Ep 210 — TX/AR/NC Primary Redux (Ft. Joe Dye)

That being said though, it's not the only reason he won. He won because he won Latino voters and fairly overwhelmingly. I don't have full demographic estimates, but he probably won the Latino and the White vote by a fairly similar 20 to 25 point margin. And obviously Congresswoman Crockett won Black voters very overwhelmingly. And so for him to win, he had to win not only White voters, but Latino voters, and he did fairly considerably. Welcome to Lawton Chaos, where Pam Bondy wants to take over your state bar. Judges are teeing up contempt charges and Democrats are getting ready to mess with Texas. We've got a lot to cover, so let's get after it. Happy Friday, Cas Monkeys. I'm Liz Dianne with me as always is Andrew Torres. Andrew, how are you? Do you want an honest answer or do you want banter? I know the answer. We're a little bit of a mess here at Lawton Chaos. In fact, our podcast is currently being held together with Sudafed and Coffee. Plus a leave, D. Oh God, bless our sanctified and approximate. Okay. So today we'll mostly air an interview with Joe Dye, my wonderful son and the election law expert at this podcast, discussing the Tuesday primaries in Texas, Arkansas and North Carolina. That's spoiler alert. It was a good night. And it was a good interview. Yeah. I was not there because it's it's weird interview your own kid. I mean, I've done it before, but you do better. Okay. First up, big mauslet of to Kristi Noam on her new promotion. I hear she's like head of Starfleet or something. I hear it was like the international shield of defense. I don't it was it was definitely the first annual Montgomery prize award for excellence in the outstanding. What what is this? I have no idea. I mean, she can't screw it up worse than her current job. What? Yeah, giving her nothing is a good. But like Mark Wayne Mullin, not sure that's a promotion. I mean, that seems like a lateral move at best. What do you think? He's a maniac. He's an absolute complete maniac. So I don't really I don't really see it from his standpoint. I mean, being DHS secretary is I suppose it's a promotion from the Senate. But if Democrats take back the house, they're going to make the DHS secretary's life miserable. And if we take back power, that person is clearly going to be prosecuted. I mean, I guess Trump is going to pardon everybody on his way out. Maybe that's maybe that's the bet. I'm not really sure. I'm not really sure what the play here is. I like that your bet is that there will be a way out. I mean, I don't I don't know Mark Wayne Mullin was like an MMA fighter. And he kind of larps as a man of the people. He is not. He is a very wealthy man. But he's nuts. Yeah. So okay. And another Mazel tov to fan favorite Lindsey Halligan, who managed to pull a bar complaint in her home state of Florida for holding herself at his US attorney in Eastern District of Virginia when she was nothing of the kind. And the New York Times says that it's about what are a crazy shit she did in front of the grand jury to get Jim Comey and Tish James indicted. Yeah. What are your thoughts here? I mean, I don't look. Florida has been extremely unaggressive in policing its own boundaries. I assume that one of the good government groups filed a complaint and they are investigating it. It will probably go nowhere as did the one against Pam Bondy. And look, we talk about this in the blog post, which we published yesterday about Pam Bondy trying to take over bar complaints. I think that this is clearly evidence of why she's doing that. We're going to talk about that. Yeah. Say more about that. Yeah. I mean, look, we've talked a lot about the Trump administration sending lawyers to go spelunking into the statutes and pull out random clauses and quote, a matter of context to say that they mean exactly the opposite of what everyone has understood them to mean for decades. We've seen that with the mandatory detention of immigrants who don't have green cards. And then on Tuesday, we talked about the DHS deliberately misconstruing a statute on refugees. That was as it refugees have to live in America for a year before they apply for permanent residents. DHS is pretending that it says refugees have to be detained if they've been in the country for a year without obtaining permanent residents, which is bullshit. Yeah. And I want to key in on something you said because I think it's really, really important. They are deliberately taking these positions with complicated sounding laws and complicated laws, but ones for which no president in history has ever tried it. So therefore, they've never been cited by any court. So there's a complete blank slate so they can walk in and say, well, no court says we carry on. There's no rule that says a dog can't play basketball, right? Right. Although with this, there is a rule. Yeah. We talked about it. There was a Supreme Court case, actually Larry Flint of Hustler fame was being prosecuted in Ohio. And he wanted his very prominent, I think it's a lawyer from New York to represent him. And the judge refused to prohac him in to grant his prohac admission. And the Supreme Court said that was fine because state courts have a right to govern their own bars and to police their own boundaries. So there's Supreme Court law directly on point with respect to what Bondy wants to do, which is take over the bar case. It's not to bury the lead here. Yeah. Right. I don't want to situate that in terms of our discussion of the habeas cases, right? Because judges are getting pretty tired of saying over and over to this administration, you are taking blatantly pretextual false wrong arguments. We're telling you they are false and wrong and you keep trying it anyway. And look, it's not just because those cases are breaking the federal docket, but also because it's profoundly un-American and inhumane, right? As we have said on the show, the point of this exercise is to lock immigrants in these gulags in such miserable and inhumane conditions that they give up and self-deport, right? That they leave on their own. We make this such an inhospitable place for immigrants that they don't want to come here anymore. And you know, that's profoundly disturbing. So federal judges are making it very clear that they are going to start holding government officials in contempt, both at the Department of Homeland Security and at the Department of Justice. On Tuesday, we talked about judges in West Virginia and Minnesota saying, if you keep coming in here with these cases, after every single judge in the district has told you that's not the law, we will make life very unpleasant for you. And today, we're going to drill down on an order out of New Jersey by Judge Michael Farby-Ars, because it's pretty clear that he intends this order to be a roadmap for other courts to use when they are contemplating how to deal with an administration that is just refusing to obey the law. Yeah, remember Judge Farby-Ars is the one who instructed the U.S. Attorney's Office in New Jersey to compile a list of orders that had been violated in the district and come up with a plan to make it stop happening. That was in a habeas corpus case called Kumar Bisoto. Luis Soto is a warden at Delaney Hall. That's the immigration detention facility in Newark. So he's often the first name defendant in the case. Let's start. I really want to look at this order that Judge Farby-Ars put out. So let's start with a footnote, though, which takes up all of page two, because it explicitly calls out the Justice Department and DHS for choosing not to solve this problem. And forgive me because it's long and, as I said, my voice is not great today. But this footnote calls out the game that the Trump administration is playing with the contrivance of the Supreme Court. It says, a district courts decision in one case does not control the outcome in any other case. And so immigration officials have continued to go forward onto the law as they apparently see it, holding non-citizens without bail hearings against the understanding of the law uniformly held by federal judges of the state. The result has been hundreds of habeas cases filed each month in New Jersey, each within all but four ordained results at the district court level. The volume of these cases has badly overwhelmed the U.S. Attorney's Office, but the DOJ has long had a way to try to quickly shut off the spigot of incoming cases. Namely, the DOJ can move the third circuit for expedited consideration of the relevant issue. The DOJ sought such expedited review in the fifth circuit, but does not seem to have done that here. Yeah. So what Judge Farby ours is saying is clearly, Trump administration, you want to flood these courts with these habeas petitions, because you could put a stop to it tomorrow. If you wanted to, right, all you would have to do is ask the third circuit to rule immediately, and that would then bind all the lower court judges. You did that in the fifth circuit where you have crazy hacks auditioning for Alitos because you knew you were going to get what you wanted, but here you know you're going to lose, and so you are slowing everything down as much as possible. Right. So continuing with this footnote, if the third circuit were to hold that the New Jersey district judges have it wrong, then this class of cases will likely go away because the district judges will not be able to offer the relief that the habeas petitioner seek, and if the third circuit were to hold that the district judges have it right, then these cases will likely also go away because within the geographical confines of the third circuit, federal officials will presumably abide by a third circuit opinion and will not detain covered non-citizens without giving them a bail hearing. And then he has a parentheses, presumably abide by a third circuit opinion because while the solicitor general has represented that federal officials will follow Supreme Court opinion, see Trump Fikasa, transcript of oral argument, there was no similar representation as to following court of appeals opinions within their circuits. I doesn't that just say it all. I mean, there's so many layers here. At first, this is Judge Farby, I was pointing out that the Supreme Court created this problem in the birthright citizenship case by blowing up nationwide injunctions. Right. This is the world they wanted. And so Kasa case that he's quoting from. Right. And they did that with the full awareness that it would unleash chaos on the lower courts and they do not care. Solister General John Sauer said it right to their face to the Supreme Court's face. He told them that the administration was going to treat a ruling in its favor going forward. If there were no such thing as nationwide injunctions as a license to ignore district court orders and maybe circuit court orders too, right. And the Supreme Court just went ahead and did it anyway. I mean, thanks Chief Justice Roberts. Yeah. So Judge Farby Ars lays out the numerous violations of his order granting the petitioner, Judge Jinder Kumar, habeas relief by what the government did was move him out of New Jersey and then failed to bring him back in timely fashion. But then we get to the meat of this order, which is what should judges do when the government isn't following court orders? Judge Farby Ars says, there are two types of contempt proceedings. Civil contempt is a means to apply pressure to make you comply with a judicial order. So in Minnesota, when Judge Provinzino said that she was going to find that jag lawyer $500 a day until the petitioner got his wallet back right, that was civil contempt right now. The funds will continue until he gets the money back. Judge Farby Ars says, that's not what we're talking about here because Kumar did eventually get returned to his family in New Jersey. So there's nothing further to compel. And that leads to criminal contempt because the purpose of criminal contempt is to punish litigants and their lawyers who violate court orders. It is covered by, among other things, federal rule of criminal procedure 42A in the third circuit. That means that the violation of the court order must be willful. Right. You can't accidentally commit criminal contempt of court. And here the judge says it looks like the US attorney's office is doing its job is not willfully violating orders. And I think it's important to note that Judge Farby Ars says he credits the DOJ's assertion that it is doing its best because he knows the assistant US attorney John Bayziak, the one who investigated and signed the affidavit to be a professional of high integrity, his integrity and his professionalism. Those are reasons to rely on his work. Right. So this judge knows the prosecutors and he says, you I know you're okay. And we're going to come back to that when we talk about Pan Bondi, but I want to flag it for you guys that this is what the Trump administration is demanding prosecutors sacrifice in these US attorney's office. They're saying you line attorney burn down your reputation in the district where you've made your career and you intend to raise your children and practice law for another 25 years. Burn your shit down for us. And that's part of why judges are so leery of holding these line prosecutors in contempt, even though they're the closest lever at hand because sanctions are a black mark on a lawyer's record and it will follow them forever. Yeah. I agree with that. I want to highlight something else that we read into judge far be ours's order right here. And that is he lists four conditions that he says way in favor, not decisively. He says it's still an open question, but way in favor of concluding that the Department of Justice did not willfully disregard his orders. The first is that Bayseac signed a declaration and the court is familiar with Bayseac as a professional of high integrity. The second was that the DOJ apparently moved very quickly in order to bring Kumar back after noticing after being pointed out that it was in violation of the court or in a there others. But I think there's sort of an implicit double edged sword beneath the surface from all of these right saying courts should credit declarations from lawyers for the DOJ whom it knows to be professional stuff integrity from other proceedings is an implicit threat of don't bring in some Jag lawyer that we don't know and have them sign a declaration. I'm not giving that any credit. Right. Saying we give you credit here because you moved expeditiously to fix the problem is I think an implicit threat of that means when we bring this to your attention, you better move expeditiously to fix the problem. So okay, in light of that sort of road map judge far be ours also says while he's not faulting the US attorney's office, that is not the end of the matter because it sure is how it looks like willfulness by homelands security. And this is a point that you made I think it's some length on our last show right the difference between the lawyers arguing on behalf of the Trump administration and their client. And that kind of disconnect. So what Judge Farbear says is what looks like inadvertence when it happens once might begin to inch closer to looking intentional when it happens more than once a week. And if it continues to happen because a federal agency has chosen to conduct operations that it does not have the capacity to do properly, then that is willful. That is a known predictable result. Okay. So we're going to talk about criminal contempt and what Judge Farbear is setting up for this district and for other judges and other districts to copy when we come back from this brief ad break unless you are a subscriber patreon.com slash long cast pod or law and cast pod dot com in which case not today, not ever. And we're back. Okay. So let's get to the meat of this order by Judge Farbear's because it's similar to what a judge in Minnesota said he was going to do last week and I do assume it will be widely copied. Yeah. We know these judges read each other. He says going forward in all of its immigration habeas cases, the undersigned no transfer injunctions will include an order that two declarations must be promptly executed under penalty of perjury and publicly filed on the court's stock. First a declaration from the United States attorney's office indicating that it has received the injunction and conveyed it to the appropriate personnel at ice and to provide it ice with written legal advice on the subject of ice's obligation to comply. And second, a declaration from ice confirming that it is received the injunction and received written legal advice from the US attorney's office on the subject of his obligation to comply. Okay. So the first declaration will be executed by the leader of the civil division or by the chief of the civil division. So that's people high up in the US attorney's office. I think that's Bayes' extra. The second declaration will be executed by the Newark ice field office director or by the Newark ice field office deputy director. Yeah. And a little more color on that first part. Remember, New Jersey is where the administration has tried to put this triumvirate in place. So you can't just say the US attorney for the district of New Jersey because there isn't one. But I think this is really remarkable that what Judge Farby, as I said, is you got to have two people step forward. One person put his neck on the chopping block as the lawyer and one person put their neck on the chopping block as the client and say, I am affirming under penalty of perjury that these orders will be followed. And you know, if they're not, you're going to answer for it. And that is a hell of a vote of no confidence in the car. I mean, unprecedented in our nation's history. I've never seen this. We are way past, we started 2025 talking about the presumption of regularity. Yeah. I mean, this is basically a presumption of irregularity in the Trump administration. But it is not criminal contempt. So it could be worse for these people, right? But Judge Farby R says this is the last stop. And if this problem doesn't get solved immediately, that's where we're going. Yeah. I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict it will not be solved immediately. I think that's right. Maybe not ever. Even with Mark Wayne Mullin and Emma, a fighter extraordinaire leading the Department of Homeland Security, I do think, however, that this is a very clear order laying out the rationale for criminal contempt and saying, we are here now. So going forward, every case has to have a person to hold in contempt from day one. And criminal contempt is what it says on the tin. That is bringing criminal charges against a lawyer or against the client for failure to obey court orders and federal rule of criminal procedure 42A, as referenced by Judge Farby R's in the opinion, allows the court to appoint an independent prosecutor if they try and refer it back to the DOJ. And Pam Bondy says, we're going to take that under advisement that the judge can say, that's not good enough. I'm going to hire somebody to come in and prosecute this case. Yeah, I have a couple of predictions about that. And the first is that it's going to happen in March. The first criminal contempt referral aside from Judge Boasberg is going to happen in March in the next three weeks. Yes. And that after the first, there will be a lot, right? Because once the first judge breaks the seal, I think that it's going to come, that there will be a lot more. And I believe that the Trumpist administration is going to argue that the inherent criminal contempt power violates the separation of powers. And that will become a big constitutional issue. So like, I think that's a constitutional issue for 2027, because we're not there yet. But or maybe sooner. I don't know. But I think that is, I think those are things are coming. I agree with all three of those prognostications and just to lay down the marker now. There is a tremendous amount of 13th century Saxony history on how inherent contempt powers do belong to the judiciary. So it will be fun to see the party and the courts conservatives that love quoting from, you know, Sir Edward Koch or whatever, to say, how are you going to deal with this? Because courts have to have the power to enforce their own orders. And of course, I'm just going to need so many gummy bears. Oh, yeah. All right. So then let's talk about Pam Bondi's exciting new regulation, which we wrote about on the blog post, I'll link to it in the show notes, because I think these two stories are really one story. So Pam Bondi has put forward a rule change for 30 days notice and comment. She proposes to amend the code of federal regulations to allow her to take over bark and planes against a OJ lawyers from the state bars if she so chooses. So if a lawyer in her shop did something unethical and catches the bar complaint, she can swoop in and investigate it internally, despite the fact that the office of professional responsibility basically doesn't exist anymore. And the way how said it wasn't going to spend the congressional allocation for the inspectors general, whatever. Bondi says she gets to handle ethics investigations of her own staff and they cannot be disbarred or sanctioned by state bars. Right. So procedurally, this would be a rule, not not a law. It's not going to be approved by Congress. Or do I think it remotely passes constitutional muster if it were a real bill signed into lobbying? The 10th amendment does not allow the federal government to regulate state licensing bodies like state bar associations. And you broke down the legal slippage here in the post list. Well, we'll link to it in the show notes. I don't think we need to go back over. But everybody should read that. So for our purposes on the show, no, Pam, that's not a thing. I agree with your larger point. This justice department is asking lawyers like John Basiac, career prosecutors to act as human shields for the Department of Homeland Security to light their reputations on fire so that Trump can continue to violate the law and, you know, and face whatever professional repercussions come from doing that. That's why on her first day, Pam Bondi said no lawyer would be allowed to refuse to sign a document for ethical reasons or they would be fired. The plan was always to make the line attorneys do unethical illegal stuff. And if they wind up on the point of end of a sanctions order, why is not Bondi's ass on the line? Or no, I'm Sir Mark Wayne Mullins or anyway, right? That's what they're doing. They're using these front line attorneys as cannon fodder. Judge Fabiars is saying is clearly as he can, the next stop here is criminal contempt and lots of other judges are saying it to. So it's not a coincidence that this proposed rule allowing Bondi to take over state bar complaints is coming out now because they know the contempt is coming and they know that those contempt orders, raking lawyers over the calls for making frivolous legal arguments are coming and those orders are going to be exhibit A and bar complaints, right? Instead of saying, okay, we won't make the line attorneys do illegal unethical shit, Bondi is pretending that she can protect them and she can't. Yeah. And I guess I want to echo, you know, to parallel what Senator Mark Kelly said to the troops, right? I've never been in the military, but I am a lawyer and I can say you do not have to follow unethical directives, illegal directives from this administration. And I'm sorry that the cannon fodder here is going to fall on people, many of whom are professionals of goodwill. And I'm sorry you're in a tough spot. I really, really am. But if we can't go after the senior administration officials, what we can say is we'll go after whoever you enlist to do your dirty work. It's not fair. That's what we have to do. Yeah. I interpret the timing of this now knowing about the Lindsey Halligan bar complaint, which almost certainly will come to nothing, but is deeply embarrassing. I interpret the timing of this as non-coincidental. Can we just while we're talking about this? Our buddy, Kell, he has an interesting counterpoint. He says that he thinks the state bars will go along with it because, and this is correct. He says that according to almost all of the state bars rules, DOJ attorneys don't have to be barred to practice in state court. So even though Lindsey Halligan isn't barred in the state of Virginia, she was entitled to practice there because she's a prosecutor. And so disbarring her in the state of— She is a prosecutor for seven minutes. Oh, right. Disbarring her in the state of Virginia, like it won't bother her. And so the state bars aren't going to worry so much about it. But I think his larger point was that even if somebody got disbarred, the DOJ could still have them, you know, like assign them as attorneys. You don't even have to be licensed to practice law at all in theory to be a prosecutor at this Justice Department in the end of 2028. That's maybe where we are. I think the truth—I think it's really, really interesting points from Kelm Cleden and our buddy and our lawyer. I think the truth is probably in the middle, right? I certainly think that there are state bars that are not looking to pick a fight with the administration. And I think they will behave exactly the way Kel has described and wait until 2029 and then bring disbarmed proceedings. They can do that. I think there are state bars that are looking to lay down a marker and relish the fight. Yeah, I think that state bars really kind of pulled themselves up by their bootstraps at the end. I think that they felt like they had egg on their face because they didn't deal with people like Rudy Giuliani in timely fashion. And you know, he eventually was suspended from the practice of law, as was John Eastman. But I'm not sure about—you know, Kel may be right—that these people just like they don't care. They're not trying to pick a fight and they're not trying to penalize these line attorneys. But on the other hand, I think some of them are, right? And I think, look, Alina Habba doesn't want to lose her license to practice law in the state of New Jersey. And more to the point, John Beziac doesn't want to lose his license to practice law. Yeah, I'm not sure on the former, but definitely on the latter. Right, right. But TLDR, no Pam, that's not a thing. Okay. We're going to take an ad break. And when we come back, we will have our interview with Joe Dye, the podcast, election is Maps, Jerry Mandering expert on the very good night that Democrats had on Tuesday. And with the first primaries of 2026 in the bag, let's welcome back to the show. Our elections consultant, our redistricting expert Joe Dye, Joe, how you doing? Thank you for having me. Thanks for coming back. I can see that you're a little bit exhausted right now. It's been a pretty busy time for campaign consultants and seem to be like we had a good night, right? Yeah. And obviously it's a primary in all of its kind of subjective, but looking at basically all of the election returns, I think you got to be pretty happy if you're a Democrat and we'll discuss that shortly. I am a Democrat. So obviously the goal is to try and stop Trump. And I think one of the tools in that toolbox is retake in Congress, retake in the House of Representatives where Republicans currently have a 218 to 214 edge with three vacancies. So that's a lot more in reach. And then there's the Senate. We're going to talk about that. Republicans currently control 5347. They also have the White House, so JD Vance gets to break 5050 ties. So Democrats need to pick up four seats. Obviously it is very early. It is these March 3rd primaries. They were in Arkansas, North Carolina and Texas, not usually places, you think of as hot beds of activity for the Democratic Party. So we're waiting for a picture to develop, but I think Joe, you think that there is data that we can glean and that we can use to help kind of inform maybe where these braces are going. Yeah. So we'll actually start with the kind of least important of the three states, which is Arkansas. And last night, it flew incredibly under the radar with the Texas stuff, and which we'll talk about in a second. But there was a Supreme Court, statewide Supreme Court election to, er, Sarah Huckabee Sanders candidate was the incumbent and there was a Democrat, Democratic back challenger to that statewide in Arkansas. Now was there an express, I mean, a lot of judge races in states around the country are nonpartisan. It's not hard to figure out which candidate is, is Arkansas, nonpartisan or do they explicitly identify? It's not like North Carolina and Texas, which actually do have partisan judge races. It's a, it's not partisan. Kind of. So obviously, a bigger grain of salt, but the Republican candidate only one by about nine and a half percent. And that's in a Trump plus 31 state. And if you look at the, the coalitions, right, the Democrat one in Little Rock and Fayetteville and a little bit in the Delta and the Republican kind of won everywhere else. And so it kind of meered a partisan election sort of similar to the Wisconsin elections. Tell me what you mean by that. So you know, sometimes like ordinarily kind of back in the day when you had these nonpartisan elections, they were truly nonpartisan. So the coalitions, you know, didn't really match the DVR that you would normally see on the national level. And by DVR, just, just for our listeners, that is a measure of partisan weight. So if, you know, if you lived in like, you know, where Andrew lives in Baltimore, right, it's very blue, but the Republican candidate might do better in a nonpartisan election, just because, just because people don't, people don't really know. And I should say that we often had situations where, although, although Maryland has had Republican governors, where the sitting judges would all sort of campaign together, right, and reach out and appeal to lawyers and say, look, we've been at this yet, you know, you might not know our political affiliations, but we're competent. We do our jobs. You can trust us. And you know, you have no idea who, you know, Pete Q Wingle nut is over here and whatever. And I don't know. I mean, that was back. I attended those gigs back when I was in big firm life. So, you know, it's been two decades. And I imagine that this is just probably gotten more partisan like everything anyway. Anyway, yeah. Well, yes, it has gotten a lot more partisan. And, you know, look, we're not going to win Arkansas. The Democrats just aren't going to win Arkansas. But having a quasi DVR race that was single digits in Arkansas, I think you got to be pretty happy about all things considered. And, you know, it's just like another data point, kind of like there was constant Supreme Court races and this stuff we're going to talk about the second that dams are probably in for pretty good 2026. Okay. So, that's the top line out of Arkansas, not really an opportunity for Democratic pickups, but a 22 point swing from the 2024 presidential election, which if you're looking for signs for a blue wave in the general election in 2026, that that's a good start. Okay. Let's talk about North Carolina. So unlike Texas where you had two very competitive Senate primaries, North Carolina, you didn't, we had known that former governor Roy Cooper was going to be the Democratic nominee. And former R&C chair, Michael Wately was going to be the Republican nominee for months. And so you look at the statewide primaries and you end. I'm more or less of looking at total vote, total vote totals in the type of scenario, because it's a very, you know, strong measure of enthusiasm. Just one side's out voting the other. You tend to have an idea that, okay, that side is probably a little bit more juice in the other. And that's because all other things are sort of equal here, right? Like you, you might otherwise anticipate if there's a heavily contested Republican race and a not contested Democratic race, there could be other exogenous factors that would drive turnout. But if both are kind of in the bag, it's then a measure of who's most excited to show up at the polls and cast their vote for a Democrat. Right. Am I reading you right on that? Correct. And, you know, while the Republicans might say, well, you know, the NC4 had a competitive Democratic primary, I would say sure, but NC1 had a competitive Republican primary and nobody really has talked about that. So like there are some house races, but all in all, it's kind of a wash down, down ballot. And, you know, the way these stuff works is people mostly show up for the big ticket things and then just kind of vote for Dems or ours down ballot. But Democrats have outvoted Republicans by almost 200,000 votes. It's a little bit, it's like $199. So roughly 200,000. And I think that's a really good time. What's that? Out of how many votes cast is that? About 1.5 million. Democrats had 825,000 total votes and Republicans had 626,000 total votes. So almost 200,000 more very, very neatly. And for Governor Cooper, you know, there's some, these weren't truly uncontested primaries, but you know, we knew who was going to win. Yeah. Really heartening for Dems is Governor Cooper got 92% of the primary vote, which shows that there's really no significant protest vote on the Democratic side. Wavy only got 65% of the GOP. Now, some of that's to be expected where Cooper's been elected six straight times in North Carolina. But 65% versus 92% is definitely something. And just to turn out in general, I think you, if you're Democrat, you have to feel pretty directionally good about North Carolina. Yeah. I mean, for context, Donald Trump in 2024 won the presidential election in North Carolina by under 200,000 votes. It was about a little over 3%. So that turnout margin would have been enough to flip North Carolina blue in 2024. Obviously, it doesn't, you know, we're not saying that you, I understand that you are not saying that, but I'm just putting contextualizing that, that 200,000 mark, that's a big margin for, for, for turnout. It is a, it is a big margin. And so for, for even further context in 2022, you know, very similar situation when Ted Budby, Sherry Beasley in the midterm, Republicans outvoted dams by about 150,000 in that primary. So you can almost see its flip, it's flipped almost entirely on its head. So Democrat, you know, Republicans had a bit of an enthusiasm edge, which kind of to be expected. And this time, that was the Biden midterm. Exactly, exactly. And, and this time, it's, it's almost completely flipped and dams have a pretty big enthusiasm edge edge in the primary. Yeah. So tell me what you think that means. I think if you're a Democrat, you have to feel really, really good about North Carolina. Dembers got the best candidate they could get. You know, Roy Cooper's been, like I said, he's been elected six times statewide as a Democrat in North Carolina and it's never lost. And the Republicans, you know, they didn't pick any one, like it's North Carolina, right? It's not like they don't have a bench. But they pick the guy who had never run for elected office before and was in R&C chair, which, okay, fine, you know, he's going to be able to raise money, but, you know, anyone in that seat is going to be able to raise money. And I think you got to feel extremely good, you know, about Roy Cooper flipping North Carolina. You know, one of the things that, that in the modern era of politics, I think the prognosticators were really slow to say, oh, you know, this is like likely D or, you know, but I think the prediction markets and things like that and just kind of the younger forecasters are like, where Cooper's probably got like an 85, 90% chance to win at this point. And wow, and I quite frankly don't really disagree with that. I just, it's going to be really hard for waitly, for waitly to win. And then just really fast on the, on the Democratic side, there was a competitive primary where rep Valerie Fushi from the Durham area, almost lost to Durham County Commissioner Nita Alam, Fushi ended up pulling it up by about 1% of the vote. I think this is just kind of further confirmation that, you know, to Valerie Fushi formerly took a lot of money from APAC has since really stopped and that's probably the only reason she held on. But I think it's further confirmation that is that, you know, taking big money from APAC is really toxic in Democratic primaries. It doesn't mean that like super far left challengers are going to always, always win. Maybe not super far left, but it doesn't mean that just running a campaign solely about Palestine, I don't think is really still winning strategy, but taking APAC money is certainly a negative and a different credit primary, even even if you stop taking it. Yeah, that, that, I think that makes sense. And given that these are the earliest primaries, I would expect that that would probably drive Democratic primary challenge or behavior in, you know, the races that are still going on for the next couple of months. Okay. Now let's move on to Texas, which has really sucked up most of the media oxygen. But I'm glad that we were able to drill down on Arkansas and North Carolina. What's going on in Texas? So as most of you know, on the Democratic side, state rep James Tau Rico defeated US rep Jasmine Crockett and what I think a couple months ago would probably be considered an upset, but as we got closer to election day, I, you know, I think the consensus was that Tau Rico was slightly favored and he ended up pulling it out by about six and a half percent. Or so. It certainly seems like it to us here on the show that that that Tau Rico campaign should send a big thank you card to Trump's FCC chair, Brendan Carr, that the stunt of trying to suppress his appearance on the Colbert report, the Colbert report, he's just showing how well I am on the Colbert show. Uh, really backfired is that a is that your review b is that, you know, do you know, if that's the Tau Rico folks view, I mean, what do you know, what are your thoughts on? It certainly didn't hurt the Tau Rico folks, especially with, you know, white college educated voters who actually a couple of months ago were very swingy. They weren't really within that and Tau Rico needed to win them. So when the primary and he ended up doing that. So it certainly helped with that. That being said though, I don't, it's not the only reason he won. He won because he won Latino vote. He won Latino voters and fairly overwhelmingly. Um, I don't have full demographic estimates, but he probably won the Latino and the white vote by, you know, a fairly similar 20 to 25 point margin. And you know, that's the, you know, he, he obviously Congresswoman Crockett won black voters probably very overwhelmingly. And so for him to win, he had to win not only white voters, but Latino voters and he did fairly considerably. And I think we're going to circle back around to that when we talk about what's likely to happen in the general election, including who Tau Rico's opponent is likely to be. So let's, let's, let's talk about that. So the Republican primary was a was probably a bit more shocking at least to me. So Senator John Corne in a long time and Cummins been there for 24 years. And running for a fifth term is running against the state attorney general Ken Paxton, who is famous for not really anything. He's done in office other than maybe going to and in suing Pennsylvania to overturn the 2020 election. But to be fair, if you're a show listener, you know a lot of Ken Paxton's performative bullshit lawsuits. But, but yes, in terms of actually doing things, I certainly agree with you, but I didn't mean. And, no, and just to follow up on that, I mean numerous sex scandals where his wife, I believe, his wife who's a state center, I think still filed for divorce from him before he started running on biblical grounds. Just numerous affairs got actually got impeached by the Texas House as a Republican, which shows not not for the affairs for the corruption for the right numerous corruption scandals inside or training, things like that. So really, really a damage candidate. But I think, you know, for, for months, he was leading Corne in the polls and fairly considerably. Despite Corne, you know, spending 25 times as much money, I believe Corne has spent close to $100 million between him and outside groups and Paxton spent closer to four. Wow. And, you know, it was, didn't really look like it was, it was going to be for anything. And then election night came and Senator Corne actually came in first. Now he only got 41%. And that's pretty terrible for a 24 year incumbent. Yeah. But, you know, given the expectations we had coming into the night, I think Senator Corne and definitely overperformed his polling. Ken Paxen came in second with about 41% of the vote. So really, really close. You know, Corne was on about a point ahead. And then Congressman Wesley Hunt, who for some reason ran, came in third without 13% and kicked Corne in versus back. Corne and Paxton do a runoff, which I, which was expected, but I think people mostly expected Paxton to come in first. Yeah. Two quick points on that. The first is that that runoff is a super long runoff. The runoff election date is May 26th. So this is going to be an additional 10 weeks of campaigning. And I'm curious, your thoughts as to what Paxton is going to do in those 10 weeks. But I'm also curious as to in the absence of exogenous factors. And we're going to talk about a big factor in a second. I think intuitively you look at a race like that. I mean, you pointed out, right? This is Corne's seeking a fifth term in the Senate, usually when an incumbent gets 42% in a primary race, that's close to their ceiling, right? Like all the other vote is vote for not that guy. And so you would think that Paxton is, you know, probably headed to a 55, 45 race in the runoff as kind of a default condition. So do you agree with that assessment? Am I, am I wrong on that? Talk to me about it. I agree that Paxton would still probably be favored in the runoff. I think a lot of the hunt supporters who kind of supported Paxton, you know, who supported hunt because he wasn't Paxton in Corne would probably, you know, support Paxton, all things considered. But I don't think it's any foregone conclusion that Paxton would win. Although I think he certainly would be a pretty solid favorite, absent any outside factors which we're going to talk about right after this brief ad break. All right. And we're back. That was my attempt to build a tiny bit of drama. But we know what it is. Go ahead and tell us, Joe. So as we sit here recording this day after the election on March 4th, about a couple hours ago at roughly 2 p.m. Eastern, Polarco came out with a report that President Trump is going to endorse John Corne. Now this isn't confirmed yet. But I think people, you know, the Trump administration is so leaky that I assume this is probably going to happen. Uh-huh. And I don't know that that spells the end of Ken Paxton, but it probably does in a GOP primary in Texas. I think if Corne gets the endorsement, I think it's probably, you know, the Trump administration, maybe it's probably pretty close to over for Paxton. Yeah. That was, I was going to ask you the question, how does Paxton make his case to Texas voters? It seems as though to date the case has been, you know, sort of the whispering of Corne is a rhino, Corne isn't the Trump candidate. And you know, if he's Trump's guy, what's your argument to Trump voters when, you know, who were God King has said vote for Corne? I mean, I'm not really sure he has one. I mean, look, he would probably, you know, if I was, if I was them, I'd probably say, look, like, you know, similar themes, right? He's been there for 24 years and, you know, Texas, in Texas, we need to change and blah, blah, blah. That being said, I just find it really hard to see him getting to 50% with Trump endorsing Corne. Yeah. And I would interpret that as Texas Republicans and the National Republican Party circling the wagons and saying, hey, that, you know, this is, this is, this is, this is a, a state that Donald Trump won by 14 points two years ago, but, you know, we can't, we can't sleep on it. And, and certainly my view is that Paxton would have been a much better candidate to face the general election by, you know, what, what might prove to be a margin of victory or defeat your thoughts? Yeah. So to back up, just kind of give you an insight into how the Trump people think. Donald Trump is very strategic. I'll give him credit for this. He's pretty strategic in how he endorses when it's not, it doesn't relate to himself. So to be honest with you, his people lie to him about what is approval rating is like he's not really popular, but he thinks he is. But he is a lot smarter than I, than people on the left give him credit for. Just as just my opinion, I know this is probably not going to be super popular with the listenership, but he's, he's a lot smarter than people give him credit for in terms of how he endorses. And I think, you know, the Senate leadership probably went to him and said, look, I'm not saying it's a foreground conclusion to Tal Riko good win because he's got a D next to his name in Texas, but certainly it would make it a hell of a lot easier for them if Corning was still on the ballot against Tal Riko, then if Ken Paxton was and you know, Paxton is a really, really disastrous, disastrous candidate. I mean, he was by far the worst of the three of the Patrick himself and Greg Abbott in 2020, in 2022 and on to add on top of that two more sex scandals and getting impeached by the Texas House for corruption. It would be, it would certainly be very, very close between Tal Riko and Paxton. And I think the president sees that and says, well, this is probably the 50 first Senate seat. We can't take that risk. We need to stay with, we stay with Corning who has this reputation of being a little bit more moderate, you know, and has connections to a little less personally crazy. Yes. And has connections to all of the sort of old money and Ags to Ag interest in Texas that Paxton really doesn't. Yeah. I want to talk about kind of where the state of the, the Senate race may be shaping up. Obviously, again, way too early, but, but I also want to piggyback on your point. Like, I think it is really important not to lump everything that the administration does under the label of, you know, they're, they're all incompetent morons, right? Like they have some very evil but competent people and, you know, and you and I were just looking at, you know, link in the show notes. It was a New York Times interactive widget that showed all of the Trump endorsements so far and so far he is undefeated in 33 odd endorsement. Now look, a lot of those are, were strategically chosen, not close races, but I think the fact that Trump didn't weigh in on Corning versus Paxton is a pretty strong indication of, of your thesis, right? That there is foresight and thought and planning that goes into those decisions. Yeah. And the fact that Corning came in first, I think gave Trump all, you know, if Paxton come in first, like, okay, you're, you're pretty much disobeying your, your own primary electorate. But the fact Corning came in first, I think gave him license to make this decision to say, no, Paxton's a lot weaker than we thought he was. I, I think I need to weigh in here to save the Senate's eve. Yeah. Well, I, I wish he wasn't, but I think it's important for us to go into these with our eyes open and, and, and take full stock of the situation. Okay. I'm going to talk briefly about some of the house races in Texas. Texas, you and I talked about this is using the 2025 redistricted map that was designed to give Republicans a, a three to five seat advantage in this cycle. And thanks to the Supreme Court, they got it. So with that in mind, what stood out to you in the Texas house races? So just to back up for a second. So one of the sort of unintended benefits or consequences, I think depending on who you are, of the Texas map is that a lot of the incumbent Republicans got a lot of new territory, you know, the territory that they weren't necessarily known in. So we'll talk about Tony Gonzalez in a minute. But for example, Congressman Crenshaw, who, you know, famously was on SNL after Pete Davidson made fun of his eye of having, or having a glass. He ended up losing to Steve Toth, who's a state representative, very, very, you know, evangelical and arco conservative from suburban Houston. And he actually ended up getting blown out. It wasn't really all that close. He ended up losing by 16 points, which is really, really bad for an incumbent Republican. Yeah. I don't really, I mean, you know, functionally, you know, you have someone who's going to backtrump a little bit more, but Crenshaw would make a lot of noise and then, and then not, you know, and then support someone, you know, and then vote for Trump's vote for the BBB vote for a big, beautiful bill, things like that. Yeah. Yeah. I Crenshaw has never been on any of our, you know, potential flip lists. Yeah. And it's a safe, it's a safe Republican seat anyway. But I think it's really interesting that he ended up getting blown out and wasn't really all that close. Tell us a little bit more about what you find interesting now. What is that signaling to you in terms of the Republican base in this primary? I mean, I think the Republican, the certainly that suburban or exerb and Republican base is still in Tea Party mode because Crenshaw, I think, was kind of in 2018 was a, you know, outside or candidate been there for, I think, eight years at this point or six or eight years at this point. And then they decided, well, he wasn't good at Montgomery County, which is suburban Houston, which is one of the, I think it's the, correct me if I could be wrong about this, but it's certainly one of the densest Republican counties in terms of netted votes. So I think Trump pointed by 125,000 votes, which, you know, for a Democrat, isn't really that big for a Republican, that's huge. Yeah. And it's, you know, the king, it's the, a lot of oil money, a lot of card dealership money, a lot of ag money out there. And those folks clearly decided that Crenshaw just wasn't conservative enough for them. And they picked a guy who's a mega church pastor too. So I think it, you know, it's crazy, it's crazy as it is to say, I think the guy, Steve taught the guy who'd be Crenshaw, I think kind of aligns more with the Republican base than Dan Crenshaw did. I think that says more about the Republican base than it does about anything else. But okay, what other Texas house races caught your attention? So Texas nine. So this is one of the newly redrawn seats that drew out a Congressman Al Green. So it took, it's a little bit of East Houston, a Hispanic part of East Houston into rural kind of, as you go closer to Beaumont out there. It's a Trump plus 20 seat. However, the Democrats have a really good candidate running whose name is Terry Vertz. It's a former aspirin. I'd been, you know, a former aspirin, I kind of in the Mark Kelly mold of politics. So originally when the map was drawn, I think the sort of consensus was that this guy named Bersgo Cain, who is really crazy. And I think for those of you who listen to the show long enough, no, they don't really say that that often. But he is after Beto work in 2020 was talking about how, you know, we, we, we, we, we need to ban AR 15s. He said come and take it and, and, you know, he's, he was also involved in the litigation in Pennsylvania over the 2020 election. And this isn't, this isn't like, he's, he's confirmed on this. I'm not making this up. You know, very anarcho-conservative and again, Trump strategically endorsing. So I think back up, I think Trump was legitimately worried that Bersgo Cain would lose a Trump plus 20 seat to Terry Vertz. And so he endorsed a lady named Alex Mueller, who's a former prosecutor over over in, in Eastern Houston, much more normal Republican. And she, she did come in first, but her and, and Cain are going to run off in three months. I expect she's favored, but I do think the, the appetite for a candidate like Bersgo Cain is clearly there when he's still getting 30%, despite Trump endorsing against him. Well, and let's talk about those vote totals, right, because we are talking a single congressional district in a contested three-way primary. I mean, that's, that's 11,300 votes for Mueller and 9,800 votes for Cain. So, I mean, that, that feels like that, you know, I think the percentage breakdown is like 36 to 31. But that feels like that could be very fluid. Yeah. And just the, just a correction. It's actually lost the primary to a, to a woman named Latisha Gutierrez. I mean, this is a very, it's a super majority Hispanic scene. So it's not really all that surprising, but I just wanted to just clarify that for the, for the show. Yeah. So, in, again, this is a Trump plus 20 seat in which both candidate, both parties, they can do stick primaries. And the dams actually outvoted the Republicans by about 3,000 votes. Now again, this doesn't mean that, yeah, right. It doesn't mean that, you know, the, the Democrats are going to win Texas 9 if I had to bet they still probably wouldn't, especially against Alex Mueller. But I think directionally it shows how enthusiastic Dems are. And you know, to, let's or extend like the GOP had pretty good turnout too, but Dems, still beat Dem Statewide in Texas, which doesn't really happen. And I think the seat is a really good example, example of how well turnout was and how high Hispanic Democratic turnout was in particular. Yeah. And I think that harkens back to a point that you have made on previous shows talking about gerrymandering, right? The way in which the fundamental rule of gerrymandering is packing and cracking, right? Taking the party that you want to marginalize and creating Democrat plus 80 districts, right? Putting them all into a single seat and wasting the surplus votes and then splitting out the remaining Democrats in other districts. And the way in which you exacerbate, say, a 60 to 40 statewide advantage into controlling, you know, a 30 district margin in house seats is you can't say every Republican seat, what they consider safe, you know, you can set it in the software or, you know, you can obviously talk in more detail about how to draw maps as part of what you do, sir. But you got to pick a number. And if a wave is big enough, then all of a sudden, safe seats, R plus 10 seats are now toss up seats, right? If there's a 10 point shift in the electorate and an R plus 20 district that seems uber safe, right? Beyond that is something that people are at least talking about. So I agree with that assessment that, you know, I still would probably not put the Texas 9 on the map as we know, bull to flip the house. But I think you're right to sort of draw attention to that push pull risk of gerrymandering. Right. And there was a number of seats that all of basically all of the seats that the Texas GOP created with the exception, I think Texas 32, the dams and all of the seats outvoted the yards and it was pretty considerable, and especially in South Texas. Now some of that is South Texas being weird, but it was pretty considerable. It was pretty considerable everywhere. There's a couple more districts I wanted. Real, real quickly, former representative Colin Allred and current representative Julie Johnson are going to run off in Dallas. I would expect Allred to probably win that, but really, really poor performance by him. He only got about 40% of the primary vote against Johnson, who's a white lady in a very, very, in about a 75% minority seat. So not the best performance for him. I think the real interesting primary was Texas 23 in the Republican side. So as you know, folks, as you might have heard, representative Tony Gonzalez has had a lot of scandals in the past couple of weeks. Messages came out between him and is now deceased former aide named Gina Santos of Elis, where he pressured her for sex and naked photos. And unfortunately she ended up taking her own life in late 2025. And he's running against a guy named Brandon Herrera's, this is a rematch from 2024, actually, where Gonzalez narrowly hang on against Herrera and Herrera is a gun YouTuber. That's good. You know, guys like made fun of veteran suicide and has some questionable association, shall we say. And you know, I had thought that Herrera was actually going to end up beating Gonzalez. And he did come in first, but they're still going to run off between each other. But Tony Gonzalez, I believe still got about 43, 42% of the primary vote. And Herrera only got 43. So that it's a runoff between two really, really, really poor candidates. I think Herrera is probably stronger if you're a Republican, but still not all that strong. And I do think it could be interesting for it's a Trump plus 15-ish seat. And I think both of those candidates actually put that seat on the map in a way it probably wouldn't be. Okay. So give me kind of if you can reduce everything we've talked about to a sentence or two. What's your takeaway on the night? Democratic enthusiasm is really high. Hispanic voters are going to swing back how much I think is a big question. And the GOP, especially in Texas, is on an internal quest to find the least electable candidate state could find. Okay. So now let's talk about where the rubber meets the road because we can have a blue wave and because the Senate system is insane and anti-democratic and terrible, it would still be very, very difficult for the Democrats to recapture the Senate. As we said at the top of the segment, Democrats have 47 seats. They need a net gain of four, but they have three races in very competitive states. They've got races where they must hold on in New Hampshire, Michigan, and Georgia. And then they got to pick up four more seats. So I guess preliminary question. I know it's super early. None of those states have had their primaries, but do you see any, how do you rate the risks of Democrats losing in New Hampshire? Kamala Harris won. New Hampshire by three points in 2024. Michigan and Georgia, which obviously were battleground states in 2024 that Donald Trump won narrowly by plus than two points for each. Go in order. New Hampshire, I think the risk is basically zero. The Democrats are going to nominate Chris Papas or Papas. He's a congressman long track record of overperforming, and the Republicans are probably going to nominate Scott Brown, who was a senator in another state. It did miss. Two sits. Yeah, exactly. So I think the risk is pretty minimal there. I hope this doesn't get clipped, but I think the risk is pretty minimal in Georgia too. John Ossof is sitting on a pile of money. He's got about 50 million bucks in the bank. The Republicans are in a three way primary where the best candidate is kind of an unknown congressman from South Georgia, right? Okay. The name Buddy Carter and the worst candidate is the former University of Tennessee football coach, which I don't know if you know college football, the SEC all that well. I know a little bit about my SEC. Right. Tennessee is not exactly friendly. Yeah. And so I think Ossof is probably going to be fine. Michigan gives me some concern. So this is where a senator of Gary Peters ended up retiring is retiring. And the Republican primary is going to be won by former congressman Mike Rogers, who I don't think is any great shakes. But if you're a Republican who's a replacement level candidate, you're basically fine. And the Democratic primary is a three way primary between state or state senator, excuse me, or McMoro former gubernatorial candidate Abdul El Saeed and U.S. Raab, Paley Stevens. All three have problems, especially McMoro, or sorry, especially Stevens and El Saeed. So all three of them are probably below replacement level candidates. Stevens has all sorts of A-packed problems, which in Michigan is kind of a big deal as we saw. Yeah. It's really, really progressive. He's endorsed by Bernie. He ran in the first primary against Whitmer and got kind of smoked. And then McMoro is fine broadly. I would probably expect her to win, but with a very, very narrow plurality. But if you look at the polling, Rogers is beating all three of them, and it's really not all that close. Now, some of that is an ID problem. And so I would expect them to, they would expect whoever the nominee is to be in a much better position, come November. But it's still really, really concerning that all three of the candidates aren't really all that strong, and the Republican is actually stronger. Yeah. I mean, I still think the Democrats probably favor to win there and fairly conservatively, but it certainly should not be as close as it is. Yeah. Right. I'm glad you went through that because you really have to run the table here. And obviously, the hope is that you have a disastrously unpopular president who's doing objectively terrible things, but it's hard to muscle the numbers. So if you're talking about winning at least four, maybe five, here are the eight additional races where Republicans hold Senate seats and their Democratic pickup opportunities. And you hear a lot of red, right? So pickup opportunities in Maine and North Carolina. You went through the enthusiasm in North Carolina and Cooper as a candidate. I feel pretty good about those two, but you're now you're still talking two or three more from this list. Ohio, Alaska. So let's talk about Maine. Okay. Let's talk about Blighter. I just kind of hope I can not do it for this fight. Go ahead. Yes, just put kind of put a ball on that. So you can't win the Senate without winning Michigan. Yeah. And North Carolina, we already touched on. I think that's seat 48 pretty clearly. seat 49 is Maine. Now it's on paper. It should be the easiest to win. It's a state that Harris won by seven points. Now Susan Collins is a very, very strong incumbent. Nobody, you know, I think almost everyone expected her to lose in 2020 and she won by 9%. So she's a very, very strong incumbent. And no strong Democrat challenger. Now on paper, Janet Mills, who's the sitting governor of Maine is a very, you know, very good get. The problem is she would be 79 as a freshman. And after 2024, I think there's a large appetite for getting, for getting younger as a, as a party. Now that being said, the guy who's opposing her in the primary is a guy named Graham Platner, who's like, who's a, you know, one of the, who's, I forget what his guy title is, but, you know, he's a blue collar guy or normally a blue collar guy. But he's had all sorts of problems as folks listenerships probably know. He's got, he had a Nazi tattoo scandal in the summer, which he recovered from. He appeared on a podcast that with a very, very anti-Semitic person and yet he's still probably going to beat Janet Mills in the primary and is all but likely the favorite tool on scene Susan Collins. We can, we can talk a lot about that. But okay, that gets you to 49. Right. Now you're talking two seats out of this roster and a lot of low cards in this hand. Ohio, Alaska, Iowa, Florida, Texas and Nebraska. So you know, Texas, we analyzed it some length. That's going to be a very uphill challenge if it's corn in that, that comes out of the primary and it looks like it's probably going to be corn in that comes out of the primary. So where do you get your two seats from, Joe? Um, so I think that probably the two easiest are Ohio and Alaska. So Ohio former Senator, Shera Brown, it was defeated in 2024 but still ran a really, really good race. It was just too hard and Trump plus 13st, he ended up losing by about three points, is running again against Senator Hustead who was appointed. It's still really difficult to win as a Democrat in Ohio, but I think he's probably got, you know, he can raise a lot of money, has a lot of that old school union support up there. I think he's got a, okay, shot at winning, but he's still a pretty decent underdog. Alaska, same kind of deal, so former rep who was defeated in 2024, Mary Peltola is running against Senator Dan Sullivan. That's all is easily the strongest candidate we can get. She ended up losing by two in Trump plus 13th state. I think your hope is that if you're a Democrat, is that she can kind of replicate that and, you know, she's Native American and can turn out a lot of Native American voters who either wouldn't vote or would vote for Sullivan otherwise. But even then, still a very, very uphill climb against Sullivan. Iowa, I think, is probably the most interesting. So because the farm is interesting in the fact that it's inexpensive, but also like has a lot of really favorable conditions. So because middle America and especially the farm belt is being hit harder by the tariffs and just the general economic conditions, then like us and the Sun Belt and governor Kim Reynolds, who's outgoing is really, really unpopular. And there was a pretty good chance, there was probably a 50-50 chance at least that there was going to be a Democratic governor. State Auditor Rob Sand is running and is probably the favorite of albeit narrowly. The conditions are definitely there for a Democrat to win the Iowa Senate race. This, I don't really like to bash on Democrats, but I think for Democrats to win the Iowa Senate race, the primers between two people. Democrats between state representative Josh Turrick and state senator Zach Walls. Turrick represents council bluffs. He run a Trump plus 8C by 5%. Okay. 2024. So he's got that 13-point overperformance under his belt already. He's a Paralympian former, I believe basketball player, but don't quote me on that. But he's a, either way, he's a former Paralympian. Walls represents a very, very blue part of Iowa city. And he's got, he was the Senate Minority Leader there for a while, ended up getting booted for someone else. And he's a nice guy and I don't want to go bash the guy too much, but it's probably Josh Turrick is definitely a stronger candidate, especially because the Republicans are actually going to nominate a very strong candidate and that's Rep Ashley Henson. Hmm. Well, so we're going to continue to watch. And I think the watch word here is, stay vigilant, stay active, stay involved. And it's, it's, we're going to have to fight and claw our way. Okay. Next up, there's a Mississippi primary, a week from Tuesday on March 10th. Anything to watch in Mississippi? I mean, no, not really. Okay. After that, March 17th, Illinois, what should we be looking for? So there's a primary to replace Dick Durbin for US Senate. It's between, it's kind of a three-way race between Lieutenant Governor Julia Nostratten, US rep Roger Krishnamorthy and US rep Robin Kelly. I think the consensus is this grant is probably a narrow, narrow favor, but Krishnamorthy could definitely win too. And then there's all sorts of primaries in the Chicago land area with reps leaving. Yeah. We're going to get too much into those, but there's just one kind of general comment is that a lot of people are going to get elected to the US House, winning 25% of their primary. And Illinois probably needs R.C.V. hero one off. Expand on that last sentence. I really just think it's really undemocratic that people in, and this is primarily a blue state thing. So this is, you know, I know I'm living a red state, but this is primarily a blue state thing. You know, New York, Illinois, in Maryland and states like that, I'll have first pass the post voting. And so that functionally, what that means is that when the safe seats open up in these blue areas, you know, when 20 dams run, the winner usually wins with like 24, 25% of the vote. And if we, if they had ranked choice voting or run offs, it would eliminate that because then that person would end up having the win a majority of their constituents. I could not agree more as you know, I've been a strong advocate for ranked choice voting here on this show. And I think as we are fighting fire with fire, right, as we have to move into an era of gerrymandering politically to advantage Democrats to counter the political gerrymandering that Republicans have engineered to benefit themselves and that the Supreme Court has blessed. Like I think that makes it even more important that the primaries reflect the will of the people as much as possible. So I'm glad you made that point. Okay. Joe, thank you so much for being here and breaking this down. Where can folks find you if and talk a little bit about what you do? Yeah. So I'm running my own consulting firm doing redistricting and politics. And we're talking about expanding the map and getting a couple of people on the highlight. Down in Florida, number one is Nixitaoslow is in Florida second. You know, he's a young data to AI engineer. So really, really understands the really, really understands what's going on with data centers and things like that. And then Rachel Grayage over in Florida is five. So both of these are, you know, I'm not going to lie to you. Their heart seats to win. But in term, in here like 2026, expanding the map, I think is pretty critical. And if Texas 9 is going to be competitive, these seats are also going to be competitive. So go and give those candidates a look. And then also just kind of, kind of generally speaking, I think pay attention to your local races. You know, one of the things that I think we've done really poorly as a party is, is not really invest locally in places like Jacksonville where I live. But also, you know, like last year, right, you know, we in a Harris plus 20 city in Mobile, like there's still Republican mayor there. And so pay attention to, you know, pay attention to your local, local candidates, right, go out support progressives or moderates or whatever your, you know, persuasion in your area because it does matter. And those are your next generation of US house candidates where you're not having to recruit like a celebrity to run. So that's just kind of my PSA. Well said and keep, keep up the good work. And thanks for breaking this down for us. You'll come back after we have another slug of primaries, right? Yes. It was a full full full full full full. All right. Yes. Thanks, Joe. Thank you, Rodney. Okay. Thanks to Joe Dye for getting into the numbers with us. I really want to draw out the implication of Joe's closing remark on the importance of pushing for ranked choice voting to reclaim our democracy. And it's just an interesting point that that deserved a little subscriber bonus of its own for us to unpack. So we're going to get into that if you are a subscriber at lawncastpod.com or on patreon at patreon.com slash lawncast pod and for everybody else, we will see you again next week with written content on Monday and a show on Tuesday and presumably we'll be less dead. Have a great weekend, you guys. Law on KOS podcast is production of Razips Media LLC. It is intended solely as entertainment, does not constantly go by and does not form an attorney client relationship. This show is research and written by Liz Dye and produced by Bryce Blankenegel. Law on KOS pod, copyright, Razips Media LLC. All rights reserved.