott, Greg Abbott is already clearly running against Beto O'Rourke. His campaign is putting out ads, and they're using his own words sort of against him. Do you think that's going to matter to voters in Texas come next November?
Braddock: "It matters. I'm just not sure it matters in the way that folks might think. So one of the things that the governor has focused on in his campaign, like you say sort of already against Congressman O'Rourke, is his stance on guns. When he was running for U.S. Senate, he had more of a moderate stance on that. When he ran for president, it became more to the left and he talked about buyback programs that would be mandatory for certain weapons. And he said, remember, 'Hell yes, we will take your AR 15, your AK 47,' and all that. And of course, you're going to hear that from the Abbott campaign. They'll probably play that clip, something about 10 million times. I'm only slightly exaggerating. But look, I think Republicans in the state have done a couple of things that will sort of neutralize that for a lot of voters who are important to them in holding onto certain offices in the 2020 election, primarily suburban women who were very turned off by certain things from Democrats in 2020, including the idea that Democrats might want to defund police. Of course, Democrats will say that they didn't really want to do that, but that was the message that Republicans were really hitting Democrats with – a lot of those same folks would think that open carry and constitutional carry something they don't really like, something like the new abortion law in Texas. That's something that a lot of even Republican women are not thrilled with. So some of those same voters who Republicans relied on before, they may have maybe not necessarily swung them toward the Democrats, but it might have at least neutralized the kind of issues that Republicans and Greg Abbott would hit Beto on."
Goudeau: On the Republican ticket, Gov. Greg Abbott is facing a handful of challengers, but he is expected to win this primary, right?
Braddock: "Sure. Oh, absolutely. I mean, he's the odds-on favorite. I think it's interesting that Gov. Abbott has, for basically the last year to 18 months, been extremely responsive to some of those folks who are now running against him, like Allen West, who's the former Republican Party of Texas chairman, like Don Huffines, a businessman from Dallas who is also going to be formidable when it comes to fundraising, in that he can self-fund. He's someone who's worth, I think, about $100 million personally, so he can put a lot of money into this. Fact is that the governor is reacting to a small group of very active and very vocal voters on his right right now because that's his only perceived political threat. That's, as you said and pointed out very well, they don't even have a Democratic candidate officially, as you and I are talking. So the only perceived threat is from the governor's right. The Republican Party of Texas, for example, was promoting a petition with 2,500 signatures to hold another special session on vaccine mandates and banning employers from being able to tell their employees they have to get the vaccine. If you think about 2,500 people, it might sound like a lot, but it's about .008% of a population of 29 million people in Texas. It's not exactly some big groundswell. But what was Gov. Abbott doing? He hasn't called for a fourth special session, but he has moved forward with an executive order trying to ban employers from having vaccine mandates. You have the Attorney General Ken Paxton pushing forward with a lawsuit against the Biden administration on that issue. So all of these statewide Republicans, and Republicans down ballot as well, very responsive to that small group of right wing voters because those are the voters who participate in the election of consequence in the state."
Goudeau: If we move down the ballot a little bit, there is an interesting, interesting race on the Democratic ticket for lieutenant governor. Now this is going to be Mike Collier's third time running for statewide office, second time running for lieutenant governor. But political strategist Matthew Dowd is now challenged. He, now perhaps, is best known for being former Republican President George Bush's strategist. Thoughts on his race and how voters are going to respond to him?
Braddock: "Isn't it interesting that both of the sort of top two Democratic candidates for lieutenant governor at this time, and I'm not convinced that we won't see some more candidates get into that race as well, but the top two right now are both former Republicans? Mike Collier and Matthew Dowd, of course, Dowd of more high-profile working for former President George W. Bush and some others. But they have some explaining to do to Democratic voters about why they switched from Republican to Democratic. And I think, you know, someone like Dowd has tried to do a lot on that front. He's talked a lot about, you know, having some regrets, having worked for Republicans and pushing some of what, what Democrats would consider some hateful campaigns in the past … Collier now has racked up, what I would say is, some credibility with some of the Democratic activists around the state because he's been doing work over the last few years and these last few election cycles to really reach out to Democratic activists around Texas and try to build credibility with them. And he's somebody that they can really talk to and has a relationship with where Dowd doesn't have that just yet."
Goudeau: One of the most crowded races right now is for the Republican attorney general race. Just this week, we had Congressman Louie Gohmert saying he's considering a run if – I thought this was an interesting if – he can raise $1 million in 10 days. Do you think that the pool of candidates is going to get larger or smaller here?
Braddock: There's a potential that it could stay about the same size. We had reported at quorumreport.com this week that State Rep. Matt Krause, who is another, I would say, a hard line conservative from Tarrant County, is thinking about getting out of the attorney general's race, which he has been an announced candidate, and he may run for Tarrant County district attorney instead. So we might trade out Matt Krause with Louie Gohmert. Gohmert is very interesting in that I think he can do something that some of these other candidates can't do. We have George P. Bush, the land commissioner who's running. We have Eva Guzman, who is the former Supreme Court justice running. And of course, Ken Paxton himself. And those other candidates, I think, aren't, no one would describe them as hard right candidates, the way you would describe Matt Krause or Louie Gohmert. Gohmert right out of the gate in a radio interview this past week, was on the attack against Ken Paxton for all of his legal issues. Gohmert was bringing up, you know, the allegations about Paxton having a mistress and having done favors for a shady developer in Austin and all of that. And he does it in a way where he can't be accused by any Republicans as being some liberal plant, right? There's no liberal deep state with Louie Gohmert. And so I think this could get really interesting, really fast. But we'll wait and see just how much, you know, how much money he's able to raise."
The Texas Primary Election is March 1. If you're not registered to vote, the deadline for the March election is Jan. 31. Click here to find a voter registration application to fill out and mail in. Remember, Texas does not have online voter registration. Applications have to be mailed in.
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