Tony Gonzalez of Current Revolt joins me to talk about the latest election drama in Texas, including the Cornyn vs Paxton race, the Beto Beto vs. Cornyn primary, and why Ted Cruz is the favorite to win the primary.
00:01:50.240He's great on policies, you know, loyal, Trump loyalist, I would say.
00:01:53.820And then Cornyn gets the nod over him. Could you maybe give us some of the inside baseball into why this is happening? And maybe specifically from the Texan point of view, why Cornyn has such an unfavorable view among Texans?
00:02:05.860yeah there's probably two reasons right uh that you can speculate on one is the biggest one which
00:02:11.460is democrats also view paxton as the least likely to win against talarico talarico james talarico
00:02:18.860is the nominee for texas senate for the democrats right and polling is consistently shown and this
00:02:24.720is all polling is consistently shown that when it's a paxton ken paxton versus james talarico
00:02:30.400matchup ken paxton performs the worst versus compared to like a john cornyn right so not only
00:02:36.580are like conservatives and like right-wing people supporting ken paxton but democrats want ken paxton
00:02:42.320to win right they view him as the weaker one so maybe trump sees maybe the long-term game on this
00:02:47.460right and the risk associated with that race uh and then additionally you know cornyn is currently
00:02:52.880the nominee he's the you know sorry the incumbent and it could be a situation where the votes are
00:02:59.760really tight right now. We don't have enough of a majority to get what we want done in Congress
00:03:04.560and in the Senate. And Trump really needs that Cornyn support to get certain things passed.
00:03:11.060That makes that makes a lot of sense. I mean, because Trump, obviously, I think in his he
00:03:15.120hasn't endorsed Volblow and endorsed Cornyn, if I'm correct, but he basically says something along
00:03:18.740the lines of like, I endorse people with a winning record. And he's basically saying he's going to
00:03:23.280endorse the incumbent. I mean, for like a better word, you could read between the lines a little
00:03:26.160bit. And I imagine that endorsement would be coming soon. To your point, I mean, that's a bit
00:03:32.440alarming, I would say, for the Texas GOP, that they're actually having to make calculations on
00:03:36.120who they run, because the state's gotten that tight electorally. And I, you know, I remember
00:03:40.740during the Beto run, you know, conservative media was mocking them, you know, routinely. But a lot
00:03:46.380of the Texan politicos were saying, like, hey, I don't think you realize, you know, the demographics
00:03:50.880in this state have changed, right? And things here, this isn't, you know, deep ruby red like
00:03:56.400it used to be. Obviously, you know, Beto got beat pretty considerably, but it's getting tighter and
00:04:02.000tighter. And that is, to me, a bit sad that we can't just run a Ken Paxton and know that he's
00:04:07.160going to be a shoo-in. Yeah, and it's even worse than that. So we just had our Republican, or our
00:04:12.680primaries, we just had our statewide primaries. And the numbers, the totals finally came out,
00:04:17.780and more Democrats voted in the primary than Republicans. And this is the first time it's
00:04:24.300happened in a very long time, by 100,000. So again, you have 100,000 more Democrats in the
00:04:31.540state of Texas turning out to vote than Republicans. If those numbers maintain,
00:04:36.440that is not good for the state of Texas as far as Republicans go.
00:04:40.840Absolutely. And when you were on the show, I think it was the show I was hosting, actually,
00:04:44.560you were on. I made this point, and this like always triggers people in the audience because
00:04:50.180they don't like to hear it, but it's just the reality on the situation is because the narrative,
00:04:55.000not just among Texans, but among like red state people in general, people that reside in red
00:04:58.740states is, well, you know, the natives of the state are great and super conservative. It's
00:05:03.000these out of state transplants are the ones that are like really, you know, screwing things up for
00:05:07.180us politically. But that's just never reflected in data. And there's a handful of states where
00:05:12.120that might be true. Like I think North Carolina, that probably is true. But if you look at Texas,
00:05:16.660if you look at Florida, it's the people out of state that are actually voting Republican.
00:05:21.160It's the natives, specifically in Texas, the natives. And this data point I always cite,
00:05:25.700and you might have some other data, is from the Cruz-Beta race and the exit polling. And it
00:05:30.200indicated, not just an exit polling and follow-up polls, that those who said I was not born in
00:05:35.380Texas voted 55-45 for Cruz. And then those that say I'm a native-born Texan voted 55-45 for
00:05:41.860Beto. So obviously that would indicate that no, someone that's leaving California, making the
00:05:47.120decision to leave California is leaving because they're a conservative. They're not like leaving
00:05:50.620just to ruin another state. Like that's the narrative. And I'm sure there are people that
00:05:53.520operate like that specifically the ones moving to Austin. But the vast majority of these guys are
00:05:57.540just like, yeah, you know, I left California for a reason. So I'm going to vote for the leadership
00:06:03.640that's made the state viable for me to move my family to. Right. You're 100% right. So yeah,
00:06:09.460you've seen that across the board is whereas texan natives are voting democrat and a lot
00:06:14.120of people forget texan texas as a state has only been a red state for i think like 30 40 years not
00:06:19.480very long on the grand scheme of things so it just recently became a republican state um but yeah you
00:06:25.140have a lot of texas immigrants to texas right uh people from california new york illinois coming
00:06:31.520and they're realizing why they left and they are voting red uh so that's good right but the texas
00:06:36.920natives are voting Democrat. And so, yeah, we have a huge problem. Additionally, you know,
00:06:41.400the state just redrew its districts, which was a huge deal. And a lot of that redrawing was based
00:06:46.680off the previous fact that Hispanics had kind of started to lean right. Unfortunately, the Hispanics
00:06:55.320leaned right in the earlier elections, and now they're going back left. Yeah. And that redrawing
00:07:01.640was based off of the Hispanics. So now it's looking like, man, this maybe was not a good
00:07:07.300idea. Do you think there's, there's so many different narratives on the Hispanic conservative
00:07:12.540shift. Um, I think that, I think the number one would be, do you think it was just primarily a
00:07:16.940Trump thing? Like they just wanted to vote for Trump, but they're not Republicans yet. I mean,
00:07:20.960that kind of seems to be the obvious explanation there. Yeah. Well, like with any minority,
00:07:26.000right? Like Hispanics, blacks, whatever it is, they're very tribal, right? So it's all about
00:07:30.940protecting their own their own tribe and this is to say so like the so yeah to your point like
00:07:36.940the the support for trump was huge for hispanics they like the machismo attitude they like
00:07:41.320the aggressiveness they like that and hispanics generally are are generally pro-life uh they don't
00:07:47.320like the the gay trans stuff and so that was the support for trump but you know they have that
00:07:53.240asterisk where well i'm right wing except when it comes to like maybe deporting you know relatives
00:07:59.060or something like that and so you know this the these ice lockdowns which are phenomenal by the
00:08:03.720way these ice raids and yeah these deportations which are really good and the country needs a
00:08:07.560war of actually Hispanics that were maybe slightly leaning towards Trump are now like well hey you're
00:08:13.700deporting my cousin or you're supporting a friend of a friend right and they they don't like that
00:08:17.720you've seen a lot of this drama happening especially in the RGV the the the borderline
00:08:23.160the southern borderline of Texas where the Hispanics that were previously for Trump they're
00:08:27.340seeing all these deportations happen and they're like well maybe i'll vote for the democrat this
00:08:31.140time around and it's not good well and as i understand it i went i went to high school in
00:08:36.280the san antonio area so i am like a slightly familiar with sort of the dynamics especially
00:08:40.460in the rgv um because you know so many people from the rgv moved to san antonio um hey ontario
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00:18:14.260I mean, with Cornyn, I guess Tallarico is considered such a potentially dangerous figure that it is worth just –
00:18:22.260and I think someone made the point they're kind of gaming out why Trump would endorse Cornyn.
00:18:26.420I personally think it's just because he's bad at endorsements.
00:18:29.140I don't think there's any extra game going on here.
00:18:31.620But some people were saying, well, with the Paxton fiasco where he said, like, hey, I'll drop out if we get the Save Act passed.
00:18:37.860I respect that. I think that's noble. I like that a lot. And so people are speculating, well, maybe that's why Trump endorsed Cornyn is to get the Save Act across the finish line. And again, he knows that Cornyn is probably more of a shoe in in the general election. Do you think there's anything to that? Or do you think it's with my kind of initial assessment that I think he's just kind of bad at endorsements and Cornyn is probably just nice to him when they see him see each other?
00:19:00.000i think it's a mix of all of it right like you got we got to remember that trump endorsed tony
00:19:04.180gonzalez right like talk about bad endorsements trump love him or hate him he's horrible at
00:19:09.580endorsements right he's not good and the fact of the matter is like his endorsements at least in
00:19:14.580texas are meaning a lot less he endorsed uh sid miller the ag commissioner here and sid miller
00:19:19.960lost yeah okay so a lot of trump's endorsements actually lost versus governor greg abbott's
00:19:25.320endorsements. Um, so yeah, you're, you're seeing this, this change in, in, in how Trump's
00:19:31.240endorsements are perceived. And yeah, I think it's a combination of Trump's batted endorsements
00:19:34.980and also, you know, calculating who can be, who can we, who can win against Tallarico.
00:19:39.780Tallarico is a far left Democrat, like super, super far left, but, uh, he's perceived by normies
00:19:48.300as a moderate democrat he talks very slow very gentle he's a christian he's a pastor he like
00:19:57.380all this stuff and to normies who just view him as his interviews i mean he was even on
00:20:01.360the joe rogan show yeah podcast to normies that see that they're like okay this is a guy who's
00:20:07.140moderate he's a democrat but you know he's not as far right as trump i might consider voting for him
00:20:11.740and but to people that actually know a little bit about him like you and i and your listeners
00:20:16.500we know that this guy's a far left democrat sure um and so the party itself and others need to do
00:20:21.900a better job of bringing out that far left rhetoric that tallarico has said in the past
00:20:26.660to let people know who he actually is i mean because it's it's not hard to see someone like
00:20:33.040him slipping through because again everyone in georgia that georgia senate race a few years ago
00:20:37.420and everyone was thinking the same thing like well you know okay it's still a red state you know just
00:20:41.200because the democrats are um you know ascendant it's still a red state you know what are you
00:20:45.300going to do it's georgia then ossoff and warnock your two senators so it's like not hard to see a
00:20:50.300situation in texas where just you know corn or paxton you know like to your point i mean if
00:20:54.600paxton gets in you know a few hit pieces talarico gets a few more slam dunk interviews we're looking
00:21:00.380at a talarico senator you know senator from texas uh james talarico yeah i i anticipate if ken
00:21:06.080paxton wins this runoff and it's a paxton versus talarico race that the democrats are going to hit
00:21:11.360packs an incredibly hard on affairs and scandals and money issues and staffing issues and um you
00:21:18.760know normies don't like that stuff they you know we we people like us we can we can look past maybe
00:21:25.700the affairs um me personally i can't but we can look past the multiple affairs to justify voting
00:21:31.080for somebody who's going to vote a certain way that we need but a normie may view it as like
00:21:36.840a character issue. They're like, well, you know, I really can't get behind this. You know,
00:21:40.880I can't support this. And they may end up flipping for Tallarico. And so this is a very
00:21:45.120serious problem. And unfortunately, the turnout also has massive ramifications for the down
00:21:51.720ballot. Democrats voting just because there's a Senate race, they're going to turn out and vote
00:21:55.480Democrat for the entire ballot down ballot. And so those have big ramifications for Texas
00:22:00.360all across the state. Do you think this is kind of interesting? I guess this is kind of old news
00:22:06.360in a way but i'm just curious what your thoughts were because again you would have the inside scoop
00:22:09.580here with the whole colbert tallarico situation we you know what happened like tim cast we covered
00:22:15.760it extensively i mean tim like an hour on it it was pretty crazy but my question would be do you
00:22:20.660think that that was the texas democrats like terrified of jazz like their internal polling
00:22:25.100was saying jasmine crockett is like toxic let's keep her off the ballot or do you think that was
00:22:29.520just you know tallarico and colbert are boys like what do you think specifically was the motivation
00:22:33.480Because it does seem like it was an electoral play in that primary, and obviously it worked.
00:22:39.080Yeah, I think maybe a little bit of both, right?
00:22:42.020Like the whole thing was kind of a setup.
00:22:44.100I do think that maybe the Democrat leaders in charge or whatever would maybe viewed Crockett as a worse candidate, because she is.
00:22:55.260And so, yeah, they were definitely pushing for Tallarico.
00:22:57.500And I think Democrats, you know, we had a special election here in in the Dallas area where a it was a plus 17 Republican district and a Democrat won it.
00:23:08.940So that's huge. A Democrat won a plus 17 Republican district over a Republican.
00:23:15.580So the Democrat won that. And the guy who won the Democrat is a normal looking white dude.
00:23:21.420Yeah. Decent looking white guy. Looks like he goes to the gym. Right.
00:23:24.160And now you've got Tallarico, who's another white guy. I really feel that the Democrats have finally woken up and realized, like, we need to run normal looking people to win races. You can't run these trans or freaks or outlandish people because they're just not going to win. And so I think they figured that out. And Tallarico's a, at least facing, he's a normal looking white guy.
00:23:44.840Yeah, exactly. And the Republicans are going the other direction. Like, Virginia, everyone's so pissed about Spanberger, as they should be. And it's like, well, you ran a diversity candidate. I mean, she's from Jamaica. Like, what are we doing here? And it's all because she just had like a photo shoot with a gun. And they're like, oh, wow, this is like finally a black woman that gets it. Like, what are we doing?
00:24:05.520Meanwhile, that's Youngkin's secret is Youngkin just was reflective of the largest group in America, which is white men.
00:24:15.260The majority of voters, for the record, are white people and white men.
00:24:20.660Just run people that look like them, and you might actually win decisively.
00:24:24.560And the Democrats finally figured it out.
00:24:26.400Granted, I think it's because they ran Kamala.
00:24:27.660There was that tweet after Kamala lost where it was the picture of all the frat bros in a line, and they're like, here's every Democrat candidate going forward.
00:24:33.920yeah and that's that's i think they figured out and the republican party like you said is kind of
00:24:38.380swung the other way i mean like look like you have a lot of really weird candidates running
00:24:42.440in the republican party like valentina gomez um love her for what she does maybe and whatever
00:24:47.700her rhetoric but she's a horrible candidate like barely speaks english horrible accent
00:24:52.760yeah not even from texas ran ran and didn't even make a runoff like had a horrible performance
00:24:59.360right um so you've got a lot of these and again going back to the republican party chairman you've
00:25:05.100got a guy who wasn't born in america has a incredibly thick indian accent and you know
00:25:11.020now look where the state is look at the state where we're at right and so yeah you've got a
00:25:15.440problem where like maybe the democrats have figured out we've got to run decent looking normal
00:25:19.440normal people to run and the republican party's like well you know we'll win over all these
00:25:24.260minority votes by by getting in all these strange people and yeah and strange outliers to run and
00:25:30.520maybe that'll get us votes and um clearly it's not working yeah like let's just go down to costco and
00:25:35.200like pluck people out at random and then we'll run them for office what are we doing here because
00:25:39.580like trump ran up the numbers with hispanic and did very well with black voters i'm not saying
00:25:44.480that should be the objective but it's like great if they're gonna vote for us that's sick what did
00:25:48.140trump do he didn't really do anything he kind of just like plowed forward because if anything 2024
00:25:53.460was this campaign where he pandered the least and that's where he like ran up the numbers with them
00:25:58.960so it's like you don't even need to do that the democrats realize this they're like look whether
00:26:02.920it's crockett or talarico like these groups are client like client voters they're going to vote
00:26:07.200for us no matter what and then they can i guess ballot harvest to make up the difference if they're
00:26:10.960going to fall short so they realize that but the republicans are like let's maybe if we run a
00:26:15.460trans black guy but he has a gun then you know maybe they'll finally vote for us and i think of
00:26:22.240I think a lot of, I think it's keeping a lot of people home.
00:26:24.780I mean, I do think that the majority of Texans would probably be like, of course I want Paxton
00:26:29.280over Cornyn, but a lot of those people are just disengaged.
00:26:31.900They're kind of demoralized to an extent.
00:26:33.980They're really just fixated on what's happening in the White House, and they're just not particularly
00:26:37.620interested in, you know, what a senator could possibly offer for them, or certainly what
00:26:42.500their local candidates could possibly offer.
00:26:45.000I mean, that's why I think people like you, that your work's so essential, because it's
00:27:15.620but the guy who's the mayor of your city or the people on your school board have a huge effect
00:27:21.280on your taxes as a business owner or a homeowner or even a renter in the city you live in. So yeah,
00:27:27.480a lot of people aren't paying attention to this local stuff, and maybe that's why they're not
00:27:31.380turning out to vote. The Republican Party as a whole needs to do better about getting that
00:27:36.920messaging out so that Republicans don't just turn out every once in a while in an election to vote
00:27:43.460in a very popular Senate race, but they actually turn out to vote in their municipal elections or
00:27:48.420school board elections and things like that. This is all grim, obviously. Are there any white
00:27:54.460pills you would have for any Texans watching? Are there any indications that in some ways things
00:27:59.060are moving in the right direction? Or do you think on the whole, it's like alarm bells going off?
00:28:03.560There's some good indications or good elections that we have. We got Dan Crenshaw out of office.
00:28:09.640We got Steve Toth in there, and Toth is a phenomenal former statehouse rep, and now he's going to be in office there.
00:28:16.780Sid Miller, love the guy, funny, cool, stereotypical Texas-looking guy, but he wasn't doing a great job.
00:28:24.840The ag commissioner, which controls – for a lot of people that don't know, the ag commissioner controls the farming, the livestock, everything that's really, really important in Texas.
00:28:33.780And we got Nate Sheets in there. Nate Sheets is a phenomenal candidate, former business owner who is incredibly intelligent. He's going to do a lot for the state of Texas and the economy. So we've got those races. Don Huffines won for Texas Comptroller. So the Comptroller position is a really, really big deal here in the state. And you've got Don Huffines in there. And so he's going to do a really great job.
00:28:57.160So yeah, we've got a lot of good wins in here. People are paying attention to specific races. But I think what really the party needs to focus on is turnout, getting actual other Republicans that don't normally vote actually out from their homes and to the ballot box to vote.
00:29:12.060yeah because that was so interesting to me that you said there was uh the democrats at the edge
00:29:15.800and primary voting because i did look under the hood and that republican register i mean there's
00:29:19.600far more republicans registered than the democrats i mean obviously the gap's probably tightening up
00:29:23.380i would imagine but if we just had the same apparatus that they had i'm not even saying
00:29:28.120like we need to do the middle of the night mail mail mail uh with the drop boxes or whatever but
00:29:33.100like if we just had an apparatus where we could go to these suburbs just knock on a few doors and
00:29:37.480say i don't know like are you take are you gonna go vote no okay do you want me to do it for you