This week, we review the one and only gubernatorial debate between Beto O’Rourke and Greg Abbott, as well as Texans for Lawsuit Reform’s decision to not support Ken Paxton this cycle. Also, Comptroller Glenn Hegar waffles on whether or not to fine a Dallas gay bar in accordance with the Texas Business Code after hosting a “family-friendly” drag show.
Transcript provided by Otter.ai:
Luke Macias 0:00
There is a Texas gubernatorial debate on Friday which we break down an overview for you. We talked about how you should be thinking about your vote and the Republican Party as a whole going into November. The Texas Comptroller Glenn Hager is refusing to punish a gay bar in Dallas. And groups like Texas for lawsuit reform are refusing to support the entire statewide ticket with Ken Paxton. This is what we cover today on the lunacy, a show.
Welcome to the Luke Misia show, we had a governor’s debate and I was not able to watch it live on Friday because my wife and I we’re hosting a monthly dinner for some members of our church that we host and so we were having friends of ours over for dinner, but I was following along. Like most of you probably getting texted from friends who were watching live and seeing different things. I’ll just tell you my overall takeaway from it
was that Beto O’Rourke lost mainly because he needed to win that debate, he needed something remarkable in order to help him stand a snowball’s chance in hell of being the next Governor of Texas, and he failed to deliver anything that was incredibly memorable. And so bentos performance was far underwhelming compared to I think, what people thought, what they expected of him or he was capable of doing. And so that was a huge win for Republicans.
I don’t think Governor Abbott did a particularly amazing job in his debate, he’s never been a good debater, it is likely going to be what kind of keeps him from ever being a serious presidential contender is the fact that he really doesn’t stand incredibly strongly by certain ideas. He’s pretty flexible on what he stands for. And so it just makes it a lot harder to be a super clear Clarion communicator. But that being said, we are glad that Beto O’Rourke did poorly that is good for the Republican ticket in Texas. I’m going to talk about
really, at some point before voting starts, I’m gonna have a conversation with you all about how you decide who you vote for going into November. I just think that it’s an important conversation. I’ve had a lot of talks with various grassroots people across Texas about what they’re deciding how they’re deciding. And I think it’s really important for us to kind of asked how we look at the Republican Party? And that’s the question we have to answer before we decide who we vote for going into November. So we’ll have that discussion in the in future episodes. But today, the takeaway is that neither of the candidates did incredibly well, during the governor’s debate. If you missed it, you didn’t miss much, I wouldn’t actually recommend you go back and watch it because there’s just not a ton of huge takeaways. I will say, and I’ll play a clip for you in just a moment that Governor Abbott did come out and say that he wants to eliminate school property taxes. And let’s be clear, this is a strong statement from the governor on an issue that he
has been pretty quiet about. He mostly ran for reelection on this message that we worked hard on property taxes,
that we passed a bunch of reforms, that we did a bunch of good policy, he’s now actually turning around and saying we need to eliminate your school property taxes, and we have the money to do most of that, in the $27 million surplus that we are going to come into this next session with so if the legislature was really serious, they could take a chunk out of a huge part of your school property tax bill. And, and so the Governor did that. In fact, we’ll just cut to this short clip of him telling you exactly what he’s going to do.
Greg Abbott 4:01
My goal is to eliminate the school property tax this imposed in the state of Texas so that people can genuinely own their own home without being taxed out of it.
Luke Macias 4:12
I do appreciate Governor Abbott coming out and saying that, that statement so you can own your own home is a really important statement. These. This is along the lines. It’s the exact same narrative as Don Hofheinz ran for governor on he said, I want to eliminate property taxes so you can actually own your own home. And we talked about that, on this show. Texans for fiscal responsibility have said that for a very long time. The reason we need to do this is so that you can actually own your own home. So this is really good to hear. Especially, you know, one thing to consider is the fact that with interest rates going up mortgages are becoming more and more expensive. And so that combined with rising property taxes really does make homeownership completely out of reach for so many Texans. And so, his willingness to come out and recognize that and
Say this, again, it’s really easy for people to say things on the campaign trail. We all, we all know that we have low expectations for Republicans following through on most of their promises. Here’s the thing to remember though,
conservatives should always be excited, when politicians who have not delivered consistently for us take strong positions in line with what we want to see them do. That is always a good thing. Okay. You can also say, Oh, well, I’m not sure he’s actually going to do it. That could also be a true statement. But you should never be disappointed that they are willing to come out and say something, in line with your values. We talked about this last week with David feeling, and Karl Rove and Robert Nichols, and all these sell out Republicans who are watering down their message when it comes to abortion when it comes to preserving and protecting human life.
But in this instance, Governor Abbott is coming in line with what conservatives are saying needs to happen. So again, always a good thing, if we are able to get that out of our Republican officials. And that being said, that leads us into one of the things that came up today, which is that the Texas family project and American principles project came out with a statement really taking on Glenn Hager, we covered this a little bit. But just to give you the backstory a couple months ago, Chris Hopper with the Texas family project, Tony McDonald, who’s a conservative attorney, both were quoted in a Texas scorecard article talking about the fact that for those drag shows done in the presence of children, where the performers are loosely dressed, they have a potential problem. And that state law, as it’s written, gives the Texas Comptroller the ability to find those businesses and say they have conducted activities that make them a sexually oriented business. It’s a pretty simple situation. And so that call to Glenn Hager led to him announcing that he was opening up an investigation on Mr. Mr. And don’t google Mr. Mr. Gay bar Dallas, because you’ll go to a website, that’s very inappropriate. And
what you will see is that the grassroots basically called on Glenn Hager to say, Hey, there’s this gay bar, that of all the drag shows, at least seems to have crossed the line to where you could find them. Right. And this would be doing, let’s say, DeSantis, like actions, I don’t know if you remember, but like DeSantis started to go after some of one of these businesses, I can’t remember exactly what he was mad about. But he was found some obscure law passed in like 73, that he said, Hey, based on this law, they can’t do that. And he has been willing to use creatively the laws on the books to punish the left, who are going to war with all of us.
And so this was a simple situation like that, where they basically said, Hey, can Glenn Hagar do this? And the answer is, yes, he can. And he announced, hey, I care about kids. And I’m opening up an investigation, which is the kind of thing that you hear a lot of politicians say, and so the real question was like, Well, what are you going to do with this investigation? Are you going to decide these? He’s got a couple of things he could do. He could say, this is totally appropriate, and I don’t have a problem with it. Okay, probably won’t do that. He can also say,
I don’t think I have the authority to find them. Okay. Basically, I’m not willing to get creative at all with the powers that my office has the 10s of 1000s of employees that I have, I’m not going to use them to protect these children in any way. Now, just a reminder, Democrats never really take this approach, okay? Democrats use the university system to indoctrinate your kids Democrats use the FBI to lock you up to arrest you and to take you out of society to persecute you. They use the power they have against you. And Glenn Hager was simply asked by the grassroots, can you issue a ticket to this company and make them pay a couple $1,000 or whatever the amount is? To punish them for doing this that maybe sends a chilling effect and message to other people? Like I don’t know if I want to cross the line. I don’t know if I could get in trouble.
Well, we’re two months into it. He still hasn’t done anything. So the Texas family project and American principles project Chris Hopper Terry Schilling great guys, and if you’re not familiar with their work, you should be you should go to the Texas family projects website. I think it’s Texas family project.com and sign up engage with them because this is an organization that is out there being the tip of the spear on these issues. Okay. But they put out a statement. And they said, together with Terry Schilling with the American principles project, they said Glenn Hager has refused to use his power to protect Texas kids from vile and obscene drag shows in Texas grassroots conservatives have called upon Hager to act for nearly two months, but he has yet to take any action to protect children from this obvious abuse.
They continue to go on and the statements several paragraphs long but I think it’s really important just to bring this up
But here’s the thing. Glen Hager has largely gotten a pass. I mean, he has done very little. When it comes to, I would say conservative has conservatives have asked very little from Glenn Hager. Okay.
He’s been there. He ran for comptroller as I’m a super pro life pro gun Republican. Okay. Those were his ads. So he didn’t run as like, I’m the best numbers guy ever. And he got there.
And just before I talked about this issue, I’ll tell you a good thing. One of the things Glen Hager has done well, that he definitely has done way better than Harvey Hildebrand would have is that he has low balled the revenue estimate. So that’s one good thing that he has done. And that’s helpful for conservatives. It gives legislators a little less money to go hog wild in their spending, and to give all these Marxists that hate us more money, okay.
But there’s a lot of other stuff that he just hasn’t been pushed to do. And I really think that this drag show situation, has all the sudden put a little spotlight on him to say like, how is he going to react? And I think there’s going to be a lot of questions about how Glenn Hager reacts over the next 612 1824 months. This is a guy who’s in a position he’s raised nine $10 million in the bank. He’s a statewide official, who has who is well positioned to be like the next Lieutenant Governor, the next governor. But all of a sudden, when one little request is made of grassroots Texans, I mean, you literally have grassroots Republicans and the party on one side, and debaucherous gay bar in Dallas. That’s sexualizing kids on the other and Glenn Hager doesn’t know which side to choose.
So that should be talked about, I have to talk about it. I like Glenn, I’ve met Glenn on numerous occasions, I voted for him to be my Comptroller, I’ve never had a big problem with him. I haven’t told people that he’s bad in any way. But y’all need to know this. He’s completely failing on this issue. And I don’t know why he hasn’t even come out. Like let’s say he came out and said, Hey,
I don’t think the law
as it’s written is as strong as I’d like it. I’d like more teeth in it. Okay. I think conservatives would like that. I mean, they’d be like, hey, the comptroller is being honest with his interpretation of the lawn. He said, he needs more teeth in the law, and has even asked the legislature like I’m working with state reps to make sure that we can pass laws that give me more
enforcement mechanisms and and a clearer statute to go after every single one of these businesses doing this. Has he asked for it? No. Has he said anything? So like, we don’t know what he thinks about the current law. We don’t even know if he thinks the current law is insufficient. Does he want to change it? Right? Because what if he said the current law is insufficient, and then left it at that? That would basically be what we get from all these sell out Republicans, which is like I’m not complaining. So it might not be insufficient for him. Maybe it’s sufficient, because he’s glad that he doesn’t have the I don’t know, this is the problem. But he’s a duly elected public official. He went to taxpayers, he asked us all to vote for him to put them in this position. And I did, and many of you did. And now he has to do something.
It’s a pretty simple request. I’m grateful that the Texas family project and American principles project are coming out on this, pushing him where he needs to be pushed. He deserves to be pushed and prodded. And that is happening. Great to see. And you know what, here’s my hope. I hope that Glen Hager
is able to rightfully respond and take the action needed.
Because we can be united. This is what’s so frustrating. I talked about this last week. I talked about this the week before. Who Who are the Republican officials refusing to unite for November?
They’re all the moderates in the party. All of these Republicans coming out and talking about rape and incest exceptions for abortion. They’re refusing to unite going into November. All of these Rhino Republicans coming out saying, Well, I’m gonna vote for Abbott, but I’m voting against Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick. I’m gonna vote for Mike Collier. They are dividing our party going into November. We get told the Conservatives are the ones who divide everybody. Well, they didn’t look like that. Look at the playing field. We’re all playing on one side and we’re trying to get to one touchdown. And the people who are teaming up with Democrats to try to get them a touchdown. Get some points on the board.
Are these moderate Republicans.
And then you fast forward a week and now you have a Republican comptroller who doesn’t even know if he should find a gay bar in Dallas who’s sexualizing kids? That’s really frustrating.
Again, I would not put Glen Hager today in the camp of Glen Whitley or Betsy price or anything, just to be clear, David
Elan, he hasn’t been there. He never has been there. Historically, he’s not teamed up with these moderate left of center Rhino Republicans. But I can tell you right now, like this one seems like a pretty easy request, and the guy is nowhere to be found he’s hiding.
It’s really frustrating. So my hope is that what we see is that Glenn goes back to the grassroots instead of, you know, moving in the wrong direction, because I will tell you this Republicans are moving really far right on issues like this. They are ready to go to war with the left to set on sexualizing kids, that’s what they’re set to do. That’s what they know to do. And if you’re a Republican that doesn’t know to do that as well. It’s not going to bode well for you as you move forward politically.
Michael Sullivan wrote a piece last week talking about this kind of unity and unifying that Texans for lawsuit reform, one of the largest probably the largest rip, I would say largest right of center PAC in Texas, okay, and there’s like different groups Realtors Pac and these other things, but but Texas for lawsuit reform is really probably the largest, most influential right of center PAC in Texas. Okay. And they are right of center. They’re not significantly right of center, but they are a right of center organization. And they spent a lot of money attacking Republicans in the primary. They went after Sid Miller and tried to beat him in the primary with James White. They went after Ken Paxton hard and tried to beat him with Eva Guzman who came in third. And now we’re in a situation everybody knows this. But public polling all has Ken Paxton, several points below Greg Abbott. Okay. It has Ken Paxton, underperforming Governor Abbott and Lieutenant Governor Patrick, likely Ken Paxton will be the lowest vote good. That’s the anticipation. That’s the expectation. And that’s the concern of a lot of Republicans who want to make sure that every Republican wins. And so if Greg Abbott wins by 10 points over Beto O’Rourke, then Ken Paxton is probably fine. If Greg Abbott wins by six points over Beto O’Rourke, Ken Paxton is probably in a close race. And so if that happens, what does it look like? And so there’s questions about who all is supporting the entire Republican ticket. And Texas for lawsuit reform has decided to not support Ken Paxton, for attorney general. And again, their donors historically, are all mostly Republicans, they support a ton of Republicans, they say Republicans are necessary and they’re in lawsuit reform, they’re in the legal arena. But they have come out and said that they’re not going to help in any way make sure that
Ken Paxton is the next attorney general and not the Marxist liberal running against him who Democrats are likely to put a lot of money behind. So that is a story of Texas scorecard that has come out. And it’s really kind of a question. I think it’s a question. It hasn’t been a question. But for the last couple of weeks, all of a sudden, people are saying, okay, Mike, call your and all these people like who else? Who are the rest of these Republicans who aren’t going to vote for Dan Patrick? For Ken Paxton, who are the Republicans out there? Who are the people that are telling you, I’m a Republican? So like, you should ask your state representative, your state senator, are you voting for Dan? Patrick? Are you voting for Ken Paxton? I think every one of them should answer the question.
And I hope they do.
Because
I and I’m gonna get into a little bit of a precursor for probably my next show, but
the Republican Party is a tool.
You don’t vote Republican because of some loyalty to the GOP. Okay? You don’t go like I just I’m a vote red. I don’t care what they do. That kind of attitude makes you a sheep that gets used by them
to literally like usher in a decline of society a little slower than Democrats would have done. So Right. A lot of us literally see most Republican politicians, as people who will
essentially allow for a managed societal decline is a term you’ll hear used, and all that really means is Democrats want to take you into a socialist hellhole, right? They want to go there. They want Marxism. They want identity politics, they want a divided country. They want any person who holds the Christian values that our nation has been founded upon, to be relegated to insignificant portions of society. And then most Republicans
are basically Saurabh Sharma friend of mine, said orderly caretakers of America’s decline, okay, like, well, we’re gonna fall away, but we’ll just kind of make sure it’s done in a slow and orderly fashion. Okay. If you feel that way, you have a kindred spirit in myself, because that’s my frustration. Many
times. But here’s the thing. Why would I then vote for Republicans? If all they are managed caretakers of Americans declined
because
they are a tool that can be used.
Greg Abbott caved and finally started investigating parents who were sexually transitioned their kids, which eventually got shut down in the courts. But it set us up to actually ban at this next session. Glenn Hager opened up an investigation on these on this gay bar. He hasn’t done anything about it. But if if you were a Democrat in that position, there’d be no point. Like you can get these people to do the right thing.
Now in Glen Hagen’s position, maybe it’s because he agrees with us, I hope he does in Greg Abbott’s
position like we know he doesn’t agree with us.
He literally like refused to support any of the policies that we’re gonna ban sectarian surgeries on kids until the very end of the special session when he knew it would die. I mean, it’s, it’s it’s very disingenuous, but it doesn’t mean that he didn’t eventually have to take some action.
When Don Hoffman has called him out for having this pro LGBT sexualization of kids language on CPSS website, it came down within an hour, that would never happen if you had a blue
administration, the governor’s office. So the reality is, we know that Republicans can be made to do things that we need them to do.
They are a tool that you as a Texan can use to accomplish what you need accomplished.
Anyways, I hope you have a great week.
Thank you for listening. Thank you for sharing this with your friends. Thank you for telling Texans about it. I will tell you, it’s very encouraging our lat last week’s episode on date feeling and Karl Rove got some phenomenal,
got great feedback from it. A lot of people who were emailing back saying I’m sharing this with friends of mine, I’m talking to people about why this is happening. I’m emailing my Republican officials saying why is why do we have Republican leaders saying this kind of stuff. Really appreciate y’all taking the information we try to pull together and give to you and set sharing it with your fellow Texans because that is what gets more and more people engaged, informed, educated and empowered. And ultimately, that’s kind of what we tried to do here. So God bless you. And God bless Texas.
