In the February 8 episode, Senator-Elect Taylor Rehmet discusses whether he thinks other Texas Democrats can duplicate his success in a special election and how his Republican family reacted to his shocking upset. Dallas County DA John Creuzot tells us if he’s prepared to prosecute federal agents if he thinks they broke the law. And state Rep. Gene Wu on why Democrats can’t get overconfident following the party’s SD 9 win and whether he wants to lead House Democrats anymore.
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Straight ahead,
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if you give about this country, then get off
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your. The top Democrat in the Texas House, raw, emotional, and fired up. Gene Wu on what he says is at stake and what his party must do heading into the midterms. Can Texas prosecutors go after federal agents who break the law? Dallas County DA John Creuzot in studio after joining prosecutors from across the country, pushing back against what they call federal overreach.
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Plus that shocker in a solid red Texas district. Taylor Rehmet on his stunning win, the message Democrats say that flipped the script and what he plans to do now in the Texas Senate. And dirty politics among Democrats, something we don't often see in Texas. We'll talk about what happened with James Talarico, Colin Allred, and Jasmine Crockett.
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Inside Texas Politics with Jason Whitely starts now. Thank you for joining us. Let's begin with the headlines, as always here. It is rare, but it was bound to happen. Texas Democrats now attacking each other just before early voting. A PAC supporting James Talarico says Republicans are secretly behind Jasmine Crockett since polls show they might be able to defeat her in November. Separately, Talarico allegedly called Colin Allred mediocre.
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Talarico denies calling him that about his race, but Allred responded with an unusual video during a workout telling Talarico to keep Allred's name out of his mouth. Governor Abbott delayed it for almost a year, but Houston finally got to elect someone to replace the late Sylvester Turner in Congress. Christian Menefee defeated former Houston council member Amanda Edwards in the special election. That district had gone without representation for 330 days.
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Abbott could have called the election much sooner, but put it off for months, helping Republicans keep their razor thin majority in Congress. And another indication of the Republican Party's evolving position on guns. Jeanine Pirro, the Republican US attorney for Washington DC, threatened jail time for anyone who enters DC with a gun. She later walked that back, saying you must first register with DC police.
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But Trump and his administration also criticized Alex Preddy for unlawfully carrying a gun in Minneapolis, all this notable, of course, because the GOP has long supported the Second Amendment. Let's begin right now though with that stunning victory in Tarrant County. Republicans shell shocked this past week, pointing fingers at each other after an unknown Democrat defeated a well-financed conservative that Donald Trump even endorsed. How did he do it and what can Democrats learn from it?
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Taylor Rehmet, senator-elect for District 9, is our first guest. Senator-elect, it's good to see you here. Congratulations uh on the win as well. Let's start out and kinda lay the groundwork for our viewers here. You, you are a machinist, a union president, an Air Force veteran who still talks like a, uh, a shop floor guy, not necessarily a polished politician.
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But how much of your win do you credit to your actual policies versus identity politics and people being able to relate to you?
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Well, I, I still talk like a guy on the shop floor because I am. And being that I'm going from the shop floor to the Senate floor, I'm gonna carry those issues of working people with me. So, it's not just about my background, but it's also about the stuff that I live daily about these uh affordability issues, lowering costs that need to be championed.
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I read that you grew up as a Republican in a blue-collar family. Uh, are, is your family still Republican?
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They are. Yeah, we don't agree on everything, but I mean, we find what we can agree on. That's again, my, my campaign is more based in unity, because we won't agree on everything. No one does. But if we find what we can agree on, I mean, if, if you don't mind, it's really about community, right? And it doesn't matter if you're a Republican or a Democrat, we all live in this community. We all live in Senate District 9. I remember the first community I recognized was whenever I was a young kid.
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I, my mom, I was, uh, uh, did hair and nails at a salon local, and I, if I wasn't at school, I'd be in that salon. I saw how everyone was friendly, there, you know, didn't really talk about politics. They just asked how, how you were doing and, uh, you know, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up.
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Why not get into social issues, identity politics, I mean, fear sells, and both parties know that very well. Why, why not take that avenue at all?
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I have no doubt that it sells, but what I'm selling is solutions, and I have no business getting into the, the, the nitty gritty of these things that distract from whenever, cause here's the thing, it's, first off, it's not in my nature, not how my parents raised me.
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I swore that I would focus on the issues, and when I'm on the campaign trail, and I have people telling me, coming up to me saying, There's people deciding between medicine and rent or medicine and food. That's what's really hurting us here. People are already afraid. Things aren't getting any better. People are not having the same buying power. We're having, uh, affordability issues.
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And so if, why would I betray the people that elected me by sticking to and not sticking to my message whenever, you know, that's what they elected me for. They don't want the campaigns of outrage. I wanted my campaign to be a place of resolve and be someone people can count on.
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Texas Democrats want to replicate your win, uh, in districts all across the state. Can they do that? Is this win transferrable at all?
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I, I can only speak to my district and my, and what I did. I would say that, do they want to do the work? Because if they do, of course there's a chance. They have the same opportunity I did. People told me all the time it couldn't be done, you can't do it. And I said, well, my issues are, are, you know, the issues that I'm championing are focused on everyone. And if I can build that trust and it's by doing the work. I knew I could do this, and they can too if they're, if they're willing to do the work.
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Senator-elect, it's good to see you. Congratulations again.
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Thank you so much for having me.
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The turnout in this race is telling, and Republican researcher Ross Hunt took it apart for us in this week's episode of Y'all-litics, which voters showed up, which ones did not, and what it says about November. This episode of Yolitics ready to download right now wherever you get your podcasts. All right, let's bring in the roundtable now to talk about the politics of this. Bud Kennedy is here from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Abby Livingston with us, the PU News congressional correspondent, and Ashley Goode, political director at KVUE in Austin. Bud, let's start with you.
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You, you know the district very well. We just heard from a plain spoken regular guy. It's something a lot of folks don't hear from these days, but voters elected him. How big of a deal is this win?
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Well, and you see he looks like he'd be a maybe a high school woodshop teacher or something, but you know don't shorts sheet because if you have the savvy to get elected as union president or union leader, then you've got some political knowledge you've got some skill, you know what happened here, he's such a blank slate as you see people made him into.
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Whatever they wanted him to be like a Rorschach test, they mainly they made him into a vote against Donald Trump, against Lee Wambsganss, against the changes in public education, against the things they didn't like to see, against the immigration enforcement, against the things they didn't like to see in District
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9. And one of the things, Abby, that, that Ross Hunt told us is that Latinos turned out for him. Does this forebode, or does this, does this, you know, give us an idea of which way Latinos could go come November?
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We're seeing a drift from the Latino community across the board across the country and a lot of the odd elections we've had in the last year and so the pattern that we're seeing from uh Mexican Americans in Fort Worth and other communities is matching what we're seeing among Cubans in South Florida, uh, Hispanics in New Jersey across the country.
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And then Ashley, the the big question Democrats have is how in the world can they bottle that up and take it to other districts across the state? Can they replicate that win?
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I mean it's for anyone to see, right, and we're gonna see this very race again come November. And so I think they have to realize and Democrats have to realize that they're gonna have to do strong messaging. They're gonna have to get out. They're gonna have to, to work to earn those votes. I mean, I think you cannot deny that the fact that the. Latino vote really did a lot to carry this win and so you're going to have to actually get out, court your voters and get that message out to them to tell them why you think you're the better alternative and
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that was his message to his fellow colleagues in the Democratic Party guys, back to you in just a moment. A lot more ahead here including this. When we come back, Dallas County DA John Creuzot with a message to federal agents break the law and face prosecution. He takes our questions though on whether that's even possible legally. And the top Democrat in the Texas House gets fired up during our interview.
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Inside Texas politics back in a moment. All right, now to an interesting legal and political question. Can local prosecutors charge federal agents who break the law? What happens if the federal government doesn't cooperate? Well, a group of prosecutors from across the country just joined forces, and Dallas County DA John Creuzot is one of them wanting to answer this question. Judge, let me start with this here. Are you prepared to prosecute federal agents if you think they broke the law?
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If I, if I have enough evidence, yes.
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Do you think they broke the law in Minneapolis based on what you've seen?
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Based on what I've seen and what the administration said happened, those, they don't appear to be aligned very well at all, OK? And based on what I've seen, I think there's a possibility that there was a crime committed.
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Uh, have your colleagues in Minneapolis or Los Angeles, where we've also seen a lot of aggressive behavior from federal agents, have they talked about local charges or state charges?
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Uh, there's talk about it, yes, but right now there's no cooperation. We would prefer to have cooperation
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and you need cooperation to see the evidence and to interview witnesses,
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interview witnesses, get the witnesses' names, get the covers off their faces, learn who they are, who was in what position. And things like that. But, but
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if you don't get that, I mean, would a, would a case really go anywhere?
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I think it, you know, that's, that's an interesting point. So some of us were talking about that. Do we have enough or would there be enough based on what you saw? So let's take the young man, the nurse on the street, OK? Clearly the gun has been taken away from him, all right. And clearly his hands are out and down and not in a threatening position. Somebody shoots him once and then multiple shots go off.
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Yes, I think that a plausible case could be made that that's a homicide, that's a murder, OK? The other woman, uh, when it's slowed down, and actually we know this because of your profession and slowing down all of these videos, OK, so when you see that the car is turning to the right, the officer's already crossed in front of the car and it's actually got a foot or two between him and the car and shoots into the car and kills her.
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So I think there's enough to go forward. Would we want to go forward without all that other evidence? No, of course not.
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If federal authorities declined to cooperate, what leverage would you or any other county prosecutor have to bring state? Charges against a federal agent.
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Well, we could issue subpoenas, but then they would have a superior right and they could come in and quash the subpoenas, so it wouldn't do a whole lot of good. But once again I want to remind you who's the ME work for, not for the federal medical examiner works for the county or the state and who does the crime scene, local police or sheriffs, OK, or maybe a state investigative agency.
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So there's a lot of evidence and then all of the video is available, OK, and the people who took the the video presumably would be available so you could put together a case and then what you would have you, you would indict that person and that person would have to come to to state court to go to trial. Now there may be some I've I've seen where there's some law that maybe they can have her removed to a uh federal court, but I think that would be.
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Uh, a long shot and I think that they'd wind up in state court,
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so they might be able to quash the subpoena because of uh being employed by the federal government, federal government, they can't stop an indictment and the grand jury gives it to you. No, OK, Judge, good to see you again. Thanks for the
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time. Absolutely, thank you. Appreciate it. Appreciate you.
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Texas Democrats spent the last week looking closely at Tarrant County. Can they replicate Taylor Rehmet'ss surprise win there? Our next guest is the top Democrat in the Texas House, Jean Wu, who is raw, emotional, and fired up in this. Interview. Representative, good to see you again here. Let's start with a stunning victory in state Senate District number 9 in North Texas here. Democrat Taylor Rehmet crushed the conservative.
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How do you know or how do Democrats know this is anything more than just a one-off in a special election?
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You know what, um, what I've been telling people when they come ask me what the temperature is and what the numbers are, um, and I say, you know what, I don't know. And even if I do, I'm not gonna say because we all need to run like we're 30 points down and our lives depend on it because it does. Um, I don't want any Democrat who's watching this to get too confident that, hey, you know, this is, this is a sign, this is what we're looking for.
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This is like for sure, this is what, what's gonna happen. Like, no, we're, we're gonna keep working like we're underwater, um, and we need to, we just need to fight even
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harder. Early priorities for Texas Republicans, things like preventing Sharia law in Texas, they say more property tax cuts. What are Democratic priorities right now in the interim?
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Democratic priorities have been what they always have been and what they always should be is jobs, education, healthcare. What happens to ordinary people who do not have lobbyists, who do not have billions to throw at people, who do not have hundreds of millions to donate to political campaigns? What did they do? And I think this is what we're focused on.
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If you look at what we've been working on, we've been working on the free speech of Americans about what we get to do. We've been working on food insecurity and the cost of living and the cost of of groceries and all those things about healthcare. We put on committees to talk about what are we going to do when the insurance market collapses across the nation. What happens to all those people who are going to not be able to afford a tripling, a quadrupling of their ACA costs. Right?
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That's what we've been working on nonstop. We've been talking about how do, how do we help farmers, how do we help ranchers when, when the immigration raids are causing all this chaos? How do we repair relationships with our foreign neighbors, our greatest trading partners? How do we sell Texas back to a to a world that hates us now? It cannot fall solely on Democrats. This is a fight for all Americans, up and down. I don't care if you're a Democrat.
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I don't care if you're a Republican or nothing at all. If you give about this country. Then get off your There's just, there's no time to say like, I'll do it tomorrow, I'll do it the next day, and I'll do it the next week. It is now.
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Let me ask about last year's Quorum break. Have you paid your $9200 fine yet?
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I have not And we're still waiting on that finalization, and many members have said we will simply accept the punishment that they give us for not paying it. We simply will not pay it out of principle and what I have. I have not made that decision yet. Look, right now, I mean, it's all still punishment. All this is done.
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So if you want to know how vindictive, how political, how nasty this is, everything is done here. The maps are passed. It's gone to the Supreme Court. Everything is done. Governor Abbott is still trying to remove me from office,
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but, but to make sure I'm clear, where, where do things stand with the governor's attempt to remove you from office? Where, where does that stand right now?
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We don't know. It's still slowing out pending there
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for
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the Supreme
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Court.
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It's still pending before the Supreme Court, and it's still, it, it's still costing us attorney hours.
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Representative, always great to see you. Thank you for the time. Appreciate it. The roundtable is ready when we come back here on Inside Texas Politics. All right, back now with the roundtable to put the headlines in perspective. Bud, Abby, and Ashley all back with us here. Abby, let's start with you, and that huge blow up. James Talarico, Colin Allred, Jasmine Crockett, as we said at the beginning of the program, we don't often see this infighting from Texas Democrats. There usually aren't enough candidates to fight each other, but wow, what a week.
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So that you're exactly on point there. We haven't seen this kind of well funded Democratic competitive primary for a Senate race. I, I think for most of my adult life at least. And so this is a nomination worth fighting for. I think the two problems for Democrats of what's happened this week on the Internet is one, Colin Albright's entrance into it to criticize Talarico, slowed down momentum coming out of the weekend from Fort Worth that Democrats.
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For feeling really good about Texas and uh the other issue is can the eventual nominee bring this party together given how personal this infighting is getting?
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And two great questions. I'll let you answer those, Ashley. What, what do you think here at the end of the day, uh, we saw Colin Allred in his response video on his workout bench that we have not seen before. I mean, some people said it's, it was an intimidating video towards James Talarico. What, what do you make of this Colin Allred?
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Well, look, I think, uh, a couple of things about the Colin Allred thing. I think number one, if Colin Allred never does the video, most of us probably don't end up even talking about this. I don't know. Didn't, I'm not, it's no disrespect to the, the Tik Toker who put this out there, but I, I'm not familiar with her up until this point. I didn't follow her. I didn't see anything about, you know, this headline until it became something that all red.
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Responded to I can understand though his concern about being called or running a mediocre campaign, right? So we, we're hearing different things, right? You have one side that says, oh, Tyler Rico called him mediocre and Tyler Rico's campaign saying no, I refer to his campaign as mediocre. Regardless, it's problematic, but has all the numbers and he can back me up on this. Colin Allred was not running a mediocre campaign. He was polling very well. He was the nominee, uh, for this race before.
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And so if you're out there and you're calling someone mediocre when you don't have name recognition, then that kind of talks about, you know, I think you're being a little tone deaf to what voters are doing and voters are saying.
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But though it felt to me watching the video that Colin Allred said in response to James Talarico talking to this Tik Toker about this mediocre campaign, it felt. This felt personal here that all red might still be sore over having to leave the US Senate race and join this congressional race.
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I think it is personal, Jason. I think that all red was undercut in this race. He had 5 million votes last session, last cycle. He had to run against a ticket with Donald Trump on top and not in a midterm election like Beto O'Rourke. He had the best poll numbers against Cornyn or. Paxton and he got shoved out by Talarico who started a year ago trying to push him out of the race.
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I think it is still personal, but I think that this hurt the ticket overall, and Talarico now has to try to rally the rest of the party to support down ballot races. The key is he's more likely to help down ballot Democrats than Jasmine Crockett, and that's what the party is pushing for
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And Abby, let me ask you on this issue here though, does Does this help, does this help any of the Democrats? I mean, you, you, you framed it very well earlier saying, listen, this, this could damage the entire party after they had this big Taylor Rehmet win. Does this help anybody?
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I think this is a tough place for the Texas Democratic Party to be, but the good part about it for them is that this primary is the first in the country. It's in March, and there's a time for wounds to be healed, but we've never seen this kind of, uh, contention in a Texas Senate race, so I, and often in. Any race, and so, uh, I, I think this is an ongoing experiment. Yeah,
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some time to be healed. We'll wait and see what
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happens. Jason, I will say, the last time I remember it was Ann Richards and Jim Maddox. Ann Richards did win.
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Wow, guys, thanks so much for the context. We appreciate that. Thank you for watching as well. We're back next Sunday.