Guest Panelists Harvey Kronberg, Ross Ramsey, and Evan Smith discussed "Muddy Waters: Implications of March Primary Elections in Texas" for the Texas Politics Speaker Series on March 22, 2006.

Dr. James Henson: -- to talk about the implications of the primary elections that took place earlier this month across the great state of Texas.

We've invited three very close observers of politics from the fourth estate, a group of guys whose work spans print, television and, of course, the Internet. I want to introduce each of them briefly and just get right to it.

To my immediate left, Harvey Kronberg publishes, edits, writes for, speaks for Quorum Report, one of the staples of political information for political professionals in this town and across the state, which you can find in a teaser version, at least, on the web at www.quorumreport.com. Harvey's edited Quorum Report since 1989 and also contributes regular political analysis for News 8 Austin on the cable.

I would be remiss not to mention that Harvey is a graduate of this fair university, a testament to the ability of Plan 2 to find and produce exciting, extraordinary, and unique people. And according to Texas magazine, Harvey is I'm sorry; Texas Monthly, yes, I mean, Texas Monthly magazine, ÒThe nexus of political gossip in Austin,Ó which would

Who wrote that?

Mr. Ramsey: He hated that.

Dr. James Henson: Which would make a great tattoo.

Sitting immediately next to Ross or to Harvey, is Ross Ramsey, the editor and co-owner of Texas Weekly, also an institution in the world of Texas politics. Ross spent 17 years as a professional journalist, including stints at the Houston Chronicle and the Dallas Times Herald. Prior to taking over Texas Weekly Ross also did 28 months of time working in various capacities for John Sharp, the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts.

He speaks widely on Texas politics, and as his Texas Weekly bio says, ÒFor groups with an inability to attract professional entertainment,Ó which was meant to be self-deprecating but made me feel somehow inadequate.

And then finally, to his left, Evan Smith joined the staff of Texas Monthly as a senior editor in January 1992. He came from The New Republic, where he was deputy editor. In July 2000, a big month, as I recall it, he was promoted to editor, and in May 2002 also became executive vice president. I'm still working on what that exactly means other than more travel.

Texas Monthly is a general interest magazine, but Evan is a political junkie if ever there was one. His interview with former Speaker Pete Laney will appear in the latest issue of Texas Monthly. Evan is also a middling but developing poker player.

Given that, let's maybe start with the nexus of gossip, Mr. Harvey Kronberg.

Mr. Kronberg: Well, they also called me gossip-monger in the subsequent issues, so big fan club.

Dr. James Henson: We'll just put this down here.

Mr. Kronberg: Yes. Well, in a lot of ways this was probably I think the most important primary, maybe the most important election of this decade in Texas. In a lot of ways it was a battle for the heart and soul of the Texas House of Representatives; to a lesser degree, the Texas Senate. It was a classic Hollywood movie, huge money versus a soccer mom the battle in the House of Representatives and it left when everything had settled down, it was absolutely as clear as mud.

In case you haven't been paying attention, this election apparently was about vouchers, at least in the Texas House of Representatives. You wouldn't know that to go to any of the campaigns that were out there, because not a single campaign really teed off on vouchers, but vouchers became essentially the battleground.

A fellow named Jim Leininger, Dr. James Leininger, out of San Antonio I think all of us started hearing last September, October, that he had minions out there that were recruiting opponents for people who had voted essentially against vouchers; on a broader sense, people who were not Òpart of the Speaker's team,Ó and they were going to find they preferred military people if they could get them, people with no particular history in politics, if they could get them, no records that they could be criticized on, and they promised them a half a million dollars per race if they would run.

A typical House race is 100 to $225,000. A half-million dollars is a lot of money under any circumstance. And they found they tried, I think, for 12 or 13 races. They ended up successfully recruiting in five, and in these five races they got candidates, they filed, they did the whole thing.

They targeted fairly popular ÂÂ for the most part, fairly popular House members, fairly independent House members, but that wasn't what was unique about it. What was unique about it was that Dr. Leininger created a PAC, the Texas Republican Legislative Campaign Committee, and ostensibly I forget who it was; somebody put $100 into it. I think it was Craddick

Mr. Ramsey: It was his dad . . .

Mr. Kronberg: That's right. Thank you.

And the rest of the $3 million that we're going to find out was spent was put in essentially by Dr. Leininger. It became the Wal-Mart of campaigns. I don't know that we've ever seen anything like this before.

Normally, if you're going to run a campaign, you go hire a consultant. You develop a message. You do some polling. You kind of do a synthesis of forces, and you come out with your campaign message and your campaign strategy.

But this was essentially cookie-cutter. Essentially what they did was they hired the the PAC hired the campaign consultant. They did the polling. They did the direct mail. They did the media-buying. I presume you could get discounts that way. And they essentially the campaign was run all these five campaigns were run from inside this PAC.

Now, each of the five candidates said that, No, no, we're running the campaign. We get to see the mail. But there were a number of radio interviews with some of these candidates where they were asked to defend their positions, and they had to look at their direct mail to figure out what their positions were.

So I'm not saying any of these were dishonorable people, although I think was. But by and large, this was a campaign that was created by one man, organized by one PAC, administered by one PAC, and the candidates were essentially interchangeable. They could have hired anybody to be these candidates.

In these five races, in particular, they had two successes. One success they took out Roy Blake, who'd been in office for a grand total of 14 months, and I can tell you in the Capitol community, as much as we may or may not like Roy Blake, taking out a freshman is kind of a whoop-de-do kind of thing. Great. Somebody the district didn't even know he was a State Rep.

But they did get one scalp, and that was Carter Casteel, who very popular former County Commissioner from or county judge from Comal County. They spent over when all the dust settles, we're going to find out they spent over $1 million in this House race. Staggering amount of money.

It was so amazing that on Election Day, they had planes flying over polling booths with little banners trailing behind them that said, Casteel raises taxes. The candidate the Leininger-sponsored candidate won by 44, 45 votes. There's going to be a recount, but the odds are that the election will stand.

There is one anomaly worth mentioning here, however, and that is that in Comal County, which was the population center, there were 680 votes more in that race than in any other race. They skipped the sheriff's race, they skipped the some people said it might have been Democrats coming to help Carter. I don't know if I was a Democrat voting in the other side's primary, I'd kind of muck things up and vote for Larry Kilgore for Governor or whatever it may be.

Might have been the toll road guys. Well, if it's the toll road guys, they would have voted against Perry. So there is an anomaly that's so far unexplained, and or at least to my satisfaction, but I'm not sure how you adjudicate that because these are mostly electronic machines and there's no paper trail.

The other side of the coin was a woman named Carolyn Boyle, who had worked as essentially lobbying on behalf of public education to PTA and others over the course of the last seven or eight years, and she was so disgusted by what she saw in the Texas House of Representatives in the last cycle, where essentially public education was the enemy it wasn't a question of how you bolster it but how you essentially transform it to fit some whole new model.

And Carolyn Boyle is I don't know if you've ever seen her she's not the most dynamic speaker. She's clearly not a political closer, in the sense that she makes a pitch and then asks for money and you feel compelled that you've got to do it. She's a soccer mom, very soft-spoken, very gentle person.

She got in her Suburban and she went out and she recruited candidates all over the state who had some experience in public education superintendents, school board members, folks like that, people who were not professional politicians, and they challenged a good portion of the Speaker's team. They had a few successes.

But essentially, what they as we were coming into the last ten days, Boyle's candidates were pretty far ahead of a lot of these incumbents that were reliable votes for the Speaker's folks, and we had Mike Toomey and another PAC come in out of the blue and do who knows what, because it doesn't appear on their latest PAC report. It won't show up until June. But they were able to turn the tide at the last minute.

But this is the classic. We had a guy named Larry Phillips from Sherman, Texas sophomore; part of the class that came in with the great TRIM-PAC scandal and all that you know, just kind of a back bencher, easy to get along guy, does what the Speaker tells him to do. Nothing really offensive about him.

But he almost lost to somebody I don't know how much, you might have it on your grid I don't know how much ultimately was spent on behalf of Larry Phillips, but the guy that ran against him, Charles Williams, I think his name was, had a grand total of 15- or $20,000, at least, the last reports I looked at, and he was essentially, he was writing letters to people, handwriting notes to get them to come vote.

The teachers were sending emails to each other, and so you had Leininger spending I don't know; $100,000. You had 2 million in his group spending $100,000, and Charles Williams you know, I don't think he broke 20,000, and he got within four or five points.

Now, I don't know what lesson you end up drawing from all of this, except for one thing. A guy with a lot of money can give you a lot of heartache, and a determined group that has discovered that they're being victimized by their perception with the Legislature can organize grass roots and still have impact.

One last comment and then I'll get off my I'll pass the baton here. Redistricting. The whole point of redistricting was, A, to create overwhelming Republican majorities in the House and the Senate, but it was also a means of disciplining members legislators, because, say, in Grusendorf's district, a typical primary is 4,000 people.

Somebody comes in in a normal year and Grusendorf gets off the reservation. You spend $100,000. You find an opponent. You take them out. It doesn't cost a lot of money typically to beat somebody in a typically low turnout Republican primary. Republican primaries are typically about 600,000 people, and most of these districts have fairly low turnout.

So redistricting was intended to discipline these members or provide a vehicle for keeping people on the reservation as far as the agenda went. It proved the flip side, however, and that is a motivated constituency, like teachers, educators, soccer moms, can come into these primaries that are typically low turnout and upset all the calculations that the political professionals have created, and they do have the possibility to create an upset.

Dr. James Henson: Thanks very much, Harvey. Ross.

Mr. Ramsey: I'll just pick up where Harvey left off.

One of the interesting things about Charlie Williams. He's from Van Alstyne, Texas, little tiny town up on what starts the Central Expressway in Dallas and goes on to Oklahoma. He has been a classroom teacher, a coach, a superintendent, a school board member, and president of the school board. So the reason he had all those people to write letters to is I guess, you know, he had all those students and all those parents and all those teachers, and he was plugged into the community.

And what worked in all of the races where people were upset, I think with the one exception of the Carter Casteel race, was that the challengers were selected for how well they fit the district. In the Roy Blake seat, nobody knew who he was because he was a freshman, and everybody thought their old State Representative was still the State Representative.

Well, unfortunately for Roy Blake, the old State Representative was the guy running against him. So they thought they were voting for the incumbent when they voted for Wayne Christian and, you know, they remember Roy Blake mainly because they knew his father as a State Senator.

Charlie Williams was a really well picked, well selected candidate. If he'd had a little bit more gasoline in the fuel tank, you know, he probably would have overtaken Larry Phillips.

The big upset of the day in the primaries was the public education chairman. Kent Grusendorf got knocked off by a woman who is you know, again, it's one of these really well selected candidates. She's a Republican. She's got her Republican bona fide. She's been a Republican the whole time. She's a former member of the State Board of Education, as Grusendorf was. She's the president of the Arlington school board, so, you know, all of those things were in place, and then you can run a campaign.

Now, the one exception to this was the Nathan Macias race. He's from Valverde, Texas. He's lived there for two years. He's a retired military. Carter Casteel has deep roots in the community. She only spent, in her defense we did this sort of interesting chart that you can pull off of our website if you're interested in it out of the free part of our website under files, texasweekly.com, and then go to Òfiles.Ó

It's a chart where we took the contributions and the expenditures that are reported so far. Texas law lets them report some step as late as July, so we don't know the whole numbers yet.

Carter Casteel's mistake was that she only spent about $600,000 in her defense. You spend $600,000 in a House race defending it, and you lose it to a guy who spends $1 million and is unknown in the district by 45 votes.

In all of these other cases, there were, you know, there were mostly local reasons for these things. Even in the seats where Jim Leininger came in with a lot of money and where vouchers was ostensibly the reason that he was interested in those races, it wasn't the subject of the debate.

In the one race where it was, that was the Blake-Christian race, and that was sort of a local race. If you follow these around the state, the issue against Carter Casteel was not vouchers, but she raises taxes. They hit them on things that work in the districts.

We kind of expected to get a clear message when we were looking at this thing. You know, you have Leininger in five races. You have the Texas Parent PAC in probably a dozen races in a serious way, and you have kind of the Speaker's Republicans in the House again the people challenging the Speaker's Republicans, and we were thinking we might get a clear sign, and it was all over the place. It was sort of really kind of a dog's breakfast on Election Day.

You could both sides were claiming wins. The spinners were of about equal balance, and you finally said, Well, you know, it was sort of a regular election in that way.

It was interesting how much money they spent on these races. One of the things we do, mostly because it irritates consultants, is take the amount of money that's spent and the number of votes cast and then figure out how much everybody spent you know, unit pricing at the grocery store, right?

One special interest group that got hammered was the Texans for Lawsuit Reform. They'd put a bunch of money into a guy named Joe Nixon. He's a House member from Houston. He was running for a Senate seat that was open and had four people in it. One of them, to Joe Nixon's consternation, is a guy named Dan Patrick, who's here from Houston, you know, is a popular radio talk show host on KSCV, has a big following, has a bunch of money.

Patrick spent about $1 million again, these aren't final numbers Patrick spent about $1 million and got 69 percent of the vote. Joe Nixon was the candidate from among these four who was picked by Texans for Lawsuit Reform. This is the guy that headed I always mess it up; is it Prop 12 or Prop 13?

Dr. James Henson: Twelve.

Mr. Ramsey: Twelve, the thing that was on the ballot a couple of Septembers ago on tort reform. He spent $206 a vote, losing. They had about $1 million in Joe Nixon and lost the race. The special interests don't always win. Money doesn't always win. You know, it's that old line about money and strength don't necessarily win the race, but that's the way to bet.

A couple of things coming up. I would you know, the interesting thing going forward is going to be this Governor's race that we've got. It's sort of the Texas version of 1992. You may remember --a lot of you, looking around, were probably in eighth grade in '92 but it's the race where we for the first time have a significantly financed independent in the race for Governor. That's Carole Strayhorn.

We also have a celebrity in the race for Governor. I'll let Evan explain that, because we're blaming it on him Kinky Friedman. And this is the the Texas Democrats are really the best thing the Texas Republicans have going, because it's sort of a disorganized party.

We have this election coming forward where it's entirely possible that the Democrats finish third in a race, and then an independent finishes second, and we'll see. You know, one of the things that you can measure in a thing like this is does the infrastructure, such as it is in the Democratic party, outweigh the money that Carole has.

If you look at the amount of money Carole's raising against Chris Bell, it's ten to one, something like that. If you look at the organization that's supposed to be in place in a Democratic party, they have 254 county chairs, they have you know, all those people and all that stuff that's got to be worth some money. We're going to actually weigh those things.

I think the race for second place is going to be really interesting. I don't know what these guys think. I think if you were handicapping it today, you'd have to say Perry's in a pretty good position. And if I were Rick Perry, I'd go down to Roger Williams' office in the Secretary of State's office down there on the first floor of the Capitol and I would say, Anybody who wants to get on the ballot, let them on the ballot. Perry's slugging it along in most of his polls at 40 to 45 percent support, and he wants as many people splitting up the other 55 to 60 percent as possible.

So thanks to redistricting, we have no congressional races of any significance. There was going to be a real headbasher in Central Texas with Chet Edwards. I think Tom DeLay won that race for him. He's running against a military guy named Van Taylor, well-financed, from an old money family in Southeast Texas. I think it'll be a race. I think Edwards will win that one.

The Texas race everybody in the country is watching is Tom DeLay. Charlie Cook was here on campus a couple of weeks ago and actually summarized that really well. He said, If the subject of that race is Tom DeLay, Nick Lampson will be the next congressman from that district.

But other than that, there aren't any real congressional races of note. The Texas Senate is pretty much set in stone. You know, you'll change a couple of seats every year in the primaries with, you know, redistricting. You know, one, trade a Democrat for another, trade a Republican for another. I don't really think we have much contest there.

And at the end of the day in the House, I think we'll trade 20 or 30 seats, which is about normal. The question going forward that you'll be hearing a lot about in the special session next month and going into the regular session next year is, What's the status of Tom Craddick's strength in the House?

The House will still have a Republican majority. The question is, Is Tom Craddick the guy that they want to have represent them as Speaker? And, you know, you can get as many opinions as House members on that one.

Let me say one more thing about the special session coming up on the tax bill. Just sort of like a viewer's guide, you know, if you're watching the special session coming up, it's the Republicans trying to pass a tax bill, and it's like trying to herd chickens to vote for Colonel Sanders. It's going to be a really interesting and is already a really interesting sort of calculation, because they're trying to raise taxes, to lower taxes, and explain to a bunch of businesses why they're bringing them into a new tax without getting any new money for education, and it's really entertaining to watch. It's kind of fun. I'd recommend it.

I'll hand it off to Evan.

Dr. James Henson: Ladies and gentlemen, Thanks a lot, Ross. Evan Smith.

Mr. Smith: Well, first of all, I think everything that Ross and Harvey said is brilliant, of course. Let me expand on a little bit of what they said, though, and also take a more midrange satellite view of the world; not just of the House and the Senate, but of politics now after the primary and going forward.

The first thing is if you read the Harry Potter books as I do with my kids, Leininger is Voldemort, okay. He is the great villain, the great mysterious villain who's never seen, whose name is barely ever spoken, and who is the subject of extraordinary discussion among the good guys.

The difference this time, as we found out, that Voldemort is mortal. If you bat .400 and you're A-Rod, that's a good thing. If you bat .400 and you're Jim Leininger and you spend $3 million or more, whatever we discover it is, that's pretty bad. And while the Casteel race may not go back to Casteel, the fact that they spent all that money and only got 44 votes more than Casteel, I think, is a sign that Leininger, who was previously thought to be impenetrable and immortal, is obviously not.

The reality is that Leininger has operated under the cover of darkness, and one of the worst things for him about this, in addition to the outcome, is that he was outed. Right? He was outed. His name was in the papers. There were stories about him. The pressure was so great on him that he was forced to actually make public statements, write an op-ed, or have one written for him published under his name in the newspapers.

I think that's a very significant occurrence in terms of the practice of politics in this state in the last couple of years that Leininger's influence was made much more public this time than it's ever been before.

The second thing is that I think both Tom Craddick and David Dewhurst are in trouble right now for different reasons. I agree with Ross that Craddick's big problem going forward is the possibility of a challenge to his Speakership, and in fact, there was a rumor, not confirmed by me possibly Harvey or Ross know that on the night of the primary, Craddick distributed a document to lobbyists indicating that he actually feared a Speaker's challenge during the special and was trying to marshal support of the lobby for him to hold that off.

The expectation is that there are enough dissident Republicans who survive Voldemort's challenge, plus dissident Republicans who were not challenged seriously, plus Democrats who don't want to see Craddick breathe air, that maybe, possibly, sorta, kinda, there could be a challenge cobbled together to Craddick's Speakership.

There's a lot of speculation revolving around Jim Pitts, who is the Appropriations Committee Chair from Waxahachie, who has told people, I understand, he'd like to be Speaker one day if not soon, who apparently had a conversation with Craddick not long ago in which he expressed concern that the special session would result in no new money for schools. Craddick said, Tough. Pitt said, Well, I'm going to do what I'm going to do, and they had kind of one of these standoffs in the movies.

It ended with an uncomfortable silence and both of them walking away, and that was taken by a lot of people who heard the story to be Pitts' declaration for Speaker. The reality is whether Pitts has enough votes to be Speaker remains to be seen. There are other people who are said to be supporting Pitts in this effort.

I heard a story today that Charlie Geren was quietly calling around on Pitts' behalf to try to collect semi pledges for Pitts. But the fact is Craddick is Craddick, and I wouldn't bet against Tom Craddick ever. And I think that Craddick probably survives this, but there are an awful lot of people talking about Craddick as vulnerable today, many more so than before, and I think that only gets worse for Craddick.

As Ross pointed out, it wasn't only the Leininger folks who survived the targets of Leininger's efforts, but people like Elvira Reyna, who are reliable Craddick Republicans, went down. I just think it's going to be a lot different this time, and probably Craddick's opponents feel emboldened, to a great degree.

Dewhurst's problem is something else. He trades Madla, a reliable Dewhurst supporter, in many respects, for Uresti, who won't support Dewhurst under any circumstances. He trades Lindsey, who was docile, for Dan Patrick, who can't be controlled. And this is Dewhurst who couldn't control the Senate with the composition before.

And so how does adding Uresti and Patrick and subtracting Madla and Lindsey help Dewhurst? The answer is not. And, by the way, he has to contend with Kirk Watson every day, who is his greatest in his own mind Dewhurst's own mind his greatest challenge to be Governor in 2010. I don't think there's a chance in hell of Dewhurst being Governor in four years. Dewhurst doesn't know that.

And Watson may not be Governor in four years, but Dewhurst may think that Watson is a threat to him, and so you're going to have this extraordinary standoff between a freshman Democrat from Austin and the Lieutenant Governor, I think, as a defining aspect of the Senate going forward. So I think from Dewhurst's standpoint, this is not a good time either.

I agree with Ross and might go even a little bit further on the Governor's race. The fact is Chris Bell could finish in fourth, not third. I think the Democrats will be lucky to finish in third, but I think there's a possibility Democrats finish in fourth. The Democrats may be pining for Garry Mauro era turnout after this year.

And frankly, from the Democrats' standpoint, if the turnout is really bad because the ticket is so bad, which I'll talk about in a second, some of the Democratic members in close districts, like Strama and Rose, who, by the way, I both think are going to survive, might actually be in not quite as good a shape as they think they are.

This is the worst Democratic slate at the top of the ticket in a Governor's race year maybe ever. Think about it. In 2002 you had the Dream Team, even if they turned out not to be quite so much of a dream. In '98 you had Mauro at the top of the ticket, who got his ass kicked by George Bush, but you also had Sharpe and you had Hobby, and I believe you had Mattox for Attorney General. Right?

In '94 you had Ann Richards, even weakened as the incumbent Governor at the top of the ticket, and then you go back before that, and yes, you had, you know, times when Clements was Governor and so on, but the fact is the Democratic candidates on the top of the ticket were extraordinarily good in those years and a whole bunch better than the folks you have now.

Ben Grant? David Dewhurst is actually a reasonably weak, in my mind, Republican incumbent against the right person; so weak that the Republicans were out trolling for Greg Abbott or Tony Garza, it is widely believed, to challenge him in the primary. So the Republicans don't love Dewhurst. The Democrats don't love Dewhurst. This is the best they could do against Dewhurst? It is the worst Democratic slate maybe ever at the top of the ticket.

Here's the mass, okay. Let's assume that Bell's floor as a Democrat is 20 percent. Now, these guys will probably come back in to tell me this is crazy, but we'll see what happens. Let's say that the worst Bell can do, which is to say his floor is 20 percent, and let's say that the Kinky hangover has worn off; that the charm is off of Kinky, and that Carole's entry into the race means that Kinky's vote total is going to be pretty far down.

Let's say Kinky gets 5 percent, so that's 25 percent between Bell and Kinky, which leaves 75 percent to be divided among the two candidates who are going to be the best funded. That's Perry and Strayhorn. The magic number is 38 percent. You know, if Perry gets to 40, he wins. If Perry gets below 38, 37, 36, he loses, but in all likelihood, Perry wins.

You know, somebody said to me today, Well, Bell's got a strategy to get to 37-1/2. That's really all he has to do. Well, that Sanchez got 41 in '02. Well, Sanchez was running against Perry. Bell's basically running against Strayhorn. And I think that a lot of the people who are unhappy with Perry, who might be inclined to park themselves with an alternative candidate in this case, Bell are going to park themselves with Carole.

So I don't think that Bell has a chance in hell of winning this race, despite what some people, Bell among them, say. I think it's either Perry or it's Strayhorn, and I think that the odds are absolutely with Perry. I think that Kinky is a non-issue at this point, in this race now, as a result of Carole being in, even if he is my problem that I caused.

Let me stay with the Democrats for a second. How lame are the Democrats right now? They're handed an extraordinary set of circumstances. I mean, you know, Rick Perry, Tom Craddick, David Dewhurst, multiple special sessions in which nothing goes on, Tom DeLay. George Bush's approval rating right now in Texas is only 41 percent. His disapproval is 56. You got tons of problems on issues school finance, property taxes run the table. And the best the Democrats can do is Chris Bell, Ben Grant, and Barbara Ann Radnofsky. How lame are these guys?

I know that they're running in more races than they did the last time, but goodness gracious! The people running things right now have no consequences at all. So that's the first thing.

The second thing is, you know, I believe that the result of Chris Bell finishing in fourth, psychically, is going to be unbelievable. I mean, if in fact Chris Bell finishes in fourth, I think it will be absolutely destructive to the Democratic party.

And then the third thing is, what is the Democratic party's strategy going forward? Where is their bench? The Republicans have a bench. Michael Williams is, like, third or fourth deep on the bench. Michael Williams would be the star of the Democratic party if he were a Democrat. Waiting for Patrick Rose to grow into long pants, as I've said before, is not a strategy for retaking power in this state, and that's what the Democrats seem to be doing.

So I want to know what their strategy is going forward. Where are their candidates? The two best known and best loved Democrats in this state are still Ann Richards and Henry Cisneros, neither of whom would run if chased. So where's their strategy for taking back the party? And I think demographic inevitability, which maybe we could talk about during the question and answer period, is complete garbage, because I don't believe at all that the Hispanics will ride to their rescue and save the Democratic party at all, although some Democrats seem to think that.

That then brings me to the midterms the last thing I want to say. Yes, the president is unpopular right now. Yes, there's the issue of corruption in the House and investigations of Bill Frist in the Senate and Abramoff and Iraq and everything else. But George Bush has proven himself, if nothing else, to be an extraordinary historical anomaly, and I don't necessarily think that any of this is going to translate. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think any of this is going to translate into some big sweep-out-the-guys during the midterms.

I think the chance of the Democrats retaking the House of Representatives in Washington is below 5 percent. I think the Senate is actually better. There's a rumor now that Conrad Burns is going to retire in Montana, forced out by all this Abramoff stuff, which is probably actually worse for the Democrats, by the way.

I think the chance that Democrats taking back the Senate is maybe one in four, but I think the chance that Democrats taking back the House is not very high at all. In fact, it's probably almost nothing. The likelihood is everybody goes back into their jobs, you know, for the next two years.

And I think with the exception, interestingly enough, of Tom DeLay. Tom DeLay will lose. Hear my words. Tom DeLay will lose. The Democratic strategy in the midterms, and I don't think it's going to be successful across the board, is that no matter who you are, no matter where you are, no matter what you're running for, and no matter who you're running against, your opponent is Tom DeLay. That is how the Democrats are going to nationalize this election; not by running against George Bush, but by running against Tom DeLay and everything he represents.

Nick Lampson actually runs against

Tom DeLay, the actual Tom DeLay. This is a district that, as we know from reading The New Yorker a couple of weeks ago, Tom DeLay really screwed up, screwed himself by pushing Republicans out of the district during redistricting. And that was a district that was trending less Republican anyway.

The Democrats are going to pour tons of money into Lampson, and DeLay's back is against the wall. I don't think DeLay Harvey and Ross may have a different point of view on this but I don't think that DeLay's primary results were very impressive, especially in Fort Bend County.

That suggests to me he's vulnerable, and if this whack job Steve Stockman, former Republican congressman, runs as an independent as he's threatening to do, all the black helicopter Republicans who would have voted for DeLay will park themselves with Stockman, and it is game over, mathematically, I believe, for DeLay.

Dr. James Henson: Thank you, all three of you.

I want to pull up on a couple of those things. There's going to be a lot of questions, and I want to get that but I kind of want to come back around to a couple of things I suspect you guys want to follow up on each other a little bit.

It seems to me one of the things we want to talk about I specifically want to ask you, Harvey is what do you make of the position of the Speaker, given all this right now?

Mr. Kronberg: I probably think he's in more jeopardy than anybody else at the table does. We ended up the last special session with, actually, neither institution trusting our leadership anymore. The days of Tom Craddick being able to ask for votes to move the process, I think, are gone.

He didn't go out and defend in a serious way his incumbents, the people that he put in jeopardy. The two people that he did that were being attacked by Leininger that he did fundraisers for, both lost. In fact, I think the perception is that he was a liability in those races.

I know of any number of rump conversations. Jim Pitts was the name that's been mentioned. There's a whole series of other names that are going out on. I don't think that Tom Craddick right now has more than 35 or 40 out of the 150 hard votes that he can count on, and the best way you can tell that is the sudden change in behavior.

Yes, it is true that that email did go out, but it was only to a very small select group of lobbyists; his inner circle, and we all know who that is. But

Mr. Smith: It was acknowledged even by him.

Mr. Kronberg: Yes.

Mr. Smith: Which I think in itself is remarkable.

Mr. Kronberg: Oh, it's there's better tales than that. All of a sudden there's a tomcraddick.com website with it hasn't been promoted yet. I don't know what the point of it is, but it's got pictures, children everywhere, all the things he supports about public education. This is something new. I mean, it's it didn't happen in a vacuum.

He's suddenly down touring the Irma Rangel school. Suddenly there's funding for the Irma Rangel Pharmacy School. Although it doesn't have you know, at the bottom paragraph it says that, I want to thank the Speaker for his help on this. He didn't stop it, which he's perfectly capable of doing. But it shows us suddenly there's an outbreak of independence among some of the members.

The best shot they if they're going to take him out, the best shot is during the special session, because the we're all forgetting about November. There's going to be an attempt at redemption. They're going to work overtime in order to take out some of the WD-40s, the white Democrats from East Texas, for instance, and anybody that they replace them with, presumably, will be a Craddick lege.

Things are in total turmoil right now. They don't trust the leadership, and research has been done by a number of different groups about how to do it, and people are no longer afraid of the Speaker. I mean, they withstood the best they could throw at him.

Nobody, I don't think, believes that he said he couldn't stop Leininger from going after those folks. I don't think anybody believes that. I think that most of the House members that I've spoken to think there was at least a wink and a nod going on and that the only reason he went out and tried to help Casteel or Blake he did fundraisers for both of them, the two losers was because his folks were telling him that he whatever support he had in the House was beginning to evaporate unless he took some kind of affirmative step. Even that was kind of timid. He's got $3 million in his officeholder account and didn't write a check.

Dr. James Henson: Ross, what do you think?

Mr. Ramsey: Yes, I you know, one of the best political movies in the last decade is a Pixar movie called A Bug's Life. I don't know if you guys have seen this, but there's a moment in this movie, I mean, if you really think about it, there's a moment in this movie where the bugs have an uprising against the grasshoppers the ants have an uprising against the grasshoppers.

And the movie goes for an hour and 45 minutes before any of the ants gets the backbone to stand up against the grasshoppers. And the question in the House is whether one of the ants gets the backbone. And so far, we haven't got the backbone yet.

You know, you have to if you look through the history of politics, you know, one of my old college professors was Dick Armey, who got whacked in the United States Congress for standing up at the wrong time. You can get snapped pretty easy, and it's really difficult to get the House past that from that point of dissatisfaction to that point of insurrection.

I don't think they quite get there. I'm not willing to go as far as Harvey does. You know, it's just hard to get that last step made.

I do agree that if somebody was going to do that, their best crack is probably in the special session, if only because 20 of the members of the House are serving now and will not be serving next January, either because they resigned or they didn't seek reelection or because they got beat.

So we have 20 dead men walking, and those people are free to vote. You know, it's sort of gotten to that point where there's nothing you can take away from them, except for the few who are going to be lobbyists. You know, so there's potentially 20 votes there. I don't know if you get there.

And Harvey mentioned it at the end. I think one of the things that really got a lot of attention in the House was that, while these members were in trouble, Craddick was sitting on a $2.9 million war chest, and I think he spent a little bit of that at the end, but I don't think it was real money. I think it was more show money. I just I think a lot of people said, You know, when my back was against the wall, Craddick was over there with a bunch of money. There was no opponent. He was building a website and not helping me out.

Dr. James Henson: I want to get in some of the other things that came up, but I kind want to maybe choose some questions that will do that. So, you know, especially Patrick Rose's long pants.

Mr. Smith: Always get a laugh.

Mr. Ramsey: That's right.

Dr. James Henson: Yes. Kind of laughed the last time I heard you use it.

Mr. Kronberg: A laugh better than two laughs.

Mr. Smith: Yes, he's almost grown into one.

Dr. James Henson: Right. Okay. What we're going to do is we're going to have somebody walk around with a mike. This is Sean over here, so questions from the gallery, please? Why don't we start right here, Sean, and then we'll work around.

Man 1: Hi guys, thanks for being here. I'm interested not in just Republican/Democrat, but wingers versus moderates in Senate races. Can you guys address that? You know, is there a chance that senators in a moderate direction can actually gain control again? Is that possible?

Mr. Kronberg: You know, one of the results in this election that was that I thought you know, when we look at this in ten years, the thing that I think that people will immediately notice in this election is that turnout was horrifying. I mean, it was just really awful.

And, you know, one of the truisms I call it a truism because we're not sure if it's you know, it's Stephen Colbert kind of truth or real truth is you have truthiness. But if only a few people vote, you know, we generally think that those are the people who really, really are going to vote, no matter what. You know, those are the wingers.

So if you get a real tiny turnout, you're going to get the far left and you're going to get the far right, and the middle's not voting. And I have this odd theory that voters are pretty good consumers and that they're smart about this stuff and that if they have something they feel is at stake, they show up and vote.

In Carter Casteel's race the turnout was pretty high. In a lot of these other races, even as contested as they were and as much coverage as the insiders gave them, the turnout wasn't very high and the overall turnout was pretty low. I think the wingers are controlling politics right now because they control primaries.

And because of the redistricting maps, if you control primaries you control Congress the Senate and the House, those kinds of things. So until the middle gets some idea as consumers of government, until the middle gets some idea that they have something at stake and that they need to weigh in on it, I don't think we'll see the moderates rise. Everything will depend on it.

Mr. Smith: Let me say that I think the test of whether there's a middle is going to be the Governor's race.

Mr. Kronberg: That's probably right.

Mr. Smith: Because the middle is going to park itself with Strayhorn. The middle is parking itself with Strayhorn already -- the conservative Democrats and the moderate Republicans who can't stomach the idea of Perry but wouldn't cross over.

You know, like I say, I don't know. But do I think there's a middle? I do think there's a middle. The turnout thing is interesting. You know, the Donna Howard-Ben Bentzin race is another one where the turnout ended up being

Mr. Kronberg: Turnout was pretty good.

Mr. Smith: -- pretty good. And, you know, this is actually interesting on the question of whether the Democrats are only a little lame or a lot lame. Democrats say, Oh, Donna Howard. You know something? Don't talk to me about Donna Howard. First of all, this is the only county of the 254 that voted against the gay marriage proposition, okay.

That was a 57 percent Republican district in name only. The best that Baxter could do with George Bush on the top of the ticket was 50 percent. Also, Ben Bentzin is a terrible candidate. You know, Hen Henson could have beat Ben Bentzin. I thought of that one this morning.

Dr. James Henson: In the shower. Right?

Mr. Smith: In the shower. The fact is Ben Bentzin was that is such an anomalous race for so many reasons that the idea of pointing to Donna Howard is indicative of something larger of larger significance. I mean, it's crazy. I think that Ross is right, though. The turnout was terrible.

And when turnout is terrible, the people who turn out are the motivated types, and the motivated types tend to be over here. Again, for the Democrats that's bad, because there are more over here than there are over here. And the Democrats who will get elected this time, the new Democrats, are not going to be centrists. They're not.

Mr. Ramsey: Only thing I'd add is I disagree a little bit, because primaries are intended to be low turnout, and they are intended to be of the faithful. But as people become increasingly aware that the primary is where the action is, if there are issues that they care about or they've gotten any kind of message on it, it's we discovered in Grusendorf's race it's remark I'm not going to say easy it's not as difficult as it would appear to upset an incumbent in what's traditionally a low turnout primary if you can just get 1,000 more people to come vote. And

Mr. Smith: But you need them to be motivated against somebody.

Mr. Ramsey: It has to be something they care about. Yes.

Mr. Smith: Grusendorf was an extreme case. I'm sure you'd agree.

Mr. Ramsey: Right. But we found out well, yes. We found out in a number of different races that if you can gauge passions, a relatively small number of voters can upset all the calculations of the guys who did the redistricting.

Dr. James Henson: And it remains to be seen just how much the overall line is going to rise, though, at this point, I think.

Mr. Smith: Yes.

Woman 1: I went to the Alamo Drafthouse last week only to see Ann Richards rebuke the audience for talking during the movie, and kind of implying some tongue-in-cheek humor about her tough-as-nails governorship. And then I talked to some campaign staffers of Kinky's, and they told me where I could find the best burger in Austin.

And it just kind of got me thinking about humor in Texas politics, and it's got me thinking about why I'm loving following it right now. But I also went over to Liz Carpenter's house to see Chris Bell speak about why we should all vote for him as Governor, some UT students and I, and the guy was dry as a bone. Dry as a bone.

He didn't win over one of us in the audience, and I can agree with you why he doesn't have a shot in hell of winning. But I'm kind of wondering now. Is Kinky's humor is it wearing off on the Texas audience and people following politics right now? Is it still working for him?

Mr. Ramsey: I don't think it is working. The two signs I would, you know, sort of the leading indicators I'd watch for that kind of thing for the press getting tired of it, because, you know, at the first of the campaign, the only people paying attention to you are reporters, and you're hoping as a candidate that through those reporters, you'll start talking to the public and then, you know, you can get rid of the reporters later and start talking to the public directly.

There's a line in The New Yorker on a Kinky profile that said, You know, whenever you want to joke with this guy, he wants to get serious; and whenever you want to get serious, and whenever you want to get serious, he wants to joke. Sort of an early sign.

Rick Casey, who's a columnist with the Houston Chronicle, had a line. You know, he was on the fringes of it. He didn't really go full into it, but he was starting to really get after Kinky about, you know, it's just a bunch of one-liners and an empty bag after that.

So, you know, he has to I don't think he's dead, by any means. But he has to he's at that point where you have to say, Okay, this was fun. It's been interesting signing your petition. Could I really pull the lever? And you have to you know, sometimes candidates make that turn, even when you don't expect them to.

Jesse Ventura made the turn. Arnold Schwarzenegger made the turn. Victor Morales hit the guardrail. You know, most of them don't, but, you know, it's still possible. He has to get some real stuff in there.

Reporters have more or less stopped covering him because there's no new content. There's essentially replaying the same thing. Although the one interesting thing about Kinky is if you've spent your whole career trying to be offensive, you really can't blow up your campaign.

But, you know, he's got to give us some new material. He's still fresh. There's still people discovering who he is and hearing the one-liners for the first time. But in The New Yorker story, he said that the reporter said, He's only Kinky told him, I've only got three and a half minutes worth of material. By Minute Five, you're bored silly with me. And that's kind of where it's at.

We're not there yet. There's a whole universe of Texans that still haven't heard lines like, I support gay marriage. They have the right to be as miserable as anybody else. But that universe is rapidly shrinking, and then it becomes redundant.

Dr. James Henson: Evan, you would know. How hard is it to get new material out of Kinky?

Mr. Smith: It's really hard. And I think that what Ross says is true. You know, he doesn't know whether he wants to be the joke candidate or a serious candidate, and if he stops being funny, then he just becomes another unqualified person running for Governor. We have plenty of those. We don't need to vote for him. We can vote for somebody else unqualified.

His whole selling proposition is basically the distraction, and he's not been very good past the first couple of months of keeping the distraction interesting. And he gets really petulant when you point that out to him. He doesn't want to hear that. He's not Jesse Ventura.

Eventually, he's going to have to be for something. It's fine for him to be against everything and be funny about it, but if anyone's going to vote for him at beyond a protest level, he's going to have to be for something, and I couldn't tell you anything he's for. And that's a problem for him.

Dr. James Henson: Other questions? Yes, back over here.

Woman 2: I did some phone banking for an organization that shall remain nameless, but when I was asking people to vote in the primary they said, Well, I can't vote because I'm signing Kinky's petition. You know, what effect did this have on the primary with people not voting because they had to do sign Kinky's petition?

Mr. Kronberg: We have a friend there's a guy named Mark Sanders who works for Carole Strayhorn, and she's running as an independent. But she's been on the ballot all of these years, and she has an election day habit of she wants to go around on election day and knock on doors.

So she goes to Sanders and she says, What do I do? You know, I don't know who's going to have voted. Trying to get petitions signed. They can't sign petitions yet. I just want to knock on some doors. It's my superstition.

And he said, Go ahead and knock. Nine out of ten times would be okay. I think that was going to be true whether or not you had independents on the ballot. You're going to have these people not voting. They have a built-in excuse now. They don't have to say, The dog ate my homework. They can say, Oh, I'm going to sign a petition, you know. Sorry. I think you get about the same result. I don't think they suppressed a lot.

Mr. Smith: But I will tell you, my focus group is, you know, kind of parents at my kid's school. A number of people who are reliable Democrats, who are donist [phonetic] Democrats, and two to one, they were all saying, I'm sitting this one out, and I'm going to end up supporting Strayhorn, and I'm going to sign her petition later.

You know, I think the issue is less people staying home to vote for Kinky or sign Kinky's petition than Democrats not voting in the primary and signing Carole's petition later. And this is not just Ben Barnes and Tony Sanchez. This is a lot of other people who could normally be counted on to both write checks for and cast votes for Democrats who are not doing it this time.

Mr. Ramsey: Although we're kind of pigeon-holing Strayhorn into this Democrat reliability premise.

Mr. Smith: We're not only. I agree with you. Not only.

Mr. Kronberg: I mean, there's March Republicans and there's November Republicans. November Republicans are less ideological.

Mr. Ramsey: More your group. More the moderates.

Mr. Kronberg: Right. And I think that's a big part of the universe. The only impact I really think it had this election was I think at it's probably a little bit of a reach but Carter Casteel, I think Strayhorn cost Carter Casteel the election ultimately, because I just know of a pocket of

Mr. Smith: That's interesting.

Mr. Ramsey: -- of TFRW types Texas Federation of Republican Women types that wanted to stay out so they could sign her petition. And I couldn't prove it, but, you know, there's enough anecdotal information to suggest it might be true.

Mr. Ramsey: The problem with losing by 45 votes is there's a million things you can think of the next morning, and if you're ever going to run for office and you got to lose, lose big so there won't be any of that questioning stuff.

Dr. James Henson: Too many sleepless night.

Mr. Smith: That's right. You can at least sleep, you know.

Dr. James Henson: Next question. The kids passing oh, is somebody back there? Oh. Hey, Mark.

Man 2: This question of does Strayhorn have a real shot at getting minority votes and pulling them off of the Democratic candidate or getting them to not stay home because the Democratic candidates are so lousy? If the answer is no, what does her strategy look like to get more votes than Perry does?

Mr. Ramsey: I'd come into the question a little bit differently. Where do minority voters go is where I would go with that. One of the questions the Bell people offer in their own defense is, you know, Carole has no geography. You know, the Democrat in their view automatically wins the Border. I don't think that's right, and I don't think that you know, this is sort of the demographic determinism you were talking about a little bit ago.

I think that if you take this thing apart, the first thing a voter has to do is say, Do I want the guy who's already there? And some percentage of them right now it's around 60 percent are going to say, No, I want something else.

They might some of them might come back, but right now they're, Yeah, I'll look around, you know. I'll shop. When you shop, you've got Kinky who, you know, as Evan said, doesn't have anything to offer yet. And he's funny, but, you know, we can get that on MTV.

We have Chris Bell if we know about him. Most people don't know about him. His name ID is about six, I think, and he turns on he can turn on an audience.

Mr. Smith: And he has no money.

Mr. Ramsey: He's actually a friend of mine but, you know, this is what happens when journalists run for office. Right? And then you have Carole, who's got, you know, sort of an she's got a high entertainment value, if you've ever seen her talk. She's got positions. She's got history with black constituencies. She's got histories with Hispanic constituencies. Good histories I mean, solid stuff, both from the Austin school board, Austin mayor. All of her races she's done really well with those.

So, you know, if you're one of those groups and you're shopping around, I think Carole is the first place that you sort of like.

Dr. James Henson: A lot of people have voted for her.

Mr. Ramsey: Right.

Mr. Smith: She got more votes on the last time she ran. Right? She got more votes than any other person on the ballot and the third highest number of votes of any woman running statewide in the country.

Dr. James Henson: And five different names.

Mr. Smith: The last time under different names, yes. But the other part of this, I think, too, is think of this way. Again, to kind of flip the question around. Look at the John Kerry vote in '04 and ask yourself, Is Chris Bell going to get one vote that John Kerry didn't get? I think the answer is no.

I think the only place for Bell to go with regard to the Kerry vote is down. That's my intuition, because there are other people that some of the people who vote -- might vote for a Democrat are going to park themselves with in the same race. I mean

Mr. Kronberg: There's no new organization to turn out minority voters

Mr. Smith: No. Forget it.

Mr. Ramsey: -- on the Democratic side. I don't know that Carole's got an actually, the only candidate that's got an organization is Perry and that, you know, arguably works to his advantage.

One statistic that hasn't popped up in the SD Senate District 18 race this has nothing to do with minorities directly, but this was the race to replace Ken Armbrister. Republican district, includes Fort Bend County, chunks of DeLay's district. There was a poll I saw that was triple-X Republican primary voters three times in the last out of the last three that voted in the Republican primary.

Perry had 41 percent and Strayhorn had 31 percent. This is among three-time Republican primary voters. I would say his base is not nearly as strong as we're all presupposing; that that may be made up by a superior organization on the ground.

Mr. Smith: The last point I'd make on this is the money is really which we've talked a little bit about the money is hugely important. You know, Carole is raising money ten times to Bell's one, right? The trial lawyer money that traditionally would have gone to Democrats either aggressively or as a default is going largely to Carole. Right? So where is Bell's money to have he has no strategy, but where is Bell's money to develop a strategy?

How does he have the money to compete? He doesn't. And that's really what this is.

Mr. Ramsey: Garry Mauro raised $1-1/2 million in his race against George Bush. Decided to do a Hail Mary, if I remember correctly, it was in August. He did one TV spot, bought little time, talking about HMOs taking over health care in August, when, frankly, you got to people want to go to the beach and

Mr. Smith: Or to Colorado.

Mr. Ramsey: Yes. Yes. And he ran out of money, and that was the last you heard the last time that Garry Mauro was on television in any serious way was in a debate on Friday night that was competing with Friday night football.

Mr. Smith: And he got 28 percent against Bush. Right? Am I remembering that right 72-28?

Mr. Ramsey: I don't remember.

Dr. James Henson: Thirty-eight.

Mr. Smith: Was it 38?

Dr. James Henson: Yes.

Mr. Smith: All right. So say Mauro got 38. Am I to believe he's going to do as well as Mauro, again, in a four-person race? I just think the math is -- the math

Mr. Kronberg: You don't believe there's a flood of Kinky voters, new voters, waiting to

Mr. Smith: -- the math is destiny.

Dr. James Henson: This is the one.

Mr. Kronberg: Or you got to beat Carole for Texas.

Dr. James Henson: This time people are going to vote.

Mr. Smith: The math is destiny.

Dr. James Henson: Yes. Over here. Brian Arbor [phonetic].

Mr. Arbor: Yes. I wanted to turn back to the State House and the Senate and special session on a couple of questions about the special session. What are the chances that a school finance, a tax bill, passes? How many sessions are we going to have? Project on that. And if Craddick is going to be booted, what's that coalition going to look like? How many Republicans, how many Democrats, where are they going to come is it going to be a triumph for the moderates in the middle or some other type of coalition for that?

Mr. Kronberg: You might be surprised that I'm just going to toss a name out a Warren Chisum could be the if they I kind of you know, I may just sound like it's really possible. I just think the most likely possibility is the special session to replace Craddick.

But it could be somebody like a Warren Chisum, somebody very conservative, but that the Democrats hey, they can trust his take him at his word, that they can he honors the process. He served under Laney, ran a fair you know, all they want really is a fair process.

Mr. Smith: To the right of Craddick on some social issues.

Mr. Kronberg: Yes. Obviously. I mean

Mr. Ramsey: Sponsor of the Gay Marriage Amendment.

Mr. Kronberg: -- clearly a homophobic individual. That's fine.

Mr. Smith: I can't believe the Democrats I mean, I may just be a rookie at this, you guys, but I can't see the Democrats

Mr. Kronberg: All I'm saying is it could be a ultraconservative in that mold, as long as it's a fair process.

Mr. Smith: Have you heard the Laney story?

Mr. Kronberg: I've heard several. Which one?

Mr. Smith: The thing that some Democrat's talking about floating Laney, lame-duck Laney

Mr. Kronberg: Oh, yes, yes.

Mr. Smith: -- as an interim Speaker, as a Speaker just during the special; that the Democrats make a deal with the Republicans to have Laney be the Speaker during the special in exchange for them supporting whoever the Republicans decide they want to put up in the next session.

Mr. Ramsey: That's crazy.

Mr. Kronberg: The only reason they would do that would be just to see them take the boxes of stuff out of Craddick's office.

Mr. Ramsey: There's no chance of that happening.

Mr. Kronberg: You know, I think the chances of them passing a tax bill are probably close to, you know, like 5 percent. There's two things. You know, if the Legislature has an easy thing to do and a hard thing to do, they always do the easy thing. You know, it's just easy thing to do is to take surplus that's now estimated at 4.3 billion. The number guys in government are saying, you know, there's another 2 billion out there.

So, say, 5- to $6 billion, you can do property tax relief, satisfy the Supreme Court, get the heck out of Dodge and not vote on a tax bill. That's the easy thing. Or or you can come in and say, We're only taxing one in 16 businesses. We'd like to tax the other 15. We're going to do that without putting any more money into education, and we're going to say that we voted on a tax bill.

Now, the upside of that is that we've cut homeowners' taxes a little bit. That's a no-brainer, vote for the surplus, go home. So that's the first part. The second part, I think they can make that decision in one session. And, you know, if you put a Speaker's race together the way you know, you just saw this happen in the U.S. Congress the guy who's collecting for, like, seconds.

Or if you didn't like Tom Craddick, Tom Craddick got hit by a bus, would you vote for me? And then if you collect enough of those, you make sure Tom Craddick gets hit by a bus. And you know, it just happened, and, you know, to replace DeLay.

So, you know, if we see anything actually solid, it'll be somebody collecting seconds; or someone on someone's behalf collecting seconds, and we hear rumors and there's puffs of smoke, but hasn't really happened yet.

Dr. James Henson: That was the Ben Barnes strategy.

Mr. Kronberg: Yes. That's right.

Mr. Smith: Do you really think that if they get out of this session without putting any more money into schools, there's not going to be some kind of revolt out among the masses? I want to believe that there is, but you're probably right.

Mr. Kronberg: Yes. I don't

Mr. Ramsey: I'll tell you one of the things I'm sorry.

Dr. James Henson: And if they spend the surplus, I mean, both Perry and Strayhorn can run on the surplus on them using the surplus.

Mr. Smith: Well, and you'll see, you know, if they were to spend the surplus, it sets the table this is, you know, more government than most people want, but if they spend the surplus, it sets the table for a tax bill next January. So the subject in the late Governor's race is going to be, Promise the people of Texas you will not raise their taxes. That will be in the final. And it might be a good time not to be Speaker.

Mr. Kronberg: Right. Right.

Mr. Smith: Run, run.

Mr. Kronberg: Exactly.

Mr. Ramsey: Which was the Governor's message to Houston during the hurricane: Run for your lives.

Mr. Kronberg: I think there's one more element, though. The Governor is part of his pitch is that he wants to do the school reform reforms. I don't know if you support him, they're reforms. If you oppose them, they're, you know, Darth Vader warmed over. But what he wants to do is repitch those presuming he wins repitch those reforms in January with the teacher pay raise. That way he figures he can buy off the teachers and take the fear factor out of all those Republicans that might have hesitated increasingly hesitated to vote the reforms.

So he's got a real incentive not to spend that surplus it's not really a surplus. It's unexpended balances but he's got a real incentive to try and protect that amount of money, because that's the only way he can move his education agenda forward next January.

But I think the truth is, everybody that I talk to says, We're going to go home and explain we just raised taxes with 6-, $8 billion surplus 6- to $8 billion worth of money in the bank, and I think it's a pretty hard sell. But it is very entertaining, hearing about meetings with Perry and Sharpe going to meet legislators.

Mr. Ramsey: There's one last piece of this I forgot to add. You have the effort here is to the Republican effort here is to raise state taxes and lower local taxes, not put any more money into education. That's not going to get any Democrats' votes.

They want some more money for teachers and for other things. If somebody were to come forward and say, I want to be the Speaker. I want your second, and they go to a Democrat, because you're going to have to have about 50 or 55 Democrats to do this, you're going to have to say, And I'll split the sheets with the Governor on this school thing. I'll do the teacher thing. So there's some tension there, too.

Mr. Kronberg: There is one more element that I'd add that really is a

Mr. Ramsey: We can do asterisks all day.

Mr. Kronberg: It sounds easy. Well, let's just take the surplus and buy down property taxes. The problem is that and there's a big legal argument whether it has to be equalized. You've got poor school districts. If you reduce property taxes a little bit by a penny, Highland Park comes out like a bandit, or Alamo Heights comes out like a bandit, whereas Socorro sees almost nothing.

And a lot of these senators have poor schools, property-poor school districts

Dr. James Henson: Little issues. Right?

Mr. Ramsey: Yes. Yes. And so just working out ultimately, if it boils down to that, Scott Hochberg will essentially be the de facto Speaker, because nobody trusts the runs that are coming out of TEA. He's a House member, Democrat, that everybody looks to, to do a thumbs-up or thumbs-down on whether it's a fair plan in terms of the money really going where it's supposed to. And but that's a huge issue. It sounds like it's easy to just buy down property taxes, but you've got to do it in such a way that everybody comes out some kind of winner.

Dr. James Henson: I think with that, before we have Democratic mass suicide in the room, we're going to call it a day. Thank you, all of you Harvey, Ross, Evan for coming today. It's been a lot of fun.

Thanks to the audience for coming.