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Seeing Red
The Seeing Red Podcast dives head-first into Texas politics with its hosts Garrett Fulce and Andi Turner, as they bring the facts, insights, and commentary on the issues that matter most to conservative Texans.
Our mission is simple: facts matter and an informed opinion is the key to making positive change in our great state.
Seeing Red
S001 E035 - Title IX, David Lowe, and the RPT Chair Race
Opening an examination of the implications of Title IX changes under Biden's administration, Garrett and Andi touch upon Texas' response and the intrinsic balancing act between due process rights and victim protection. They also discuss the recent Texas Voice Article on House Challenger David Lowe, The Texans anniversary, and its interview with Mitch Little, before they wrap with insights into the Texas Republican Party Chair race, pinpointing the underlying divides among factions and the overarching need for fundraising efficiency in the face of upcoming elections.
Links Mentioned
Texas Voice Article: https://www.thetexasvoice.com/hd-91-candidate-lowe-not-eligible-for-re-hire-as-a-peace-officer-by-collin-county-sheriff/
The Texan's Brad Johnson's interview with Mitch Little: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txjOISVCnPM
Livestream link for May 15 RPT Forum: https://rptchaircandidateforum.com/
2:15HD-91 Candidate’s Controversial Employment History Revealed
5:38Unpredictability and Voter Impact in Election Runoffs
7:21Law Enforcement Officer’s Controversial Discharge and Election Runoff
11:58Texas Challenges Biden’s Title IX Revisions
16:58Debating Due Process in College Sexual Assault Cases
21:04Celebrating The Texan’s Journalistic Integrity and Anniversary
22:09Evaluating Mitch Little’s Potential Impact in Politics
26:21Effective Communication in Political Campaigns
29:01Debating the Role of Party Leadership in Primaries
35:27Election Strategies and Fundraising Challenges
39:16Insights on Texas Politics and Beyond
Follow us on all socials at @theseeingredpod and online at our website Seeing Red Podcast. x.com/gwfulce
Welcome to the Seeing Red Podcast with Andy Turner and Garrett Fools Checking up on Texas policies and politics, with some federal issues thrown in like the assault weapons ban, interest rate hikes, you get it, but it's mostly Texas, since we can't ignore the big stuff either. And now here are your hosts, Andy Turner and Garrett Fools. Hosts Andy Turner and Garrett.
Speaker 2:Foles, everybody, welcome back to this week's edition of the Seeing Red podcast and YouTube, and we are delighted you are joining us. If you are new, welcome, welcome. And if you are returning, thank you so much. We are delighted to have you here. Please, please, please, hit that subscribe button and smash that like button. It's really helpful to us to get the word out about the show and about what we're talking about, and you know all the things. So smash that subscribe, smash that like button Turn on notifications. And notifications are great too.
Speaker 2:Absolutely yes we don't do this in a single episode.
Speaker 3:That way you know right when we drop it Because, like today's episode, we're recording this on wednesday morning. We typically record it, uh, on tuesday or monday or tuesday, and so it's going to drop later than usual. So you're going to. If you want to know exactly when this podcast came out, when this youtube video dropped, you want to turn on those notifications. But thank you so much for joining us today. And, andy, did you see what Mark McCaig dropped this morning?
Speaker 2:I did not, you were telling me a little before the show, but wow. It was quite the headline.
Speaker 3:Let me show you this. Yeah, oh, there we go, there you go. So we have HD91 candidates. So HD91 is in Tarrant County. It's represented by Stephanie Click, a candidate up there. He's run a couple times this might be his second time running Named David Lowe is you know they're in a runoff.
Speaker 3:He was able to prevent Representative Click from getting into it. Well, he likes to run on his past record. He's a veteran, he's a former, maybe active, I don't know a peace officer, um, but he's not actively a peace officer. He doesn't work actively for any police organization, to my knowledge. Okay, he got his job initially in collin county, which right there in the dfw metroplex. Um, he apparently, according to records that Mark McCaig at the Texas Voice found and I'm going through this right here on the site he found that David Lowe was demoted in his first 10 weeks from a peace officer to a detention officer and that's not necessarily detention Detention officers are often peace officers but he also received a pay cut when he did that and to date, he quickly left just the law enforcement field. By 2020, he was working for the Dallas GOP. By 2020, he was working for the Dallas GOP and it was stated there that he Mark interviewed or tried to get a comment from the Collin County Sheriff and the sheriff said where is this Under?
Speaker 2:its current policies and standards. David Olo is not eligible for rehire of the peace officer within the Collin County Sheriff's Office and that's pretty much all they can comment on from an HR perspective. They can say when he started, when he started work like when people call for references when you started what, what, how much you made, and when you left and are you eligible for rehire, and when you left and are you eligible for rehire, and yeah, it's yeah usually not a good sign when the answer to are they eligible for rehire, when the answer is no, it's not a good sign.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So it's, yeah, it's not a great sign. The next employer he had, Dallas GOP at the time was chaired by Rodney Anderson, who was a former state rep out of Irving. He lost in the same election in the same area where Matt Rinaldi lost, which is kind of the Irving West Dallas County area. But Anderson won a few elections by a fewer than 500 votes I think a couple of them were lower than 200. He came out and just eviscerated Lowe he's like as County Chairman. I was forced to confront him spreading mistruths about the county party. I was forced to confront him spreading mistruths about the county party. David Lowe's blatantly false information was damaging to party efforts and now he has moved to Tarrant County to run for office. It saddens me to see him using the same tactics against Stephanie Click. I urge the voters of HC91 to strongly redirect these tactics. Stephanie Click is an honorable, respected and effective conservative serving Texas well.
Speaker 2:I mean yeah.
Speaker 3:You never know how a story like this is going to play in a runoff. And that's the thing about runoffs, speaking generally about it, there's nothing predictable about them. They are completely different from a primary or from a general election, because it's a scheduled election but a lot of people aren't going out for it and typically there's only one or two things on the ballot, so there's not a lot of people just turning out generally who don't know about your race. People are turning out. They're turning out to vote for you, vote for your opponent or vote against one of the other two people, and there's only. It's just. It's a completely different way of looking at the election. And you know, just because somebody got you know, I've seen elections where somebody got 49 points some odd percent Right and ended up losing the runoff and ended up losing the runoff Right.
Speaker 2:Which is crazy. Can you scroll back up so that people can see where to find this?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's the TexasVoicecom. Okay. Well, there you go, it'll be its top story.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if you just click, yeah, just want to make sure Mark gets all the credit in the world.
Speaker 3:Absolutely so. That's an interesting story that's coming through right now. There's a bunch of stuff happening in the runoffs. We don't really know what's going to happen. I mentioned that the crazy things are happening. You never know what's going to happen. That's just to say you don't know how a story like this is going to impact a race, but it could very well influence enough voters to vote for or against, for click or against Lowe. That it could be the difference.
Speaker 2:And for some people it will be not necessarily like I know some people's reasoning in some races is I'm not voting for candidate A, I'm voting against candidate B, like maybe they don't have strong feelings about the first candidate A, but they definitely don't like candidate B. So, and you know, while we're talking about this, representative Frazier up in more or less the DFW area.
Speaker 3:He's in Collin County. Yeah, he lives in Collin County and worked for Dallas PD.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think you can take this down now. Oh sure, but I know that he pled guilty to some misdemeanors. You guys probably read about it. I don't want to like get into all the little tiny details, but as part of a plea agreement, he had to pay, I think it was like $4,000. And he, but as part of a plea agreement, he had to pay I think it was like $4,000, and he had to do some other things. He was fired by the Dallas Police Department. That was very public. You can access that. This is not things that I know, that nobody else knows. So we're in some very interesting runoffs, particularly as it concerns law enforcement officers. And, yep, you want to move on.
Speaker 3:Okay, great, so I was just trying to load it in the screen. Sorry to the people watching this live. You know some of this happens while we're doing it. I was just, uh, loading up the next topic because the governor, uh, and I'll take this down for the, for the, for the moment, but, um, the governor you can move on uh, I mean frederick frazier's, you know, is also in a runoff and you know.
Speaker 3:You know he had stories. There's been ebbs and flows in his story too. I mean, you know he had what you just said. There was also something that kind of exonerated, or I don't exactly know. I don't, I'm not following it particularly well.
Speaker 2:He pled guilty. I'm sorry, that is not correct. That is not correct. He pled no contest to the charges. Dpd did fire him and he did have to do it.
Speaker 3:I thought he resigned. I thought he was forced to resign.
Speaker 2:I do not believe that is correct.
Speaker 3:Hang on one second, let me do some fitting pasta visage um but at a certain point being asked to resign and being fired, or you know, the points are saliently different. Um, but yeah that you know those are different races where it's similar issues with people who are, you know, ostensibly on kind of different sides of the republican party. So it'll be interesting to see if one plays, one doesn't, if it's an issue that kind of permeates through anything, but it's kind of specific. But also, what's happening right now is to kind of touch on something we talked about previously.
Speaker 2:He was dishonorably discharged from Dallas. This is according to WFAAcom. North Texas State Representative dishonorably discharged from Dallas Police Department pleads no contest to misdemeanor charges. Representative Frederick Fraser R McKinney pleads no contest to class A misdemeanor charges of attempting to impersonate a public servant. And I could rehash all that for you, but I think that's enough said about that. So we're having some very job as a law enforcement officer.
Speaker 3:No, and apparently he just kind of burns the bridges of anywhere he goes. So I mean, if you go into the legislature, if you're working in legislator, there's a certain cooperative element to getting legislation passed.
Speaker 2:Right and you need to be able to negotiate in good faith with other people, particularly people of his own party, um, or her own party, then I would say maybe you want to rethink who you're going to vote for. I mean, there's a lot of reasons people vote for people, but like, if I can't trust you, if I have questions about your character, chances are good you're not getting my vote. Yeah, that's me.
Speaker 3:So on the next topic we are talking about this week, we have kind of a retouch of something we covered a few weeks ago, where Biden came out with his title nine changes that were basically for school districts to change how they categorize genders and, you know, effectively administrated Title IX. Governor Abbott sent out a directive to TEA to inform school districts and charter schools that they were not to implement those changes. It's today, wednesday. Shortly before this came through, he sent out a press release that I have that put up right now that goes over how he made clear Texas will not comply with Biden's rewrite of Title IX and that contradicts the original purpose and spirit of the law, which is to support the advancement of women. Last week I instructed the TEA to ignore Biden's illegal dictate on Title IX. Today I'm instructing every public college and university in the state of Texas to do the same. The directive was sent specifically to all the university systems and community colleges in Texas.
Speaker 3:There had been some reporting that Texas A&M was going to implement the changes and we're kind of ready to go, but Ken Paxton has filed a lawsuit against it and A&M has now said that they're going to wait. This kind of also falls in line with, like I think there's some. There's there's definitely some consternation between administrators at universities and you know the different government entities that are in charge of overseeing those groups, because you know the legislature came through and banned DEI. You know they keep seeing reports of dozens of staffers being fired from the university. You know they're maybe trying to jump on this quickly to get it implemented so it's harder to undo, you know it's.
Speaker 3:You kind of see some fights but then you also see some agreement at the highest level. So when it comes to like these free speech protests, you know you have Jay Hartzell who did a great 50 other reps that commended Hartzell on his handling of the illegal encampments under the guise of free speech at UT. So you have some. You know you see that at that level. But back on this issue, you know you see that Title IX is, you know, might be, something that, like this, these trans athletes and certain administrations might be done differently. Also, I believe mentioning in here the part of the Title IX directive from Biden had to do with how so interpersonal conflicts are administered by the university that are accused, have some sort of due process right or, you know, have or have the ability to be represented to a certain degree and then how those um cases can be administered by the university um but part of general, or what do you say?
Speaker 3:only only as a matter of academic, like probation, whatever. There's been a lot of issues where somebody can be accused of sexual assault and then they aren't allowed to have any representation in any sort of student tribunal. There's a preponderance of the evidence standard and people are just basically being kicked out based off only an accusation. That's not to say that the accusation isn't valid, but that the consequences happen immediately, and then they kind of figure it out after the fact versus the other way around. Um, and basically texas has a system in place, um that protects the accused due process rights, um that I think runs afoul to a certain degree the the new title ix directives from the Biden administration. So all that to say, there's a bunch to this.
Speaker 3:It's more than just trans athletes. There's a bunch of other issues that are at play here, and I mean Paxton is leading the charge because it's Texas specific and, you know, hopefully his Solicitor General doesn't go in and just screw up like he did on that immigration case, but I don't have a lot of faith that we're going to prevail on anything that Paxton's leading. I do think that the legislation was written well, and by that I mean it was written to withstand challenge, so it's going to be a situation of can Paxton dunk the ball or is he going to throw it?
Speaker 2:out of bounds. We can't be the only state that feels this way. I mean, I didn't do the research on this, but we can't be the other state. But going back to the due process thing, like if you're in college, generally speaking you are at least 18 years old. During college, generally speaking, you are at least 18 years old and therefore you are guaranteed all of your constitutional rights.
Speaker 3:So for a college to take that away. I get huge problems with that and there's there's there are major issues with it because that's something that the I mean. I remember hearing a news story about this when I was working in Iowa in 2014, and this was an issue that Biden spearheaded when he was vice president of really trying to lock in a Title IX requirement for universities to basically just accept any accusation and basically kick out the accuser ASAP, and there are concerns with how that can be administered. If that's as easy as it is to do that to somebody, a lot of times what happens is it's an ex, there's issues with an ex and then it's just petty revenge, but most of the times they're probably actually substantive cases of sexual assault haunted by someone who's attacked them, versus general due process rights for somebody who's been accused of malfeasance, and the general argument by the universities is that this isn't a constitutional right.
Speaker 3:There are rules within the institution and you don't have to have it because you're not being charged with anything and you're only being deprived of an opportunity. You're not being charged with anything and you're only being deprived of an opportunity. But when I talk about government institutions, it gets a little fuzzier and there's still a lot of open court cases when it comes to this. There's still a lot of legal questions that are very gray. So we can say, oh, it should be one way or the other, you can have that argument. But there's also arguments, legal arguments, that are far beyond my comprehension, or at least my knowledge at the moment, that are still playing out, and that's kind of like the two factors of this particular issue.
Speaker 2:I just I understand that college is a privilege and you pay to go there, but if you are going to accuse someone of anything, of anything, the due process should still be. You know, I mean, even when you work for a company, if you are accused of whatever, you are given the opportunity to to speak to this, and I wow the idea that somebody could just accuse your, accuse somebody of something and nobody.
Speaker 3:I'm sorry say that again no, I'm sorry, that's the only thing that happened on the back end. Okay, yeah, but you need to accuse upon somebody and they just get kicked out of college. It's, you know, it's it's so wrong.
Speaker 2:It's like we're gonna take your money and you're out and like you don't get to say anything and I would be really angry. But okay, I I find that bogus, all right. So so there we are with title nine, and and, due process, and where, and, and and going forward. We are pausing on implementation.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I did want to mention that there was the Texan had its fifth I think it was its fifth year or sixth year anniversary this past week. Lots of stuff on Twitter, you know, kind of talking about it. I just want to kind of praise them for a second, because they do a really good job of reporting and they make a case to report. They have institutional policies where they don't endorse, um, they don't think it's appropriate for media and such like.
Speaker 3:Media like, ostensibly journalism, um, well that you know journalists should uh, endorse in political races even their editorial boards, um, and they want to do a, they do, and they do a good job of presenting different facts. They recognize that different journalists and authors are going to have an opinion and have bias, but they strive with their editorial standards to not make that bias known when reporting on a given piece and I think they did a really good job. Connie Burton, a former state senator, is the person who is the editor in charge or editor-in-chief publisher. She started it and Connie is a very, very nice person.
Speaker 3:When I was on my first political job, she was running for state senate and I didn't live in her district, but I ended up being at a lot of the same events as her and every time she'd see me at an event she remembered my name. No, it was 10 years ago. She might not remember it now, but she remembered my name. She always made sure I got fed. She was just a very kind person. When she had no reason to be, I didn't work for her or against her, which is kind of at the event, and she was just. You know, as you know, they kind of say in the churches, I grew up in being Jesus to people and I always, you know, found that to be just. It always stuck with me, because you know she doesn't necessarily always. Whenever she was a legislator I didn't always agree with how she'd vote or her opinions on a given thing, but I've always respected her Cause I just know that she's a genuinely decent person.
Speaker 2:She's a good human.
Speaker 3:Um, and that's all I have to say is um, one of their reporters, brad Johnson, um recently interviewed Mitch little uh, who's the uh GOP nominee for um well, I actually don't know the district number up in Denton County. He just beat Karuna Timish, who's the incumbent there, but he's, you know, somebody who's also we've talked about on the podcast, or at least talked about his work, because he was one of Paxton's defense attorneys both in the impeachment and in the criminal trial.
Speaker 2:Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 3:He's probably the best candidate that like traditionally qualified and articulate candidate that Tim Dunn and his groups have ever gotten behind. He did this interview with Brad Johnson and I'll put it up real quick. He did this interview with Brad Johnson and I'll put it up real quick. But Mitch Little talks to Yuppie Primary people.
Speaker 1:You can find it on.
Speaker 3:YouTube. I did the text, yeah, and he makes a lot of the same and all this stuff will be linked on the show description. I encourage people to subscribe to the text and then to listen to this interview and whatever else, because Brad does a great job of interviewing. I think people should go check it out. But what's interesting about the interview is that you can see that Mitch Little's very, very smart. He's a UT law grad I think he went to A&M undergrad. He's obviously very successful defense attorney and I think that he said a lot of the right things about kind of in some ways moving forward as a party and whatever else, and I will hold him to it because I hope he follows that. But I think he has an opportunity.
Speaker 2:You said moving forward as a party, like cohesively, like cohesively.
Speaker 1:And you know I don't expect to agree with Mitch Little on everything.
Speaker 3:I know already that I agree with him on a ton of stuff. I think he has the opportunity to do a good job in his position, um to actually go in there and um fight for legislation. I think he actually has an opportunity to get legislation passed and to do well um, and I think he can. I I hope that he. I have hope. I have hope that he'll do well.
Speaker 3:I don't have hope for some of the people that the, the defend te got behind. I've seen them speak. They are, in some cases, particularly unintelligent and I think that it will be. You know they're not going to get much done. Mitch Little is not that. He's very smart and I think that he should be somebody that people look at, because I think he's going to end up being the leader of that group, because the people in there now who are kind of the faces of stuff they might be okay at press or getting on Newsmax, but they don't really have any substance behind. Assuming that the arguments he was making in the primary were in good faith. He gets to make some changes. That will get done. I'm not sure if you'd seen that video.
Speaker 2:No, I hadn't Actually I hadn't, but good for him. And you know, if you, having worked, as Garrett has, I don't know dozens and dozens of campaigns up and down the ballot, if you can't articulate your message, you know like if you have a point you need to make and you can't boil it down to two sentences, you're losing Because then you're explaining. And if you two sentences, you're losing because then you're explaining, and if you're explaining you're losing. So it's, you know, there's a lot to know about running for office and communication and you need to be able. But a lawyer not all of them, not all of them, not all of them, not all of them but most lawyers can be very articulate. Sometimes you need to.
Speaker 2:I know I worked. I worked for a lawyer who was, who was an elected official, and so I had to get him to like boil it down just a little more, like condense it, Like your points are good, but you're explaining too much. Just say your point and then, if you're asked, you can expand. If it's like an interview or if you're standing up in front of a group of people, you know we call it the stump speech, or you know, and that's the, that's the basic points of why you're running. I'm running for this policy, this policy, this policy and these personal reasons. And then there's the elevator pitch, which is like how you pitch yourself on an elevator ride. So you get two minutes to do that, and lawyers are used to using many words.
Speaker 3:I think it really depends on the context, right? Because if your person was a defense attorney, yeah, sometimes they're going to have a long closing, but they also need to be able to get a question out and get information across. If you're writing long contracts, you have to make sure you get every single detail on there. So your brain is going to be thinking about making sure you check off every single possible thing. Now, someone who is a defense attorney and we saw how he did it, how he did on his questioning in the PACs, and he was excellent for the defense from a professional standpoint. So obviously him and Busby were the reasons for that they won that case, were the reasons for that they won that case, and I think that it is. So I feel like he's already demonstrated that.
Speaker 3:It's not necessarily that I have not met him. I do feel as if I did, he'd probably be. You know, austin's probably kind of on first meeting. You know I I feel like he'll do well in Austin and that's not a dig. I'm not saying oh, he's just going to go, whatever. I think generally, if you're an affable person, you're going to do well in Austin and I think that he can be affable, but he'll fight for his side whenever he needs to. All of that to say is a lot of these people that Scorecard has been sending for a long time have not been that and they've been pretty poor, and I think Mitch Little has the opportunity to really kind of professionalize it and I think that if you're kind of a quote-unquote establishment Republican, you should be scared of him.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, speak your truth. That's what it is. So, yeah, all right. Well, we'll see what happens.
Speaker 3:And if you wanted to come on the show and talk, we'd love to have them. I think it'd be a good interview. But the I mean I know some people had interactions with them during the primary that were less than positive. But primaries are better Acrimonious affairs, they're civil wars.
Speaker 2:By nature they're civil wars.
Speaker 3:That is why county parties, and they're not usually that civil.
Speaker 2:But that's why county parties and the state party have no business getting involved in these like yeah, and that's kind of the last thing I wanted to yeah, yeah, go ahead that's the last thing I want to talk about.
Speaker 3:It's a good segue to the county. The county chair races uh, not county chair. The part of the state chair race is heating up. There are five candidates. Uh, don't ask me to name them all.
Speaker 2:They had a debate.
Speaker 3:They're doing several. There will be one next Wednesday that's being live-streamed by Texas Values. I'll include the link in the description for this week and for next week's. Next Wednesday at noon. Texas Values has a candidate forum in forum in the north houston area. That, um, they'll be broad, they'll be live streaming and um, you know these, these debates are happening kind of a different opinion.
Speaker 3:It seems like there's different factions of the party. We all know that. There's a kind of the dtl crowd, there's a scorecard crowd. They're kind of different, mostly the same. You kind of have the tfrw, you have kind of the young republicans, you have the some people who are just long-time party members and you have some people. You know it's all sorts of different groups. You always have different factions. It's a group all groups have. Um. So beyond those dividing lines, it seems like the main issues are should the party get involved in inner party contests and how important of all of it is raising money and getting people republicans elected in the general election? So basically it's a how much of the focus of the party chair should be on general elections versus on, like I guess, party discipline or whatever.
Speaker 2:No, that's not their job.
Speaker 3:But that's your opinion. Other people disagree, and that seems to be with the fight of the, but that's literally what the election is being turned into. That's kind of like what is the election going to be about? So maybe, but so we can, we can get, let you get to it.
Speaker 2:I just want to make sure that what I'm all I'm saying is that that's what the election is going to be about so if you are chair of the state party, I mean, the first thing that I was told when I was a county chair, um, and and god bless her, sharon taught me a great deal is that as chairman whether it's county, whether it's state, whatever you represent all the shades of red. Okay, so stay out of the primaries, like that's why we don't, or we shouldn't, take a position in the primaries, because as chairman or as a member of the board, um, say for rpt or, you know, a state group or whatever, you have no business taking sides. You may do, you may support whoever you like in your personal life, but you may not make a public statement. And because we have, you know, people who are fire engine red.
Speaker 2:You know the far right Republicans, and then we have the middle of the road, you know kind of Reagan Republicans, and, and then we have people who are, you know, I don't know what the opposite of a blue dog is, but we have, we have those two, and so you know, but you have to represent, you know everybody, and you can't make exceptions. Well, you know you're not with me on social issues, but I'm with you on everything else. So shut up, like if you and I've said it over and over and over again if you believe in smaller, more efficient government, less taxes, then you are a Republican and the leadership of the Republican Party should be glad to have you and stay out of the primaries. I'm sorry, it drives me crazy.
Speaker 3:I mean, just regardless of your opinion on that issue and I tend to agree with you, andy, regardless of your opinion on that you have to be raising funds because all of it is moot right it's kind of a chicken and egg question and you have to have money to win elections.
Speaker 3:You have to win the elections and elections yep, you have to win the elections and have majorities for any of the other things to make sense. So the rank order should be we have to have raise money because we have to win general elections, we have to recruit candidates in places or whatever. We have to do those functions of the party so that we can do any of the other questions. And I think that over the past few years, the people who have been voting and participating in the Republican Party organization itself, the actual organization stuff, have taken for granted our majorities and our dominance in elections, and I think that's just ultimately what it's. What it boils down to is that we we've taken it for granted. We actually have to go out and win these elections, like how are we going to hold? We have to work to hold cd 20, so the congressional district 23, regardless of whether Gonzalez wins or Herrera wins, right, especially if.
Speaker 3:Herrera wins, that's going to be a dogfight to keep the seat, let alone whatever else. We also had Henry Cuellar get indicted this week, who is he's kind of a blue dog Democrat. He's a pro-life I believe he's a pro-life pro-border wall. He's a pro-life uh, pro border wall democrat from south texas. He's been there for a while. He was secretary of state back in the early 2000s. Um, like he is a you know he's been there for. He's been in the congress for a while and he's got bribery charges having something to do with azer, egypt or I don't know.
Speaker 2:Did you see, though, his legislative staffer and I don't know what their specific title was Apparently it's being reported, I'll give you.
Speaker 3:I'm taking the same tact that Ted Cruz is. I don't often say that, but he basically came out and said listen, when it comes to stuff like this, cuellar has been very, very critical of the Biden administration. I want to wait and see the evidence and get a little bit more information before I think about it. If that reporting is true that his staffer is turning state's evidence, then yeah, I think he probably needs to resign. And I don't know, I probably need to figure out if what, if he's already what his primary, what that means for the democrats, uh, in his district, because one way or the other, that seat's going to be far more in play for republicans. So we need that's all to say is we need money in the federal accounts so we can go after that seat. The new New South Texas T is gettable in the right circumstances. This might be the right circumstances. So we need to look at that ASAP because that's it could be a flip in Texas.
Speaker 2:Yeah, bad, bad.
Speaker 3:So what are we doing about that? Because we have to be raising funds. You have to raise funds from the federal dollars, which means you're limited by how much you can raise at any given time. You have to raise funds at the state dollars for the state races like Lopez down on the border or, like I mentioned before, lahood and LaHan and Bexar County, chin and Meyer and Dallas. Any of these suburban seats in Houston or Harris-DeVilla in Williamson County could be at risk. You know these seats are. We need to be defending these seats at the very least, let alone going after some seats in these suburban areas and in South Texas.
Speaker 2:And I would say to you, garrett, like some of these people have already won their primary, some of them have not, but by getting involved in the primary you're cutting off dollars to the party. So if I'm, if I'm supporting, supporting Jane Doe for state Senate and the RPT or my county comes out and says no, no, bob Smith, right, they're not getting any money from me. Like no, no. That's why, as the leader of the county or or the state, people are going to hold back dollars and like no, no, support everybody and when one of the primaries over figure out where you're in danger, put your money behind those races. That's it.
Speaker 3:Well, lots going on here in May as we gear up for the next big thing, which are the runoffs and the RPT convention in San Antonio, which are going to happen around the 23rd to the 25th. So that's going to be kind of the things that are percolating over the next few weeks. But we covered a lot today, andy. I think we got more than enough. So thank y'all so much for joining us. Remember, like we said earlier like subscribe, smash the notification button so you know exactly when we release a new episode. Thank you so much for watching and listening to us today and we'll see you next week. Bye, guys.
Speaker 2:Bye guys.
Speaker 1:You've been listening to the CN Red Podcast. It's always Texas politics and beyond. We present the facts and opinions the CN Red Podcast with your host, andy Turner, and Garrett Foles. Thank you and tune in next week and please do us a favor. Hit the subscribe button so you don't miss a single episode.
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