Texas Republicans Are Walking Into a General Election Buzzsaw

The 2026 election cycle is already taking shape.

In this episode of Seeing Red, Garrett Fulce examines new warnings emerging from Republican strategists about vulnerable legislative districts, turnout challenges, and the impact of the Paxton-Cornyn Senate race on down-ballot Republicans.

Later, Mark McCaig joins the show to explain the Republican Party of Texas convention, delegate selection, party leadership elections, the State Republican Executive Committee (SREC), legislative priorities, and how grassroots activists influence the future direction of the Texas GOP.

Topics include:

• Texas House battleground districts
• Republican turnout challenges
• General election strategy
• The Republican Party of Texas convention
• SREC and party governance
• Delegate selection
• Legislative priorities
• Grassroots organizing
• Door-knocking and voter outreach

Subscribe to Seeing Red for weekly analysis of Texas politics, elections, campaigns, and public policy.

00:00 Texas Senate Race & Down-Ballot Fallout
01:12 Why R+12 Districts Are Suddenly Vulnerable
03:05 Texas House Seats Republicans Could Lose
05:35 Why Paxton Changes Every Race on the Ballot
07:55 Winning Primaries vs. Winning General Elections
10:38 What Is the Republican Party of Texas Convention?
12:40 How Delegates Actually Get Chosen
16:20 The Race for Texas GOP Chairman
18:25 What Does the State Party Chair Actually Do?
20:59 Should Republicans Close Their Primaries?
22:21 Credentials, Rules & Convention Fights
25:36 Can Republicans Stay Unified in 2026?
30:29 How Campaigns Identify Persuadable Voters
32:56 What Is the SREC?
40:44 Inside an SREC Meeting
43:43 How the Texas GOP Has Changed
51:18 Republicans Need a New Message
53:39 The Most Effective Door-Knocking Strategy
1:01:53 What's Next for Seeing Red?

Guest Information

Mark McCaig
Publisher, The Texas Voice
Former State Republican Executive Committee (SREC) member
Attorney and longtime Texas political activist

Follow Mark
X/Twitter: @MarkMcCaig // @TheTXVoice
Website: TheTexasVoice.com

Mark McCaig is the publisher of The Texas Voice, a Texas political news and analysis outlet focused on state government, elections, and conservative politics. A former member of the State Republican Executive Committee, McCaig brings years of experience in party politics and grassroots organizing to discussions about the Republican Party of Texas and the broader Texas political landscape.

Find us at seeingredpodcast.substack.com for full episodes. Follow us on all socials at @theseeingredpod and online at our website Seeing Red Podcast. x.com/gwfulce 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

We got Texas Tussle in the Senate race. We got down ballot ramifications from everything from statewide to dog catcher. And we got Mark McKay on to talk about the Republican Party of Texas Convention. Stay tuned for the next episode of Seeing Red. Thanks for watching. Like, subscribe right now, wherever you're watching. And we'll have, you know, all that and more right now on Seeing Red. Welcome back to another episode of Seeing Red. I'm your host, Garrett Fulce. Great show. Lined up. We did the intro already, talking about what's going to be coming up. You know, we have Mark McCain on the show today. We're going to talk about some convention, like what is a convention? Kind of go into part of that. And then we'll be with us again next week. The convention starts next week, so that we'll roll out then where we talk a little bit more about like legislative priorities and the platform and how those things are established. So thank you so much for being with us today. Let's just jump into it. Uh, the Texas Bullpen's reporting on a massive confab of Republican candidates, elected officials, and consultants that the governor's team put on in Austin this week. And some big top line things came out. Brand Johnson reporting, Brad Johnson, friend of the show, is reporting that a couple of the main things that came out of this were anyone who's in an R plus 12 district should be worried. Or worse, should be worried. Now, R plus 12 means the Republican typically wins by 12 points standard or whatever else. So you gotta think, you know, in a two-person race, that would be winning 56 to 44. That type, but often there's other things that happen. It can be 53 to 41. There might be a third-party candidate on the ballot. That type of thing can happen. And so ultimately, these districts are largely in suburban areas. There's a lot of reporting on which districts those might be. They basically boil down to the same ones we're always worrying about, plus some. And so let's talk about the Texas House. The Texas House right now has a big Republican majority. If we lose a lot of seats there, we could lose that majority. There are seats in Dallas County, the Valley, San Antonio, Houston, and Williamson County that are kind of always on people's radar. So those are where Representative Antichin Button and Morgan Meyer, Ep and Dallas, kind of Lacey Hole, Manadila in Houston, as well as Jenny Lopez, the seat held by Representative Lujan and La Hoods in the San Antonio area, as well as Caroline Harris, Davila in Williamson County. These are all seats that could flip. There are additional seats in Denton and Collin County, Fort Penn County, just suburban seats that are at danger. This is Bumgarner, Little, Meyer, Gates. Those are just ones I'm thinking of off the top of my head. Some loss of friends of the show. These are all seats that are in that plus 12 danger zone. And what that means is the closer you get to 12 or from 12, the more danger you're in. I would say right now, what that means is that right the ballot testing is probably saying that Republicans have a 5% edge statewide. And so, you know, different seats are going to have different makeups of what that statewide looks like. There's a lot of also consternation about what happened in SD9. The same stuff I was talking about last week. It's being echoed. A lot of the people who are in the know have seen this and have been worried about this. If you look at the exits of who voted in that election, Republicans should not have lost that race. The based off who've turned out. And what's that what means is there are people who are voting. So the lower the turnout, the worse for us. But also there is a there is a group of traditionally Republican voters who have given up on or have opened themselves to being a bit like willing to vote for the right or certain types of Democrat candidates. One of the goals is going to be to make sure that the Democrats at the top of the ticket are toxic, but that's always going to be the case. You're going to have to run up the negatives on Gina Inahosa and James Talarico, as well as the others. But that's only going to do so much. The local races are going to be really, really important. Now the governor has come out and said they're going to knock this is being reported by the bullpen, five million doors. That's a lot of that's a lot of door knocking. Anything that the other candidates do will be in addition to that. It's really important to do effective door knocking and to start doing it now through the election. A lot of what you're doing in the run-up to an election is identifying who your voters are. You do a lot of data to figure this stuff out. But there's the margins of races, and when we get when you get tighter races, you need to have a better idea who these people are. You have to identify who are likely to turn out for you and who are likely to turn out for your opponent. And then you need to, once you have that information, do your best to turn out your voters to make sure that they're they're coming out to vote. That's the the really, really big picture. Like, what why do we knock doors? It's effective, it's the most persuasive form of politicking that there is. It's also the most time-intensive, labor-intensive, and expensive. Even it's more probably more expensive than TV if you're gonna reach the same amount of people or have the same amount of effectiveness. And so that is this part of it. They're gonna they're gonna hire a few hundred people, several hundred people, and they're gonna be doing a lot of that type of work. It's important. You know, the good I'm I'm confident in the governor's team, having been on it in the past, extraordinarily competent political operatives and minds, and some of the best talent in the country is housed in the governor's team. And so it will be so that's but that's only one piece of it. And the governor's team knows that they're gonna need the that's why they had everyone get together. They had all the consultants and candidates get together so they could all talk about just how important it is to run a race. The problem is a lot of these consultants and most of these candidates have never had a competitive general election ever. A lot of the people who have come up in this have only come up through primaries and have run primary elections. And so, and so if they're volunteers, so it's a different type of campaigning. You are not going you're there, there's a certain level of it's where you're turning out your base, but at a certain level, it's turning out persuasive and non and low propensity voters. And so that's a whole other animal that folks are gonna need to recalibrate to, and it's going to we're gonna see who you know, we're gonna see who the real candidates are there, like who has a mind for it and who has an ability to do it. That is where we're sitting right now. Let's let's just call a spade a spade. The result of the packs and corn runoff impacts that a degree. It is not the end-all be all of that plus 12 number. My guess it'd be they'd be saying it'd be plus 10 or plus nine if Cornyn was the nominee, maybe as much as plus six or seven. That's significant. It adds more, it adds more races to the to the field of ones to worry about and ones that we're gonna have to put money into and you know, turning out voters to run that those operations. But it's not it's just it is what it is, and as Abbott's team and Governor Abbott pointed out in that room, well, you know, once again, reporting from the Texas bullpen on this, because I wasn't there, was that you know the ticket's the ticket, and if you if you're a Republican office holder thinking that maybe Taler Rico is a better option, you're out of your gourd and you need to leave leave the room and leave the party, you are you have the same letter next to your name as Paxton, and that you're gonna have to live with that. And so, and support the ticket to that end. Now, you know, I feel most of a lot of the in-office holders in the statehouse that I saw that were very pro-Corn and anti-Paxton have already come out and said they're supporting the ticket and to the or something to that effect. So I don't think we're gonna see a lot of you know a lot of anything there. But it is that is the messaging from the top is they're getting together, they're gonna, they're they're gonna run the race with the people that with the with the people they have and they're gonna push forward. And so that is the messaging from the GOP consultant class to the to the candidates and the other GOP people on how this race is gonna be run. So that's the message from this consultant class. We have in our next, we're gonna just as a kind of housekeeping issue, we're gonna break up the show now into segments. Each of those segments are gonna get released individually, but throughout the week. But we're gonna have the long show releasing. Eventually, it will land on Tuesdays. As I'm getting up and getting my systems back up and running, I just have a delay in production, and that should work itself out in the next two to three weeks, and that we can get that normal scheduling, you know, and consistent scheduling ongoing. But one of the things that we're gonna be talking about over the next couple weeks, because it's happening now, is the Republican Party of Texas Convention. And I have a guest with me, Mark McCain, who's gonna help me talk about it over the next couple weeks. So we're gonna cut to that segment now. We have with us to talk about the Republican Party of Texas Convention and all the stuff that goes along with it, the publisher of the Texas Voice, Mr. Mark McCay. Mark, thanks for joining us today.

SPEAKER_02 10:32

I appreciate you having me on, Garrett.

SPEAKER_01 10:34

Absolutely. You are you are a former SREC member, which is very relevant to this conversation. You write extensively about what's happening in the state of Texas and the and the what's happening just with the on the campaigns and convention and whatever else at the Texas voice. And so I thought there's no better person to kind of explain with me what the convention is, what a party is, how people are selected to be delegates at the convention, and then what are they gonna be doing when they're there, you know? And for a lot of people, it's gonna be the most boring thing in the world be going to a political convention, and for others, it's their Super Bowl. And so, just a little bit, I want to explain to the people at home who may or may not be with us in Houston in a couple weeks, like why it's happening and what kind of impact it has on state politics as a whole. And so I guess let's kind of start off with what's a political party and why do these can what is it what even is a political convention?

SPEAKER_02 11:38

Sure. So basically a political party, you know, just a gathering of of like-minded folks to influence elections in the political process. And the state convention is is really just you know where the delegates assemble and set out their priorities for for the party, vote on party business, party leadership, and sort of chart the the path they want the party to take for the next two years.

SPEAKER_01 12:03

Absolutely. Okay, so how is that process? You know, you and I have both navigated it, but like how does someone become a delegate to let's just say not just let's just say the state convention and then work and work way work our way there?

SPEAKER_02 12:19

Sure. So so to be a delegate for for at the state convention, you have to be voted on as a delegate at your either your county convention or your senate district convention, depending on the county you live in, without getting you know too much into the nitty-gritty. The larger counties that have multiple Senate districts have Senate district conventions. Some of the smaller rural counties have county conventions for because the Senate districts have many, many counties.

SPEAKER_01 12:47

Yeah. So, and then to be elected to a to at to be a delegate at that one, you have to be come up as a precinct convention, though, as I'm sure you didn't mention that step, you don't have to be a delegate to the Senate convention in order to be a delegate further down, uh to be not named a delegate to the state convention.

SPEAKER_02 13:08

Correct. You don't have to be present to win, you just have to have someone put your name on the list, essentially.

SPEAKER_01 13:14

Yeah. And so so what's interesting to me is that there's also you don't necessarily have to have voted in the primary in order to be a delegate either.

SPEAKER_02 13:27

You have to be affiliated with the party.

SPEAKER_01 13:28

You do have to at that point if you haven't anything else to affiliate, there you do have this paperwork you can sign to do so, but you don't have to vote.

SPEAKER_02 13:36

But if you vote in the Democrat primary, you're stuck. You you've affiliated with the Democrat Party. But well, it's not even just the Democrats, it's if you sign like the Libertarians or any any third.

SPEAKER_01 13:48

If you participated in libertarian convention stuff, or if you signed any petitions for an independent candidate, that precludes you from being a serving as a delegate or voting in the Republican primary as well. It also means like if you vote in the Republican primary, you can't sign an independent candidate's ballot uh initiative to be get on the ballot, which is interesting stuff with how that kind of system works. A lot of that stuff doesn't really ever get adjudicated, though, because we have so few independent voters or independent candidates actually get on the ballot in Texas. It's very difficult. Okay. We've kind of explained a little bit about how we get to the convention. This year it's being held in Houston. It does rotate to a certain degree, just kind of based off of where the party can get the best deal. They try to move it between San Antonio and Dallas. But it's the biggest political convention. I can I they always talk about it, it's like the biggest political convention in the world. It's bigger than the art, like the national conventions in terms of number of delegates and people who attend, or in terms of number of delegates. And so there's this very only a couple of places where you can house up to like I think it has to house like 10,000 people. There's only like it's basically Houston City and Dallas. We go to the convention, like what authority does the convention have? What are they are they nominating our like I know like the technically the it's like at at the presidential level, like they're technically nominating the president. Like, is that kind of stuff happening at the state level, or what are they doing there?

SPEAKER_02 15:17

So there's a couple things that go on at at the state convention. One is really just a lot of the ceremonial things that happened there, speeches from from statewide candidates, that sort of thing. As far as actual party business, the two main things are electing your party leadership, which is your state chair, your state vice chair, and your state republican executive committee. And then you also have also on the party business side, things like adopting changes to party rules, adopting the party's platform and the party's legislative priorities.

SPEAKER_01 15:54

Okay. So talk to me a little bit, just grant a big picture. Uh actually, I'm gonna make sure I don't go into other stuff. SRAC, legislative priorities. Okay, we have I don't have anything in here to really talk about chair. So talk to me about this year. We have an open or there's an open battle right now, as there is always for the chairmanship of the party. What does the party chairman do? What are they I guess what are they supposed to do? What have they been doing? And like what are those campaigns coming down to right now?

SPEAKER_02 16:31

Sure. So our current state chairman is Abraham George, who's finishing up his first two-year term as state chairman. He was elected uh at the convention two years ago. He has several opponents. Really, the only viable opponent he has is Dorinda Randall, who's currently the state vice chair.

SPEAKER_01 16:51

Okay. Now, I know there's some something in there where they both for the SREC, and which we'll talk a little bit later in a either later this episode or next episode, but there's there's rules about if the chair is a man or a woman, the vice chair has to be of the opposite gender. So how's that playing out with the vice chair race?

SPEAKER_02 17:13

Sure. So Abraham George, his his running mate, is Amanda Hopper from Wise County, the wife of State Representative Andy Hopper. And Dorinda Randall has is asked as her running mate to be David Covey, former SRAC member. He was chairman of the Orange County Republican Party in East Texas, and it's probably known to most party activists is Dade Phelan's primary opponent back in the 2024 primary, was Speaker Phelan, you know, very narrowly defeating him in a uh runoff two years ago.

SPEAKER_01 17:48

Yeah. So it's basically coming down to one or the other, I guess. So, like, I guess what's the job of the chairman?

SPEAKER_02 17:55

So the chairman's basically the the leader of the party. The the SRAC is the governing board, but really day to day, the chairman oversees the state party staff. He's the spokesman for the party, really, you know, the the the face, the figurehead of the state party organization. He's out there you know raising money, out there doing media interviews, working with uh grassroots activists, part county party organizations, just you know, the the the day-to-day nuts and bolts of running the state party organization.

SPEAKER_01 18:34

He's and has Abraham George done a good job of raising money and uh you know getting the infrastructure in place to help it it depends on who you ask.

SPEAKER_02 18:44

You know, there's a lot of opinions of of of how Abraham's done his job. I've I've generally stayed out of opining on on the state chair race, just sort of trying to present information factually about developments in that race. I have not endorsed either candidate, but I have made tweets and written things just kind of about the state of play between the the different campaigns and with the state party right now.

SPEAKER_01 19:14

They both seem to come from the same kind of world of grassroots voters. They're not like what differentiates the two right now? Like, what are they what are the two campaigning on? Is it this the same stuff on but who would do it better, or are there different campaign planks that they're really seem to be focusing on?

SPEAKER_02 19:33

So so just you know what I've seen from where I'm sitting, there's the messaging that the candidates themselves are running on, and then there's sort of the the undertones that some of their allies and supporters are are talking about. So, for example, Abraham George running for for re-election, he's focused a lot of his messaging on his work to close the state party primary. There's a lawsuit ongoing right now where the state party is in court to assert their position is they have a First Amendment right to require only registered Republicans or affiliated Republicans to vote in the Republican primary and get and get rid of the current open primary that we have right now. Uh Dorinda Randall says she she wants to be more grassroots oriented, but you've seen a lot of her supporters uh sort of take the approach that Abraham uh has not been aggressive enough on going after uh elected officials. A lot of her supporters seem to want to be more aggressive with censuring and and possibly trying to remove Republican elected officials from the Republican primary ballot. And also some of her supporters have said that the litigation about the closed primaries has been too slow and think that the party should be taking a more aggressive stance to try to close the primary immediately instead of going through the litigation process.

SPEAKER_01 21:06

Okay. Well, thank you so much for the kind of breakdown. We're gonna be hearing more from Mark later this episode and next week, uh next week's episode, talking even more in depth on what the SRAC is, the platform process, and what the hell is a legislative priority. But real quick, I did want to ask, because we're not gonna talk a touch on them as much. You mentioned a few committees in your intro, rules, organization, and credentials. Explain briefly what those are at all.

SPEAKER_02 21:40

So credentials and organization, their their job really is done before the convention, at the very start of the convention. Credentials uh essentially make sure that that everyone who's supposed to be a delegate is seen as a delegate and hears challenges if maybe there's somebody who was issued. Credentials who wasn't eligible, or if there were, say, shenanigans at a convention trying to figure out resolve any kind of disputes over who the the proper delegates or alternates from a from a particular convention are, while the organization committee essentially just recommends a slate of uh officers for the convention. So that's the other thing.

SPEAKER_01 22:25

It's not like the officers doesn't the chairman typically assume the role of like chairperson of the convention, or is that done by the organization, like the person who's gonna be like the person in charge of like the meetings and stuff during the convention? Is that done by the organization committee?

SPEAKER_02 22:41

So so the convention actually gets to decide on a permanent convention chair. The the organization committee recommends a slate of of temporary officers, and then the the convention gets to you know rat ratify that and make you know really whoever you know to be the permanent convention chair. And typically those are rubber stamps, you don't really see fights over uh convention officers. It's kind of you know boring type type thing.

SPEAKER_01 23:11

And then the rules committee. I know another thing can be fights there, but that's where well what's the value of the rules committee.

SPEAKER_02 23:16

Yeah, the the rules can get interesting sometimes, and and there may be some some drama or fights over party rules. So so the party by state law you know has has rules that that govern the party. And some of these rules have been hotly debated within Republican circles, particularly uh as it relates to rules involving censuring and possibly banning censured Republicans from from running on the Republican primary ballot. And just, you know, a couple of weeks ago we saw some drama over a party rule involving access to the state convention delegate list. The SREC had a meeting to resolve some of that, but I wouldn't be surprised if they they changed the language of that rule to uh sort of address some of the the concerns that were uh addressed by the SREC and party activists in the run-up to the convention about accessing uh the delegate list.

SPEAKER_01 24:18

Okay. Well, thanks, Mark. We'll hear from you in a little bit. Thank you. So that's what a convention is, and that's what we're doing in Houston June 11th through 13th, though stuff will be happening before that too, that we'll cover next week. So let's talk a little bit about the Republican ticket. Obviously, the big top-of-the-ticket issue that was decided in the runoff election was the Paxton versus Talo Rico matchup. We also got Mays Middleton as our attorney general candidate. He's a state senator from I'd say the Houston area, but it's really Galveston County and Brizouria County. And then there's Bo French won the railroad commission seat against incumbent Jim Wright. So those are the so now our ticket is as follows. We have Paxton at the top of the ticket. We have whatever congressional race you're in is the second thing. Then it goes to the state. You have Governor Abbott, you have Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, then you have for attorney general, you have Mays Middleton. Lane Commissioner is incumbent commissioner Don Buckingham. Then you have for Ag Commissioner, Nate Sheets, and uh for Railroad Commission, you have Bo French. Oh, and Comptroller, you have Comptroller, forgot about him, Don Hoffein's. So that's our that's our ticket. That is, you know, that's going to have they're going to be the the top of it. That's gonna be where you hear the most information about. Bo French has some issues. As recently as a year ago, Dan Patrick and others called on him to resign his position as Tarrant County GOP chair, which he ultimately did to run for office. And he got a lot of pushback from everybody, and he won his race by about a percentage point. Maybe he's ended up being two. I haven't checked the I didn't check the finals. But it was a close race, a well-fought race. And you know, he he's running the way he's running, he says a lot of stuff on Twitter in a way that's very aggressive. That's the nicest way to put it. He's been labeled many things, and he will be a lightning rod for democratic tension. And by being on the same ticket, what's going to happen is his comments, his past comments, are going to be put on mailers against House and Senate candidates. That's a problem for the House and Senate candidates more it is than it is for French. But he's going to be somebody that folks find distasteful. And those are the folks that we either need to stay home or Republicans either need to stay home or somehow persuade back onto the team. And so that's going to be a big, a big thing the Republicans are going to have to work to rehab over the next six months, five months, whatever. Like I think it's five months. It's five months. So that's something that'd be on our radars. The it did not, we do not have a perfect ticket. And the other part of the statewide race, the other elephant in the room that will be on mailers and Republicans will be having to run, well, we having to deal with is what's happening nationally. If then if those things go the opposite way, they could trend downwards. One of the big macro factors. The second macro factor is candidate strength at the top of the ticket. It's kind of a mixed bag. And so the but it's also kind of a mixed bag on the Democrat side. That's not talked about at all when we're talking about the statewide stuff. Like, except when you're talking about Taller Rico's couple comments that are already out there. No one knows who Rosenthal is who's running against French, and he will probably try to keep it that way. But Geniehosa has said a lot of things in a similar vein to Taller Rico over the years and on different issues, and that stuff's gonna get hammered as well. But those are gonna be the efforts that are done at the statewide level to drive up negatives for the Democrat ticket and try to you know hang those comments around Democrats as well. And so it's gonna be a battle of you know who can get the best messaging out. When it comes to it, there's only so much work a state rep can do to overcome the standard or the generic ballot. They need to start doing that work now. That work, and then that work includes reaching out to nonpartisan organizations like chambers of commerce or other fraternal or and service leagues like junior leagues and lions club, Rotary, etc. Reaching out to those types of places, making sure you're at community general community events and not just Republican events. You need to be at those things. You need to be knocking doors. The candidate's time knocking doors is the most important. With five months left, a good candidate can get out and knock a lot. I know like one of the people I'm less worried about than anybody is Gary Gates. The man, people have a lot of thoughts on Gary Gates, whatever, but the man can knock 30 doors an hour. He has a system, he does he doesn't get hung up at the door, and candidates always have the highest open rates and the highest people actually keep the door open when it's the actual candidate at the door, and when the actual candidate's able to talk to him, that's great. So if you're talking to, if you do it for three hours a day, it's you're knocking 90 doors, you're probably getting a good open rate of 40 to 50 percent, which a candidate is the type of person who can get that. So you're getting about 40 to 50 doors a day. Let's just say that 30 to 5 to 40 a day. If you do that five days a week, that's 150 doors. You do that over five weeks or five months. I mean, that number starts to add up, but it's still not a ton. It's 700, ends up being 150, 600 a month for five months. That's 3,000. Now, if you look at voter totals, like how these how close these races are going to come, the candidate knocking 3,000 doors individually and asking for people's vote, especially those marginal voters, if he has good data to know who those marginal voters are, that can swing an election. That ends up being about 10%. And so you have to look at it like you are your job as a candidate is to knock doors and make phone calls to get money to go on TV and radio. That's it. Don't spend all your time at a Republican club. I mean, barely go to a Republican club, except unless you're trying to recruit volunteers. Like those people are turning out for you. They're going to Republican club meetings, right? They'll for the for the year and a half, up and through the primary and the runoff, you can go to those meetings all you want, and they're gonna see you, they're gonna talk to you, they know you, they know your family, they know everything about you, they like you, they don't, but they're gonna vote for you. You need to talk to the people who don't know you. You don't have to talk to people who don't like you, but you don't have to talk, you should be talking to people who don't know you. Because when people know your face, know your name, and know what you're standing for and why, like why you're voting the way you're voting or what believe what you believe, they're far more likely to be like, you know what? I'm a Republican voter, I don't necessarily like what's going on with everything else, but I met this state rep. I like him. I'm gonna keep voting for him at least. And that's the type of stuff you can swing your direction. And it's gonna be really, really important for the consultants and for the candidates to do that work, or it's just we're gonna run into a Democrat, statewide official, andor a majority in one or both of the houses. I don't think both houses are really possible because of the Senate's only up half at a time. But I the it doesn't look great for Republicans right now, and that's why people are sounding the alarm. It's not just, oh, this could go bad. It's like it could go bad, and we have time to do the work necessary. We have enough people who know what to do. Let's get out and let's do that work. And so that's where we're at with that. Let's talk a little bit more with Mark McKay. All right, back with us for another segment talking a little bit more about the convention. I have the publisher of the Texas Voice. That's thetexasvoice.coms publisher Mark McCaig with us. Mark, how are you doing? Are you doing Garrett? Yeah. Well, tell me a little bit, like where can people find you?

SPEAKER_02 33:23

Uh so our website is thetexasvoice.com. The Texasvoice.com. Encourage everyone to go visit the website, sign up for the email newsletter, have every uh new article put in your inbox whenever whenever we publish, or follow us on X formerly Twitter at the TXvoice.

SPEAKER_01 33:44

The TX voice or thetexasvoice.com. All right, Mark. Thanks again. Okay, we're gonna dive into something you know better than a lot of people. We're talking SREC. Now, a lot of people who know a lot about politics, unless they're really involved with actual the actual party, don't know what the hell the SREC is. Explain to me like what SREC stands for and what it is.

SPEAKER_02 34:15

So the SREC stands for State Republican Executive Committee. It is the governing body for for the Republican Party of Texas. And it consists of the state chair, the state vice chair, and a committee man, committee woman from each of the state's 31 state senate districts.

SPEAKER_01 34:33

Okay, so I want to clarify that. It's not a committee man or committee woman. There is one committee man and one committee woman from each of the senate districts.

SPEAKER_02 34:40

Correct. There are 64 voting members of the SRAC.

SPEAKER_01 34:44

Man, they should do a like a uh NCAA style bracket of like who's the best little challenge at some point. That'd be fun. Okay, so SRAC, there you get one from you get two from each Senate district. So let's just talk about that. There's from each Senate district, right? There's 31 Senate senators in the state. They that those boundaries change periodically. Each of those Senate districts has varying levels of voting strength. Okay, so let's let's talk about that. Each Senate district gets more or less votes or delegates than the other, depending on how well there's uh there's some more criteria than this, I believe. Maybe not at the state level, but the main thing is how many people voted for governor from that Senate district and from the counties in that senate district in the most recent general election. And so that kind of prevents really dim-heavy Senate districts. So, like Senate District 13 in the Houston area, prevents Senate District 13 from having the same voice, say, as Senate District 18, which is far more Republican and you know covers similar areas. And so, because there's just fewer Republicans there, because fewer Republicans are voting in the general election, that means you know, there's just less voting strength at the convention. So let's talk a little bit about voting strength. I think I've explained it a little bit, but when does voting strength actually come into play at the election? Because sometimes they're just voting, it's just every vote, every vote's just kind of one to one, doesn't really matter if I'm voting strength. But sometimes some votes count more than others.

SPEAKER_02 36:24

Yeah, if if there's a contested election, so for example, talk about our SRAC members, those are elected in caucuses. So during the the state convention, there's a couple times during the convention where the delegates and alternates from each state senate district get together in a meeting room somewhere and have their own district caucus. And at one of those caucuses, typically the the second district caucus, the delegates uh will vote on their SREC committee man and committee woman. And when those votes are taken, it's done by by delegate strength. So you mentioned Senate District 18, for example, which uh has suburban counties like Fort Bend, has urban counties like Harris, and also has has rural counties in there too. Uh so it doesn't matter how many delegates there are there, as long as there's at least one delegate from that county, the county gets to vote its entire string.

SPEAKER_01 37:28

Right. So, like let's just put it, let's just do a little quick example. Let's say Harris has four delegates, Fort Bend has three delegates, and Bezouria has two delegates on the in a on a Senate district. Well, if one person shows up for Harris, that vote counts as four votes when they vote. Correct. Yeah, if there's two people had showed up for Fort Bend, that vote counts for one and a half votes effectively, because it's two into three. And then if both people from Missouri had showed up, then those votes could count as one vote. Correct. So that's that's the way to think about it. It's like you're voting at that level. I I know voting strength is possible at in the general session, though I've not seen it because it's usually just it's too hard to do the math.

SPEAKER_02 38:18

Oh no, no, they they did the last convention.

SPEAKER_01 38:21

Did they? Okay. Yeah. So you you can see you can see it at sometimes. Sometimes so when if you're at the convention or if you're following the convention, if you're seeing like a why is it taking so long to count these votes, it's not that they're it's taking so long to count it. They're figuring out the math. And let me tell you, political nerds are not necessarily good at math.

SPEAKER_02 38:41

There's lots of spreadsheets. Yeah, no, so so if the the chairman's race, for example, if it goes to a floor fight like we had two years ago, yeah, there's gonna be lots of tattling of ballots, and each county, you know, take yeah, let's let's say you know you're in Senate District 18, you know, that they each Fort Bend County has their votes, Harris County has their votes. You know, Wharton County has their votes, and you have to make sure the the math adds up to make sure that all the uh the the counties and and in the districts are are counted properly.

SPEAKER_01 39:19

Well, once every all the SRC is elected, my favorite thing for the SRC of all anything that SRE does, because it's always just kind of funny to me, is they get to do a little promenade walk on the stage, like they just want to miss America. That's that's just good TV to me. It's entertaining. Yeah, and it is nice for them. Like, I'm not being too mean, but it's just kind of like there's it's it's the the meeting of a little bit of pageantry with a little bit of absurdity, and I enjoy it. Okay, so once they're elected, I think they have a meeting. There's always like a standing SREC meeting, the first correct.

SPEAKER_02 40:06

Yeah, as soon as the convention gabbles out within generally a half hour, hour after the convention concludes, there's the you know an organizational meeting of the SREC.

SPEAKER_01 40:17

And I know one of the first things they do they vote on is basically there's a bunch of we'll talk about we've talked about rules a little bit earlier and the rules to get that voted through the convention. We'll talk about stuff going through the convention next week. But once stuff is passed, conventions and otherwise, there is a you know, people will worry about the wording and people will worry about a lot of stuff, but they uh do have the authority to grammatically fix things that don't change the meaning of rules and regulations as they're standardizing it. And I know that's what the first thing is.

SPEAKER_02 40:52

Anytime humans are involved with things, mistakes happen, typos happen, and especially note the convention, you know, there's there's a lot of activity, a lot of chaos, and it's easy for for for typos to tap and things get a little messy sometimes. So they sort of can can go back in and and and make sure things are what the convention intended, as long as it beat as typographical and not substantive.

SPEAKER_01 41:21

Right. And so beyond that, they meet, I think, quarterly, and they can meet beyond that. There's like you mentioned early in the first segment, there was some sort of special meeting called to fix something as as the at the discretion of the chair, but they pretty typically throughout the year, to their two-year term, meet about every three months. What are they doing? Like, what are those meetings for? What are they what like what's the point of it?

SPEAKER_02 41:45

I mean, it's so it it it really depends on what the priorities of of the SREC are. You know, the SREC is one of these things where it has a very broad jurisdiction over what it can do or or attempt to do over the party. And especially over the last, I would say, eight years or so, it has become a lot more aggressive in trying to influence legislation. You know, back when I was on the SRAC 2008 to 2010, there was obviously interest in what the legislature was doing, but you didn't have, for example, the legislative priorities committee. Uh that that that wasn't a thing back then. There was more of a focus on uh winning elections. Uh there were there were still a lot of Democrats representing areas that should be more that are now very reliably Republican. So you still were were like in some some rural East Texas, they there were still some some Democrat state reps representing rural areas of the state that are now 70-80% Republican.

SPEAKER_00 42:54

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 42:55

So so you saw a lot more focus on uh I think elections and the mechanics of party infrastructure, while now the SREC, at least at their meeting, seems to have very little focus on political infrastructure and winning elections. It seems to be more focused on uh influencing legislation and censuring or discussing censuring members who who they think violated legislative priorities, that that sort of thing, sort of being more of an enforcer. And what sort of party orthodoxy?

SPEAKER_01 43:31

What sort of margins did the party win by back in 2010 when you were on the SRC and focusing on elections? And like what did we do in the last go-round?

SPEAKER_02 43:40

So so the 2008 election, that was the Obama wave. So the 2008 general election was was not a good one for for for Republicans. In fact, we we almost lost the state house. It was 76, 74. That's yeah when Joe Strauss came in, was was elected speaker for the first time. Uh the the the 2008 Which was shortly after I left the SREC, was a very good uh election for Republicans, sort of the the anti-Obama wave, where Republicans had by the time by the time the election was over, a very strong majority of the Texas House. And then you had a couple of Democrats switch parties to become Republicans. So you actually had like 101 members, Republican members of the Texas House after the 2010 election going into the the 2011 legislative cycle, and then you had redistributing the sort of uh gerrymandered things made you know more safer Republican seats, more you know, Democrat type seats to make it so that there were fewer uh contested races, fewer, fewer of these races that really required a lot of money uh participant. You you obviously still have battleground races in the state, you know, for for various reasons. Um but obviously back before that redistricting cycle, you you really had a ton of battleground races as you saw when when the state house went from 76 Republicans to 101 Republicans.

SPEAKER_01 45:12

Yeah. Well I think it's interesting is that I think it's not interesting. It's crazy to me how much the SRAC rags on these elected officials and takes these electoral majorities for for granted and will browbeat them and say, you know, do it's the ultimate purity test, when they could be going out there and help building election infrastructure in their Senate districts to help make it stronger. And guess what? If they're doing that and they're bringing people into the party, they're going to have more influence over the people who get elected to have the changes that they want to make. It's like they don't really seem to understand that getting people elected and doing the work to get people like get people elected gets you the influence because you're pushing for, you know, you can have those tests before and after, and in that process. It does, it does, it boggles my mind because we're in this at this stage now, as I've been talking about that like like that's the first real time there's been an open question that's not just oh, Republicans always win Texas, or like there's gonna be a dogfight in this election. Republicans are still likely to win at this point, but in six months, who the hell knows what's gonna end up happening. We could lose a chamber, we could lose some statewide, and then it's game on.

SPEAKER_02 46:45

You know, I mean right now you've got George Soros and organizations affiliated with him pouring millions of dollars into the state through the Texas Majority Pack and other other efforts to build Democrat political infrastructure. The Democrat fundraising base is very energized right now. The Republican fundraising base, yeah, I think is going to be very, very, very energized playing defense more so than offense, even though there are certainly a number of pickup opportunities because of redistricting where where Republicans are playing offense, particularly uh down in South Texas, Rio Grande Valley. So, yeah, we are going into what's going to be a very uh expensive, uh very uh contentious election season and this big party is going to be a part of that to some degree, but I think it's just a matter of uh for some SRIC members, are those elections their priority or are they they focused on getting ready for uh the legislative session in January?

SPEAKER_01 47:50

Well, and let's let's put put it plainly, the party has certain legal rights and responsibilities that put it in a position where it can be more beneficial to go through the party for donor dollars because a lot of things can be can then be shared with a lot of different candidates across different races and race types, election race types, that are like the party is very useful for that. So that's really important that the infrastructure and the the tools in place at the party are important. But from my understanding, the national party doesn't trust the Republican Party of Texas at all, and is in the in the previous couple past couple of election cycles, I'm sure they'll probably do it this one. Like has sent in the RNC has sent in its own team to fill that role that the RPT just cannot get off its thumbs to figure out itself. And that is a drain from other parties that might need it more, or you know, where we can might pick up more Republican seats versus just holding Republican seats.

SPEAKER_02 48:54

Yeah, I mean, just compared to other election cycles, the Republican Party of Texas has very little staff right now compared to say 2018, 2020. Yeah, so so especially with with some of these hotly contested congressional races, particularly the ones down in South Texas and the Rio Grande Valley, I do expect that the RNC is going to deploy some resources. I think the RNC said they're going to deploy some resources. I don't know exactly what that looks like yet. I don't know if the RNC knows what that's gonna look like exactly yet. But I do expect at least see some some national involvement in Texas uh to some degree uh leading up to the November election.

SPEAKER_01 49:39

Well, Mark, thanks for joining us this week. Uh we'll see y'all watching, get more of this. We're gonna be talking the platform and legislative priorities in next week's episode. But thanks for joining us again, Mark.

SPEAKER_02 49:51

Thanks, Garrett, appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 49:53

Thanks again, Mark, for being on the show. It's always great to have you on. We'll be back next week to talk more about legislative priorities and the platform. But let's talk a little bit more about the issues that are gonna be driving voters to the polls. Right now, the issues that are driving primary voters are not the issues that are driving general election voters. And a lot of people are gonna have to pivot their messaging to talking about the issues that people care about. That isn't to say they need to moderate on anything necessarily. That is just to say the issues you're talking about are not necessarily the issues that the Republican primary base cares about. The primaries are over. We have our ticket. That also means the primary issues are gonna be put on the back burner, including the legislative priorities we're talking about next week to a certain degree. If for no other reason, then those aren't the issues that people are going to care to talk about. The we're gonna be I I the of the things that were releaked out of this big meeting, I don't know what the big issues are. So that will be something that we're gonna have to look at as I get eyes on data and other sources over the next few months. My best guess is for the past two or three years, the overwhelming majority of general election voters cared about immigration, especially in Texas, uh in closing the closing the border. To a large degree, the immigration issue is not at the front of mind anymore. Well, what is going to be front of mind for general election suburban kind of middle class and working class folks is going to be how much they're having to spend on us spend on things each week. So those are gonna be grocery bills are going up, gas bills are going up, electric bills are going up, water bills, etc. Whatever those bills that they're having to pay on a weekly and monthly basis, those expenses, that's gonna be those those what are referred to as pocketbook issues, those are gonna be the issues that people are gonna talk about. So, you know, the messaging that Republicans are gonna put out is going to have to be talking up, seeing the problem that people are are worried about and addressing it with a with a solution. You can go and you can yell on X all you want. X is not really real life, but it is the real echo chamber that all the politicians and journalists listen to. So there's always a disconnect. If people start knocking doors, they're like, oh, no one's talking about this niche issue that everyone on Twitter is talking about. That's really valuable. If you are somebody who is physically capable of knocking on doors, uh you're not have some age infirmity or whatever else, I would highly encourage you to find your local or closest state rep campaign and volunteer to do a day of action on a Saturday or something and just get your feet wet. Knocking doors is both extremely easy and extremely difficult. It's difficult only in the person's head because they're so worried about what they sound like and trying to be super convincing. I'm gonna tell you the secret to knocking a door effectively. The first thing is actually knock the door. You win and ring the doorbell. But actually, physically knocking on the door and ringing the doorbell, you you step back. Let me just let me just walk you through this real fast. You walk up to the door, you knock, you ring, you step back, give them about 10 to 15 feet. This isn't a COVID thing. This is a how close do you want to be to a stranger who when they're opening their door? You know, it is what it is. You say they answer the door and say, Hi, my name is Garrett. I'm with ex-campaign. Can I have 60 seconds of your time? I'm uh I'm just need a sex, yeah. I just need 60 seconds of your time. I'm here campaigning for ex-candidate. Here's why I'm voting for him. He's excellent on education. He caught ESAs through the through the house. He has been fighting for teacher pay raises, and he's been somebody who really impacts whose votes have really impacted my daily life and have made my community better. I would appreciate if you would vote for him. Do you have any idea who you'll be voting for in that election? And obviously, I'm using generic terms. I'm not talking about whatever, but you you know, that'll be fill in the blank. That'll be on your script. But it's basically you can take your script, there's only all sorts of information. And in that information, there will be the issue that you know, whomever thinks is the right what the right issue to talk to that person about. But if you're walking up to a door and you're seeing that they have an NRA bumper sticker, you might want to talk about two-way issues. You know, if you're coming up and you're seeing like, you know, this my you know, my varsity football player at X look at local high school, you know, or support X, you know, community group, you know, you're gonna see stuff. You can make those audibles as you see those things as you walk up. But just knock on the door. The my biggest the biggest things are ask for a minute, get your pitch out quickly, and then get to the what's the key question. Your your key question and all this on the door is identifying the person. Are they voting? Like, are they voting and are they voting for your guy? When you get closer to the election, it'll be do you know where your voting location is and stuff like that. But you don't need to do that in in June. The other thing is if you don't have an answer, count in your head. Do a slow count, do a fast count, but count to about 20 to 30 seconds. One, two, listen. People move around the house, windows start moving, you know, things start happening. Just listen. If you hear any movement at all, maybe a dog, whatever else. At 30 seconds, you knock and ring again, give it another 30 seconds, and you go to the next door. Mark is a no one's home, and you move on. This is the double knock, it is important. You don't want to, it's more valuable to get a knock at a door than it is to get a no-one home at a door. And so you want to give people time to get to the door to say hello. That's important, and so that's what you need to do. It's not that difficult. What is difficult is feeling in your head like you know, I have to have this long debate with somebody or whatever else. You're not gonna win somebody who's debating you. Your goal is just to get the information and get whatever and move on to the next one. You're you're trying to talk to a bunch of people, and so you also want to make sure you're talking to the right person. You know, you might see that this person, you there's like three or four people listed in the house on the whatever tablet or whatever you're working at. Well, there's only gonna be one or some of those times, all those people are people who were trying to identify. Sometimes we know someone's a hard R or hard D, and it's like this other person's spouse is the target. Well, at the end of the day, you need to talk to the person that's listed because they're the target. You may end up be talking to Democrats, and they're just not gonna care, but those Democrats aren't the people in the household you're necessarily targeting. And so that's just something to keep in mind. The other thing to keep in mind is there are a lot of voters Republicans have been looking to persuade uh from the Democrat Party over the past 10 years, primarily in the Valley and in South Texas, where you'll see that they have a very strong Democratic voting history. Like, oh, this is a Democrat. Why am I talking to this person? We they've been identified as somebody who's who is voting Democrat but is a conservative, and we're trying to get them to start voting Republican, basically. So they'd be somebody who used to vote Democrat and now is voting for President Trump, or maybe it's somebody who or they live in an area where they just don't they if they want to vote in local elections and have their voice heard on local for local candidates, there's just no Republican uh apparatus putting up candidates, or that if they do, the Republican has no chance. And so the real election for local elections is the Democrat primary. Those are typically the people we're we're trying to flip over, but sometimes people just have a have have a Democrat voting history and they get for whatever reason, they have whatever else, like they voted in one Democrat election, so they're just labeled as a Democrat, but they've never really voted since. And we think that they may have switched over for one reason or another. And so a lot of times it's just identifying to confirm whether they are a Republican or a Democrat. So we do know in the future, oh, this person is waffling or isn't waffling or has come or whatever else. That way we know in the future how we need to address that person, and so that data builds up on itself over time. That's a long expression, that was a kind of long explainer of what political uh work is and what door knocking it does. But that is the key. And like I said before, it takes time. Those interactions, if you discount the interactions, if you're doing it fast and they're gonna last one to three minutes. If you're going slow, it's gonna last longer. If you if you get a talker and you're a talker and you're just gonna keep talking for a while, those interactions build up. But so does the time between doors. The key thing is I would I would I would emphasize to anybody, it is actually a waste of time to just go knock every single door in your neighborhood. We know the people who we need to talk to. There are probably on my in my neighborhood where I live, there's probably 40, 50 houses on the my my like little cul-de-sac. I would say if I looked at it, there's probably 20 houses, 10 to 20 houses that probably have at least one target in them that need to be identified. I don't need to knock every single door. I need to go to those 10 to 20 doors and I need to knock those things. You need to talk to your local campaign. And if they're not active doing anything, you need to register with the ABBA campaign, and you can go figure out who those who those 10 voters are, get the materials you need, and training if you want it, and then go knock on those doors in your neighborhood. Then go to the next block and the next block and just start being a precinct captain and doing the work of a precinct chair. That's important. That's how Republicans are gonna hold the state. It's how we flip the state, and it's how we've done it for the past 40 years. That work's gonna have to get done. And if you're watching this podcast and you're a diehard Republican, it's the work you're gonna have to do too. Work I'm gonna have to do, work we're all gonna have to do. So I would leave it there. One last thing. New equipment is in the mail, waiting for it to get delivered. We've got about half of it, need to get another half of it, but you're gonna start seeing some real changes on the podcast as we move forward with different quality control and well, lots of different things. Like the editing will look a lot better, the camera will look better, the those types of things. You won't see small stuff in the background like you have in the past. So thank you so much for being along this ride with me. And as we and listening as we up the production values in the program, like I said before, we're going to move back to a Tuesday release where we release the whole show. And then for folks who who typically don't watch the whole show but might be interested in one or two of the segments, we are going to release each segment kind of on a rolling basis throughout the week as well. So have that to look forward to. If you have any comments, questions, concerns, always reach out to me. Hosts at seeingredpodcast.com. You can always give us an email if you're interested in coming on the show or you know somebody who you think would be good. That's a good play, good way to reach us. But no, like, subscribe, follow, all that fun stuff. You know, do it now and just like it. If you're here at the end of the video, just like the video or like the whatever, make sure you're subscribed. And until then, I'll see you in a few days. We'll talk more convention and more about what's going on. Okay. Bye guys.