In the September 14 episode, state Representative James Talarico explains why he entered the race for U.S. Senate, shaking everything up. Harris County Commissioner Lesley Briones tells us about the savings she found in the budget before asking residents to pay more. And Congressman Roger Williams reveals whether he sees signs of a weakening economy as chair of the House Small Business Committee. GUESTS James Talarico, D-Candidate for U.S. Senate Commissioner Lesley Briones, D-Harris County Precinct 4 U.S. Rep. Roger Williams, R-25th District
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The next US Senator from Texas, James Tallarico. Straight ahead here, the shakeup in the race for US Senate. State Rep James Tallarico launched his campaign, changing the dynamic for Democrats. Car sales down 9% across the state are the indications of a weakening economy. Congressman Roger Williams, chair of the House Small Business Committee, with us from DC on what he wants to see happen.
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For the first time in 16 years, Plano is raising property taxes. We'll explain why city leaders say it is necessary. Clearing up confusion in Harris County is the county budget really out of the red? Commissioner Leslie Brionis on the millions saved and what the upcoming vote now means for residents. And Governor Abbott's approval rating at an all-time low, plus two other interesting takeaways from a brand new survey.
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Inside Texas Politics with Jason Whiteley starts now. Welcome to our program here. I'm Jason Whiteley. Let's begin the program, as always, with the latest political headlines across the state. A brand new survey out by the Texas Politics Project at UT Austin has 3 interesting takeaways. First, Governor Abbott's approval rating at an all-time low. 50% of Texans now disapprove of his work as governor.
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Second, almost half of Texans polled disapprove of Republicans redrawing congressional lines to help President Trump keep control of Congress next year. And finally, almost half of those surveyed now want an independent commission to do that in the future. For the first time in 16 years, Plano is raising property taxes. Its new budget, almost $800 million and to pay for that, residents will now see an additional 2 cents for every $100 that their property is worth.
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Plano said increased costs and slowing growth led to this unanimous decision by city council. And we're watching a growing movement inside the GOP to legalize recreational marijuana. Republicans have railed against weed for more than 50 years, but MAGA does not subscribe to that. Sarah Stagner, a Republican DA from West Texas, smoked a joint on TikTok last month. And a conservative radio host from Houston says weed could increase jobs, help veterans, and fight drug cartels.
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Despite lawmakers trying to outlaw low amounts of THC in Texas, Governor Abbott signed an executive order this week making it unlawful for anyone under 21 to possess it. Let's begin right now though with the biggest political race in Texas next year, the US Senate seat currently held by John Cornyn. Ken Paxton is challenging him on the right, but news that state Rep James Tallarico is in the race now changes the dynamic for Democrats.
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Hours after announcing his candidacy, we reached Tallarico in Round Rock. Representative Tallarico, congratulations on your candidacy. Let's start with the basics here. There's already a high profile Democrat in this race. Texas remains a solid red state here. Where do you see a path to victory?
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Well, you know, I first got elected to the state house by flipping a district that no one thought was winnable. I was an underdog in that race, and I'm an underdog in this race, both in the primary and the general. And honestly, I love being an underdog because it. It means there's an opportunity to try different things and to break outside the mold and to speak truth to power both in my party and and when it comes to the other party.
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And so I'm, I'm looking forward to running this underdog campaign. And my life has shown me, um, whether it was as a middle school teacher on the west side of San Antonio or as the son of a single mom, you should always bet on the underdogs. And so that's, that's the kind of ethos that I'm bringing to this campaign.
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You first have to win the Democratic, uh, primary, and you'll be up against, uh, former congressman Colin Allred. You haven't focused on him in the early hours of your race. You're talking more about billionaires, but what should voters expect? Is this going to be a dirty campaign between you two?
< spk_1 - 00:04:13.6190000 >
No, I don't think so. Um, I'm committed to running a positive campaign about my vision for the future, my values, and, and how we can change this corrupt political system that's hurting all of us, whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, and I like Colin Allred a whole lot. I know you're probably not supposed to start political campaigns by saying you like your opponent, but I do. I respect Congressman Allred tremendously and I think he would be a great US senator and certainly much better than Ken Paxton or John Cornyn.
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So I'm not interested in tearing down my fellow Democrats. I'm interested in putting a case forward to the people of the state and sharing my experiences, my skills, my values, my vision, and why I think I would be best as the senator from Texas.
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You immediately attacked billionaires' influence in politics, which is really outsized. Are you running as a progressive alternative to all red or where, where would you say you, you line up?
< spk_1 - 00:05:11.8590000 >
You know, I started my launch video by saying that I no longer see politics as left versus right. I see it as top versus bottom. I think a lot of the billionaires who control our government, who control our media, who control our economy, they have a vested interest in keeping us all divided. They do it regularly with their social media algorithms that they control. They do it on the cable news networks that they control. They divide us by party, by.
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Race, by gender, by religion to keep us from realizing that they are defunding our schools, gutting our healthcare, and cutting taxes for themselves while they raise taxes on working people in this state. And so we've got, we've got to resist the divisions that have been placed upon us by the people at the top. We've got to come together, realize that there is far more that unites us than divides us, and take power back for working people in this state.
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Considering your criticism of billionaires in politics, will you refuse corporate PAC money to fund your campaign?
< spk_1 - 00:06:14.9880000 >
Yes, I'm the only member of the Texas legislature who doesn't accept a dime of corporate PAC money, and I will be continuing that policy in the Senate campaign. It's not easy, you know, as a state rep, I've literally had to send. Checks back to Walmart and Chevron and AT&T, um, because I believe that many of those corporate PACs have way too much influence in our politics.
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Um, not that I won't sit down with them, not that I won't listen to, to something they have to say because business has obviously a role to play in our community. And I'm a, I'm a pro-business candidate, but they have way too much influence in our politics. They, they deserve a seat at the table, but they don't deserve every seat at the table. And so it's why I've put that ban in place in my office. It's why I put this ban in place in my.
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Senate campaign, but that also means that I'm going to have to rely on the people to fund this effort and and I hope that that people across the state, regardless of their political affiliations, will join this campaign, be a part of this movement to take power back for the people of Texas.
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All right, let's bring in the roundtable to talk about the politics of this. I am Mitra with us from the Texas Tribune in Austin, Ashley Goode, political director at KU in Austin, and Bud Kennedy, of course, from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Bud, let's start with you. Rep Tallarico is a millennial with a huge social media following. How do you expect the Democratic primary to shake out? Well,
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we may be headed for another one of these train wrecks where the Democratic primary nominates the candidate who's less likely to win. Colin Alred leads the polls, has continued to lead the polls, had independent support, flipped 6 counties to his side of the vote that voted for Donald Trump at the top of the ticket last time. Without a presidential race, if he could just duplicate his last performance, he would have a good chance to win. Tallarico is very little known, particularly among independents outside of Austin.
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He doesn't have the mojo statewide, at least not yet, and he
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does need to up his name profile across the state, Ashleigh, right?
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Right, there was a recent Texas Politics Project poll over there at UT Austin, and they found that not a lot of people know him. He's not well known, but one of the interesting things about it is if you look back to when Colin Alred was first running for the Senate, Tallarico's numbers at this point. In the game are similar to what all Reds numbers were at this point in the game, and I think that's important. We're just going to have to see how much work he puts in if Texans are going to get to know him. Yeah,
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and here's my question, Ian. Can a nice mild mannered Democrat who quotes scripture get elected in this political environment?
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It's a great question, and we're gonna find out, but, uh, you know, again, the message that, uh, Representative Tallarico is talking about here and making it less about left versus right and top versus bottom is going to resonate with a lot of folks, and it's just a matter of whether he can, you know, do the number of town halls, you know, get, get out on social media. It's a big state with a lot of expensive markets to really. Uh, get that message across.
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So that's the real challenge for him is to build that name ID, uh, in a time where it's, we're probably going to see a pretty challenging and difficult, and it'll be a rough midterm election. Yes,
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6 months to go until the midterm election, guys, a lot more ahead here, and we're going to bring you back in in just a moment. Here's what's coming up next. When we come back here, the upcoming vote in Harris County to raise property taxes. Commissioner Leslie Brionis on the savings she found in the budget before asking people to pay more. And Congressman Roger Williams, chair of the House Small Business Committee on where Texas companies see the economy going.
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Up next on Inside Texas Politics. Welcome back to Inside Texas Politics. A week from Wednesday, Harris County commissioners will vote on raising property taxes. Our next guest is Commissioner Leslie Breionis, who says raising taxes is only coming after millions of dollars have already been cut from the budget. Commissioner, welcome to the program here. Let's start with the confusion over the county budget. You've, uh, laid out a budget close to, to close the $275 million shortfall.
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Judge Hidalgo says the money is not there to do that. The budget office says no comment right now, reportedly. What's the truth?
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The truth is we now have a balanced budget, zero deficit. We have protected all core services. There will be minimal impact to any forward facing services the county offers the people, and we did it without having to go to the voters to ask them to raise their taxes further. And making sure we did this was incredibly important to me because I grew up check to check. We rolled up our.
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Sleeves, we got it done and most importantly, we did it in a way that protects the key priorities of the people of Harris County that have been very clear, um, public safety, public infrastructure, public health, as well as disaster response and readiness.
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Walk us through this. Where did you find $275 million in savings? Is it not filling vacant positions or what? So.
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In one part, for example, we did a very targeted, thoughtful hiring freeze, and that was 25 million approximately. Then vacancy control, um, if you look at all of Harris County, there's over 2000 vacancies. Some of these vacancies have been open for months, some over six months, and the work has continued. We're not targeting the thousands of vacancies, instead, just 110 approximately, and that.
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Give us 11 million in vacancy savings through this vacancy policy. In terms of technology, we have a huge county, third largest county in the United States. We have approximately 20,000 people who work at the county, purchasing of laptops and other technology equipment, streamlining the purchasing so that we get volume discounts, for example, software licenses as well, fleet purchases. You know, I have a 2015.
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vehicle at home as long as it's safe and reliable, we can again streamline. And so just being very thoughtful about these sort of internal resources that don't affect the public facing services, and we can send a full breakdown, but the executive summary is that we were able to close the deficit in a way that protected all core services, minimal impact to forward facing, and did it with, for example, historic investment.
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Such as pay parity for our law enforcement officers and setting aside funds for pay equity for all Harris County employees.
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And Commissioner, besides finding the savings that you found in the budget there too, property taxes are still going up 2 cents for every $100.
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The bottom line is that some colleagues wanted to go to the voters to further raise their taxes to pay for these things, and instead, my approach was no, we're going to go. Scour each line of the budget of these 70+ departments and we're gonna find ways to streamline. So it was really countless hours of hard work, but to me that's what the people deserve, right?
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Leaders who are gonna dive in and solve problems and do it in a way that's the best stewards of taxpayer resources.
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Commissioner, we appreciate the time. Thank you so much.
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I appreciate you. Thanks for everything you do for Texas.
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You wouldn't know it from the stock market, but experts warn that the US economy is weakening, slower job growth, less manufacturing, and consumers just aren't spending as much as before. Our next guest, Congressman Roger Williams, a Republican representing parts of Arlington, Fort Worth, and Points West, who also chairs the House Small Business Committee in Congress. Mr. Chairman, welcome back to our program. Uh, let's start with the economy here. Manufacturing is slowing down. The, uh, jobs numbers were revised recently.
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Unemployment now at 4.3%. Novo Nordis, the latest big company to say is laying off, uh, 9000 or so workers just hours before this interview. But my question is, what do you tell small businesses that are worried about a weakening economy right now?
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Well, frankly, uh, Jason, small businesses I've traveled around the country has got a great attitude actually. I mean, they're really. Uh, the, the, the bill that we passed a couple of weeks ago has, has helped him a lot. Uh, there's always some current with, uh, some concerns with small business because they're risk takers and they don't have a lot of capital and access to capital is an issue. But, but what I tell them is I think that we're poised to have a great, uh, a great economy through the end of the year. And, and, and after that, I think the last component we need is a rate cut, and I think we'll see that in September and maybe another one in December.
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But you couple your rate. Rate cuts with tax cuts and less regulations and 100% expensing the things we put in the, in the latest bill we passed is good news for the, for small business. And, and frankly, if small business is ready to hire people, jobs are there. So, I think, uh, even though some of the numbers we've seen, I do think from a drill it down to a local standpoint, business is good and it's going to get better.
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You've been in the car business a long time. I just saw information from the state comptroller that says year to year, August 25 to August 24, car sales are down 9% uh here in the state,
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which is a kind of a, a harbinger of, of
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which way the economy might be going. What do you make of that?
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Well, the economy, you're exactly right. The car industry is a good barometer. And, and let me tell you, Jason, we have people, people want to buy cars. I mean, there, there's no lack of wanting to buy. The problem is the cost of goods sold. Uh, that's no problem, except, you know, the manufacturers, they just put more costs in this stuff, and the cost of goods sold is getting higher and higher. That's why again, uh, an interest rate cut would be do a lot of. Frankly, for my industry, where people can buy more for less, people are payment buyers. They want to be able to budget the right number for a vehicle.
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They want to buy the vehicle, so interest rate cuts are important and the manufacturer in our business is going to have to take control of that. We're going to start seeing 0% again. We're going to start seeing lower interest rates to move the economy along,
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but aren't tariffs offsetting any interest rate cuts that might be coming?
< spk_6 - 00:16:15.1900000 >
Well, you know, they could. I, although I got to tell you, I don't have a tariff vehicle on my lot right now. So I, I don't know. You know, a lot of the tariffs have been absorbed by the manufacturer, and, uh, but I will tell you, if you have a, a, a tariff car and you can't sell it because it's priced too high, uh, what we do in our business is, you know, we discount the vehicle. Uh, the manufacturer comes with a rebate. You get a cut in the interest rates.
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Uh, and your used car, the used car market is going up, so you got more value in your used car, and pretty soon you bought a tariff car for less than you did with, with without a tariff.
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Hm, let's talk crime for a moment. I've, I've seen you, uh, talking a lot about that. You say that Main Street needs safety and security in order to be successful. Nobody would argue with that, but as we're watching these, uh, you know, talk of National Guard going to Chicago, seeing them in Washington DC, would you support seeing National Guard in, in Arlington or in Fort Worth anywhere in your district? Well,
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if we had a situation that was like Chicago and the Texans were killing Texans and People were just out of their mind, the way they're acting and stores being broken in the small businesses being hampered and having to close. I mean, those kind of things we don't have in Texas, but if it did get that way, I'd certainly, uh, want some, uh, support and some help in getting it back to the way it should be in the environment I live in and, and so I would support that, but I don't think we have to worry about Texas, frankly. Mr. Chairman, good to see you. Thank you for the time. Thank you, Jason.
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The roundtable is ready when we come back here on Inside Texas Politics. All right, time now for reporters roundtable to put the headlines in perspective. Bud, Ashley, and I and all back with us here. But, let's start with you on this high profile assassination we saw of Charlie Kirk in Utah the other day. tragic, but we're heading into the midterm elections in 6 months here in this state and across the country. Does this change anything politically, you
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think, Jason? It's going to be interesting to see. We hear all these calls for peace and for a more agreeable tone in politics and to ratchet down some of the rhetoric, but a lot of it's been ratcheted up, and the mob mentality of going after anyone who ever said anything bad about Charlie Kirk has only increased. We need to see whether this gets louder or calms down,
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Ashleigh.
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I think that there's a lot of time between now and the midterm elections, you know, you would hope that people would realize that the rhetoric does have consequences and there are consequences to so much of what we hear. I, I am appreciative that we've seen all of the former presidents come out and say, you know, on both sides of the aisle. You know, people who don't agree with you politically, they're not our enemies, they're still our neighbors, and so we need to all have a more peaceful tone. Let's hope that carries through.
< spk_0 - 00:18:56.2850000 >
Yes, and I feel like we heard this before, I with Gabby Giffords' shooting, the attempted assassination of President Trump. We hear this and then it just fades away. The rhetoric gets turned right back up.
< spk_4 - 00:19:06.9390000 >
That's right. So often too, especially with the heat of, of, of whether it's a midterm or a presidential campaign, you know, I go back to kind of what, uh, Utah Governor Spencer Cox said, uh, in talking about this as an inflection point for us, uh, for all of us, and to really try to appeal to our better selves. Um, it sounds, uh, Pollyanna-ish, but at the same time it's, uh, it is something to kind of take a step back and kind of see how we're all kind of contributing to the discourse.
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Uh, Definitely something to think about. Ashley, let's shift off to, uh. Higher ed here in the state mired in politics over the last few sessions. It seems like legislative sessions, but surveys are now showing. This politics is driving some professors to leave. This is, this could impact higher ed in the state, right?
< spk_3 - 00:19:49.6700000 >
Absolutely. Not only is it driving them to leave, I mean, you have a 25% of professors who took a survey from the American Association of University Professors saying that they're applying for other jobs. They are planning to apply for other jobs. They do not plan to stay in higher ed. Long term and they're encouraging their students to look for jobs in other states. So I think we have to be really careful because this could have long term effects on the Texas economy.
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So that's a good point, Ashley. I and what happens then because I, I can't imagine the politics around this slowing down anytime soon.
< spk_4 - 00:20:23.0300000 >
No, and you see it too with the leadership at a lot of these university systems too, uh, you know, whether it's Brandon Creighton at Texas Tech or, or others, you know, you're seeing that kind of trend here too. Look, uh, you know, uh, whether it's Dan Patrick or other legislators, they've said that they want to have more uh. You know, they see the benefits of legislators or former legislators in these roles because those folks have faced accountability.
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So you see this kind of uh new kind of wave of moving into like more accountability and less, uh, you know, less freedom as traditionally as some universities
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have
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seen.
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And then Bud zooming out, what does this mean for the future of higher ed in the state?
< spk_2 - 00:20:58.3190000 >
Well, I, I think the point is. Need to remember, remind everybody that they're carrying out the legislature is carrying out the will of the people. I don't think Texans in general like the idea of tenure or that professors can't be fired. I think this is really the way they want the legislature to run the schools. They want Texas and A&M to reflect the feelings of the people of Texas and not some more lofty educational goal.
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Yeah, and it seems like lawmakers have accomplished that now, but you know, like I said, like we've seen. This is not gonna be slowing down anytime soon, uh, you know, with the next session, perhaps one after that too, guys, thanks so much for the, uh, insight we appreciate that. Thank you for watching as well. We're back next Sunday to take you inside Texas politics and we hope to see you then. Take care.