Houston-area early voters out in droves for Texas midterms | What's Your Point?

I'm Greg Grugan, and welcome to What's Your Point, where our panelists call it like they see it. Let's greet them. Starting us off, Stephen David, former Deputy Chief of Staff for Houston Mayor John Whitmire. Next up, Ben Stroussand, well-known conservative commentator with the Amigos on KSEV Radio. In the three-spot, longtime super neighborhood leader, Tamara Bell. Batting cleanup this morning, writer and public policy advisor, Charles Blaine. And closing us out, Bill King, businessman, columnist, and fellow at Rice University's Baker Institute. Let's begin. Toss-up, a dead freaking heat. After all this sound and fury, after the hundreds of millions expended on messaging, negative, positive, and otherwise, After all the fear-mongering and punditry, the final Fox News poll on the Lone Star State's cage fight for U.S. Senate came in at Ken Paxton, 49, James Tallarico, 49. With nine days remaining until the actual midterm and early voting underway in ferocious fashion, Democrat Tallarico has taken aim at a shadow opponent, the world's richest man. Elon Musk is trying to buy this Senate seat in Texas. We just found out that he is almost single-handedly bankrolling this effort to install Ken Paxton in the U.S. Senate and stop our movement here in Texas. Meantime, Paxton was hammering away at Tallarico's hyper-progressive past, a pattern he insists has been tamped down purely for the purpose of getting elected. James Tallarico does have a plan for your money. It just doesn't include you. He is a radical who has never met a tax increase he didn't love. All right, panel, the stretch runs stumping by both candidates, coinciding with a pretty gigantic first-week turnout of early voters. Pray tell, what does it portend, Bill King? So if you look at the early vote, it looks like Republicans and Democrats are voting at about the same level. There's some, you know, issues about how you count that, but they're roughly the same. Going into Election Day in 24, the Republicans were 10 points up on Democrats. So if you look at that as being even right now, and we know that independents are breaking towards Democratic candidates, generally speaking, the early vote does not look good for Republicans. All right, Stephen David, after leaving City Hall, has all this free time on his hands, so he's been crunching the numbers, too. What are you seeing, Tim? So what we're seeing is we are seeing really high amounts of turnout for Democrats. So Bill's right when you look at it as a percentage. Democrats and Republicans are turning out at about 50.5%. In Harris County, though, there are just more Democrats, about 4 to 1 to be specific. But the important thing is that there are 137,000 voters that don't have a primary history in the state of Texas. And of those, about 69%, two-thirds, are turning out in record fashion with no primary history. And so those are all wildcard voters. Those are people that you can't predict what they're going to do. You can't say if they're going to go left or right. And to be more specific, when you go back and you analyze further beyond how they voted this year in the primary, it becomes spottier and spottier and spottier. And so what that tells me is that everyone's enthusiastic. People are coming out because they care and they're passionate. All right, there's only been one person on our panel who's been at the polls every single day. Tamara Bell down at West Gray. What are you seeing anecdotally? What is really enthusing, and I mean this, I'm talking 25 and under, and they come in packs. They don't come by themselves. You know, they can't live without talking to somebody with the thing in their hand. So when they come to vote, they come in groups. and i mean and they're they're taking everything from everybody and they're all smiles and grins and you tell them you know it's an hour wait okay they're happy and everything and those 55 and over you tell them that the line you know i'm getting the hell out of here i'm gonna go somewhere else but seeing the young people engaged and i i can pretty much guess the way that they're voting but what has gotten me is the amount of voters that are coming out West Gray did over 3,000 in one day. And on that particular day, it was not just the young people. Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy was coming. He's the only one getting it. They were there as well. I am not kidding. In their walkers, on their canes, they were there. And so the voting enthusiasm is across cultures, across parties, and across generations. firewall suburban red counties as well as a 70 30 split somewhere there in the rural Texas Ben, can it happen? Well i was looking at the five-day totals and uh i saw the democrat turnout was up seven percent relative to 2022 republican turnout down 10 down 10 relative to 2022. If those trends continue, Republicans, we are going to get our clock cleaned. So it's really up to what happens over the next eight or nine days left, including today, whether or not Republicans statewide, this is statewide, Harris County's lost. I mean, it's totally blue. There's no Republican that's going to win Harris County based on these numbers. But statewide, it depends on what happens over the next eight or nine days. There's still four 500,000 3 and 4R Republican votes that have not voted yet. Typically, the most enthusiastic side votes first. So I think the Republican turnout will increase over the next eight or nine days when everybody realizes what's happening, what's at stake. All right, Charles Blaine leads the B block. Still to come, serial property tax hike by Harris County commissioners. Do Houston area voters really have no interest in punishing those who are punishing them. But up next, just nine days left in the most expensive Senate race in American history. What, if anything, can be said to shift critical votes? I'm not against wealth. What I'm against is greed. I'm against the fact that these billionaires can buy politicians like Ken Paxton, and then those puppet politicians turn around and rig the rules of the game for those billionaires, and they cut their taxes while they raise taxes on us. How are your billionaire donors different from Paxton's billionaire donors? Well, I think anyone who donates to my campaign, including people with wealth, know that I'm going to pass tax cuts for middle class people, and I'm going to make the wealthy pay their fair share in taxes. James Tallarico taking tough questions from my Fox 26 colleague, Lena DeFloria. Some think Ken Paxton has declined to do with any major Fox station in Texas. That said, Paxton has taken his stretch run pitch on the road with the same messaging we've been hearing for months he wants to transition our kids he wants to transition Texas off of oil and gas how about we transition him and his crazy ideas right out of Texas Okay panel, back to our core question will a plurality of Texans buy what Paxton's selling does he have a shot Charles? Yeah, I still think he does I mean listen I think what we're seeing now is Republicans haven't shown up yet I think this is somewhat uh an outcome of what we see overall of the years of talking about voter fraud. You have a lot of Republicans that I've heard from who say, well, I'm not going to go vote early so that the Democrats know how many votes to steal. These are thoughts that folks have, and so they're waiting until the end. Similarly, though, I think if Democrats were as enthusiastic as we claim, we would see them turning out in much higher numbers. For their first time to be able to pull a race in 30 years, why are they only polling or showing up the same amount as Republicans 50-50? But also, for James' point about being rigged, this is the same guy who, after redistricting, moved into a predominantly black district and then stole that seat because he wanted to stay in the legislature against you know black candidates who could have also represented that district so he shouldn't really be talking about a rigged system all right Stephen David Harris County, Dallas County, Bexar County, Travis County El Paso County, the RGV Fort Bend County that seems like a lot to overcome for Paxton, is it in the cards? I wouldn't say that it's in the cards but it's definitely within the margin of error, you know, after spending 500 million in ads in the state of Texas between the two of them. They've moved the needle on Tallarico two points. He went from plus three to plus one and a half, plus one. The issue with this is that they're spending colossal amounts of money in a state that should have always been red. It's been red for the past 30 years. And so I think what we're seeing is a mix of two different things. One is frustration, general frustration. You're never gonna find a lower approval rating than if you look at Congress, how people feel about Congress. But two, Ken Paxton is a historically bad candidate. He's sort of low energy whenever he's speaking to crowds. But more importantly, he's got a lot of corruption, a lot of baggage that comes with him. And if you want to look at the way that the general's turning out, look at the primary fight between him and Senator Cornyn. It was ugly. It got really ugly really quick. And it's because he's bringing so much baggage to the table. Bill, you're channeling a huzzah to what Stephen David said, unless I've read your previous comments incorrectly. No, you know, there's another whole scandal came out this week about him, about he and Senator Paxton investing in this blind trust that's run by a felon, a criminal that went to jail for fraud. And I disagree with what Charles said about, yeah, maybe there's 12 nuts out there that are not voting because they're waiting for election day. But the big problem is when you look at Republican leaners, they're only supporting Paxton at between 50 and 60%. They're supporting Abbott over 80%. There's a big chunk of Republicans, especially old Cornyn people, that are just saying, I'm not going to vote for this guy. Now, I think a lot of them are staying home. I think a lot of them, I think they're gonna be surprised if a lot of them go in the poll and either voting for Tallarico or skipping the race altogether. there. Quickly. I agree with Bill, and people said that to me out there. They said, I'm still voting Republican. Not all Republicans. They made a point of saying, but not all Republicans. Okay, we're coming to Ben, because we're not done talking about the Senate race, okay? Up next, Greg Abbott's quest for a fourth term as Texas governor, still very much in question. Can he close the door on his hard-charging Democratic challenger, Gina Hinojosa?