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December 9, 2025 • 33 mins

Michael Berry explores the forces reshaping Texas—from high-profile Senate battles to local judicial revolutions. A deep dive into the strategies, stakes, and surprises defining this election season.

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Speaker 1 (00:03):
It's that time time, time, time, luck and load. So
Michael Arry Show is on the air, and now a
totally random week in review from the past. Take a
guess when this was. I said, good morning, Uncle Preyson. Eyah,

(00:27):
I said, Glenn Campbell's coming to the Astronomer. He's gonna
be at Houston. And he said I would watch Glenn
campbellvis across the street. And what bothers me is I'm
fifty four years old. That's approximately fifty years ago, and
I can't understand why he was so mad at Glenn Gamble.
Dozens of Texas Democrats were waking up in Illinois and

(00:49):
New York after leaving the state in a last dished
effort to stop a congressional redistricting attack. They've left the state,
abandon their posts, and turn their backs on the constituents
they swore to represent. To run to stay site New
York and Illinois to protest redistrict and is kind of
like a running to Wisconsin to protest cheese. It's just
kind of outrageous. Dear God, bless his heart, Please don't

(01:11):
let him do national interviews anymore. It's just setting him
up for failure. A priesting five constable deputy under an
internal investigation after posting a TikTok that went viral. See
a priesting five constable deputy joining on a TikTok trend
and having some fun, but that could cause her to
lose her job, like they planned. No, you're just being childish,
like y'all ain't you ain't taking nothing seriously, you're gonna

(01:33):
write me some tickets because you ain't get great. I
love how they always have to have the man on
the street response to the story, because we wouldn't really
know how to respond if they told us that A
Constable's deputy filmed herself saying I didn't get banged last night,
So everybody's getting a ticket today for the third time

(01:56):
since last week. Someone throw an adult toy onto the
court during a WNBA. It's putting people in danger. Yeah,
you want to. These are athletes who are running, they're
cutting their jumping and very unhygienic and also not hygenic.
It's not hygienic. It's not Why exactly is it unhygienic
unless you've If you guessed August eighth, that was the

(02:26):
date that Week in Review aired, you will recall around
this time every year we play some last few weeks
of deceemer we'll play some of our old weeks in
Review or week in reviews, and your job is to
guess when that would have aired. Do we have a

(02:47):
lot to talk about today? My goodness, Well, yesterday was
filing day. Before we get to the Democrats, let me
just give you a sense of what we're dealing with
in the major races that are going to get a
lot of attention across the state. The US Senate race,
as you know, has the incumbent John Cornyn with two challengers,

(03:13):
Ken Paxton and Wesley Hunt in what has turned out
to be a referendum on the swamp versus the grassroots.
Another pole coming out yesterday, and now Cornyn has dropped
from second to third. This poll had Ken Paxton leading

(03:37):
at thirty three percent, Wesley Hunt at twenty eight, John
Cornyn at twenty seven. You've been in the Senate for
over twenty years, you are burning through cash, and you
are in third place to a guy that the entire
establishment has smeared much so that they impeached him in

(04:01):
the House to try to end his career, and a
congressman who's been in Congress for a cup of coffee.
The two of them are so much more popular than him,
so much more connected to voters than he is. And
he's been in the United States Senate for over twenty years.

(04:23):
He made a run for Senate majority leader. In fact,
one of the arguments that Paxton and Hunt are using
is that Cornyin is going to get and spend one
hundred million dollars from the Swamp to try to hold
on to his seat, not against the Democrat, but against

(04:45):
two Republican challengers. That one hundred million dollars could have
been spent in races where we desperately need to win
next November, but instead the money will be spent on
a primary. I go back to the race in twenty
ten when Marco Rubio, the leader of the state House there,

(05:07):
who was a Tea Party darling, was running against Rick Scott.
I'm sorry, Charlie. Oh what's his name, Charlie. It will
come to me in just a second. He was a

(05:27):
Swamp Republican. He had been the governor, Charlie Crist Charlie
Crist and they had a challenge. This was a tea
party challenge. This was when the grassroots made the big
push that ended up being what we see today, which
is the anti establishment Republican Party. They spent a fortune

(05:51):
on Charlie Crist, John Cornyn and Mitch McConnell were behind
this because they're boys Club the Swamp. They're in this together.
They're bought and paid for. They had to have Charlie
Crist keep his seat, and of course Marco Rubio beat him,
and immediately Charlie Crist announced he's no longer a Republican,

(06:11):
he's an independent. And by twenty twelve he was not
only no longer a Republican or just an independent, he
switched to being a Democrat and supported Barack Obama in
a full throated endorsement. So why did the swamp Republicans?

(06:32):
Why were they so determined to keep this guy as
one of their own? And if he couldn't keep his seat,
why did he all of a sudden love Barack Obama?
Because he didn't have to walk very far to get there.
He was already there, a wolf in sheep's clothing. So
now you've got the National Republican Party spending a fortune
the Senate Club to keep John Cornyn because we cannot

(06:55):
have you upstarts out there thinking that you can choose
your own senator. You'll start getting ideas, start thinking, this
is your process. You don't know anything. You're an idiot,
you're a peon. You're stupid, you're uninformed, you're racist, you're hateful.
You don't understand why we have to send all this
money to Ukraine. You don't know what you're doing. You

(07:16):
can't be allowed to govern. Only they can. They know
better than you. They're smarter than you, they're more informed,
they're more sophisticated. It's their process, not yours. What are
you doing? That's what this is all about. That's what
this is all about. So in the state of Texas,
you have the corn in versus Versus Paxton race, corning

(07:36):
in third place and burning through cash fast. You've got
Congressional District two incumbent Dan Crenshaw against challenger Steve Toath.
Tooth has a real shot to win that race because
Crenshaw is not well liked among the base in Congressional
District nine, one of the new districts. But we'll get

(07:59):
to all that. Jasmine Crockett getting in, Oh, there is
this is a time. I'm telling you, this is kind
of the super Bowl of talk radios. So on the
Republican side, the filings are done in both parties December eight,
six pm. The filings had to be in They were

(08:22):
filed with the local party unless they represented a multi
county election, statewide or regional. So in the Senate race,
you've got the major players. There will be a lot
of other names in some of these, but I'm not
going to get into all that. In the Senate race,
you've got Cornyn versus Wesley Hunt versus Ken Paxton, with

(08:45):
the new poll out that Cornyn is in third place,
Paxton is in first, Hunt second, and Cornyn in third place.
In the congressional district to race, Dan Crenshaw, who has
seriously upset the base for a number of reasons, being
challenged by very popular constitutionalist Tea Party Republican Steve Toath,

(09:08):
and Toath is making real ground. I see him closing
that by election day, by primary day. Congressional District nine
is one of the new congressional districts as part of
the redistricting, So al Green loses his seat, he moves
over on the Democrat side to Congressional District eighteen, which
is Sheila Jackson Lee's old seat, and you have a

(09:32):
new seat that's created that most expect will go Republican.
That seat is sort of East Harris County all the
way up. It's fifteen percent Liberty County, but it's sort
of it's east side of Houston all the way into
Liberty County. You've got working class, conservative Republican. It's not

(09:54):
a rich district, but it's a very conservative district. You've
got ou Alex Meeler running there. You've got risk Okine,
the state representative. At the last minute, former Congressman Steve
Stockman got into the race. You've got Stowball in that race.
That's going to be an interesting race. Indeed, nobody will

(10:15):
have represented that seat in no incumbent and it's a
new district, so it's going to be interesting. CD twenty
one you've got Chip Roy's seat, Chip Roy running for
Attorney General. Twelve candidates filing to run in an open,
safe Republican seat. It's kind of outside of Austin. CD
twenty eight Henry Quaar, who the President just pardoned a

(10:40):
little over a week ago and immediately announces he's running
for Congress. Two Republican candidates running against him. Some Republicans
angry with Trump over the pardon of Quaar. But if
you know Quaar's history and the enemies he has had
within the Democrat Party, you know that that was a
shot Trump at them. Now you're told that Trump is

(11:05):
angry at Quaar, that right after Trump pardoned him, Quaar
immediately files to run for Congress as a Democrat, and
Trump is very angry. I don't believe that. I think
Trump sees that as a Democrat seat that only a
Democrat can win, and that he wants his guy, his Democrat,

(11:30):
his Rod Blagoyevitch, to win it, but in order to
help him, he has to pretend to be angry at him.
That's what I think. I don't think. I don't think
he would have released him right before the filings unless
he knew exactly what he was doing. CD th two,
You've got nine Republican candidates to oppose Julie Johnson or

(11:53):
Colin Already. We'll get into Alred in a moment. Greg
Abbott drew nine opponents. Chambers I think is probably the
strongest of those. He's getting the most attention, and the
Constitutionalist Tea Party MAGA crowd is seems to be supporting
Chambers more than the others. Abbott sitting on a stockpile

(12:16):
of cash. It'll be interesting to see if Chambers can
start to get some momentum. Dan Patrick drew three opponents
for Lieutenant governor Attorney General, an open seat with Paxton
running for the US Senate. Now that seat Pope's open,
You've got State Senator Joan Huffman from the Greater Houston area.
You've got Alex Middleton, state Senator from the Greater Houston area.

(12:40):
You've got Aaron Wrights, who worked under Paxton and has
been endorsed by Paxton. He had gone to d C
this past year to work for the Trump administration, coming
back to announce he's running for attorney general. And you
have Chip Roy, the congressman. That's going to be a
very very interesting race. I see it as a runoff

(13:02):
between Rights and Chip Roy. We'll see comptroller. You've got
Christi Krattick, whose dad was a longtime Swamp state Representative
and Speaker, Kelly Hancock, who is Abbot's hand picked candidate,
and Don Huffines. Huffines has secured a lot of constitutionalist

(13:24):
tea Party MAGA America First, and he's well funded. Former
state senator That makes a bit of a difference, a
big difference, because when you're a challenger and an outsider
with non swamp positions, you've got to have the money
to be able to run the campaign, and he can
self fund. So I think Huffines has a very good

(13:46):
shot of winning that one Railroad commissioner Bo French, former
Tarrant Party chairman in that race with somebody else that's
running in it, and they are challenging the incumbent. We'll
get to that race. It's going to be it's going
to be a very interesting season over the next few months. Indeed,

(14:10):
and now we turn our attention to the Democrats. There
is a phrase called black girl magic in two thousand
and nineteen in pr Ran a story that said Miss
Universe twenty nineteen is young, gifted, and an outspoken believer

(14:35):
in black girl magic. Now this all kind of dove
tails Jasmine Crockett running for the US Senate. There will
now be a lot of prominent people who will step
forward and talk about how we need a black woman
from Texas to flip Texas Democrat. Jasmine Crockett doesn't have

(15:01):
a strong chance of winning, but she could win if
the stars aligned and I go back to the nineteen
ninety election of Anne Richards over Clayton Williams, when Clayty
was up over thirty percent, but the stars aligned and
the media help make it happen and they turned every
what they called gaff into nuclear war and Anne Richards

(15:25):
ended up winning the last time a Democrat won the
governor's race because George W. Bush would win in ninety
four and then it went Bush, Perry, now Abbott. But
there is something that is sort of branded as black
girl magic. We need These black women are nephertides, they're
queen's They've got something. This is consistent with what Michelle

(15:48):
Obama has been saying repeatedly. And part of this is
this big black women are the most special. We're it.
And it's a combination of of a Cardi b attitude,
a Maya Angelo sort of US first, Tony Morrison US first,

(16:12):
and a Michelle Obama sense of entitlement. And that that
was a big part of Harris County's filings yesterday, which
surprised a lot of people. We'll talk about the Montlake
Malcoberry's ship. So you had this movement for black women
in Democrat politics, and part of the persona is that

(16:43):
they have to at times act like Cardi b. They
got to get real sassy. Well, to be clear, Obama
put on a persona. He would get in front of
rallies where was a large black population in an inner

(17:04):
city of and he would start putting on his black pastor,
and sometimes he'd put on his black gangster. But that
wasn't that wasn't what he tried to define himself as
he wanted to be taken seriously across town. He would
just do that out on the stump and everybody would
pretend it was okay. Hell, for that matter, Hillary Clinton

(17:28):
did it when she did her Reverend James Cleveland, I
no way, tad.

Speaker 2 (17:35):
I've come hoove har from where I started from. Nobody
tall me the road would be a'a.

Speaker 1 (17:48):
But I don't believe he brought me this far to
leaeve me. Remember that is sort of a requisite campaign trait,
that you must have your ghetto persona that you pander
to people, which I find to be insulting frankly on

(18:09):
the campaign stand. I mean even Hillary felt the need
to do it.

Speaker 2 (18:15):
Ill, no ways tired, I come too far from where
I started from.

Speaker 1 (18:23):
Nobody told me that the road would besy. I don't
believe he brought me this far, this far come to ha.
So a lot of these candidates feel need to do that.
But what about what happened in Harris County yesterday? But

(18:46):
to my knowledge is not getting any attention. Rodney Ellis
is so good at what he does he has become
the boss tweet of Harris County politics, and no other
Democrats will talk about it. They won't bring it up.

(19:09):
There has been for several years now a feeling of
absolute terror by the white Democrats on the Harris County
judiciary that Rodney will run a black woman against them.

(19:29):
These are white Democrats, mind you. Some of these are
well regarded by their peers and they know that if
Rodney runs a black woman against them, they'll lose. So
yesterday five more white Democrats in the Democrat primary were

(19:51):
charged by black women and they will all lose in March.
We'll get into that just but first you have to understand,
since this trend started, you had these judges, these white
Democrat men, mostly judges or actually maybe all white male

(20:16):
who were swept in starting with Obama in two thousand
and eight. Some of them were serving for that period
of time. But when Rodney made his move not just
to hold his own, not just to take El Franco
Lee's seat for Precinct one commissioner, but to run all
of Harris County. That started in about twenty eighteen, maybe

(20:39):
twenty sixteen. So in twenty eighteen nineteen, black women ran
on what effectively became a slate. They call themselves black
girl magic. Now this is something that's been written about
by white liberal They love this. It's black girl magic.

(21:01):
We descend from queens, and not New York. We descend
from African queens, and we have something special. There's a
tone of this in a lot of what Michelle Obama,
her babble that she preaches in her podcasts and her speeches. Now,
Kamala Harris took this on. You have to listen to

(21:22):
me because I am a black woman, and we have
the wisdom that America needs because you once suckled at
our breast and now we are the powerful queens. There
is a lot of this. Jasmine Crockett draws on this.
But in twenty eighteen nineteen, black women ran for various
judge ships in Harris County, calling themselves black girl magic,

(21:45):
and they all won. They didn't beat Republicans who were
incumbents to get there. They beat white male Democrat judges.
Play with fire, you're gonna get burned. It's impossible for
a white male to beat a black female in the
Harris County Democrat primary. I give you an example, Darryl Moore.

(22:09):
He was a judge of the And by the way,
I'm not pining for the white Democrat judges, don't get
me wrong. Tell you what's happening within the party. They're
eating their own. They needed the white Democrats to get
to power. Now that they have the power, they're kicking
them out. It's fascinating to see. So Darryl Moore was
judge of the three hundred and thirty third District Court,

(22:31):
and I talked to people in the courthouse and he
was actually very well respected white Democrat. He was beaten
in the spring of twenty twenty the following year by
a woman named Britney Morris. Now Britney Morris happened to

(22:52):
have a law license, but people tell me she had
never practiced before. She was a real estate agent, and
people tell me they don't think she'd ever been inside
a courtroom before. But she was a black woman and
the Brittany had an extra e on the end just
for the flare of it all. Of course, she ended

(23:15):
up winning. There was a guy named Bob Schaeffer. He
was judge of the one hundred and fifty second District
Court since two thousand and nine. Took office at nine
elected in eight he was part of that Obama sweep,
again relatively well respected by his peers, white Democrat. Spring

(23:37):
of last year, twenty twenty four, he was challenged by
a woman named Takasha Francis. Ta capital k Asha Francis.
The k is not a typo, Takeaysha Francis and who
do you think one? So there's nothing wrong with running

(24:02):
against incumbents, there's nothing wrong with black women running against
white Democrats. But what you're seeing in Harris County is
that Rodney Ellis has created a machine. How does he
do it? He does it to the black churches and
they run what are called ponies or slate cards. They

(24:24):
do a role to the poll. So on the first day,
first Sunday of early voting, after church, everybody goes to
vote and then you come back to the church and
have lunch. The candidates are there, they hand out the slates.
You do those through the churches, you do those through
black organizations, you do those through through governmental organizations, anybody

(24:44):
that's on a governmental program, if you do those through mail.
Rodney's got money for this through the Soros organization. They're
all Duncans, and you know duncan means your yo. So
back to black Girl Magic, which is really just an
extension of Rodney ellis taking complete and utter control of

(25:09):
the counting. Before it's done, he will own practically every
judicial seat in Harris County. They all owe it to him.
He giveth and he can take it the way. That's
what happened to Kim oug He was a big supporter

(25:31):
of a white woman Democrat district attorney until she started
investigating things that related to him and his business interests
and the things he was up to. And then he
crushed her. And he did. He hand selected her opponent,

(25:53):
He put the money, the effort, and muscle the ground
troops behind it, and he beat her. There's no small
feet to beat an incumbent, but he did it. So yesterday,
five Democrat civil district judges drew Black Girl Magic opponents

(26:16):
and they are running around like chickens with their heads
cut off. They are scared to death. Someone emailed me
yesterday and said, I don't understand if blacks make up
nineteen percent of the electorate how Rodney can control the results. Well,
I'm going to use very broad generalizations. Let me explain
it to you like this. So let's say most blacks

(26:42):
are going to vote in the Democrat primary, not Republican.
So now you take one hundred percent of Harris County
and cut it in half. Now, nineteen percent of that
half makes up forty percent. Now you start. Now you
start talking about almost enough votes with just black votes

(27:09):
to win. And this is why it's important that blacks
be focused on racism and anger and resentment and voting Democrat.
Because if you can hold all the black votes, now
all you need to get is another eleven percent out

(27:30):
of the remaining thirty percent that are there. You can
do that. You can do that. So first you've got
to get blacks to turn out in big numbers. You
do that through the churches, the social organizations, and the
outreach from the government. Remember Rodney runs Harris County government.

(27:52):
This is why you see things like the basic income
program even if it's three four one hundred dollars per household.
If he's got a couple hundred dollars coming into your
door every day every month, then how easy is it
for him to tell you who to vote for. Remember

(28:13):
what Lena got popped for and her top three people
indicted was a COVID outreach program. So they were handing
a COVID outreach program allegedly to a one woman operation
out of Montrose who was the digital director for Hillary
Clinton's national presidential campaign and then the campaign manager for

(28:37):
Adrian Garcia's Commissioner's Court Adrian Garcia's mayoral run when he
ran for mayor. So you had a woman who ran
the numbers, a data person. Data people are very important
in politics, very important. You had the woman running data
operations who was now going to be handed the COVID outreach.

(28:58):
Why is that important because you're now going to give
her boots on the ground to go out and knock
doors all day every day. Hey, we want you to
know about COVID. Y'all need to be real careful, Okay, yeah, okay.
So we show here that you've voted in two out
of the last four elections and you're registered as a

(29:20):
Democrat or you voted in Democrat primaries. Do you see
yourself voting for Lena ht Allgo. You've got twenty million
dollars as a slush fund, but the part that you
do actually spend is a campaign contribution without having to
be claimed. Now you've got federal funds supposedly for COVID

(29:42):
to go door to door and find out what it's
going to take to get these people to vote Democrat
and if nothing else, then to remind them to vote
for Lena at that point, which was what this was
designed to do, because Rodney was afraid he'd lose a
county judge. See, so you've got the Black Girl Magic
can and it's running basically as a slate, and this

(30:05):
becomes his ability to absolutely dominate Harris County on a
level that is unfathomable. As I said, this is Tammany
Hall under boss Tweed back in the day. That's the
original smoke filled rooms, that's the insider. So let's go

(30:26):
back to twenty nineteen. This was on national INPR on
something called All Things Considered, one of their programs, Meet
Black Girl Magic. The nineteen African American women elected as
judges in Texas. Though Houston and Harris County make up
one of the most ethnically and racially diverse metro areas

(30:46):
in the country, that hasn't always been reflected in its judges.
But the region recently took a big step toward representation,
you see, when it elected an additional seventeen African American
women to the bringing the total number of African American
women judges in the country in the county to a
record nineteen. And then he goes through some of their names. See,

(31:10):
nobody's being represented until black women are elected. Now, all
of a sudden, people are being represented. And that's a
big deal, you see, because there isn't any representation until
black women are elected, and you're supposed to believe that
you're just continuing the Jim Crow with your white liberal
judges until black women are elected. It's going to be

(31:33):
interesting to see. But there's more to it than that.
With nineteen or with these five black girl judges running,
you've got five more women candidates going out to the
churches and saying we've been held down for too long.

(31:53):
We got to put some black women in there. Blacks
are over represented in counting, not under but that's the message, right,
Fire people up, anger them, resentment. Well, then we turned
to the US Senate seat. Colin Alread, a black male,

(32:15):
was supposed to be running. He's been running since July.
James Talerico, a white liberal Beto wannabe, was running, and
Jasmine decides she's running, brings in Stacy Abrams. She brought
in the muscle or the fat, and all of a sudden,

(32:35):
Colin all Read bows out of the race. He says
he didn't want to be in a bruising campaign. I
thought you was supposed to be a tough guy. And
now he's running for a congressional seat and it's Jasmine
and the white liberal and he was so afraid to
criticize her yesterday he said it because he cannot criticize
a black woman in this primary. This is going to

(32:57):
be interesting.
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