Strongest Identity of Them Y’all?

 Dan Goodgame

The identity that Texans hold as Texans is stronger than in any other state…

Robert Pease (host) 

Dan Goodgame knows a thing or two about that Texas identity. He’s Editor-in-Chief of Texas Monthly, a uniquely successful and enduring media brand in Texas and nationwide.

 Dan Goodgame 

…and if you ask someone who grew up in Lubbock, whether she identifies as, you know, first as Republican, or as a Texan, she’ll say Texan. And a Democrat from San Antonio will say the same.

Robert Pease (host) 

Which is as it should be, really, and maybe how you feel about your own state. But what about polarization? What about all that red vs blueness that dominates so much of our politics, society, and culture? 

I’m Robert Pease and this is The Purple Principle, a podcast about the perils of polarization.  We’re discussing polarization and identity with Dan Goodgame in this episode, our second in this month-long series on the great state of Texas.

Dan Goodgame

Our main task is for Texas Monthly to be as compelling and as iconic on its website and in live events as it has been in print.

Robert Pease (host)

Dan’s a respected media voice in his own right. He was a White House Correspondent for Time Magazine, an Editor at Fortune Small Business, and a Pulitzer Prize Finalist. All that before taking the helm, or was it the reins, at Texas Monthly. 

[Enter Interview]

Dan Goodgame

We’re in really an enviable position, Robert, at Texas Monthly. Our mission is to deliver the best storytelling about Texas, which includes politics and business and energy, but also, you know, areas that bring people together like music and the outdoors and true crime, barbecue, tacos, swimming holes, honky tonks. And we are growing rapidly in audience across print, the website, podcasts, videos, books, live events, selling our stories to Hollywood. We’ve got about two dozen of those in various stages of option and development. And we are growing also in revenue, and we are growing in staff, which has doubled in the last three years to 60 journalists.

Robert Pease (host)

And you’ve had some pretty phenomenal writers on your staff there. Maybe if you could just highlight a few and for the benefit of our listeners, most of whom are not in Texas.

Dan Goodgame

Two of the best known veterans on our staff today are Skip Hollandsworth and Mimi Schwartz. Another veteran is Russell Gold, the country’s best writer on energy, whom we hired last year from the Wall Street Journal. We’ve also got a core of rising young writers.

Robert Pease (host)

And in the past you’ve had more than a few famous names?

Dan Goodgame

Yes. And we’re pleased that some of them are still write for us as freelancers. One of those is Steve Harrigan, a best-selling author. Another is Robert Draper who also writes for the New York times magazine. Other prominent alumni include several of our former Editors-in-Chief. Bill Broyles, our first editor, went on to a great career as a screenwriter for movies like Apollo 13 and Castaway. Evan Smith is the founder of the Texas Tribune. And then there’s Larry Wright, who writes for the New Yorker along with his books, Pam Colloff, a Pulitzer Prize winner for the New York Times Magazine. And we’re looking forward to seeing all of them when we celebrate our 50th anniversary this time next year.

Robert Pease (host)

We’ll definitely have to keep an eye out for that, Dan. But let’s get into the less pleasant subject at hand, hyperpartisanship and polarization. Some scholars trace it back to 50 years or more that polarization has been widening, but accelerating certainly in the last couple of decades. And so we’re wondering, as a general interest magazine with a large audience in a huge state that’s arguably really a nation, does that create new challenges? How do you reach an audience that may itself be polarizing?

Dan Goodgame

Well, we do suffer from polarization in Texas, Robert, but less, I think, than the rest of the country. So I think that’s an advantage for us in covering the state, because there are all these things that people have in common. I mean, Texans of all political stripes bond over, you know, barbecue and tacos and college football and Willie Nelson, and most Texans who attend college stay in state. And so they develop friends and interests in many parts of the state. So they take an interest in the state as a whole, not just in, you know, in their city or their neighborhood. So I think for many, the identity hierarchy would be Texan, then Aggie, then Republican. Or Texan, then Longhorn, then Democrat.

Robert Pease (host)

Well we certainly thought that we should start this state series with Texas because that identity is so strong, but we wondered if it’s not as strong as it was, particularly in the area of politics, when we see, you know, prominent Texas politicians on the right looking, you know, for an endorsement from Donald Trump and some progressive politicians on the left, looking for endorsements from AOC or from PAC money.

Dan Goodgame

Yeah. You know, I draw a distinction between the polarization of Texans writ large and Texas politics. Because Texas politics, as you note, is, you know, very polarized and, and a lot of that is just structural. I mean, I’m gonna read a short series of numbers to you and let you guess what they represent. 29, 22, 16, 4, 2, and 1.

Robert Pease (host)

Uh, contested seats.

Dan Goodgame

Nope. 29 is 29 million is the population of Texas right now, 22 million is the number of people who are eligible to vote. 16 million is the number who actually register to vote. 4 million is the number who vote in primaries in Texas. 2 million is the number who vote in the Republican primary in Texas. 1 million is all it takes to win. So that’s 3.3% of the population is deciding who the statewide office holders are in Texas. And for the last 27 years, that’s how long it’s been since a Democrat won statewide office in Texas. For the last 27 years, winning the Republican primary in a statewide race was tantamount to election. So the 3.3% are calling the tune for the rest of us. And, you know, a big part of why it works that way is, frankly, the ineffectiveness of the Democratic Party in Texas.

There’s people who don’t like Republican policies are, you know, very quick of course to place all the blame there. But Democrats here similarly play to their base rather than to centrists. I mean, you would think after 27 years of losing, you’d try something different, but they remain unable to frame a message that might appeal to a majority of Texans. And they’re content to appeal, most of them to relatively liberal Democrats in the cities and the urban counties that the Democratic Party controls. And so they let the party get identified with issues that are just toxic in Texas. I mean, defunding the police, opening the borders, abolishing the Border Patrol in which thousands of Texas Latinos serve, abolishing the oil and gas industry, abolishing private health insurance, seizing semi-automatic rifles. This is not a winning platform in Texas. 

Robert Pease (host)

Yeah. Well, that’s interesting. We have not yet, you know, visited many other states, so it’ll be interesting to reflect back on your answer as we go around the country. We did talk to the Director of the Texas Politics Project, Dr. James Henson, who’s been polling on a variety of issues in Texas for a decade or so. And we were struck by one of his answers about this decay in optimism in Texas.

[Look ahead audio to James Henson]

James Henson

You know, it used to be you could find when you ask questions about the nature of politics or the health of the political system, or your optimism, et cetera, that Texans judged what was going on in the state much more positively than the way they judge things in the nation. And if anything, that was a big part of Texas identity, that sense of, you know, Texans’ reflective sense that, well, you know, we kind of are doing better. 

Robert Pease (host)

Yeah. So again, that’s Dr. James Henson from UT Austin, Texas Politics Project. We’re wondering if any of your reporting, any of your podcasts, have found a similar erosion of optimism in recent times?

Dan Goodgame

We certainly follow the polling that’s done in the state very closely, and we get our political team and, and others out around the state quite a lot, and talking to voters, talking to other folks. And I would say that what he describes is a turtle that didn’t get on the fence post by itself, that this is not a ground up, moving from the ground level up sentiment about pessimism in Texas. People are being told to feel this way by a number of their leaders. And it’s a way to get voters angry. It’s a way to get them motivated. It’s a way to get them to turn out to vote. And so you scare them, you know, and the Replacement Theory is pretty openly discussed here among right-wing politicians. Our Lieutenant Governor, Dan Patrick, talks about it all the time, primarily on right-wing AM radio.

[Archival Audio – Dan Patrick]

Dan Goodgame

And it simply posits that Democrats wanna open the borders and bring in lots of brown people and shove white people out and take away their power. And, you know, that’s an example of the way that you scare people. The ginning up of completely unsupported accusations of voter fraud, which has never been proven, you know, to any significant, significant degree, nothing near anything that would change the result of an election. And yet, you know, there are people on the right who are constantly making folks afraid of that. And of course the people that, they raise the specter of cheating or often people of another color.

Robert Pease (host)

Yeah, that’s interesting because you do have such a high percentage of Hispanics already and have had relative to the rest of the country for a long time. So that’s certainly nothing new…

Dan Goodgame

You know, I kind of go back to, you know, 450 BC, I believe it was 461, the Peloponnesian wars and Thucydides wrote a great line that is as true today as then: “what made war inevitable was the rising power of Athens and the fear this inspired in Sparta.” And so the folks who lash out tend to be the folks who see themselves losing power in a relative sense. You know, they see someone else rising faster than they are. And in Texas, you know, Latinos are very soon going to be reported as the plurality in Texas, more than non-Latin whites. And that scares some people, particularly when they’re encouraged to be afraid about it.

Robert Pease (host)  

Well let’s talk a little bit about fear and local politics then. We interviewed the hosts of the podcast Y’all-itics, Jason Wheeler and Jason Whitley. And they talked a bit about how the state government has trampled on local positions and that the Republican Party has had an about face on local politics that it used to be a more supportive, bottom up government, and now it’s kind of an Austin-down government. Is that something that might motivate voters?

Dan Goodgame

It certainly angers a lot of voters, including Republican voters, including some of Greg Abbott’s financial supporters, people who give him campaign money. There’s a big example of it going on right now in San Antonio, where I live. By the way, I work in Austin, but live in San Antonio. And, it’s a marvelous city where public minded people are doing a lot to redevelop the downtown, including a street called Broadway, which used to be part of the main road between San Antonio and Austin before the interstate came in. And it calls for a bond issue that was passed by 70% of the voters in San Antonio, calls for that street, as it nears downtown to, go down by one traffic lane and to add bike lanes, and a wider sidewalk, and landscaping with trees and shade and so forth.

Well, Greg Abbott just decided on his own to put a stop to that. Because the state still has jurisdiction over it as a state road, because of its history as the main road between San Antonio and Austin. And people in San Antonio are furious about it. And this happens in so many petty ways around the state. 

Robert Pease (host)

Well, you would think that might over time erode some support. And, if I’m remembering correctly, there’s some reporting in Lawrence Wright’s book God Save Texas about fracking being a similar issue, that local governments were really unable to prevent fracking even in pretty densely populated areas.

Dan Goodgame

Right. Denton, Texas, for example, you know, a college town.

Robert Pease (host)

So Democrats have not been able to get any traction from that?

Dan Goodgame

Not yet. No.

[Exit Interview]

Robert Pease (host) 

That’s our special guest today, Dan Goodgame, Editor-in-Chief of Texas Monthly. And Dan is quick to make an important distinction there between the Texas politicians, who thrive on division, and just plain Texans, who thrive on multiplication, coming together, sharing a lot of great stuff like music, as on the TV show Austin City Limits for 47 years and counting. And the annual Austin City Limits music festival. That attracts tens of thousands to hear over 90 bands on two main stages.

We’re getting some of that authentic Texas sound from our own resident composer/musician, Ryan Adair Rooney, former resident of Austin and Marfa, Texas.

[Music by Ryan Adair Rooney]

Robert Pease (host) 
But it is election season and much as we’d like to tune out politics and continue streaming music, we can’t ignore the importance of politics in our second largest state. Not when the US House is so closely divided and the Senate perfectly divided in the simplest of red vs. blue terms. But of course it’s way more complicated than that. There’s factions at play within both parties: on the Republican side, there’s Trumpian populists versus establishment conservatives; and on the Democratic side there’s no great affection between progressives and centrists.  

These factional battles, they’re playing out in primaries nationwide. Many Purple Principle listeners are independents or unaffiliated voters who do have the option of choosing which primary to vote in many states, though not all states. So a few episodes ago we asked Sarah Longwell of the Republican Accountability Project what is more important in the 2022 elections, the Republican or Democratic primaries? 

[Look back audio to Sarah Longwell]

Sarah Longwell

Ooh, that’s a good question because I don’t know. They’re both super important because there’s a certain condition that has to be created and I think it’s a mirror of what happened in 2020. We saw how close the last election was. Is anybody going to dispute that if that election had been between Donald Trump and Elizabeth Warren, or Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, that Donald Trump would’ve won it? I believe Trump would have beaten just about every other Democrat in the field. You needed to have both Donald Trump who, while he attracts a lot of people, repels a certain and kind of swing voter. And you needed to have a sufficiently moderate candidate, or perceived to be moderate candidate, to pick up the people who are repelled by Donald Trump and who could kind of hold the line and not lose any more ground on the white working class voters. 

And really the contours of all the races are the same to me, which is, can Democrats put up broadly appealing candidates that can pick up swing voters who don’t like these super Trump-y candidates who are well outside the mainstream and who are likely to say really crazy things during the course of the election?

Robert Pease (host) 

Sarah’s hoping for some centrists who can actually negotiate over or around partisan gridlock. But from what we’re hearing from our “Texperts” in this series, and from what we’ve just seen in primary results, the structure of politics in the Lone Star state does not favor centrists in either party. That has a lot to do with gerrymandering, low voter turnout, and lack of other viable parties. Another former guest, Katherine Gehl, speaks directly to this problem. Katherine’s the founder of the Institute for Political Innovation and co-author of the book, The Politics Industry.

[Look back audio to Katherine Gehl]

Katherine Gehl

It’s the only industry I can think of where those people in the industry are playing that game, their jobs and their revenue in the politics industry are the ones that make the rules that govern that industry. Like, the politicians are the ones who set the fundraising limits. The politicians are the ones that in most cases dictate and create the rules of how the elections are run. And so they keep altering rules and setting them in a way that benefits their own private organizations and their consulting firms, their media firms, their campaign firms, et cetera. And those people keep doing better and better, while the customers are doing worse and worse. 

Robert Pease (host) 

And we are those customers, voters and citizens like you and I. We’d like to see the electioneering and fundraising set aside and some real problems tackled in our nation’s capital and state capitals like Austin. With that in mind, let’s get back to the interview with Texas Monthly’s Dan Goodgame. One of those big issues the politics industry has failed to address is immigration. No major federal legislation for over 35 years. But with its huge immigrant population and long border with Mexico, Texans feel the impact of that gridlock in real time, every day, in ways most other states just don’t.

We’ll be talking to former Congressman Will Hurd from the Texas border region in an upcoming episode. While in Congress he advocated for a pragmatic and bipartisan approach to the issue:

[Archival Audio – Will Hurd]

Robert Pease (host) 

Let’s ask Dan Goodgame if immigration still remains top of mind to Texas voters and citizens…

[Enter Interview]

Dan Goodgame 

Yes, it’s still one of the top issues that voters cite in polls, under Biden as much as under Trump. And the loudest group here is the one that’s been stirred up by politicians, like our Lieutenant Governor, Dan Patrick, you know, with the claim that Democrats won open borders, so brown people will take power away from whites. And so this group wants to close the borders to both illegal and legal immigration, stop the granting of asylum to, you know, round up and deport roughly 1.6 million undocumented immigrants in Texas.

And so this is the group that decides Republican primary elections, the ones who hold these beliefs. But there’s a similarly extreme group among some Democrats, that advocates essentially open borders, not necessarily in so many words. And if someone like Will suggests something in between, I can tell you that we ran an op-ed piece recently on our website by a construction company, owner, family owned, construction business called Marek Brothers, based in Houston. Hires a lot of immigrants trains them, you know, good jobs like, you know, hanging sheet rock, had middle of the road view about how we could get better control over our borders, allow some legal status to the people who are here undocumented and allow them to work and pay taxes and have an ordinary life here.

Even if that doesn’t necessarily mean a path to citizenship, which is a non-starter with Republicans, people like Will Hurd and Stan Marek get called racist by Democrats for supporting anything other than open borders. So you’ve got polarization on both sides of this issue.

Robert Pease (host)

Yes, well Texas is not the only place experiencing that kind of thing, but maybe Texas is fairly unique in population growth over the past two decades. Huge growth. And we’re kind of curious about this Texas versus California dichotomy. On the one hand Governor Abbott is kind of famous for popularizing “Don’t California my Texas,” on the other hand, there’s a lot of courting of California companies to relocate to Texas.

[Archival Audio – collage of news clips]

Dan Goodgame

Well, Texas is experiencing, as you’ve noted, net in-migration of about 3,800 a day, which is pretty striking when you think about it. And that’s coming not just from California, but from New Jersey and India and Mexico and Nigeria, you name it. And these migrants are a big part of what gives the state its dynamism economically and culturally, and, you know, as I noted before they are not turning the state blue, you know, we reported that in our cover story, in December. Many of them are conservative Republicans and evangelical Christians arriving from places like Orange County, California. So they’re as diverse politically as they are culturally. But, you know, Abbott does do a lot of recruiting in California and what he and other Republicans’ leaders want is the money and jobs the newcomers are bringing, but not their cultural differences. And that’s not just childish, that’s just historical. I mean, for centuries, Texas has been shaped by wave after wave of migrants from Tennessee, from Germany, you know, from all over the US and the world. You know, and I would add that these migrants aren’t just reshaping Austin, but the entire state, and especially Dallas and Houston. I strongly recommend anybody who wants to know more about that check out the cover story that our writer Tom Foster did in our December issue, The Newest Texans.

Robert Pease (host)

Great. So yes, a lot of population growth in Texas, and a lot of economic growth. Texas has had a very enviable economic growth rate, one of the highest in the country in some periods, but there’s some question about whether it has the infrastructure to maintain that growth. Has Texas Monthly done any recent reporting on infrastructure in Texas and that concern?

Dan Goodgame

Yes, we cover that all the time and, you know, it’s ironic to us that, you know, the governor and legislature insert themselves into all sorts of issues into which the government need not be involved, like which restrooms people use and what’s taught in college history classes, while at the same time neglecting the duties that only the government can perform. So that’s, as you note, the building and maintenance of infrastructure for transportation, the funding of public schools, the securing of our electric grid. These are not red meat issues, so they don’t get as much attention.

Robert Pease (host)

Yeah. Well, speaking of Governor Abbott, tell us about the Texas Monthly Bum Steer award that you awarded to Governor Abbott this year. And I believe last year you were awarded to the Democratic Party in Texas.

Dan Goodgame

Yeah. It’s really two sides of the same story, Robert, it’s what we’ve been talking about through this interview is, you know, one of the reasons why we get the passage of all this legislation that is unpopular in the polls, whether it’s legislation on abortion or voter suppression, or, you know, open carry of firearms without any kind of permit or training, the majority of Texas registered voters don’t approve of those things. But we don’t have an effective Democratic Party that can offer an alternative that will appeal to a majority of Texans. And so that’s why the Democratic party was, you know, our Bum Steer, you know, for the January ‘21 issue. And then, you know, on the other side, you know, Governor Abbott, all you have to look at is his performance during the blackout and his performance since the blackout and not really fixing anything.

Robert Pease (host)

So the last question, which we ask all of our guests, is to show a bit of purple, and name one Texas Democrat and Republican, living or dead, who were less hyperpartisan, who were more concerned with citizens than votes and with policy and not grandstanding.

Dan Goodgame

Well, since we’ve already mentioned Will Hurd, you know, he would be one of the first to come to mind. Will represented the 23rd that runs from San Antonio to El Paso, and someone who always wanted to work across the aisle and represented a district that really demanded that. But I’m not gonna let you count that one against me, and I’ll add one. And that’s former House Speaker Joe Straus, who’s from San Antonio, neighbor of mine. Both Joe and Will are centrists who declined to run for reelection, amid their party’s lurch to extremism. 

Now on the Democrat side, I would cite Bill White, the very successful former two-term mayor of Houston, who, you know, worked in the oil and gas business, knows finance, was Deputy Secretary of Energy for the US government. You know, again, someone who always wanted to work across the aisle. Now in the category of dead politicians, can I give you a thought there? 

Robert Pease (host) 

Yes, yeah. 

Dan Goodgame 

I think it’s interesting to think back to the Texas politicians who rose most prominently to national leadership. So let’s think about Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson on the Democrat side and the two Presidents Bush. All of those were centrists who would have a lot of trouble winning a primary in their party today in Texas. That should tell us something.

Robert Pease (host)

Well, it is interesting, on a very uninformed perspective, that Texas is this real melting pot, like in music, for example, like all these musical styles come together, in food, in all these cultural areas, like movies and shows and things. And yet the politics is, you know, a little sclerotic.

Dan Goodgame

Yeah, you know, I would add one thing there, which is, you know, we talked about how a net 3,800 newcomers move into the state every week and you say, okay, the state has these very unpopular policies. Why would those people move here? Well, first of all, politics doesn’t really touch them that often. And second, it’s a great place to live and work. So, I think when newcomers get here, they pretty quickly realize that the governor and the legislature aren’t Texas, they aren’t representative of Texans. They begin, you know, meeting their neighbors and seeing that there’s a great diversity of views here.

[Exit Interview]

Robert Pease (host) 

That’s our featured guest, Dan Goodgame, Editor-in-Chief of Texas Monthly. Many thanks to Dan for bringing some depth and nuance to our understanding of Texas. In that last bit there, he’s stressing the really important point that Texas has a great diversity of viewpoints we just don’t hear much about. That’s because safe seat politicians and partisan media providers collapse our thinking into simple red and blue tribalism, leaving out a whole lot of purple. We’re going to learn more about those viewpoints in our next episode with three Texperts on identity and politics.

First up, Dr.  James Henson, veteran pollster and Director of the Texas Politics Project at UT Austin. Dr. Henson’s polling positions voters along a spectrum of viewpoints, and not just in simple dichotomies.

[Look ahead audio to James Henson]

James Henson

Frankly, the tendency towards horse race coverage in public, in media, in public discussion, you know, really does push people in that direction, and you forget to talk about independents. And, you know, I mean, I think frankly if you look at most polls, you’re gonna find some kind of an independent measure in there. The problem, to me, is that frequently it’s not a very good measure because it lumps leaners into, I use the same term you do into, along with true independents.

Robert Pease (host) 

And we’ll look beyond the red versus blue surfaces to learn about seven types of Texas citizens and voters from the authors of a major study entitled “Threads of Texas” by the nonpartisan research group, More in Common. They coined an important phrase, “the exhausted majority” in their 2018 study on America’s Hidden Tribes. Research Director Stephen Hawkins and co-author Paul Oshinski are going to take us through the More in Common method, now applied to the Lone Star State.

We hope you’ll join us then, consider supporting us on Patreon and Apple Subscriptions, share  the show with a friend or colleague, whether red, blue or purple, and give us a review on Apple Podcasts, or your favorite player, by going to ratethispodcast.com/purple. This is Robert Pease for the whole Purple Principle team, including resident composer and honorary Texan, Ryan Adair Rooney. The Purple Principle is a Fluent Knowledge production.