In the September 6 episode, Republican Tarrant County Commissioner Matt Krause explains why he supported reducing the number of voting sites in his county. In the long run, he thinks it will make elections more efficient, even though he doesn't know how much money the drastic cuts will really save. The chair of the Dallas County Democratic Party talks about the protests expected at the GOP midterm convention. And Republican Party of Texas chair D’rinda Randall on why she thinks that convention will energize the GOP and she sets the record straight on those ticket prices.
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Right now on Inside Texas Politics.
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Claims of voter suppression as the third most populous county in Texas slashes voting locations ahead of the big November election. How will voting access in Tarrant County stack up now to similarly sized counties? We talked to one of the Republican commissioners who approved the controversial cuts in a party line vote.
Again, everything's painted as nefarious or you're trying to suppress it. It's not. It's just logistics. Also, President Trump and a who's who in Republican politics descends on Dallas this week for what the party calls a midterm convention. The state GOP chair shares what they're expecting, but Dallas Democrats say they're ready to counter that message with their own slate of heavy hitters.
We get into it all right now on inside Texas politics.
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Inside Texas Politics with Jason Whitely starts now, and thanks for being with us this week. I'm Jason Wheeler in for Jason Whitely. Let's get to some of your political headlines first. Texas hospitals say that cuts in service could happen as they are being deprived of $27 million a day. That funding covered from the federal government covers leftover hospital costs when Medicaid reimbursements fall short.
The Trump administration isn't disbursing the money because it is questioning how Texas hospitals are taxed. Governor Abbott is now in the unusual position of having to fight for that Medicaid funding. Under his tenure, Texas has been one of the few states that hasn't expanded Medicaid, which has contributed to the state having the highest uninsured rate in the nation.
You may have seen alarming social media posts about 1.2 million Texans Texas voters being put on the suspense list. You get added to that list if elections officials are unsure of your address, you can check the Secretary of State's page to make sure that you're registered. And if you are on the suspense list, you should remedy that with the your county voter registrar by October 5th.
If you miss that deadline, you may only get to vote with a limited ballot. An additional billion dollars in Texas taxpayer money has been requested to fund private schooling. Republican state lawmakers dedicated $1 billion to that program last year, and most initial approvals were to students who were already in private or home schools.
Now, Comptroller Don Hough is asking for 2 billion the next time around, so families still on a waiting list can get in to the Texas State Teachers Association told the Texas Tribune. The state can't afford more private tuition as public schools tackle budget deficits. While there were claims of voter suppression in Tarrant County this week after Republican commissioners in the majority there slashed almost one third of the county's voting locations for the upcoming November election, claiming it's more efficient and economical.
But the Tarrant cuts leave the state's third most populous county, with 1.3 million registered voters, with half as many voting centers as slightly larger Dallas County, which has nearly 1.5 million registered voters. Tarrant would have even far fewer polling sites than slightly smaller in terms of registered voters.
Bexar County. We put those comparisons before Republican Precinct three Commissioner Matt Crouse, who voted for the change. There's a real trend when you look at other big cities or big counties in Texas, that they're going to have far more polling sites than you guys will have in Tarrant. You all are a stand out.
Well, and I do say that we're different, but if you look on every metric, we're pretty much different as well. They're raising their tax rates. We're lowering their tax. We're lowering our tax rates in Tarrant County. And we've even talked about here in Tarrant County that how are you going to have the people to run all those places?
So for every election site that you add, you have to have election judges, you have to have people to work those places. And these other counties are finding that even with more sites. Well, and I will tell you, in Tarrant County, we've heard from the election board that's bipartisan, made up of a lot of different folks.
It's hard to find good, qualified people who can help run those. So is it harder than in these other places because they're opening more sites than you all you would have to ask them. I'm just telling you what the report is we've had in Tarrant County. This was a big flashpoint in the debate. Critics say that these closures would especially impact voters of color.
One Democratic commissioner even calling this a modern day poll tax. Yeah. First of all, modern day poll tax was said by my my friend and colleague, Commissioner Miles. We don't agree on everything, but there's things we agree on. And so he's become a friend. But I vehemently disagree with him on that point.
Again, 12 days of early voting. The 13th day of Election day voting. 12 hours. There's hundreds of hours to get out and vote at a place that's fairly close to where you live, no matter where you live in the county. This was contentious, people. This was an overflow crowd at these meetings where you all talked about this.
People were arrested. There was a lot of shouting. There was profanity involved here. People were saying that this would limit or suppress voting in Tarrant County, which is a fundamental right, of course, that we all have. Was this a hard decision for you? Well, no. And part of it goes back to 2025 when we for talking about those special elections, constitutional elections, we had the same exact conversation on using the same criteria to select our voting sites.
And everybody said at that point, you're taking too many away, you're closing too many of them. It's voter suppression. You're not going to be able to do it. We had record turnout in that 2025 election, and what we saw were wait times on early voting of two minutes and under, and on election day was under eight minutes.
Let's run through some of the numbers here. We're going to compare this to the 2022 midterms because this is a midterm election, right. You're cutting 92 Election Day locations and three early voting locations comes out to almost a third of the polling sites going away this time when compared to the 2022 midterms.
Do the math for us here. How much is this going to save and how does it save that? Well, I mean, that's kind of a hard question. Save from what? Now, we know every early day voting site cost the taxpayers about $25,000. Every Election day site saves you about $4,000. But we don't know what the savings will be.
We don't know the total savings because compared to what? Compared to 316 sites compared to this, you could easily do that math. But I think a lot of people say, well, 316 wasn't good enough. We should have had 340. Well then that's more math. Or we probably could have gotten bio 290. So you can do a lot of that math.
But what I do know is I think 224 sites gets us to exactly where we need to be in Tarrant County. You're a Republican. You've seen the vehement opposition from Democrats to this. Are you concerned that you may have lit a fire on the other side, and that indeed you will see a greater turnout that people will, you know, make an absolute necessity to get to those polls this time around and that you may have actually juiced turnout for the opposition party.
I think that fire was already lit for most of those people. I don't think this is going to add to it. This is another talking point that they can use. This issue also reminds Republicans we've got to come out and vote. We will be watching to see how it turns out. Commissioner, thanks for the conversation. Thanks for having me.
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Let's bring in our roundtable now to talk more about this. We got Ashley Goudeau, who is a political director at Kvue in Austin. Natalie Haddad, political reporter at FAA. And we've got Bud Kennedy from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Bud, let's start with you. This is your home turf. What are your thoughts?
Well, you know, there were too many sites. And the last election they had some sites that were very lightly used, but they, you know, they could only cut about 5 or 6. That made sense. You know what really the problem here is, is that the commissioners vote 4 to 1 Republican, that they will vote will be four.
There are three right now. They've drawn a map that is 4 to 1. And then they say, we're going to put an equal number of voting sites in every commissioner seat. Well, that means that three fourths of the sites will be in Republican precincts, cause the map is Republican. The voting sites are Republican. Natalie, you know, last question I gave him, there was, will this juice turn out perhaps on the other side.
You saw what the enthusiasm was like at these meetings from people who showed up to speak out against this. Any thoughts on that? I was at the rally that was happening before the commissioners court meeting earlier this week or last week when this airs. And I think if Democrats walk the walk, they will definitely be coming in droves to the polling site.
You know, the issue here for this particular party is that the closing of these polling places is not exactly uniform. You've got zip codes in South Tarrant County. 76104. Even the University of Texas at Arlington, where there are a lot of students there who are depending or were depending rather on a site on that campus, they are going to be upset about this.
I think they will be coming out by the dozens especially. So this midterm election. Yeah, that Utah site definitely was not a low turnout site. Ashley, let me ask you this. I guess we're going to have to wait until Election Day and after to see what effect was there. Were there longer lines? Did we see longer wait times?
You know, did did we see turnout, you know, sort of fall off in some areas?
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I mean, you don't have to wait, Jason, to figure out if there's going to be long lines. If you take away a third of the places where people could go. But what do you think is going to happen at the other places? I mean, it's just it it honestly makes no sense to so many people that you would be reducing the number of places for people to go vote.
It doesn't look good. The optics are very bad for Tarrant County on this one. Yeah. And again, you know, comparing them to the other big counties in Texas, it is a steep, steep drop off. All of you stick around. We're going to have more reporters roundtable here in just a few minutes.
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More to come on inside Texas politics as Republicans ready to take over Dallas for what they're calling a midterm election convention. Dallas Democrats ready to respond to it on their home turf inside Texas politics. We'll be right back.
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Now to the GOP's first midterm convention in modern history. It will be held this Wednesday and Thursday, the ninth and 10th, at the American Airlines Center in Dallas. Republicans trying to energize their voters ahead of the midterm elections. Critics say the decision to hold this unusual midterm event is a sign that the party is losing support for its agenda, and that it's getting desperate.
Heading into the election and just a moment, you will hear from Republican Party of Texas chair Dorinda Randall about that big event. But we start with Dallas County Democratic Party Chair Cardell Coleman. Chairman Coleman, thanks so much for being here with us. Thank you for having me. Are you ready for this?
Do you quite know what to expect out of this? We don't usually see one of these in a midterm. Uh, you know, we're ready. Uh, Dallas County is a solidly blue county. We have been Democratic for 20 years. It's actually an anniversary for us. And so they're coming to a county that they can't win to host a convention in the county that they can't win.
So Donald Trump has been on the ballot in Dallas County three times and lost three times in Dallas County. But do you think the national Democratic Party should have made its own convention or rally like this, or. No. I was in favor of. Unfortunately, that's not the decision that they made. But I do know that I was in favor of that, and a number of other individuals were as well.
So will you be watching the opponents event as it's happening? Or will you have somebody watching that just to be able to keep up with it and, and put out your own messaging on this or. No. We're head down. We're focused on our messaging. We know who we are and we know what our voters want to see. And so we're contacting them.
We'll be showing up for our neighbors, providing resources for them, but also providing opportunity for folks who want to gather and use their First Amendment right to protest and rally as well. So there will be a number of opportunities for for anyone in Dallas County or around the state of Texas for that fact who resist what they're seeing in this administration and know that they're being squeezed.
I was going to ask you about protests. We know that we're going to see them. They know that we're going to see them. Um, how involved will you all be in protesting? We're directly involved. Look, you know, we won't lay down and let that agenda roll into town, and that's not be found working. And so that's what we'll be working with all of our allied organizations.
We're working with our state party, with our national party and other affiliates who are planning to make sure that they can use their First Amendment right and make sure their voice is heard. How concerned are you, though, about making sure, though, that this stays on message for your party here in Dallas and that the protest doesn't go in a way that you don't want it to go.
We have some of the best communicators, you know, in in the country who are actually live in Dallas County, but also in the state of Texas, where we have been tried and true. We're tough, if you know what it means to be a Texas Democrat. You've earned your stripes. And so we are on message. If you look at the likes of a James Talarico who has been clear and being able to deliver a message, Gina Hinojosa all the way down to the bottom of the ballot, folks in our neighboring counties.
Alyssa Simmons This is still home of Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, who knows how to deliver a message to our base. And so we look forward to having folks from around the state of Texas to join us and to do just that. Now you're throwing out some big names there. Are we going to see all of them and more showing up?
I think you'll see a few in more. Okay. You know some names. Just wait and see. Look, we want everyone who's watching today to show up Thursday, 6 p.m. at Dallas City Hall Plaza. And we will make sure that that you get a chance to hear exactly what the Democrats plan to do. It's going to get here fast. Yeah. Chairman Coleman, thanks for taking the time.
Thank you for having me.
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Chairwoman Randall, thanks so much for being with us today. My first question to you is the big event is about to happen in Dallas for Republicans. Are you going? Oh, yes, I am going. And I thank you. Thank you for having me on. But yes, we are ready. Well, we know they've been giving out some free tickets as well.
We've heard that the attendance could be up to 20,000 people. Are you are you confident that they're going to be able to to fill all the seats? I am. Because it's also not only Texas, but it's all the states. So that's pretty exciting. And so we have huge delegations, California and Florida, to name a few.
And so of course, Texas is the biggest and so but anyway but yeah, we have been able to get our tickets out. We've been hearing from people and of course we've been reading as well that this is, you know, still being put together, that it's, you know, being sort of hastily arranged. Is that the sense that you get from the inside?
Well, it is quick. It's a quick turnaround for us. You know, President Trump said, I want to do it. And so we've all jumped through hoops and we are making it happen. All right. So the president obviously knows how to generate attention. He's done it his whole life. Uh, some, though, have pointed out that this will coincide and sort of conflict with the first NFL games of the season, which, you know, are heavily watched, and that it would go right up to the 25th anniversary of the September 11th attacks.
Is this the right week? Is there any chance that, you know, you may not get the air airtime or the eyeballs that you might have otherwise gotten. Well, I think for us that are excited about politics, that know what time it is in our country. We are totally going to be there. And I have a feeling there's got to be a lot of people watching the football games on their iPhones as well, and so I don't think that's going to be an issue.
And what we're doing in Dallas is we also have some events surrounding September 11th. I know that they're doing a tribute to Charlie Kirk and to September 11th. So I don't think that that's going to be an issue. It's not really a convention like we see in a presidential election year, because you're not going to have party business or a nomination happening.
And I've been seeing descriptions of this that vary from, you know, midterm convention to mega rally. Someone called it a midterm rescue mission for Republicans. I've also seen it referred to as Trump Appaloosa. What exactly is this going to be and how is it going to look? Well, it's mainly going to look like a rally.
It's going to be something that is going to energize. You know, the thing that we have in the Republican Party is we have a president of the United States that energizes us because he loves this country. He loves our Constitution, he loves Texans, he loves all Americans. And so he is able to energize us like no other candidate does.
Chairwoman Randall, thank you so much for taking the time. I know that there's a lot of preparations and things going on right now, so we really appreciate it. Thank you so much for your time. It's going to be a big week for both parties here. An interesting new Senate and Governor poll coming up next in our reporter roundtable.
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Back to our roundtable now. Still with us, Bud Kennedy from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Natalie Hadad from WFAA in Dallas and Ashley Guido from Kvue in Austin. Ashley, let's start with you and talk about this new poll that came out this week from Overton Insights in the Texas Public Policy Foundation.
It showed really tight races for U.S. Senate and for governor here in Texas. But you get down into the details of this poll, and that's where it gets really interesting.
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Yeah. I've got to tell you the thing that really stood out to me. First of all, start with the obvious, right. Talarico winning. Abbott winning. Though these races in this poll are like tighter than we've seen them in other polls. But when they asked the participants who you which primary do you plan to vote for in 2028?
The majority of them said Republican. And so that just said to me, well, does that mean we have Republicans, voters who are planning to back James Talarico? When you look at these figures, it would kind of lean that way. Yeah, that was the question I had about that. Natalie, let's talk about the governor's race there then.
Is that an alarm for the Abbott campaign, if indeed you're speaking with more Republican leaning voters, more of them identifying as conservative in this poll and the vast majority of them older voters. Is this a bigger concern for the the Abbott campaign? You know, what's interesting, Jason, is that I was speaking to a couple of House Republicans just within the last two weeks, and they all told me that while they don't think that the Democrats are going to be successful in the governor's race, they do think Abbott is going to lose.
Are they going to win by only 2 or 3 points? I would there's still some time left. I would definitely say that this is a time where the Abbott campaign is having to fight harder than they were ever expecting to. I think we can all agree that there is a momentum in the Democratic Party that we've not seen since at least, let's say, 2018, the Beto O'Rourke days.
But at first glance, this looked like it could be bad news for Talarico, because he's had sort of a cushion in some of these recent polls, and this one brought him into less than a point ahead. But when you do start to dig down and realize that we're talking to some pretty conservative voters, it appears in this poll.
What does that really mean? Well, it means Paxton's advertising is starting to take some hold. It's starting to bring him back into a close race. It's gone from 4 or 5 to even. But what's really happened to the governor's race is that, you know, Gina had no name ID whatsoever. People are just finding out a little bit about her.
They like her a little bit more. And that's becoming a closer race. Ashley, let's talk about flock cameras. Texas Tribune came out with a big report this week, talking about how a dollar was added to all of our auto insurance policies from a law passed back in 2023 by the Texas Legislature that was supposed to go to combat these catalytic converter thefts that were happening all over the state.
Instead, though, this board that was appointed by the governor decided to start redirecting that money, and they ended up funding thousands of flock cameras, which has become very controversial. A lot of people, you know, feeling like it violates privacy. Talk a little bit about what we saw in that Texas Tribune article.
Well, I think the big thing about the article, you summed up the article beautifully. The bigger thing is, right before that article came out, the governor sent out a notice to folks and said, hey, no more state money for those flock cameras. And so that has left a lot of people kind of shrugging their shoulders and these agencies figuring out, okay, well, what are we going to do?
Can we still have these cameras? Can we not because we can't use state dollars to try and pay for them. So I think there is a much bigger conversation about what's going to happen with the governor and these agencies. How are they going to pay for these cameras if they can't use that state money? Yeah. And of course, the governor paused any state funds going to those cameras, the Texas Texas Tribune pointing out that that happened after they asked repeatedly for comment about this particular issue.
And again, we've seen a lot of backlash to those cameras as well. More to stay tuned to on that one for we are out of time, y'all. Thanks for joining us this week and thank you as well. We will be back next week with more inside Texas politics.