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Episode 3: From Anger to Hope — Texas Politics Then and Now (ft. Sen. Nathan Johnson)
64 Plays29 days ago
This week on Mission: Texas, we sit down with Texas State Senator Nathan Johnson — now a candidate for Attorney General — to talk about flipping Texas, rebuilding hope, and why the long game matters.
We cover what really drove the 2018 wins, how Democrats can re-energize discouraged activists, and the practical math of turning anger and hope into actual turnout. Senator Johnson breaks down statewide wins and why 2026 might just be the moment to "buy the dip" and believe again.
He also shares what the Attorney General’s office could be doing to protect Texas voters, fight Trump’s overreach, and restore the “white hat” vision of good government. Plus: the truth about gerrymandering, the importance of primaries, and a surprise detour into Dragon Ball Z, composition, and going “Super Saiyan” as a party.
In this episode:
- Why 2018 still matters
- Overcoming voter fatigue
- Why statewide races can’t be gerrymandered
- Hope vs. pessimism in Texas politics
- What the AG’s office could do differently
- How to turn civic despair into collective power
Follow:
@MissionTexasPodcast | @NathanForTexas
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Mission Texas'
00:00:00
Speaker
Howdy. This is Mission Texas. A political podcast about winning Texas by 2032 or else we may lose the White House for a generation.
00:00:11
Speaker
I'm one of your hosts, Alex Clark. And I am Kate Rumsey. Other podcasts may focus on the day to day the next election. But we are keeping the eyes of Texas on the bigger prize.
00:00:23
Speaker
What happens after the next census?
Meet State Senator Nathan Johnson
00:00:27
Speaker
Hello, and welcome back to Mission Texas. Today, we are joined by State Senator Nathan Johnson. ah Senator Johnson represents Dallas and the Texas Senate.
00:00:39
Speaker
And in 2023, when I was the race director for the Freedom Run, hosted by the Dallas Association Young Lawyers, so we both won our age groups. I won't tell you who came before the other between the two of us, but I'll just say that, Senator, we can have rematch anytime you want.
00:00:56
Speaker
oh yeah Can I tell them who came in first? yeah well yeah yeah I feel like I've done a bad job with the introduction because buried the lead.
Why Run for Attorney General?
00:01:05
Speaker
Senator Johnson is one of ah two declared candidates for Texas Attorney General.
00:01:10
Speaker
Yes, I suppose more importantly, but I appreciate everybody's like activity in the community. And it was a fun race. And I have a few age groups past you. That's right. which Makes it easier to win.
00:01:23
Speaker
Y'all would beat me I'm sure. But we got to do another race. We're all runners here. Speaking of races. Yeah, I couldn't hear a race. went the Attorney General's race and all the races across the state. Yeah.
00:01:35
Speaker
So you're running again, Senator, but now for a different office. I think we all heard rumblings that you wanted to run for a statewide and you are now in for the AG's race. Tell us how you got into that that race. Yeah.
00:01:48
Speaker
I mean, I've been looking at the possibility of a statewide race for for quite some time now. um I don't think I was ready ah in prior cycles. I think I've been able to get more experience in the legislature and and through electoral politics generally. So just being ready yourself, I think, is important about any decision to run, um especially if you're talking about running in a state of 30 million people. It's a big undertaking.
00:02:12
Speaker
um as i As I looked around at different races, you know what what's the best avenue for me? Where can I be the most useful candidate ah to the state um and to the ticket overall?
00:02:26
Speaker
And when I look at the Attorney General's office, I see an office that has ah ah level of power that is generally not appreciated. um that requires a level of objectivity that I think kind of by nature I have.
00:02:42
Speaker
um And one that has been in the in the past quite a few years, grossly abused and neglected. And in neglected, I mean the power of that office to do good. I heard someone describe it as a white hat agency has been anything but that And so when I look at, you know, who are the opponents?
00:03:04
Speaker
What does the race look like? What can I do when I get to that office? um This one seems like the right one for me at this time. Yeah. And for those of the listeners who aren't just fully steeped in this and are not big Politico nerds like me and Kate, um just some background.
00:03:22
Speaker
ah Senator Johnson flipped this this district here here in Dallas.
The Importance of Flipping Districts
00:03:28
Speaker
um Was it back in 2018? 2018, yeah. 2018, and that's no small undertaking. And given the nature of this show, we're especially interested in talking to candidates who flip districts, who don't just run in the safe split safe space, who aren't just talking to their own primary voters.
00:03:45
Speaker
By nature of your win, you had to do something different. um And I want to get into that. But I also want to make sure that the the listeners are understanding that when we talk about the Attorney General's office and the way it has lacked integrity for the last several years, we're talking about Ken Paxton, the name you may have heard of.
00:04:06
Speaker
in all likelihood going to be the Republicans nominee for U.S. Senate in this coming election. ah He's very likely to take down ah John Cornyn, who, if you can believe it, is somehow not MAGA, not conservative enough for today's Republican Party.
00:04:24
Speaker
So I just wanted to to put that in there. And then the... Difficulty of flipping a seat and and what it's all about, I guess it's relevant to your earlier question of why the attorney general's race. there what was What was happening in 2018 was a confluence of factors.
00:04:40
Speaker
Democrats were, of course, extremely angry about things that were happening. They were angry about the Trump election. They were angry about the Republican majority's failure to invest in public education. And and anger drives turnout to a point. But there was and there were two other factors at work.
00:04:57
Speaker
One of them was that these angry Democrats actually smelled blood in the water. And I guess we shouldn't use gruesome metaphor. So I, the The Democrats, I guess there's a much more positive way to put that.
00:05:10
Speaker
They had legitimate hope that we could win. And they had hope that they could elect their local district court judge, their state representative, their state senator, their U.S. representative, and their U.S. senator.
00:05:21
Speaker
It was this tremendous opportunity to have your vote actually matter.
The Power of Undecided Voters
00:05:26
Speaker
And I think that hope factor drove turnout as much as anything else. And then there was one other thing.
00:05:32
Speaker
Texas always has a sizable contingent of people that call them independents, call them moderates, call them whatever. They tend to wait very late in the election cycle to decide who to vote for. And so they're when we get down the election time, they're called undecideds.
00:05:48
Speaker
And we had around 12, 13 points that were still undecided going into early voting in 2018. And in our post-election analysis and our our real-time calls and sampling during early voting, we estimate 70 to 80 percent of the undecideds voted for Democrats that cycle.
00:06:07
Speaker
In similar analyses in the in the next three elections, 70 percent of those undecideds voted Republican. That's a big deal in these Texas elections. So it if in in this year, as in 2018, you have this surge of Democratic anger and hope and determination and enthusiasm leading to a a rise in turnout at the same time as you have that kind of independent narrow slice in the middle breaking for Democrats, I think you could see statewide wins.
00:06:35
Speaker
I think you see a number of local wins. Add another factor. There are people who have called themselves Republicans their whole lives because they they're fiscally conservative and
Predicting Democratic Turnout in Texas
00:06:45
Speaker
they are for limited government and those kinds of principles. And i'm I'm not sure how those came to be so um associated with a particular party, but the history of the Democratic Party in Texas ah has plenty of fiscal conservatives in it.
00:06:58
Speaker
um But there are Republicans who crossed over that election cycle who didn't later. And I think with the mistakes that Donald Trump is making, um with the spinelessness, the fecklessness of the Republican Party over the past six months in particular, nine months in particular, I think we're going to see surge in Democratic turnout, independence break to the left and crossover from Republicans.
00:07:24
Speaker
Texas is a tough state to win. Will that be enough? I think if you add those three up, you see some statewide wins. No, I mean, that answers partly a question I had, which was 2018 was a Trump midterm. You won in that year.
00:07:37
Speaker
and flipping a seat an hour or again in a Trump midterm talking about that anger. But do you see anything else, either positive or negative about that those two differentials between 2018 and 2024?
00:07:49
Speaker
least from my perspective, I see a lot of people who were activists who had never been active before in 2018, suddenly creating groups that are now talking to me about fatigue. and they're they don't have hope anymore because they think they've done so much for the past six years and and didn't change anything. So do you see that or are you seeing those similarities again? Kate, I think that's a really, not just good, but unfortunately important observation that in 2018, that surge of hope was not on the heels of a couple of cycles of of crestfallen activists, right?
00:08:24
Speaker
We came out 2018 really enthusiastic and and you know the results were great. the It was the best legislative cycle that we've had probably in 30 years because the Republicans were were chased into the productive zone, right?
00:08:37
Speaker
And worked with Democrats to pass good policy, some. um And in subsequent cycles, Democrats have thought, aha, we've got this momentum. Let's keep going. and And we've just been crushed and i'm not crushed in election results, but certainly beaten and emotionally crushed. Right. People had so much invested in this.
00:08:55
Speaker
And now we say, oh, but we can do it again. And it's it's hard for people to lay it all on the line, whether you're talking about making donations, using your
Activist Demoralization Since 2018
00:09:03
Speaker
free time or just the emotional energy to invest in the hope.
00:09:08
Speaker
of Democrats winning in a place where they weren't winning before. it It is harder in that respect. But I think that that difficulty is countered
00:09:19
Speaker
by the severity of the crisis. Yeah, I think your hope factor point is is is right on point. And we have to figure out, at least in the short term for this election cycle, how to how to buck ourselves up.
00:09:34
Speaker
I think what's really interesting and people don't really remember about how close Beto got to beating Ted Cruz is that at the time that was a record setting fundraising haul.
00:09:47
Speaker
It was the most anybody had ever raised for a race like that. think it was like $80 million. dollars A of people don't realize 40 of that came within like the last several weeks of the campaign, like a full half of it.
00:10:00
Speaker
I think Texas Democrats in particular, more so than other Democrats throughout the country, have this real pessimism problem, which is a shame because Texans who love Friday Night Lights, you know, we understand the importance of clear eyes, full hearts can't lose, that kind of optimism, can-do attitude.
Texas: Permanently Red or Potential for Change?
00:10:17
Speaker
But somehow we convince ourselves we've lost the race before it's ever started, before election.
00:10:23
Speaker
you know before somebody says go. Yeah. and and and And coming in and being persuaded that we can win in the last five minutes, and there's only so much you can spend money on at the very end of the campaign. It needs it needs to be invested over time.
00:10:39
Speaker
Yeah. How useful is that Beyonce endorsement in the last few days of the election? Would have been a lot better at the start of early voting, right? oh or Or six months earlier so that you have time to to weave it into a campaign and it doesn't just look like a pop stunt. Oh, look, Beyonce's for me. I mean, weave it in over time.
00:10:59
Speaker
Yeah. and and And I think it's part of the bigger picture of... I mean, this is the rant you'll probably hear on every episode, is that Texas Democrats, we have lost statewide more consistently than any state party in the country.
00:11:13
Speaker
And there's no there's no good reason for that. Did you realize this? Every red state, every single one of them, like Alabama, West Virginia, Alabama,
00:11:25
Speaker
You name it. Kentucky has a Democratic governor right now. States far more red on the presidential level have elected Democrats statewide more recently than we have. And it's not just that.
00:11:36
Speaker
Every blue state, the bluest of the blues, the Californias, the Massachusetts, the Vermonts, the Hawaiis, they've all elected Republicans statewide more recently than we've elected a Democrat.
00:11:49
Speaker
But we're going to change that. but but that's my point My point is there's no there's no good reason for it. So the fact that we continue to tell ourselves the story that Texas is forever read, that's a story that has no real basis.
00:12:04
Speaker
Well, certainly is self-fulfilling. Right. Right. Self-fulfilling prophecy, but also conclusion. um You know, you asked at the beginning, you know what led to your decision? to run for attorney general.
00:12:15
Speaker
One of the things is that I think we can win this cycle. I really do. I value my work as a senator. And if i if I don't have the good fortune to to win the attorney general's race, and I plan to, but if I don't, I'll i'll be back in as a senator. And and that work is important enough to not you know just be chasing um a statewide office for the sake of being the attorney general. I'm chasing it because it's possible and I want to do what the attorney general can do to improve our state.
00:12:46
Speaker
Well, can we go into that? Because one of the things that we are exploring is flipping Texas, right? And one of the things that we Alex and Kate can't control are the voter laws. But you as a senator get to vote on voter laws and hopefully as an attorney general, you do as well. And so, but we cannot, mean, we we hypothesize that our voter laws is one of the factors of many that creates the voter apathy and the vote low voter turnout that we have in this state. yeah So, I mean, my I'm curious, you know, do you think that is a big factor of many? And how as an attorney general, can you potentially address that? Because it does seem like a chicken and the egg thing. Like, you know, we want to change the voter laws, or we got to elect Democrats to do it in order to get more turnout. So what do we got to do?
00:13:33
Speaker
think the first thing we have to do is get over the pessimism of thinking that, oh, the elections are so rigged we can't possibly win. Yes, we can. you can win or you You can win these elections despite the fact that Texas has the most onerous voting requirements in the country.
00:13:51
Speaker
um i I don't like what Texas has done with these. Unfortunately, legislatures very often come down to simple arithmetic. Are there more people who vote for it than there are who vote against it, right? So, you know, when when the Republican majority is not only passing highly burdensome restrictive voting laws,
00:14:09
Speaker
only 90% of which are bad, right? 10% of them are just, you know, we have to run elections efficiently and well and make them trustworthy. Great, great. but But if they're all going to vote for it and and all the Democrats are going to vote against it, we're going to lose.
00:14:22
Speaker
And we do. Until we get a majority of Democrats in the legislature, they're going to do this stuff. And we make speeches about it and we hold rallies and we will continue to make speeches and hold rallies and we'll use data from other states and But we we cannot outnumber them until we outnumber them.
00:14:41
Speaker
and Do I think it's had an effect? I do think it's had a depressive effect. I'll say 50 times we can overcome this. I don't want anybody staying home because they think, oh, game over. They've made voting too hard.
00:14:53
Speaker
No, they're going to chisel away at the the numbers
Challenges of Restrictive Voting Laws
00:14:56
Speaker
that we could probably hit. But it ain't game over. um I particularly want to talk about two things with ah voter suppression, discouragement.
00:15:06
Speaker
And one of them is mailing balloting. And this is pretty sinister because When they first decided to make mail-in balloting trickier, to trip people up, to invalidate ballots in particular, if you look at the history of mail-in ballots, historically, it had favored Republicans.
00:15:26
Speaker
And I thought, this was a few sessions ago, i'm like, what are they doing? They're cutting off their own advantage here. But what they knew when they post that stuff, if you look at the lines, the trajectory of Democratic mail-in votes and Republican mail-in votes, the Republican line was going down and the Democratic line was going up.
00:15:46
Speaker
They were anticipating that line crossing and shutting it down before it could happen.
00:15:52
Speaker
Diabolically brilliant. And the effect has been they have caused Republicans and Democrats to have their votes not counted. And it has been so discouraging that some people are like, you know what? Screw it. I'm just not going to vote.
00:16:05
Speaker
That's bad. And then you see things like reducing polling places on college campuses. um There's a number of ways. yeah The ID requirements are are highly controversial. um it's It's difficult to um argue broadly to the public that you shouldn't have strict ID requirements.
00:16:24
Speaker
When you look at these, there's those are problematic too. But i don't I don't think as Democrats, we do ourselves any favor by um overemphasizing the importance of these restrictive voting laws.
00:16:36
Speaker
They're there, we've got to beat them anyway. And what I think is far more pernicious, far more destructive to rigging elections is gerrymandering, not least of which is this mid-decennial redistricting.
00:16:50
Speaker
That disenfranchises millions of people deliberately, skillfully, scientifically by essentially rendering elections unwinnable, and that suppresses turnout.
00:17:04
Speaker
Because they don't think that they can make a difference in that local race. And they're being quite rational if they're if they're talking about only a local race. And so we've got to get people to understand that you're not just voting in your local race, you're voting for the statewide offices, but also your local race matters.
00:17:22
Speaker
If the margin is 55-45, that's one thing. If it's 75-25, that's quite another. And you voting in a race where you think that your candidate can't win because it's gerrymandered does matter to this overall progress. And and I know that, Kate and Alice, you are interested in kind of a long game that think Republicans have been playing and Democrats have not.
00:17:44
Speaker
And if we're looking at the long game, I want Democrats to understand that your vote matters, even if you are effectively gerrymandered into being unable to elect the candidate of your choice.
00:17:56
Speaker
It's the beauty of a statewide race. You can't redraw what Texas looks like, right? want a bumper sticker that says you can't gerrymander a statewide ah race. Somehow put it everywhere because someone like you, you want to vote everywhere, right? like I have to get votes everywhere.
00:18:12
Speaker
Yeah, you want a blue dot and a red area, your vote matters and your race. A Dallas vote is the same as a vote from the 903 where I'm from in Sherman, Texas, right? that's right That's right. A Sherman vote counts just as much.
00:18:24
Speaker
and And I wanted people to see that it's important for statewide candidates like me and others, but it's also very important to your local candidate. It's hard to recruit people to run for office in a serious way if they're just going to get their clock cleaned and they feel like there's no one supporting them.
00:18:41
Speaker
and And so there are people who will run knowing that it's a long shot, but they got to feel some level of support. I do think it's important. Yeah, that's right. And we have to do it. but We talked about this with one of our other guests, Christian Carranza. She's running in the most, probably the most flippable house seat this cycle in San Antonio.
00:19:01
Speaker
um She and I had worked together on the 2014 governor's race as campus organizers, if you can believe it. Awesome. And the point I made was, i I'm not sure, and I haven't checked, but my sense is that I don't think we're even running enough candidates to take a majority in the legislature should we all win.
00:19:25
Speaker
hey That's interesting observation. That's that's if that's true. And to be fair, I have not fully vetted that. That's my sense, though. If that's true, that says something really sad about our the state of our party. Like we're not even trying to win in the in the big sense. Right.
00:19:45
Speaker
Obviously, we have people who are running who are trying to win. I 100% understand that you're trying to win your race, and I think you've got got a good plan to do it. i mean, you flipped a seat already. i think it's winnable. But my point is we can't take back the legislature unless we have a majority of the legislature. And we can't have a majority of the legislature if we don't have enough people running.
00:20:08
Speaker
yeah and And there's two parts to that. um we have To get people to run, they have to believe that they have a meaningful chance ah most of the time. There are people who will there are people who will run in an 80-20 district just to keep the voice alive.
00:20:23
Speaker
and And I'm so thankful to them. God bless them. Even there, you know they have to feel the support at home. Can you get me to 25% instead of 20%?
00:20:34
Speaker
That would, that would feel good. Right. I'll feel like doing it. Right. So I do want everybody to keep voting. Even if you think, even if you feel like your vote doesn't matter in a local election, it does matter in the local election. And of course it matters at statewide level.
00:20:49
Speaker
Have you seen a difference though? I'm always interested in process and infrastructure and Alex is all about the messaging, which is a theme in our podcast, but have you seen any measurable differences since then, as far as what we have as our resources and assets as Democrats here in the state of Texas and, and being able to run and prop up races?
00:21:09
Speaker
On a statewide basis, I'm, I'm not a great person to ask. I'm not super knowledgeable about it. Um, I have had enough interactions with, um, statewide candidates and statewide operatives to know that in the past six years, ah there has been a lot of work done and a lot of hard examination to what's the best way to deploy resources, ah how best can people cooperate throughout the state geographically and up and down the ballot. I don't know.
00:21:38
Speaker
i could not assess the health of where we are today. i can definitely tell you that a lot of a lot of good minds have been on the subject.
Coordination Among Democratic Groups
00:21:48
Speaker
yeah and i And I know people who out there who are out there trying to build um parallel infrastructure and some of that parallel infrastructure is starting to connect to the internal infrastructure.
00:22:01
Speaker
ah There's more coordination among outside groups and candidates, more coordination between the party and outside groups. So yes, i I guess I have seen encouraging trends.
00:22:14
Speaker
I'm just not knowledgeable enough to yeah are worthwhile I imagine you're asking, like I did people that ran before you in a statewide race, like what worked, what it didn't work and what are the resources. And one of the perceptions I just saw as a person on the doors was that it seemed like the top of the tickets and the statewide races were the really the ones driving a lot of the grassroots organizing. And so I'm really curious about what resources you anticipate as a statewide office, you know,
00:22:43
Speaker
you know holder ah to hopeful holder to get elected in a general and like what that coordination looks like. I think one of the, i don't know if it's a mistake Democrats has been made, but it's certainly been the case that in the past four or five, most cycles for a while, Democrats have generally had star power at the top and 99% of the resources have gone to one person for one office.
00:23:14
Speaker
And i think it's an awfully lot to expect of one individual to single-handedly flip a state, even if she or he has all of the resources.
00:23:25
Speaker
And to win in Texas as Democrats, and I would like more than just a one-off. I would like a shift in mindset. I'm going see Democrats win across the board and continuously.
00:23:38
Speaker
we are going to have to get more people to vote for Democrats. And since no one person appeals to everybody, it's beneficial for us to have a variety of political personalities and personas and backgrounds, professional and personal, so that we have broader appeal, which means that we're going to have to inra invest in more than one race.
00:24:05
Speaker
As an attorney general candidate, which is going to get absolutely a fraction of the attention in the media and the financing that's going to go to perhaps a governor's race or certainly the US s Senate race, I think that if we if we do fund races like attorney general and other statewides of great significance, like comptroller,
00:24:27
Speaker
um we will have a a broader coalition and um and ah and a deeper well to draw from when we're trying to appeal to voters. And I think that makes for a stronger ticket overall.
Investing in Diverse Races
00:24:38
Speaker
Yeah, I think the word invest is is the right way to think about it. I mean, even the casual Robin Hood investors like me um understand the concept of buy the dip, right?
00:24:50
Speaker
That's what I've been telling to anybody who will listen is that this is the cycle to buy the dip. If you wanted to run for office as a Texas Democrat, now's the time to do it because agree with that. that All of the right.
00:25:02
Speaker
environmental factors are in play. In the same way 2018 was a great opportunity, i think 2026 is going to be that on steroids because all of the things that kept Trump reigned both in his cabinet and in Congress, are gone. I think it still shocks me whenever I do the math on how long his term has actually been.
00:25:27
Speaker
it feels a lot longer than that. um i pardon Pardon the clunky transition here, but I wanted to bring up to the listeners here, because I think we try to interject some pop culture when we can.
00:25:39
Speaker
um People might not know, and Kay was not even aware of the show, but you were the composer. You're coming out. you I'm going to call you out. ah You know, it and it's fine. Not everybody has to have seen Dragon Ball But ah Senator Johnson, you compose the music for the American version of Dragon
From Composer to Politician: Johnson's Background
00:26:00
Speaker
Ball Z. Is that right?
00:26:01
Speaker
I did. i did 67 of 300 some episodes. So i i I did a chunk of the shows and four or five ah short form Dragon Ball Z movies. yeah So after school every day Toonami on Cartoon Network, I had my Rice Krispie Treat. I had my Dr. Pepper. and that was wow That was part of my adolescence, man.
00:26:23
Speaker
You were a part of that. um And so I think it's is really kind of incredible just how widespread, not Kate, but a lot of people have seen Dragon Ball Um, and when I tell people that about you, it's always one of the most fascinating things to learn. Like a Senator Dragon Ball Z.
00:26:44
Speaker
um And so I was wondering, maybe, I don't know how much of the shows you actually watched, if you're just making the music or or what, but- At least 67 episodes. You watched them? but i Well, I had to score them. i Yeah, you watched them. My question is, if you'll forgive the awkwardness, is how do we go Super Saiyan? What's going to be that last straw that cracks Goku where he just unlocks something within him?
00:27:12
Speaker
Like- I think for it was what, killing Krillin, right? Frieza kills Krillin. And ah he justs he he loses it. and And you see the hair go from black to gold. And what a moment that is for a young person to see for the first time.
00:27:31
Speaker
um I think there's something that's going to happen in Texas where we just kind of snap. And the hair is going to go black to gold because that's kind of how it happened on the other side. Right. It wasn't that there was just a one off.
00:27:48
Speaker
It started that way. But then it became the entire state was Republican. Yeah. It happened very quickly. And I think that's going to happen the same way for Democrats. Once we can get over this story, we've told ourselves for years that like it can't happen when we have a proof point that it can.
A Call for Democratic Awakening
00:28:04
Speaker
I think everything's different. I don't think you're going to have ah ah gold hair and of a candidate that's goingnna that's going to carry us over. I think it if you're going to use the the metaphor and there's something to this, like finding something within yourself all of a sudden you didn't know was there and and it and ah that power just fills you.
00:28:23
Speaker
I think that's going to have to be as a party and as voters collectively. And and what is that moment? I think it's where we stop playing defense. where We don't stop playing defense. We stop only playing defense. And the Republicans have been really good at just firing stuff at us.
00:28:41
Speaker
We're reacting all the time to these things. um But I think in order to to really flip things, people are going to have to know that if you want competence and you want compassion and you want vision and you want intelligence and you want responsibility, you want fiscal prudence, that's the Democratic Party.
Defining the Democratic Party's Vision
00:29:02
Speaker
And if when people can say in response to Aaron Wright's or Chip Roy saying, I'm gonna fight the radical left, when you can say to them, who on the radical left closed your hospital?
00:29:16
Speaker
Who on the radical left took resources away from your public schools? Who let you run out of water?
00:29:26
Speaker
It wasn't the radical left. Why aren't there any grocery stores in your town? Is it because federal antitrust law has been neglected for 45 years and we just watched more and more and money flow into fewer and fewer and fewer hands and those in turn are able to control the levers of government?
00:29:40
Speaker
Is that what you all want or do you want a government that actually creates markets that are competitive and you have lower prices and better services? Do you want one that's not spending all its time trying to bully people on cultural issues in order to distract you from why all of your local businesses have shut down?
00:30:00
Speaker
When people see us as the party that understands what has happened and how to fix it, hair goes gold. Yes. Gold is good, I think. That's an analogy.
00:30:11
Speaker
We'll get you caught up. Yeah. husband's a big gamer and loves anime, so I'm sure I'll get there. um You know what I've neglected to say on this? When we we talked about the attorney general's race and you're talking about Trump and, you know we know that the election can't be all about Trump, but boy, he sure is giving a lot of for people to talk about.
00:30:32
Speaker
State attorneys general are going to be the last line of defense to Trump's wrecking crew that is tearing apart. This is this is not overstated. We have crumbling constitutional foundations.
00:30:47
Speaker
The walls that separated the branches of government that were part of the original conception of this nation and duplicated by every state, including Texas, are being torn down. And that's really bad news. And it's attorneys general who can to some degree block, slow and change that.
00:31:06
Speaker
So the office itself is exceedingly important right now. Well, and we saw that with Ken Paxton, right? Like he used the office a lot of times to sue the federal government ah with whatever Obama did. Right. So he's going to override the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare.
00:31:23
Speaker
um So you're right. And I agree with you. It's in a very important office and making the case that people should pay particular attention to this race. I think, you know, amongst all the ones is a great place to start when we're talking about countering what.
00:31:37
Speaker
Donald Trump is doing. Think about it in terms of of schools and money. um Texas was allocated $700 million dollars ah for a certain element of public education.
00:31:49
Speaker
And Donald Trump said, no, actually, we're not going to send that out there. He doesn't have authority to do that. That's been appropriated by Congress. What a good attorney general would do is sue the Trump administration, like a lot of attorneys general around this country already have.
00:32:03
Speaker
Now, what a bad attorney general would do is collude with the federal government when they try to harm Texas. For example, when 24 years ago, Republican Governor Rick Perry signed into law in-state tuition for undocumented kids who've grown up in Texas, gone to school in Texas, gotten good grades in Texas, and want to go to college in Texas.
00:32:24
Speaker
but they're low income or they're very poor and we want to give them in-state tuition so they can be a bigger, better contributor to our society. Republicans decided that was a good idea. Democrats together and for 24 years, 12 successive legislatures held that up under attack
Defending In-State Tuition for Undocumented Students
00:32:42
Speaker
every time. We've said, this is Texas policy. It's good for Texas.
00:32:45
Speaker
It's good for people. It's moral. It's economic. It's great. No, Trump administration sues Texas to invalidate it. And instead of defending the laws of the state of Texas, which is the responsibility of the attorney general within constitutional limits, he signs an agreed order with the judge. In six hours after the lawsuit was filed, 24 years of good policy, Republican Democratic policy thrown out.
00:33:11
Speaker
I'm really glad you brought that up. I want to ask you about a new lawsuit that's been filed. I think it's going in the exact opposite direction of what I think we're trying to do as a party, which is to to grow, to expand, to bring in more people and build a coalition that's sustainable past this 2030 reapportionment. Right.
00:33:30
Speaker
And that is the Republican Party, for some reason, wants to contract. Right. and be exclusive and they want to close their primaries and not allow anyone who is not a card carrying registered Republican, which has never been the case in Texas elections.
00:33:47
Speaker
Um, so they've filed a lawsuit against the secretary of state, uh, Jane Nelson. Um, My understanding is that that's the kind of thing the attorney general's office should be getting involved in to defend the current law. Generally speaking, that is the job of the attorney general, whether they like the current law or not. It's it's not a legislative position and unless...
00:34:14
Speaker
constitutionality or or other errors and in process would require the attorney general to take a different position. ah But yes, I do believe the attorney general should be intervening in that lawsuit. um It's not the easiest case as a legal matter to um to throw down on.
00:34:29
Speaker
ah i As I looked at the law in this case, and I believe that the position of the Republican Party on this one is just unsupportable in the law. But you know ah we've had a lot of judges on courts right now that aren't that interested in upholding precedent.
00:34:47
Speaker
The precedent that the Republican Party cites in that would would seem to favor them, but it's it's actually flowing in the reverse. um Those cases held that you couldn't require, i think it was that you couldn't require party to hold closed primaries.
00:35:04
Speaker
They didn't hold that you um were required to have closed primaries. so they They cite to ah a California, ah kit well, it's a ah yeah U.S. s Supreme Court case about the old California system.
00:35:19
Speaker
And there we were there the old California system was upset that people were forced into voting in a primary. um And that was an an offense and a front to associational rights.
00:35:30
Speaker
California has changed their laws. Now it's the top two vote getters go on from the primary and and into the general. And so that has been upheld as constitutional. Yeah. Again, yeah, I mean, we don't have to get into the the merits ah legally, but i'm I'm just curious about the broader the broader context of ah ah political party who feels so confident that they want to exclude people.
00:35:56
Speaker
um ah Just for context, I learned about this case because of my involvement with an organization called Veterans for All Voters. Texas has the largest population of veterans in the country.
00:36:08
Speaker
ah Kate and I are both service members or were service members. We're both former federal clerks. So i'm going to be ah careful about the way I talk about federal judges. But I will say I don't think it's an accident that they filed this case in Amarillo where they were pretty sure which judge they were going to get. I'll just leave it at that.
00:36:26
Speaker
which is one judge that covers that docket and they might be Trump appointee. So yeah. It rhymes with mesmeric. and Yes. and And I would say, I think he is not a good judge.
00:36:39
Speaker
Yeah. Well, there are people around the country that don't know whether that is good or bad for Democrats, frankly, but when you look at the reason that they did that, um it's, it's not well motivated and,
00:36:54
Speaker
I think it's pretty clear the reason is they felt like the effort to throw out the very, very, very, very very conservative Republican, Dave Phelan, because he wasn't very, very, very, very crazy conservative.
00:37:08
Speaker
crazy conservative ah was was foiled, they say, by Democrats voting in the Republican primary. And you know what? That might well have happened. But guess what? Because the Republican primary determines the outcome in that district, it's perfectly rational for Democrats to participate in that.
00:37:26
Speaker
and within their rights and more representative of the people of that region. So the effort to close the primaries is actually an effort to ensure that fewer people have a voice in the outcome of
Republican Lawsuit to Close Primaries
00:37:40
Speaker
elections.
00:37:40
Speaker
In that respect, it's anti-democratic. its It's incredibly anti-democratic, especially when you consider my my earlier rant about being the losingest most statewide party.
00:37:51
Speaker
Because when you consider that in the last two presidential cycles, the entire voting age population turnout for Republican primary was less than 10 percent.
00:38:03
Speaker
Right. And in a a midterm where, you know, we got governor and lieutenant governor, attorney general, a race like yours is like under five percent. um So consider an actually competitive primary, like a Dade Phelan who wins like 51% to 49% in his district.
00:38:22
Speaker
You cut those numbers in half. In a presidential year, we're saying 5% of Republican primary voters get to decide everything. And in midterms, 2.5%. two and a half percent of Republican primary voters get to decide everything.
00:38:37
Speaker
And that's in fact, generally how it goes, notwithstanding the possibility that some Democrat drops into the election. It's really only in a runoff that I think that could be a serious variable.
00:38:47
Speaker
um Most people who identify with one party or another are going to vote in the primary of the party they identify with. The other bumper sticker I want is get to the primary because I want to convince people to actually vote in primaries.
00:39:03
Speaker
How would you convince people to do that? I mean, and you have a competitive, you have a other person in the primary in your race, but i mean, it just seems like if we can actually vote in a primary, we might not have the extremes that we're looking at.
00:39:16
Speaker
And I remember in my race, I was so surprised that my vote universe that I was thinking about targeting was only 12,000 people of a hundred and you know over person district and just seemed insane.
00:39:27
Speaker
it it is There are a couple reasons to really drive people to the primary. One is that people who vote in primaries vote in generals. It's the whole concept of making voting a habit. If there's an election, you vote.
00:39:39
Speaker
And it's like, ah, it's just a primary. Well, then you're not in the habit of voting. So let's get in the habit of voting because early primary primary voting will increase turnout in general election voting.
00:39:49
Speaker
So it's important for that reason. It's important to participate and pick the best candidate. But as you and Alice have both just been describing, if we're talking about the 3% of voters or 5% or 6% of voters determining in the primary who ultimately will be the dominee Your vote counts a lot.
00:40:09
Speaker
and And I know actually when when I ran in 2018, I did an analysis and trying to figure out whether or not I could flip a 30 year seat. I analyzed the district in terms of who votes Republican, who votes Democrat, and how it was that I was running against a Tea Partier who was really off the edge of the table politically ah when when he ran and while he was in office.
00:40:33
Speaker
How did he beat 20-year veteran, highly respected, generally very well-regarded Republican John Corona.
00:40:44
Speaker
How on earth did Don Huffines beat him? And the answer was, because it was a primary election and a very small number of people turned out. And the ones turned out were the most angriest, fire-breathing-est, far-right people.
00:40:58
Speaker
That's who turns out in the primary. If you want to take the power of deciding who represents you away from the extreme elements, then than those of you who kind of have a busy day and you're fairly, you know, ah level-headed in your politics, you got to vote.
00:41:19
Speaker
Yeah. And because like something like 50% of veterans identify as independent,
Inclusivity and Extremes in Politics
00:41:24
Speaker
um those are the kinds of people we want to have a moderating civic-minded community bigger picture influence on these primaries and the Republican Party is saying, no, thanks.
00:41:37
Speaker
Didn't say no, thanks. and And let me be clear. i actually think it's very important to have people at the extremes of of of the ideological spectrum involved in the process. Sometimes they're right.
00:41:49
Speaker
or Or they can teach us something or they can cause us to think. um and And sometimes something that might have seemed to be an extreme left view or an extreme right view, five, six years later, it's like, oh yeah, that makes sense.
00:42:02
Speaker
and So i don't I don't mean to suggest that that people ah who are on the ideological edges don't have a right to have their voice be influential. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. certainly yeah I mean, moderate and centrist and whatever middle of the road means in certain contexts is kind of ah without substance. I mean, what's what's the middle ground on civil rights, for example?
00:42:27
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. ah What's the is gay marriage a leftist position? Right. yeah Oh, it's just like normal. It's normal. it's It's what any decent person approves of, right? That's not a lefty position.
00:42:40
Speaker
um But when we're talking about ah the polls, the problem is, we all know this, we decry social media and the news and Donald Trump's fake news machine, the misinformation machine out there.
00:42:51
Speaker
It is making the polls um
00:42:56
Speaker
less thoughtful, Well, I think first, I mean, can you give us a couple of things that people can do at home?
Active Political Participation
00:43:03
Speaker
Because that's the thing that I've heard a lot are people wanting a plan like, okay, 2018 and now what has worked, but maybe we're feeling less hopeful, but like specific things that folks can do to help drive our statewide races in Texas.
00:43:19
Speaker
I think ah go outside. Find something to do. Find a group to drive to, people to talk to, be engaged in conversations. um Yes, read the news.
00:43:31
Speaker
um But I think we've got to get past the feeling engaged simply by reading and and being upset. Find a group to join.
00:43:42
Speaker
or Or go listen to a podcast, for example. Go listen to a podcast instead of doom scrolling. The podcast The social media experience is designed to capture you for three seconds at a time. And you're really shutting down a lot of the mental process.
00:43:59
Speaker
And if you take a breath and you you go outside and you talk to friends or you listen to a longer form podcast and then take a walk and think about it, you you reach different conclusions and you have an idea. You know what?
00:44:10
Speaker
I'm going to go talk to Jerry. I remember he was so hung up on this and that and that. I have something for him. In fact, I'm going to take him to vote in the primary. Yeah. And so just getting away from the doom scrolling, I think is helpful. And it's hard because there's so much doom coming at us and it's so damn interesting.
00:44:28
Speaker
Yeah. But get your friends to vote, get your friends engaged, you know, talk about football for a little while, but, but then talk about the importance of voting in the primary. I mean, the the main thing we can do is get people to vote in the primary. I think that's about the most important thing. Yeah.
00:44:42
Speaker
I'm going to make that bumper sticker. I swear. our Or the, Pen. But OK, final questions. ah If people want to support you or follow you, where should they find you, Senator? And also, what do you got going on outside of politics? Because we got, as you're saying, we're getting outside. we have to have something else going on in our lives.
00:44:59
Speaker
Nathanfortexas.com is my website, and you can read more about what we're doing. We'll be updating that website over time. Of course, I can be following social media at Nathan for Texas on all the various platforms.
00:45:11
Speaker
ah There's ways to contribute. You can chime in. ah The campaign's easy to find. Emails, nj at Nathan for Texas dot com. ah Of course, we'll be running up a ground game as we get moving into next year.
Senator Johnson's Personal Interests
00:45:23
Speaker
lot of ways to contribute. If we have events in your area, please come. It's great to see people um outside outside of this ah political world. You know, I still try to be a lawyer.
00:45:34
Speaker
I still try to run. i'm not goingnna I'm not going to catch Alex, but I run a couple of days a week and I swim and I still still try to play the piano a little bit and keep in touch with my really great grown up kids.
00:45:46
Speaker
Amazing. I love it. I'm also a musician and I would love to be a better runner, but maybe we can all get together and do both. um But I will speak on behalf of both of us and say thank you so much for joining us, ah Senator, and we learned a lot.
00:45:59
Speaker
Thank you. Thank you both for for launching this podcast and kind of bringing something to the conversation that I think people have' missing for a long time, which is this kind of long-form, long-term, broad thinking, how are we going to win this?
00:46:13
Speaker
Because we can. Right. We can. Thanks, Anna. And good luck. Thank you. You can follow us on all socials at Mission Texas Podcast. Email us at missiontexaspodcast at gmail.com.
00:46:27
Speaker
This episode is edited by Juan Jose Flores. Our music bumper is by Adam Pickerel, and our cover art is by Tino So.