AUSTIN, Texas — In this week's edition of Texas This Week, former presidential candidate Andrew Yang is on a mission to reform America's democracy and he has his sights set on Texas. Plus, Gov. Greg Abbott is on a veto spree as he makes good on threats to veto bills over property tax relief.
Three things to know in Texas politics
1. Gov. Greg Abbott vetoes 76 bills, nearing record
During a bill-signing ceremony on Wednesday, Gov. Greg Abbott threatened to veto a significant number of bills unless lawmakers reach a compromise on property tax relief. The next day, he started making good on the threat by vetoing dozens of bills, writing the same thing in the veto statements – that the subject matter of the bills is "simply not as important as cutting property taxes." He added lawmakers can reconsider the legislation in a future special session after property tax relief is passed.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick blasted the vetoes during a Dallas news conference, saying the power of the veto should only be used to stop bad policy.
"It's not a very good image to veto bills for no reason other than he didn't get the property tax bill he wants," Patrick told reporters.
2. Suspended AG Ken Paxton's securities fraud case will be in Houston
The securities fraud trial for suspended Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton will remain in Houston. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals settled that fight on Wednesday after Paxton's attorneys tried to move the case to Collin County, where Paxton lives.
In 2015, a grand jury indicted Paxton on three counts for allegedly defrauding tech startup investors in 2011 by not telling them he was being paid by the company to promote its stock. Paxton faces up to 99 years in prison. There is no word on when the trial could begin.
3. Texas buses migrants to Los Angeles
Texas added Los Angeles to the list of Democrat-led cities where the state is busing migrants. The governor announced the first bus arrived in the city on Wednesday night.
Since April 2022, Texas has bused more than 21,000 migrants to cities across the country. Gov. Abbott said the voluntary trips are an effort to relieve stress on Texas border communities.
Andrew Yang and the Forward Party
Former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang is helping lead a movement to create a new political party – the Forward Party. Rather than focusing on traditional Republican or Democratic ideology, the party's candidates will focus on each community's values and results-based solutions.
Yang sat down with Ashley Goudeau, KVUE's Managing Editor of Political Content, to talk about why he believes Texas is a great place for the party to make its mark.
Andrew Yang: "We are kicking off the Texas Forward party, TexasForwardParty.org. It's a new up-the-middle political party, not left or right, but forward, which is where most Texans and most Americans want to go."
Ashley Goudeau: Talk to us about the formation of the Forward Party. What really led you to do this?
Yang: "Oh, here in Texas, there are a lot of people who feel like they're left out politically. And that's true in most of the country. We have a two-party system that is increasingly dysfunctional, unrepresentative and polarizing. We don't want to be turned against our friends and family and other people in our community. We want to get things done."
Goudeau: And so you, you and some other leaders, formed this party. You know, there are thoughts about other parties that have tried to start, movements that have tried to start in the past and have been unsuccessful. What makes you feel like this will be different?
Yang: "I'm a numbers guy and an operator. It turns out that 43% of the local races in Texas are uncontested, are uncompetitive. And if you look at it, it's not like Democrats are heading to rural parts of Texas and running candidates and trying to win. This state has been carved up into blue zones and red zones like most of the country. If there's anything that parties can agree on, it's to avoid competition. And that's what we want to change with the Forward Party. But the path is very, very clear. At this point, two-thirds of Americans want another option. And 49% of Americans say they're independents."
Goudeau: When you look at what you will have to compete with in order to get candidates to run in rural parts of the state, particularly, you know, that's a challenge, particularly for Democrats, because Texas is so reliably red. So how do you think you're going to go about recruiting folks to run in those smaller cities?
Yang: "Well, the truth is that if you ran as a Democrat in a lot of those areas, you would lose. But if you run as Forward Party, then people have never heard of that, so they don't know whether to love or hate it. So they might have to listen to you. And maybe they might have some frustrations with the person who's been in office that has not had a real challenge in years and years and years. The same is true in reverse, too. There are parts of the state where maybe a Democrat has sat unchallenged for a while because it's like a blue oasis, I think [laughs]. And and there might be someone who wants to provide common-sense policies and a more moderate approach in that environment, too."
Goudeau: The thought process of the Forward Party, is it more of a moderate, what you would call common-sense? You know, when we think about how polarizing both sides can be, you feel like this is the party in the middle?
Yang: "Well, we're practical. We're non-ideological. It could be that the practical solutions don't fall neatly on this left-right spectrum. And we're trying to reconnect people to our representatives and then give the people what they want, whatever that means. It could be something generally thought of as down the middle, but it could be something else. And that's what we need to establish, because right now you have a system where we don't matter. You have a system where it's just this ideological back-and-forth. And our communities, unfortunately, are left behind."
Goudeau: But with no political ideology, how do you feel as though people can really align to the party itself, or is that the idea, you want folks to align to the person instead?
Yang: "Well, we want candidates to be able to express themselves. We have this thriving grassroots movement here in Texas. If you go to TexasForwardParty.org, you'll meet the executive committee and all these people. And we want Texans to establish what the platform should be for Texas instead of having some top-down approach from me or anyone else."
Goudeau: It's an interesting way to look at things. You guys actually consider Texas to be a battleground state. Why is that?
Yang: "Well, it's a very important state and it is one of our focus battleground states. But it is in essence, a one-party-rule state. And that is not unusual. It turns out that 75% of the country is one-party rule where one party controls all branches of government. So we have something of a faux two-party system in Texas and a lot of the country, where you have one dominant party, and then if you have a problem with them and, you know, right now the minority party is on the outside looking in because of the structures. And the same could be true in reverse in a place like California. So we are the pro-dynamism, pro-competition party on either side of the spectrum."
Goudeau: This idea of moving forward rather than left or right is something new explored in your book. Tell us a little bit about that.
Yang: "So I ran for president, and what I determined is that our current political system is not meant to deliver solutions on climate change, education, homelessness, poverty, which is what I ran on. And so I had to grapple with the fact – look, if you still want to combat poverty, which I do, it turns out that reforming our democracy is the first major step. And there are folks I'm working with who were climate change activists who realize that our political system is not going to deliver on climate change unless you reform our democracy. This is the argument that Forward has to make and deliver is like, 'Look, no matter what you care about, this system is not going to deliver it,' and that we have to reform the system itself. Because right now you have a 94% incumbent reelection rate in Congress, even though our approval rating of Congress is like 20%. So the feedback mechanism is broken. We have to rebuild the feedback mechanism to have any chance to move forward."
Goudeau: So that would be elections, right?
Yang: "Yeah, that would be elections. But this is the thing – it's the customary message to a young person, would be something like, 'Hey, get out and vote, become more active.' And young people have checked out because they've realized that in a lot of these contests, their votes don't matter. The country has been carved up in the blue and red zones and it's a foregone conclusion who's going to win by the time you show up. If you go to rural Texas and say, 'Hey, vote, you know, vote Democratic,' it's not going to make a difference. You go to to a place in Austin and you know who's going to win. The Democrats have already figured it out. So we have to shake this up to a point where there's genuine competition and appetite for change can actually be satisfied. Because right now you're just being set up to get more and more frustrated and angry, not at the system, but at each other. That's like the dangerousness of the polarization that's just rising and rising."
Goudeau: So when we talk about reforming the democracy, what are the ways that you want to see that done?
Yang: "Yes, so there's something that I'd love for people to take from this. It's instant runoff or ranked-choice voting, which makes it so that you can run and not spoil anything. You can rank a couple of candidates and it ends up supporting positive candidates. It discourages trashing each other because if I trash you, then we both look kind of bad. And then candidate No. 3 benefits. So if you had nonpartisan primaries and ranked-choice voting, it improves the incentives. Right now, the incentives are to try and keep the base off of your back. And this is true in both parties where you think that – my job as an elected representative is to please 51% of my constituents. It's not. It's just to please that 10% to 12% of the most ideological voters that vote in my party's base. And that's why we're getting pulled to the sides. If you had nonpartisan primaries and ranked choice voting, it actually gives most of us what we want."