Texas Democrats make big splash in midterm election | What's Your Point?

I'm Greg Grugan and welcome to What's Your Point, where our panelists call it like they see it. Let's greet them. Starting us off, businessman and former Democratic statewide candidate, Andrew White. Next up, Holly Hansen, political reporter for the Texan. In the three spot, urbanist and energy professional, Jordan Thomas. Batting cleanup, Dr. Sergio Lira, president of LULAC, Greater Houston. And closing us out, Bill King, businessman, columnist, and fellow at Rice University's Baker Institute. Let's begin. We just took back Texas. We just proved that all the money in the world is no match for the people of Texas. It's loud for every billionaire, every lobbyist, and every corruption. This belongs to us. After three long decades, the perfect storm struck Tuesday with a vengeance, an incendiary electoral outpouring of dissatisfaction and anger, accelerated by GOP extremism, and a dangerous degree of hubris, which piled up layer upon layer over each unchecked cycle of power. What pundits and pollsters forecast as a razor-closed rush to the finish line was anything but. With every Democrat running statewide swept comfortably into office aboard a blue tsunami that may well redefine the once ruby red Lone Star State for years to come. Panel, you've all had an opportunity to absorb what's unfolded, so I ask the question, what's your point? I'm going to start with you, Jordan Thomas. Great night for my folks, for Democrats. I think we've got a once in a lifetime opportunity here and everyone who's now in charge knows not to squander that. I think you saw in those two acceptance speeches a nod to bipartisanship. They know that they've won a traditionally red state and the mandate does not extend to Democrat policy throughout everywhere. They're gonna have to reach across the aisle and work with the Democrats, I mean with the Republicans in the Senate. I'm excited. Sergio, we've talked about it for years, Latinos in Texas are becoming the majority if they're not already. And now we have a Latina leading the state of Texas for the first time ever. This is a phenomenon I never would have imagined in my lifetime, you're correct. This is a historical once in a lifetime situation. I said it on this program, the death of Lorenzo Salgado, it will be a bloodbath for the Republicans, and that's exactly what happened. This was a statement from all the families that were hurting for what's happening in our state and across the nation. That's just for starters, but this blue wave started in the Gulf of Mexico from the Port Arthur all the way to Port Isabel, and it swept up the Panhandle. We're still excited. All right, Andrew White, we were talking last year, and you sensed that there was some chinks in the armor, and there was some real dissatisfaction with what had evolved over that long stretch of Republican rule. Yeah, I'm 54, so for 30 years, my entire adult life, I've been waiting for this moment. And seeing those clips on the TV, even though it's been about a week, I still get chills. This is a huge, huge moment. When I first realized that the Democrats had won and had won top to bottom, it felt like that ding dong, the witch is dead moment, right? When in the Wizard of Oz, like everyone's dancing, everyone's out. You can't believe we're free, right? And so. What happened, I think, was we saw the most moderate cast of candidates we've seen in 25 years. So from James to Gina to Vickie Goodwin as a lieutenant governor-elect and Sarah Eckhardt, that's four Austin Democrats. They're known to be the most liberal Democrats in Texas, right? But they just ran the most moderate campaign in 25 years. You didn't hear the abortion word one time. This is not Wendy Davis's party anymore, if you ask me. Because if you wanna win, you have to run as a moderate. All right, Bill King, How about a heaping helping of reality here? Because it's your belief that it wasn't so much an embrace of Democratic ideals as it was a repudiation of what was happening in Washington with the president and down the ticket. It really was not a blue wave. It was an independent wave. The Republicans and the Democrats performed pretty much like they have in previous elections. Thank you very much. What people keep forgetting is not everybody are Republicans or Democrats. About 40% of the people that vote in Texas don't vote in primary, so legally they are unaligned. And that 40% voted about 58-42 for Donald Trump. They voted about 58-42 against the Republicans this time. That is a swing of 1.6 million votes. That's what happened in this election. And so I would just suggest this is a cautionary tale, that if you get out and start talking about fringe issues, like the Republicans did nonstop in this election, we talked about it on the show many times, calling people names, all that nonsense, those of us that are in the middle of the political center got sick of that. Now, right now, we're hearing some great things from Democrats, and I hope they follow through on what they say. But if they go back to their old ways and start acting like the Republicans just did, then I guarantee you, in two years, we'll set all them down on the bench, just like we did the Republicans this time. I was talking to our mutual friend, Justin Keener, and I said, you know, you learn more from losses than from victories. What are you hearing out there? Well, to follow up on Bill's point, definitely one thing we've talked about, and we talked about on this show all this past year, is you win elections with those swing voters. And you did not see Republicans persuading those swing voters. So I think there's a lot of soul searching going on right now amongst the Republican Party. We have to go back and look at what happened in the primary election for US Senate, where you have a subset of a subset of voters that come out and vote in that election. And they opted to put Ken Paxton top of the ticket in Texas as if there were not already a problematic political scenario coming from what's happening in the White House. Then you had that candidate at the top of the ticket. It dragged the whole ticket down. Hold that thought still to come. The landmark midterm delivers an historic elevation with Houston's Syphronia Thompson set to become the first ever Madam Speaker of the Texas House. But up next. Referendum Tuesday's election widely viewed as a job review for President Donald J. Trump. You saw the people that were packed, thousands and thousands of people at every rally. And if I was on the ballot, we would have won. Not his fault, says the president, despite posting the lowest approval rating in recent history, including a consistently subsurface mark here in the once loyal Lone Star State, which he carried by double digits less than two years ago. Panel clearly. In my opinion, Mr. Trump is in denial. What do you think, Holly? Yes, absolutely. You know, when we're talking to some of our local Republicans, I'll give you an example. There's a woman by the name of Burgundy Kane in this area, a Republican activist, wife of a state lawmaker. And she was talking about after this election and even before the election, the big problem for people was affordability. And when people are... Sometimes having families pay more for groceries than they are for their mortgage, there's a real problem. And they elected Donald Trump to the White House in response to the economic Situation in 2024, they expected things to get better, but they haven't. And yes, inflation is not at the rate it was a couple of years ago, but it's still ongoing and those prices haven't come down. In the meantime, people are struggling to be able to afford those groceries that are more and more expensive. Young people are having difficulty in imagining even buying their first home because Because of the cost of things and so those are the issues that persuaded those independent. Independent voters, as Bill said, don't affiliate with a particular party, and that's where you win and lose elections with those people. Now the question is, what will Democrats do to address these issues? And the devil's in the details. And that's gonna be important, because we have criticized the president for over-promising and under-delivering. And we've had some promises on the Democratic side. How do they stay laser-focused? I think some of it's already teed up. So they're a set of... Healthcare cuts to happen in the new year, that's gonna unify the Democrats on something that they can fight against, right? And they've gotta continue it from there. I think Trump is teeing up this fight by choosing Stephen Miller. That's a doubling down on failed policies that were just repudiated. He's offering UFC CEOs jobs in the White House. He's totally disconnected from where people are at. Holly's right, affordability was the word that Mondale taught the political world in 25. Democrats added accountability to that phrase in this cycle. And I think that's what you're gonna see in Washington next year. You will see a whole bunch of hearings. There is gonna be kind of the Washington theater, but there are enough policies that the Dems have united on early out the gate that I think is gonna get them going. Bill has identified Latinos as the biggest independent voting block in Texas because there was a 27-point swing in 2024. Before. The president under-delivered in the minds of a lot of Latino voters, but it's like, show me, show me. Yeah, no, absolutely, I think and Holly's right when she said the swing vote was decided, the factor here in this election. But the Latino vote is the swing vote in the state of Texas and in California and across the state. And it's no longer a swing vote, it's a huge important voting block now. The children of immigrants who are had enough and frustrated, they're called the No Sabo generation. They came out that first one and then once behind them, they're called the six seven generation. They're coming, they're gonna get stronger, sustainable and that's what That's what happened. They're not going. The sleeping giant is not going. He's not going back to sleep. We'll be watching. Up next, Texas voters elect their first ever Latina governor, signaling a landscape shift in Lone Star politics for potentially generations to come.