What Can Texans Expect From Their State’s (So Far) Two Presidential Candidates?

This week in Texas politics with the Texas Tribune.

By Rhonda FanningMarch 15, 2019 12:35 pm, , ,

It’s time for the week that was in politics with Emily Ramshaw, editor-in-chief of the Texas Tribune.

On Beto O’Rourke’s decision to run for president:

“He’s running for president, no surprise to anybody, but, boy, are we glad we can stop waiting for this announcement. Beto is already out on the trail. He made his announcement, first, by leaking it to an El Paso TV station, and then the next morning, by releasing a web video of him and his wife and his kids. Now he’s already in Iowa – pretty traditional approach for a pretty non-traditional candidate.”

On Texas’ two Democratic presidential nominees:

“I cannot remember a time in any recent memory where you had two Texans on the Democratic side running for president. This is setting up a really interesting match up. These guys have pretty different backgrounds [and] in some ways, relatively different politics. … What voters and folks observing Beto in these early primary states are going to find pretty quickly is that he may not be as far to the left as they are hoping he is. I think he is a politician with some varied policies and varied politics, and I think they are about to get a taste of that.”

On a top official’s resignation from Southwest Key:

“Southwest Key is the primary company that has been housing so many of the migrant kids who were separated from their families. … The CEO has come under some fire for owning some property, having some stakes in some of the same properties that his company was using to house these kids. So he’s stepping down basically saying, “This has become too much drama, I don’t want to be a distraction from the work here.”

On who’s being blamed for errors in Texas’ review of voters’ citizenship status:

“The governor really blamed the director of the Department of Public Safety, Steve McCraw, saying this was bad data that the Texas secretary of state’s office was given. We weren’t sure whether McCraw was going to come out and eat it, but it turns out this past week he did … which was a pretty big shocker. It’s still unclear whether the legislature buys this argument, and we are still waiting to see if the secretary of state gets to stay on in his job. We’re anticipating a vote on that in the coming weeks.”

Written by Sara Schleede.