August 25, 2025 • 32 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
It's that time time time time lucking load. So Michael
darry Show is on the air.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Rise Loo, get into Mic. We gotta feed a bed.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
I don't plan to shave.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
And it's you think, but I just gotta see. I'm done,
all right?
Speaker 3 (00:32):
Will you come?
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Mix's beating? Ready done, that's true. It's neither drink or
drug and stool. I'm just done. All right.
Speaker 4 (00:46):
You've got an awful illegal alien who's about to be
punted to Uganda, and the liberals are signing a petition.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Oh no, not the partition, President Trump, what will you
do here? Here's the petition. I like to think of
how proud they were when they YEA, yeah, I'll sign it.
I like to imagine them out in front of the
(01:19):
Whole Foods, out in front of the what's the most
liberal location you can think of? Ramon, There they are, Yes,
I'll sign it.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Oh, who am I kidding? They generate all of this themselves.
He's probably signed by a bunch of illegal aliens. They
probably just signed it by a bunch of illegal aliens. Well,
at the current pace, this is going to be the
most active political season in a Republican primary that we've
seen in a very long time. Let me try to
(01:53):
give some structure to this. But this is this is
an ongoing deal, and it will only get more and
more busy as the days go by. So you've got
John Cornyan running for reelection to the US Senate, and
I'll break these races down in a minute. But you've
(02:14):
got John Cornyn running for re election to the Senate.
And you've got the Attorney General Ken Paxton having announced
his challenge to John Cornyn. Paxton leaving the Attorney General's
office freeze up the attorney general race. But going back
(02:39):
to the Senate race, you've got Cornyn, who's down over
twenty percentage points in the polls to Paxton. Well, now
you enter the conversation Wesley Hunt, and it looks increasingly
like Wesley Hunt is in that race. I think if
(03:02):
Wesley Hunt is in that race, john Cornyn gets out.
But I'm not certain of that. John Cornyn does not
want to leave. That is certain. John Cornyn is going
to lose to Ken Paxton, that is certain. Does Wesley
Hunt give up his safe congressional seat to run for
the Senate. Obviously, there are only one hundred Senators as
(03:25):
opposed to four hundred and thirty five congressman. It's a
six year term rather than a two year term, and
you are immediately influential just by sheer virtue of the
power of the Senate, Whereas as a congressman, you know,
he's only been there a few years. You've got to
be there a long time before you have any real influence.
(03:46):
So I can see where that's tasty. I can also
imagine the risk if you lose. If Wesley Hunt ran
and lost, I feel certain President Trump would put him
in in his administration. I think a lot of folks
when they get to Congress, and I'm not saying that
this is what Wesley has done, but I think a
(04:07):
lot of folks when they get to Congress, they realize
being a congressman, there's no glamour. What the hell?
Speaker 3 (04:15):
What was that?
Speaker 1 (04:17):
And what happened? How does that happen? Though? Oh, pot
was hot? Okay, all right? So I thought maybe you
were trying to silence me on Wesley Hunt. I thought
maybe that was a conspiracy. So you got so if
Wesley Hunt runs for the US and then you got
his seat, that pops open. That has not happened yet,
(04:38):
and it's not certain that that will happen, but I
think there is. I think there's at least a fifty
to fifty chance that it does. Now you step down
to Ken Paxton's seat for Attorney General, You've got Joan Huffman,
a state senator who's running. She's represented by Alan Blakemore.
(05:00):
He's evil, he's the worst, he's absolutely horrible. Everything that
is wrong with state government is Alan Blaymore. You've got
May's Middleton, who's also a state senator. He's represented by
Jordan Berry, who I really don't I don't know much about.
Middleton's got a lot of money from this area. John
(05:20):
Huffman also from this area. Two state senators from this area.
So you've got you know, you're always going to be
stronger in the district you represent. Then you've got Middleton
in his district, so you've got you've got the greater
Houston area being split to some extent. Then you've got
Chip Roy, who is now in the race, who is
(05:44):
a congressman from the outside the Austin area. And then
you've got Aaron Wrights, who worked for Paxton and now
in the Trump administration. My understanding is well, Paxton was
(06:05):
expected to endorse rights and apparently got talked out of it,
and that that's going to be And I don't know
that endorsements matter as much as people think they do,
but early on, insiders pay a lot of attention to them,
(06:26):
and that can often affect other insiders. I think at
the end of the day, the people vote on who
they're going to vote for and other than the Trump endorsement,
and even the Trump endorsement in certain places has not
been enough to move the needle. So you've got two
state Senators Hufman and Middleton. Aaron Wrights, who's never well.
He has run for office and lost, but he has
(06:48):
not held office, but is expected to have the Trump
support that has not happened yet. And Ship Roy, who
has ted Cruz's support and is represented Axiom, who is
Cruise's political consulting firm. Chip Roy has offended the Magabase
(07:08):
by calling them maga effers. He has pissed off President
Trump on more than one occasion, and he has pissed
off I think the Magabase and a lot of the base.
Just as Trump was leaving office, chip Roy was one
of the ones calling for his head. And I think
a lot of people will not forget that that being said,
(07:32):
he's a pretty astute politician and I think he has
a higher state wide profile than any of the other three,
so should be very interesting to watch there. Agricultural Commissioner
Sid Miller running for reelection, Nate Sheets running against him,
Land commissioner. The only candidate I know of now is
Don Buckingham, who is there. She's ambitious, she'd like to
(07:55):
hold another seat, but I think that I think that
for now her play is to stay put where she is. Usually,
when there's a reshuffling like this, candidate or officeholder, really
ambitious people will make a jump at a time like this,
and she strikes me as one of those people who's
(08:15):
trying to kind of bumble her way to the top
the way Greg Abbott did. And so this reshuffling may
mean that she runs for something else more racist to discuss,
you will sleep like each other Michael Barry Superior. They
(08:36):
used this song in the America's Team documentary that Netflix
aired has begun airing. I've never been a Cowboys fan.
I love Wade Phillips and so I rooted for the
Cowboys when he was there, and I always had this
immense respect for Tom Landry as a man and as
(08:56):
a coach, and my family, my mother especially was the
biggest Cowboys fan. I mean she was scream and holler,
which was unlike her, well, it was not like her
over sporting events. Anyway, when the when the Cowboys were playing,
I remember when the catch was made Dwight Clark. It
(09:19):
was twenty seven to twenty one. It was a championship game,
and I think he was eighty one, and We're all
sitting around and I cheer, I jump up and cheer.
I mean, what a little turd, because my whole family's
just devastated, and I'm whoo. I loved Joe Montana, but
I rooted against the Cowboys every week, openly, loudly, obnoxiously
(09:44):
rooted against the Cowboys. And when he makes the catch
and you realize he's made the catch, he's inbounds, Everson
Walls just kind of, you know, his shoulders, he hangs
his head and he kind of went Really was nothing
he could do. There was nothing he could do on
that catch. Anyway. I was never a Cowboys fan, but
(10:07):
I'm I'm I'm fascinated by the story. And they tell
the story very well, and I think they actually do
a pretty good job, the Jimmy Johnson Jerry Jones saga
and how that thing has played out over thirty years.
Jimmy Johnson's Golden Triangle boy. So I've always rooted for him,
(10:30):
and I was happy for him when the Cowboys won,
because he's a golden Triangle boy, and I mean, you
just it's the most valuable sports franchise, and on and
on and on. They do a pretty darn good job
with the with the documentary. All right, so back to it.
We've got a number of seats that are open. The
Comptroller's seat is open. Christi Krattick, who I would say
(10:55):
is one of those folks who's you know, she's Tom
Krattick's daughter. He was the Speaker of the House, and oddly,
when when he was no longer the speaker, he stayed
on as a state rep. And he has stayed on
all these years, which is odd. That doesn't usually kind of,
(11:17):
you know, pick up your ball and go home. But
he has hung around and has been a big, a
big guiding force in his daughter's career. And she is
very ambitious, as is Don Buckingham. Kelly Hancock is running
in that race. Christycratick was on the Railroad Commission. I'm
(11:37):
not sure if she still is. She may still be
on the Railroad Commission. And then you have Don Don Huffines,
who unfortunately is represented by Blakemore. But Huffins is going
to put whatever amount of money he needs to put
in that race to win, and he looks to have
the early advantage he's got. He's bucking up most of
(12:01):
the big endorsements anyway, and the kind of money he's
going to put into that, neither of the other two
is going to be able to raise, even Christycratick, who's
a pretty proficient fun raiser, if I recall correctly. While
I was talking about the race, I did not see it,
(12:22):
but Ken Paxton's endorsement of Aaron Wright's came down. It
was embargoed until eight, which I always think is so stupid.
They say Paxton endorsement of rights in bargoed till eight. Yeah,
(12:43):
because at eight o'clock when it hits on Fox News,
it's going to be such a jaw dropper. Hey, honey,
hold on, don't go to work yet. The big endorsement
just dropped. I got an email from a lady over
the weekend and she said, hey, here's this song, and
it's a song by an artist I didn't know. It's
(13:05):
a song I never heard, and I really appreciate you
playing it, but don't don't post it anywhere. Don't uh.
And I'm worried if people download it off your show,
they won't buy it anywhere. And I said, you know,
if I were to tell you, how many times in
twenty years of doing this somebody has said, don't promote
(13:31):
this too much, too much? Because I want to. I'm
going to do the big reveal, do the big reveal
next Thursday when three of my friends are coming over.
You're most things die, not because they're too broadly known,
but because they're not known at all. And this idea
(13:52):
that because it's really important to you, it is so
hard to get people's attention about whatever your thing is
you're doing, it is so hard to get people to
pay attention to that. It's almost impossible, almost impossible. And
for you to add, for you to add anything related
(14:18):
to that to in any way restrict that is surprising.
Ramon asked me if that was an endorsement of Hulfiin's No.
I like to know who the candidates are going to
be first but I think he wins that race. I do.
I think it'll be a good race. He's a former
state senator, He's he ran for governor. He actually he
(14:44):
actually ran a decent campaign for governor. It's hard to
run against a sitting governor. Uh, there's a fellow who's
running for governor now against Abbott. We'll get into that.
So let's go through our current office holders. The Attorney General,
Ken Paxton is running US Senate. The Comptroller Glenn hagar
has has gone to be president at Texas A and
(15:06):
M Robert Nichols Senate District three is not running for reelection.
Kelly Hancock Senate District nine is running for comptroller against
Hoff Fines. Senate District eleven. May's Middleton is running for
attorney general. Senate District seventeen. Joan Huffman running for Attorney General. Now,
(15:28):
each one of these office holders that's running for another office,
that means their seats are going to come up. So
you're going to have a lot of turnover. Senate District
twenty two, Brian Birdwell is not running for reelection. Good
House District nine. Trent Ashby is running for Senate District three,
which is Robert Nichols seat, which means that Trent Ashby's
(15:52):
seat will and so it goes on and on. Live
life doing it is big Michael Berry Show. All right,
So Senator Joan Huffman does not have to give up
(16:13):
he seed. Remember state senators, like US senators, serve six
year terms. Is that right. Somebody told me it was
four year terms. We thought it was six year terms.
I got to check that again. But this is not
on her re election cycle, so she gets a free
shot at this. That's one of the things about being
(16:38):
it's about holding an office with a multi year term,
is in the midterm of that you can run for
another office. So you've got of the state senators, You've
got two that we know of already that are not
running for reelection, Robert Nichols. All of these are the Republicans.
I'm just giving you the Republican side, Kelly Hancock, who
(16:59):
is unning for comptroller. Then you've got Middleton and Huffman
both running for attorney general. Huffman doesn't have to give
up her Senate seat because she can even if she
lost the Senate primary, sorry, the attorney general primary, She's
still a state senator and would still go back. Then
you've got Brian Birdwell, who's not running for reelection. Then
(17:20):
your state reps. You've got a lot of movement there
because every state senator wants to be statewide. Every state
rep wants to be a state senator. So now you've
got a District nine, Trent Ashby, who's running for Robert
Nichols seat. Nichols is not running for reelection. You've got
Steve Toath, as you heard announced on our show, running
for Congressional District two. We have another candidate announcing their
(17:46):
candidacy for a newly created congressional district, and that will
happen at nine o'clock. That's in bargo Ramon. It's embargoed.
You're not allowed to know till nine. It's either no,
just this embargoed. I decided to embargo it myself, just
to impose the embargo, just to be goofy. So you
got Tooth running against Dan Crenshaw. Now, an interesting thing happened.
(18:13):
Part of the redistrict that just passed the Senate last
night had already passed the House. Of course, the governor's
going to sign it. This is this is the expected
five seat pickup. But let me be very clear. If
Republicans have the opportunity, they will squander at least one
of those congressional districts. They will, I'm telling you they will.
The Democrats won't. Democrats will pick one of those up.
(18:36):
But if the Republicans have an opportunity, they will squander it.
And the way they'll squander it is Karl Rove will
come in and he will oppose the candidate who's going
to win. This happened. This happened in the Senate race
in Missourian in twenty ten. Todd Aikin was going to win,
and Karl Rove came in there and put all the
(18:57):
money they could into defeating a who was a Tea
Party guy. So the Tea Party candidates are going to
catch hell from the Carl rod folks and the same
people who brought you the Nicki Haley for President twenty
twenty four. They thought we'd forgotten in that primary. Those
(19:18):
people will attack your your maga Republican congressional candidates who
wouldn't otherwise win, all right, so of your state reps.
So in the Crenshaw race, the creation of the five
new congressional seats meant that some districts got carved up.
(19:38):
They're not five new Congression seats. They're redistricting. We don't
actually add any net seats. We should, but we haven't yet.
But what it does do is it carves those districts
up differently. Well, DC did everything they could to protect
Dan Crenshaw. How his district was forty percent Harris County,
(20:01):
sixty percent Montgomery County. They flipped that it's now sixty
percent Harris County, forty percent Montgomery County. The reason that
matters is the area that he picked up is very squish.
Republicans in the area he gave up are hardcore Republicans.
A Montgomery County Republican is very different than a Harris
(20:25):
County Republican. Think Donald Trump versus Nicky Haley. And particularly
because that district carves through the heights, you're getting folks
that could just disse easily vote Democrat. You're getting folks
who voted for Obama two times they call themselves Republicans.
Those folks are far more likely to vote for Crenshaw
(20:46):
and far less likely to be bothered by a lot
of the stuff he's done. So you've got toath running there.
I still think Tooth can win that race. And there
is another well funded candidate in that race, which we'll
get to. Dade Feeland State Rep. Not running for reelection,
Drunk Daye Stan Lambert not running for reelection. Tony Tenderholt
unfortunately because he's one of the good guys not running
(21:07):
for reelection. David Cook, State Rep. Running for Senate District
twenty two, which is Brian Birdwell. Remember Birdwell's not running
for reelection. Giovanni cappri Capprilione not running for reelection. You
probably know that story. I'll tell it later if you haven't.
Risk Ocaine running for Congressional District nine. He's a state Rep.
(21:30):
Running for Congressional District nine. That is one of the
districts that has been redistricted. It's currently Al Green. If
we don't mess this up, a Republican the way it's
now reconfigured with this new map that'll be coming out,
a Republican should take that seat, and al Green will
have to I'll Al Green will have to do whatever
(21:55):
it is he does when he's not in Congress. Denis Rep.
Who I believe ran for the state Senate before. I
recall that many years ago. But I'm not pause on that.
He will be running in Senate District eleven, which was
held by Mays Middleton, who is who has to give
(22:15):
that seat up because it runs concurrent with the attorney
General's race. So that's just a few of the races.
There is also some drama related to political consultants that
is playing out, and that is Axiom, who is Ted
(22:35):
Cruz's political consultant who ran the DeSantis campaign but then
DeSantis ended up hating them. That is Jeff row and
his crew. Axiom is running Ken Paxton's race, and that
is because Chris ls Sevida is running Cornyn's race. Lavida
(23:00):
is one of Trump's people. He's not his only person,
but he is perceived in Texas as being the Trump guy.
He's not the only Trump guy, but that's kind of
his credentials. So you've got a Trump guy running Cornon's race,
a Cruise guy running Paxton's race, and then you've got
(23:22):
Wesley Hunt in the offing. I think if Hunt gets in,
Trump puts las Avida on Hunt, which would mean he
wasn't supporting Paxton. That's a step yet, but I think
there's a chance that will does. So this is the
Michael Barry show the rational District nine currently held by
(23:47):
al Green. The redistricting maps that passed the Senate overnight
had already passed the House. They are going into effect.
The governor, we'll sign that. Yes, Democrats will file a lawsuit.
You've got to calm down when you hear that Democrats
(24:09):
have filed a lawsuit. You file a lawsuit on everything.
It's what you do. It's a hell, Mary, but it's
what you do. So just assume every time you win anything,
Democrats have filed a lawsuit. I get breathless email from
people panicking, what can we do to do away with
(24:30):
the court system. That's what the court system is for.
It's an appeal. It's like being mad that Karl Malone
would turn and look at the refs. He flops, He
looks at the refs. Magic Johnson did it, Lebron does it.
There's nothing you can do about it. It's what it is.
I don't think they'll win that. I think redistricting will
go into effect. And that's just that. And when it does,
(24:53):
al Green cannot win that seat. The Democrats have already
looked at the seat. They've already looked at the district
you look at the numbers, they know they can't win.
So al Green is looking at moving into running in
the Congressional District eighteen Democrat primary. And you remember who
(25:17):
the congress what was Congressional District eighteen. That race had
been wired for Christian menefeea win. He's the county attorney
who is supposed to step down from his job where
he is now. Once he announced that he was running
for office. He didn't. They're not doing anything about it.
(25:38):
The county. Rodney runs the county, not Lena, and Rodney
is keeping him right there. So he's got a paycheck
and he can do Rodney's bidding as the county attorney.
But the race has been wired for Menefee to win. Now,
Joelonda Jones, who's currently a state rep and was on
(25:59):
city council before that, is running in that race. And
I think that she is I don't know that she wins,
but I think she's got probably better name I d
than Christian Menefie does. She's an activist, she has Sheila
Jackson Lee's willingness to get behind the camera. She succeeded
me on city council. I will tell you that in
(26:22):
that congressional district. She has a lot of the tools
of politicians you would see in the out of the
seventies and eighties, more of the Mickey Leland type campaigning,
in the Mickey Leland type activism, and she may have
enough to get over the finish line there. I don't know.
(26:42):
I'm just saying I wouldn't. I would not sell her
short Menafie is not a particularly charismatic candidate, but he
is Rodney's boy and that was that was set up
for him to win. The problem is sometimes people don't
let Rodney have his way on these seats. They also
want to see it, and he didn't have me where
to put him. Right now, al Green is not going
(27:06):
to win Congressional District nine. And this is al Green's paycheck.
He was a JP for many years, that's what he
did before. And al Green is not going to stay
in that race till next November and take the fall
because that district will have been redistricted. From what I've heard,
I've not seen the final map. The final map is
(27:27):
out there, I just haven't personally looked at it. But
from people I've talked to that they've seen it. Al
Green doesn't have a chance, and he's not going to
stay there and lose. He has the name ide to
move into eighteen and win. If al Green moves into eighteen,
remember you don't have to live in a congressional district
to run there. If al Green moves into district, into
(27:48):
Congressional District eighteen's Democrat primary, Rodney will put Christian Menifee somewhere.
He'll keep him as county attorney. Remember how they did
Amanda Edwards. Amanda Edwards was going to run for mayor
the race that whitmire Sheila Jackson Lee, and then Amanda
(28:09):
Edwards was in. Amanda Edwards was peeling off some Black support,
and she was peeling off some money, and she was
a city councilman, and she was a much better looking
candidate than Sheila Jacksonlee. She's an attractive woman. She's young, youngish,
I think she's probably early thirties. She's got a lot
of energy. And there will always be in predominantly black
(28:33):
districts an idealistic young black electorate. They may not be
enough to win the election, but there will always be
an idealistic young Black electorate, some of whom, some of
whom came here to go to school, some of whom
are from here and went to Howard and came home,
and they're tired of Sheila Jackson Lee. They're tired of
Rodney Ellis, and they want somebody that they think is
(28:55):
more like them, more of their sorrow sister or more
of their frat brother, more a young, young, energetic, hardworking,
respectable person who can conjugate their b verbs. And so
Amanda Edwards had a coalition and she was making a
decent run. She wasn't going to win, but she was
(29:15):
going to keep Sheila from winning. So a deal was cut,
and this is what happens in black races and in
the Black community. A deal was cut with her that
Sheila that she would pull out and Sheila would That way,
Sheila would have a good, clean path to being mayor
(29:40):
and Amanda Edwards would have that congressional seat, she'd have
Sila's endorsement. Well, as you know, Sheila doesn't win the
December runoff with John Whitmer in early December, and then
that's on Saturday. She has until Monday at five pm
to file in the primary, the Democrat primary for Congress,
(30:04):
and of course she does. So she went back on
her deal with Amanda Edwards. I think if al Green
gets into Congressional District eighteen's Democrat primary, Mimfy can't beat him,
and Rodney has to potentially fracture his coalition. And Rodney's
(30:28):
got a good business enterprise going right now. He's got
everybody placed. Remember he had his chief of staff as
HISD board chairman. Of course, she got indicted and convicted
for that, and then but before she got indicted, he
put her at Houston Community College because that's another big
pot of money, and she had the day job with
him running his operation. But he's got all his people
(30:52):
in all the right places, except he lost the mayor's race.
He needed Sheila in the mayor's race to continue because
there's a lot of money at the City of Houston
going around. And he and Whitmyer are mortal enemies. I
mean they hate each other. There aren't two Republicans who
hate each other as much as those two hate each other.
(31:16):
All right, we have a Congressional District nine, which was
our Green seat, redistricted to make it a Republican seat.
Risco Caine is running there and our first candidate interview
or the season or a candidate who will announce right here,
(31:36):
right now, their candidacy coming up
It's that time time time time lucking load. So Michael
darry Show is on the air.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Rise Loo, get into Mic. We gotta feed a bed.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
I don't plan to shave.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
And it's you think, but I just gotta see. I'm done,
all right?
Speaker 3 (00:32):
Will you come?
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Mix's beating? Ready done, that's true. It's neither drink or
drug and stool. I'm just done. All right.
Speaker 4 (00:46):
You've got an awful illegal alien who's about to be
punted to Uganda, and the liberals are signing a petition.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Oh no, not the partition, President Trump, what will you
do here? Here's the petition. I like to think of
how proud they were when they YEA, yeah, I'll sign it.
I like to imagine them out in front of the
(01:19):
Whole Foods, out in front of the what's the most
liberal location you can think of? Ramon, There they are, Yes,
I'll sign it.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Oh, who am I kidding? They generate all of this themselves.
He's probably signed by a bunch of illegal aliens. They
probably just signed it by a bunch of illegal aliens. Well,
at the current pace, this is going to be the
most active political season in a Republican primary that we've
seen in a very long time. Let me try to
(01:53):
give some structure to this. But this is this is
an ongoing deal, and it will only get more and
more busy as the days go by. So you've got
John Cornyan running for reelection to the US Senate, and
I'll break these races down in a minute. But you've
(02:14):
got John Cornyn running for re election to the Senate.
And you've got the Attorney General Ken Paxton having announced
his challenge to John Cornyn. Paxton leaving the Attorney General's
office freeze up the attorney general race. But going back
(02:39):
to the Senate race, you've got Cornyn, who's down over
twenty percentage points in the polls to Paxton. Well, now
you enter the conversation Wesley Hunt, and it looks increasingly
like Wesley Hunt is in that race. I think if
(03:02):
Wesley Hunt is in that race, john Cornyn gets out.
But I'm not certain of that. John Cornyn does not
want to leave. That is certain. John Cornyn is going
to lose to Ken Paxton, that is certain. Does Wesley
Hunt give up his safe congressional seat to run for
the Senate. Obviously, there are only one hundred Senators as
(03:25):
opposed to four hundred and thirty five congressman. It's a
six year term rather than a two year term, and
you are immediately influential just by sheer virtue of the
power of the Senate, Whereas as a congressman, you know,
he's only been there a few years. You've got to
be there a long time before you have any real influence.
(03:46):
So I can see where that's tasty. I can also
imagine the risk if you lose. If Wesley Hunt ran
and lost, I feel certain President Trump would put him
in in his administration. I think a lot of folks
when they get to Congress, and I'm not saying that
this is what Wesley has done, but I think a
(04:07):
lot of folks when they get to Congress, they realize
being a congressman, there's no glamour. What the hell?
Speaker 3 (04:15):
What was that?
Speaker 1 (04:17):
And what happened? How does that happen? Though? Oh, pot
was hot? Okay, all right? So I thought maybe you
were trying to silence me on Wesley Hunt. I thought
maybe that was a conspiracy. So you got so if
Wesley Hunt runs for the US and then you got
his seat, that pops open. That has not happened yet,
(04:38):
and it's not certain that that will happen, but I
think there is. I think there's at least a fifty
to fifty chance that it does. Now you step down
to Ken Paxton's seat for Attorney General, You've got Joan Huffman,
a state senator who's running. She's represented by Alan Blakemore.
(05:00):
He's evil, he's the worst, he's absolutely horrible. Everything that
is wrong with state government is Alan Blaymore. You've got
May's Middleton, who's also a state senator. He's represented by
Jordan Berry, who I really don't I don't know much about.
Middleton's got a lot of money from this area. John
(05:20):
Huffman also from this area. Two state senators from this area.
So you've got you know, you're always going to be
stronger in the district you represent. Then you've got Middleton
in his district, so you've got you've got the greater
Houston area being split to some extent. Then you've got
Chip Roy, who is now in the race, who is
(05:44):
a congressman from the outside the Austin area. And then
you've got Aaron Wrights, who worked for Paxton and now
in the Trump administration. My understanding is well, Paxton was
(06:05):
expected to endorse rights and apparently got talked out of it,
and that that's going to be And I don't know
that endorsements matter as much as people think they do,
but early on, insiders pay a lot of attention to them,
(06:26):
and that can often affect other insiders. I think at
the end of the day, the people vote on who
they're going to vote for and other than the Trump endorsement,
and even the Trump endorsement in certain places has not
been enough to move the needle. So you've got two
state Senators Hufman and Middleton. Aaron Wrights, who's never well.
He has run for office and lost, but he has
(06:48):
not held office, but is expected to have the Trump
support that has not happened yet. And Ship Roy, who
has ted Cruz's support and is represented Axiom, who is
Cruise's political consulting firm. Chip Roy has offended the Magabase
(07:08):
by calling them maga effers. He has pissed off President
Trump on more than one occasion, and he has pissed
off I think the Magabase and a lot of the base.
Just as Trump was leaving office, chip Roy was one
of the ones calling for his head. And I think
a lot of people will not forget that that being said,
(07:32):
he's a pretty astute politician and I think he has
a higher state wide profile than any of the other three,
so should be very interesting to watch there. Agricultural Commissioner
Sid Miller running for reelection, Nate Sheets running against him,
Land commissioner. The only candidate I know of now is
Don Buckingham, who is there. She's ambitious, she'd like to
(07:55):
hold another seat, but I think that I think that
for now her play is to stay put where she is. Usually,
when there's a reshuffling like this, candidate or officeholder, really
ambitious people will make a jump at a time like this,
and she strikes me as one of those people who's
(08:15):
trying to kind of bumble her way to the top
the way Greg Abbott did. And so this reshuffling may
mean that she runs for something else more racist to discuss,
you will sleep like each other Michael Barry Superior. They
(08:36):
used this song in the America's Team documentary that Netflix
aired has begun airing. I've never been a Cowboys fan.
I love Wade Phillips and so I rooted for the
Cowboys when he was there, and I always had this
immense respect for Tom Landry as a man and as
(08:56):
a coach, and my family, my mother especially was the
biggest Cowboys fan. I mean she was scream and holler,
which was unlike her, well, it was not like her
over sporting events. Anyway, when the when the Cowboys were playing,
I remember when the catch was made Dwight Clark. It
(09:19):
was twenty seven to twenty one. It was a championship game,
and I think he was eighty one, and We're all
sitting around and I cheer, I jump up and cheer.
I mean, what a little turd, because my whole family's
just devastated, and I'm whoo. I loved Joe Montana, but
I rooted against the Cowboys every week, openly, loudly, obnoxiously
(09:44):
rooted against the Cowboys. And when he makes the catch
and you realize he's made the catch, he's inbounds, Everson
Walls just kind of, you know, his shoulders, he hangs
his head and he kind of went Really was nothing
he could do. There was nothing he could do on
that catch. Anyway. I was never a Cowboys fan, but
(10:07):
I'm I'm I'm fascinated by the story. And they tell
the story very well, and I think they actually do
a pretty good job, the Jimmy Johnson Jerry Jones saga
and how that thing has played out over thirty years.
Jimmy Johnson's Golden Triangle boy. So I've always rooted for him,
(10:30):
and I was happy for him when the Cowboys won,
because he's a golden Triangle boy, and I mean, you
just it's the most valuable sports franchise, and on and
on and on. They do a pretty darn good job
with the with the documentary. All right, so back to it.
We've got a number of seats that are open. The
Comptroller's seat is open. Christi Krattick, who I would say
(10:55):
is one of those folks who's you know, she's Tom
Krattick's daughter. He was the Speaker of the House, and oddly,
when when he was no longer the speaker, he stayed
on as a state rep. And he has stayed on
all these years, which is odd. That doesn't usually kind of,
(11:17):
you know, pick up your ball and go home. But
he has hung around and has been a big, a
big guiding force in his daughter's career. And she is
very ambitious, as is Don Buckingham. Kelly Hancock is running
in that race. Christycratick was on the Railroad Commission. I'm
(11:37):
not sure if she still is. She may still be
on the Railroad Commission. And then you have Don Don Huffines,
who unfortunately is represented by Blakemore. But Huffins is going
to put whatever amount of money he needs to put
in that race to win, and he looks to have
the early advantage he's got. He's bucking up most of
(12:01):
the big endorsements anyway, and the kind of money he's
going to put into that, neither of the other two
is going to be able to raise, even Christycratick, who's
a pretty proficient fun raiser, if I recall correctly. While
I was talking about the race, I did not see it,
(12:22):
but Ken Paxton's endorsement of Aaron Wright's came down. It
was embargoed until eight, which I always think is so stupid.
They say Paxton endorsement of rights in bargoed till eight. Yeah,
(12:43):
because at eight o'clock when it hits on Fox News,
it's going to be such a jaw dropper. Hey, honey,
hold on, don't go to work yet. The big endorsement
just dropped. I got an email from a lady over
the weekend and she said, hey, here's this song, and
it's a song by an artist I didn't know. It's
(13:05):
a song I never heard, and I really appreciate you
playing it, but don't don't post it anywhere. Don't uh.
And I'm worried if people download it off your show,
they won't buy it anywhere. And I said, you know,
if I were to tell you, how many times in
twenty years of doing this somebody has said, don't promote
(13:31):
this too much, too much? Because I want to. I'm
going to do the big reveal, do the big reveal
next Thursday when three of my friends are coming over.
You're most things die, not because they're too broadly known,
but because they're not known at all. And this idea
(13:52):
that because it's really important to you, it is so
hard to get people's attention about whatever your thing is
you're doing, it is so hard to get people to
pay attention to that. It's almost impossible, almost impossible. And
for you to add, for you to add anything related
(14:18):
to that to in any way restrict that is surprising.
Ramon asked me if that was an endorsement of Hulfiin's No.
I like to know who the candidates are going to
be first but I think he wins that race. I do.
I think it'll be a good race. He's a former
state senator, He's he ran for governor. He actually he
(14:44):
actually ran a decent campaign for governor. It's hard to
run against a sitting governor. Uh, there's a fellow who's
running for governor now against Abbott. We'll get into that.
So let's go through our current office holders. The Attorney General,
Ken Paxton is running US Senate. The Comptroller Glenn hagar
has has gone to be president at Texas A and
(15:06):
M Robert Nichols Senate District three is not running for reelection.
Kelly Hancock Senate District nine is running for comptroller against
Hoff Fines. Senate District eleven. May's Middleton is running for
attorney general. Senate District seventeen. Joan Huffman running for Attorney General. Now,
(15:28):
each one of these office holders that's running for another office,
that means their seats are going to come up. So
you're going to have a lot of turnover. Senate District
twenty two, Brian Birdwell is not running for reelection. Good
House District nine. Trent Ashby is running for Senate District three,
which is Robert Nichols seat, which means that Trent Ashby's
(15:52):
seat will and so it goes on and on. Live
life doing it is big Michael Berry Show. All right,
So Senator Joan Huffman does not have to give up
(16:13):
he seed. Remember state senators, like US senators, serve six
year terms. Is that right. Somebody told me it was
four year terms. We thought it was six year terms.
I got to check that again. But this is not
on her re election cycle, so she gets a free
shot at this. That's one of the things about being
(16:38):
it's about holding an office with a multi year term,
is in the midterm of that you can run for
another office. So you've got of the state senators, You've
got two that we know of already that are not
running for reelection, Robert Nichols. All of these are the Republicans.
I'm just giving you the Republican side, Kelly Hancock, who
(16:59):
is unning for comptroller. Then you've got Middleton and Huffman
both running for attorney general. Huffman doesn't have to give
up her Senate seat because she can even if she
lost the Senate primary, sorry, the attorney general primary, She's
still a state senator and would still go back. Then
you've got Brian Birdwell, who's not running for reelection. Then
(17:20):
your state reps. You've got a lot of movement there
because every state senator wants to be statewide. Every state
rep wants to be a state senator. So now you've
got a District nine, Trent Ashby, who's running for Robert
Nichols seat. Nichols is not running for reelection. You've got
Steve Toath, as you heard announced on our show, running
for Congressional District two. We have another candidate announcing their
(17:46):
candidacy for a newly created congressional district, and that will
happen at nine o'clock. That's in bargo Ramon. It's embargoed.
You're not allowed to know till nine. It's either no,
just this embargoed. I decided to embargo it myself, just
to impose the embargo, just to be goofy. So you
got Tooth running against Dan Crenshaw. Now, an interesting thing happened.
(18:13):
Part of the redistrict that just passed the Senate last
night had already passed the House. Of course, the governor's
going to sign it. This is this is the expected
five seat pickup. But let me be very clear. If
Republicans have the opportunity, they will squander at least one
of those congressional districts. They will, I'm telling you they will.
The Democrats won't. Democrats will pick one of those up.
(18:36):
But if the Republicans have an opportunity, they will squander it.
And the way they'll squander it is Karl Rove will
come in and he will oppose the candidate who's going
to win. This happened. This happened in the Senate race
in Missourian in twenty ten. Todd Aikin was going to win,
and Karl Rove came in there and put all the
(18:57):
money they could into defeating a who was a Tea
Party guy. So the Tea Party candidates are going to
catch hell from the Carl rod folks and the same
people who brought you the Nicki Haley for President twenty
twenty four. They thought we'd forgotten in that primary. Those
(19:18):
people will attack your your maga Republican congressional candidates who
wouldn't otherwise win, all right, so of your state reps.
So in the Crenshaw race, the creation of the five
new congressional seats meant that some districts got carved up.
(19:38):
They're not five new Congression seats. They're redistricting. We don't
actually add any net seats. We should, but we haven't yet.
But what it does do is it carves those districts
up differently. Well, DC did everything they could to protect
Dan Crenshaw. How his district was forty percent Harris County,
(20:01):
sixty percent Montgomery County. They flipped that it's now sixty
percent Harris County, forty percent Montgomery County. The reason that
matters is the area that he picked up is very squish.
Republicans in the area he gave up are hardcore Republicans.
A Montgomery County Republican is very different than a Harris
(20:25):
County Republican. Think Donald Trump versus Nicky Haley. And particularly
because that district carves through the heights, you're getting folks
that could just disse easily vote Democrat. You're getting folks
who voted for Obama two times they call themselves Republicans.
Those folks are far more likely to vote for Crenshaw
(20:46):
and far less likely to be bothered by a lot
of the stuff he's done. So you've got toath running there.
I still think Tooth can win that race. And there
is another well funded candidate in that race, which we'll
get to. Dade Feeland State Rep. Not running for reelection,
Drunk Daye Stan Lambert not running for reelection. Tony Tenderholt
unfortunately because he's one of the good guys not running
(21:07):
for reelection. David Cook, State Rep. Running for Senate District
twenty two, which is Brian Birdwell. Remember Birdwell's not running
for reelection. Giovanni cappri Capprilione not running for reelection. You
probably know that story. I'll tell it later if you haven't.
Risk Ocaine running for Congressional District nine. He's a state Rep.
(21:30):
Running for Congressional District nine. That is one of the
districts that has been redistricted. It's currently Al Green. If
we don't mess this up, a Republican the way it's
now reconfigured with this new map that'll be coming out,
a Republican should take that seat, and al Green will
have to I'll Al Green will have to do whatever
(21:55):
it is he does when he's not in Congress. Denis Rep.
Who I believe ran for the state Senate before. I
recall that many years ago. But I'm not pause on that.
He will be running in Senate District eleven, which was
held by Mays Middleton, who is who has to give
(22:15):
that seat up because it runs concurrent with the attorney
General's race. So that's just a few of the races.
There is also some drama related to political consultants that
is playing out, and that is Axiom, who is Ted
(22:35):
Cruz's political consultant who ran the DeSantis campaign but then
DeSantis ended up hating them. That is Jeff row and
his crew. Axiom is running Ken Paxton's race, and that
is because Chris ls Sevida is running Cornyn's race. Lavida
(23:00):
is one of Trump's people. He's not his only person,
but he is perceived in Texas as being the Trump guy.
He's not the only Trump guy, but that's kind of
his credentials. So you've got a Trump guy running Cornon's race,
a Cruise guy running Paxton's race, and then you've got
(23:22):
Wesley Hunt in the offing. I think if Hunt gets in,
Trump puts las Avida on Hunt, which would mean he
wasn't supporting Paxton. That's a step yet, but I think
there's a chance that will does. So this is the
Michael Barry show the rational District nine currently held by
(23:47):
al Green. The redistricting maps that passed the Senate overnight
had already passed the House. They are going into effect.
The governor, we'll sign that. Yes, Democrats will file a lawsuit.
You've got to calm down when you hear that Democrats
(24:09):
have filed a lawsuit. You file a lawsuit on everything.
It's what you do. It's a hell, Mary, but it's
what you do. So just assume every time you win anything,
Democrats have filed a lawsuit. I get breathless email from
people panicking, what can we do to do away with
(24:30):
the court system. That's what the court system is for.
It's an appeal. It's like being mad that Karl Malone
would turn and look at the refs. He flops, He
looks at the refs. Magic Johnson did it, Lebron does it.
There's nothing you can do about it. It's what it is.
I don't think they'll win that. I think redistricting will
go into effect. And that's just that. And when it does,
(24:53):
al Green cannot win that seat. The Democrats have already
looked at the seat. They've already looked at the district
you look at the numbers, they know they can't win.
So al Green is looking at moving into running in
the Congressional District eighteen Democrat primary. And you remember who
(25:17):
the congress what was Congressional District eighteen. That race had
been wired for Christian menefeea win. He's the county attorney
who is supposed to step down from his job where
he is now. Once he announced that he was running
for office. He didn't. They're not doing anything about it.
(25:38):
The county. Rodney runs the county, not Lena, and Rodney
is keeping him right there. So he's got a paycheck
and he can do Rodney's bidding as the county attorney.
But the race has been wired for Menefee to win. Now,
Joelonda Jones, who's currently a state rep and was on
(25:59):
city council before that, is running in that race. And
I think that she is I don't know that she wins,
but I think she's got probably better name I d
than Christian Menefie does. She's an activist, she has Sheila
Jackson Lee's willingness to get behind the camera. She succeeded
me on city council. I will tell you that in
(26:22):
that congressional district. She has a lot of the tools
of politicians you would see in the out of the
seventies and eighties, more of the Mickey Leland type campaigning,
in the Mickey Leland type activism, and she may have
enough to get over the finish line there. I don't know.
(26:42):
I'm just saying I wouldn't. I would not sell her
short Menafie is not a particularly charismatic candidate, but he
is Rodney's boy and that was that was set up
for him to win. The problem is sometimes people don't
let Rodney have his way on these seats. They also
want to see it, and he didn't have me where
to put him. Right now, al Green is not going
(27:06):
to win Congressional District nine. And this is al Green's paycheck.
He was a JP for many years, that's what he
did before. And al Green is not going to stay
in that race till next November and take the fall
because that district will have been redistricted. From what I've heard,
I've not seen the final map. The final map is
(27:27):
out there, I just haven't personally looked at it. But
from people I've talked to that they've seen it. Al
Green doesn't have a chance, and he's not going to
stay there and lose. He has the name ide to
move into eighteen and win. If al Green moves into eighteen,
remember you don't have to live in a congressional district
to run there. If al Green moves into district, into
(27:48):
Congressional District eighteen's Democrat primary, Rodney will put Christian Menifee somewhere.
He'll keep him as county attorney. Remember how they did
Amanda Edwards. Amanda Edwards was going to run for mayor
the race that whitmire Sheila Jackson Lee, and then Amanda
(28:09):
Edwards was in. Amanda Edwards was peeling off some Black support,
and she was peeling off some money, and she was
a city councilman, and she was a much better looking
candidate than Sheila Jacksonlee. She's an attractive woman. She's young, youngish,
I think she's probably early thirties. She's got a lot
of energy. And there will always be in predominantly black
(28:33):
districts an idealistic young black electorate. They may not be
enough to win the election, but there will always be
an idealistic young Black electorate, some of whom, some of
whom came here to go to school, some of whom
are from here and went to Howard and came home,
and they're tired of Sheila Jackson Lee. They're tired of
Rodney Ellis, and they want somebody that they think is
(28:55):
more like them, more of their sorrow sister or more
of their frat brother, more a young, young, energetic, hardworking,
respectable person who can conjugate their b verbs. And so
Amanda Edwards had a coalition and she was making a
decent run. She wasn't going to win, but she was
(29:15):
going to keep Sheila from winning. So a deal was cut,
and this is what happens in black races and in
the Black community. A deal was cut with her that
Sheila that she would pull out and Sheila would That way,
Sheila would have a good, clean path to being mayor
(29:40):
and Amanda Edwards would have that congressional seat, she'd have
Sila's endorsement. Well, as you know, Sheila doesn't win the
December runoff with John Whitmer in early December, and then
that's on Saturday. She has until Monday at five pm
to file in the primary, the Democrat primary for Congress,
(30:04):
and of course she does. So she went back on
her deal with Amanda Edwards. I think if al Green
gets into Congressional District eighteen's Democrat primary, Mimfy can't beat him,
and Rodney has to potentially fracture his coalition. And Rodney's
(30:28):
got a good business enterprise going right now. He's got
everybody placed. Remember he had his chief of staff as
HISD board chairman. Of course, she got indicted and convicted
for that, and then but before she got indicted, he
put her at Houston Community College because that's another big
pot of money, and she had the day job with
him running his operation. But he's got all his people
(30:52):
in all the right places, except he lost the mayor's race.
He needed Sheila in the mayor's race to continue because
there's a lot of money at the City of Houston
going around. And he and Whitmyer are mortal enemies. I
mean they hate each other. There aren't two Republicans who
hate each other as much as those two hate each other.
(31:16):
All right, we have a Congressional District nine, which was
our Green seat, redistricted to make it a Republican seat.
Risco Caine is running there and our first candidate interview
or the season or a candidate who will announce right here,
(31:36):
right now, their candidacy coming up
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