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Could reality TV star Spencer Pratt become Mayor of Los Angeles? And could Trump’s endorsement of Ken Paxton cause Texas to go blue? This week, Alex dives into all things primaries to see if we can read the tea leaves for what awaits both Republicans and Democrats in the future. She’s joined by Nikki Laurenzo, anchor and political reporter for FOX40 in Sacramento, to break down the chaotic and still very undecided races shaping California politics. Then she speaks to Crooked Media’s Dan Pfeiffer, co-host of Pod Save America and author of the Message Box newsletter, to get a read on the consequences of Senator John Cornyn’s loss to Ken Paxton, and why a crowded gubernatorial primary in California could be a warning for Democratic presidential hopefuls in 2028.

 

TRANSCRIPT

 

Alex Wagner: Hi, everyone. It is a complicated week to be a Republican. Okay, every week in the Trump era is a complicated week to be a Republican. But this week, four term Texas Senator John Cornyn was walloped in a runoff primary by the state’s impeached and scandaled, ultra-Maga former attorney general Ken Paxton.

 

[clip of Ken Paxton]: When everyone in Washington told him to abandon me and abandon the people of Texas, he didn’t listen. Instead, he gave his complete and total endorsement. President Trump is the leader of our party and his endorsement is the most powerful force in politics.

 

[clip of John Cornyn]: I trust the voters of Texas and they’ve made their decision and I must respect it.

 

Alex Wagner: Cornyn’s defeat isn’t just symbolic of the death of the conservative establishment wing of the GOP at the hands of Donald Trump. It is also, maybe, the race that could move the Senate into democratic control. Here’s a clip from CBS the day after.

 

[news clip]: I think in Paxton being the nominee for the Republicans has given the Democrats a new level of motivation.

 

Alex Wagner: Because Ken Paxton will now face Democrat James Talarico, a state representative and a seminarian and literally the opposite of Ken Paxton. In the words of my former colleague and Texas political savant Mark McKinnon, James Talarico could be Moses. So good job, Donald Trump and Texas Republican voters. You have now given Texas a legitimate chance of turning blue this November. But the tumult and the chaos this week is not limited to the right. If the second biggest, most populous state in the union is dealing with political shock waves, so too is the biggest. For the last seven years, Californians have been under the wing of Governor Gavin Newsom, who has emerged as one of the most prominent anti-Trump voices on the line.

 

[clip of Gavin Newsom]: We could have decided to write an op-ed. We could’ve decided, you know, hold hands, have a candlelight vigil, win the argument. These guys are ruthless on the other side. Trump’s not screwing around, and nor can we. Yeah, it’s uncomfortable fighting fire with fire. Yes, we all want the better angels, but we’ll lose our country. We will lose our county.

 

Alex Wagner: That is Governor Gavin Newsom at a Center for American Progress conference last week where his 2028 presidential ambitions were not exactly a secret. Newsom is now term-limited from running again, which begs the question, who replaces him? California, after all, is the avatar of anti-Trumpism. It’s arguably the most powerful blue state in the union, and it is one that’s gotten even bluer this year thanks to voter-approved redistricting. For months, the frontrunner to replace Newsom was representative Eric Swalwell until April, when some very disturbing and credible allegations of sexual misconduct came out. Here’s a statement from one of his accusers, Lana Drews, followed by Swalwell rebuttal.

 

[clip of Lonna Drewes]: I arrived at his hotel room. I was already incapacitated and I couldn’t move my arms or my body.

 

[clip of  Eric Swalwell]: These allegations of sexual assault are flat, false. They’re absolutely false. They did not happen. They have never happened. And I will fight them with everything that I have.

 

Alex Wagner: Swalwell dropped out of the race and resigned from Congress on April 12th, leaving Californians about 50 days until the primary. Cue the red balloons. In the weeks since, the gubernatorial race in California has been flooded with an almost unquantifiable number of hopefuls. No clear leader. Republicans doing better than they ought in the state of California. And voters left struggling to make out candidates’ policies.

 

[clip of Tom Steyer]: Me paying more taxes is not the answer. I’ve said I believe—[overlapping voices] I have said one person putting more money into the system if one person puts more money into the government that doesn’t solve it we need structural change.

 

Alex Wagner: That is billionaire Tom Steyer sparring with Trump endorsed Republican Steve Hilton, who, along with Democrat Xavier Becerra, are the closest thing Californians have to front runners in this race. And the chaos is not limited to the California governor’s mansion. The mayoral race in Los Angeles, as in Los Angeles, California, has now been upended by, wait for it, a Republican reality TV star.

 

[clip of Spencer Pratt]: This is where Mayor Bass lives. You notice something? Or here, where Nithya Raman’s three million dollar mansion sits? They don’t have to live in the mess they’ve created, where you live. This is were I live. They let my home burn down. I know what the consequences of failed leadership are. That’s why I’m running for mayor.

 

Alex Wagner: Spencer Pratt, the anti-hero of the reality TV show The Hills and a Republican, is now polling in a not very distant second place against the city’s current embattled mayor, Democrat Karen Bass. How the hell is this happening in California? The state has one of the most reliably blue electorates and has become an essential testing ground for the Democratic Party, both in terms of what policies work. And who is most successful at enacting them. But all of a sudden, Republicans, in both the gubernatorial race and the mayoral race, have seized on Democratic disarray to significant advantage. What is going on here? Just like Texas has lessons for Republicans, what is California telling Democrats? If the state is the Democrats’ lab, should the party be worried about the science? [music plays\ I’m Alex Wagner, and this week on Runaway Country, what can the left learn from California’s election chaos as the national party angles for power in Congress and eventually the White House? To dig into all of that, I’m gonna be talking to the best in the biz, Crooked’s own Dan Pfeiffer, host of Pod Save America, and author of the essential Message Box Substack. But first, I wanted to gauge the mood on the ground in California. So I’m talking to Nikki Laurenzo an anchor and political reporter for Fox 40 in Sacramento. Nikki moderated a California gubernatorial primary debate last month and has conducted interviews with candidates including Democrat Katie Porter and Republican favorite Steve Hilton. She even sat down with Spencer Pratt. Here’s our conversation. Nikki Laurenzo, welcome to Runaway Country. So I am on the other side of the country in New York, but we understand, although it may not always seem in our media coverage, we understand the pivotal role that California plays in our national and political dialogue. And it is both right now a mystery and a beacon for the rest of the county, right? Um, give us, if you would, the big picture on the gubernatorial race. What are the, what are the issues that have really animated and sort of moved voter opinion in the, in the 16 years that this race has been going on?

 

Nikki Laurenzo: Yeah, it really does feel like that. You know, I had to go back and look at when I started the coverage. It was two years ago.

 

Alex Wagner: Oh, my God.

 

Nikki Laurenzo: This this like in the spring when the lieutenant governor announced she was running and was considered somebody that was going to be formidable because she’s got a ton of money. She’s not even in the race anymore. So that’s how much the race has changed. And look, the implosion of Eric Swalwell after the scandal really upended everything. I mean, he wasn’t the front runner, I would say, but he had a lot of that momentum. He had all of the big union support, all of the interest support, and he was really on his way. So sort of after that, it was, you know, there was a lot of discussion of like, this is a boring race because you didn’t have these big powerhouse names like a Gavin Newsom or Jerry Brown or even like an Arnold Schwarzenegger. So people are like, and with Donald Trump just dominating 24-7. It was hard to get people to pay attention to this race after Kamala Harris decided not to run. So it’s like, okay, we have like sort of this list of candidates that nobody really knows. And for the most part, if we would have had a democratic president, I think we would’ve had a different race. It really would have been more about sort of the issues in California, but it’s really been who is the candidate that’s going to be able to fight Donald Trump? And Eric Swalwell had that resume. And now with him out of the race, the focus has gone to Xavier Becerra because he is, you know, the former attorney general, sued the president over a hundred times, former HHS secretary and member of Congress. And Democrats have really looked at the resume of Xavier Becerra and not so much the issues. I mean, they’re having all the Democrats are kind of having this battle over who’s for single payer health care, who is not, you know, who’s flip flopped on this. You know, what can you really do as governor when it comes to the insurance crisis? But the big issue is is affordability. But I just think with sort of the drama surrounding this race and lack of a clear front runner, we haven’t really had the candidates define themselves on the issues. I was actually scheduled to do an interview with him the day before. I think it was 24 hours before the story broke. And I got a message from his campaign that there was some mishap in scheduling and he was not going to be able to make the interview. Let’s see if we can have some time on site at the rally he was holding. So I contact the campaign on the ground here. We don’t know about this. We’re just gonna cancel the interview altogether. We weren’t really sure if there was gonna be press avail, so we had a reporter go there. And he vehemently denied everything. And then, obviously 24 hours later, all the news comes out. We were scheduled to do a debate in less than a week based on polling we had done three weeks prior. So it was a mad dash to kind of figure out what we were going to do and really try to read the tea leaves about what this meant for the race and where the voters were going go. And I’ll tell you on the call I had with our team, I said, look, with this sort of narrative, I think a lot of those, we all thought that they were gonna go to Katie Porter and they went to the guy who’s been pulling in single digits. I mean, Xavier Becerra got in, I think it was like. 3% when we polled him, 5% then after his scandal involving his chief of staff it went back to 4%. He just came out of nowhere.

 

Alex Wagner: Can you talk about what kind of race is Xavier Becerra run? I mean, you’re talking about someone, maybe elaborate a little bit, if you could, on the the the controversy surrounding his staffers that as of right now, we have no reporting or reason to believe he was involved in. But that does not diminish the cloud of, I think, a little bit of skepticism around him.

 

Nikki Laurenzo: Right. Yeah. So, so this all broke in November of last year. I’m trying to get my timelines straight with all that has happened in this race. And so it was a, you know, according to court documents, it involved Xavier Becerra’s longtime chief of staff, Sean McCluskie, a longtime lobbyist here, Greg Campbell, and then Gavin Newsom’s former chief of Staff, Dana Williamson. And according to court documents, this is this alleged conspiracy. That they funneled campaign funds from a dormant campaign account, Xavier Becerra’s dormant campaign account to Sean McCluskey. And in the beginning, Javi, I did the only interview with Becerra after this broke, and he said, look, I’m a victim here. He’s like, this is a gut punch. I feel like I was in a marriage. And it was like lying in a manager infidelity is how he articulated it. I’m a victim in this. And I said to him, you know, he’s like, I knew the payments, there is some sort of work that needs to happen with dormant campaign accounts. They need to be managed. I trusted my people to manage them. Sean McCluskey was his longtime chief of staff. I mean, they go way back. And so, you it has been deemed even with the last plea deal that Dana Williamson entered into two weeks ago. You know, all for what we know right now, it does look like Xavier Becerra was a victim, but this question of this happened on your watch, this happened with one of your high level people. What does this say about your judgment, you know, and your ability to man the shop and kind of have an eye on your people, you know, in your judgment? And I said, what do you say to people who might question your ability to lead? And he said, you know, keep follow the facts and trust reporters like you are going keep asking questions. And so he’s just maintained that I didn’t know anything and this has sort of been something that happened and I was duped and I was a victim.

 

Alex Wagner: Well, it sort of sounds like it hasn’t hurt him. I mean, if anything, he’s ascending in the polls, right?

 

Nikki Laurenzo: Right.

 

Alex Wagner: Since last year, he came from single digits, Swalwell drops out, and now it seems like it’s Becerra’s. He’s the, you know, effectively the frontrunner. Is that fair to say?

 

Nikki Laurenzo: Yeah, I like, yeah, I mean, he’s just cracking the 20s now, so the Public Policy Institute of California is out with a poll I have, and now it’s not going to drop until tonight, which we’re, what is it, Wednesday night. Granted, this, it’s, you know, we know polls are a snapshot in time, and this was done two weeks ago. It has Becerra, you now, at the top at 23%, then followed by Steve Hilton, and then Tom Steyer is at 15%. So he’s sort of maintaining it’s kind of like. You know, he’s sort of in that spot. And I really truly feel like people just looked at his resume. I mean, in the polling we’ve done with Emerson College, it has shown that he has continued to gobble up Democratic primary voters, that’s he’s grown his base there. And all of the attacks, I can tell you every single commercial, no matter what you’re watching, is a Becerra ad or a Tom Steyer ad, and they’re talking, you know. They’re attacking one another. And so. You know, the scandal involving, you know, when his time at HHS or, you know, just the criticism, I won’t call it a scandal, but the criticism of his time at HS involving, the migrant children and sort of the loss of where they were placed in the country during that time, there were ads involving that there were adds involving his scandal, nothing has really seemed to affect him yet. So while we have these conversations of people that cover politics 24/7, it doesn’t really seem like it’s landing with the voters right now. Again, anything can change, because I do know voters—

 

Alex Wagner: The primary is in a week, Nikki.

 

Nikki Laurenzo: I know, I know.

 

Alex Wagner: I love that you’re like, anything could change. Like, in the 72 hours could be Tom Steyer’s race.

 

Nikki Laurenzo: Well, I say that because we like we’re looking we’re following the returns of the ballots coming in and it’s showing these very slow returns of those mail-in ballots and just having conversations—I’ll tell you I was at a wedding over the weekend and no and the the dominant conversation was I don’t know who to vote for. I’m sitting on my ballot. I don’t know what to do. Is something else going to happen? I’m not really sure about this. It’s just been so interesting covering several governor’s elections in California. And people, Democrats, kind of being like, ugh, I guess I’m gonna vote for Becerra?

 

Alex Wagner: You know, you mentioned Tom Steyer, he has spent $200 million. Is that right? On his campaign.

 

Nikki Laurenzo: Yeah, he broke a record. I think Friday was the point where he spent over $200 million.

 

Alex Wagner: Is that legitimate? I mean, you’re talking about a poll that’s coming out that shows him considerably behind Becerra, but up until now he has had some, you know, he has had some support enough to register as like the maybe third front, third place frontrunner in all of this. Is it the ads that explain that or do people genuinely like Tom Steyer? I mean, how would you sort of assess his campaign and his prospects?

 

Nikki Laurenzo: Yeah. I mean, he spent all that money, uh, starting in the winter of last year, November of last year. And when we did our first poll, I believe he was at four per, he was in single digits. And he is just, has been flooding the airwaves. And I mean he is, it’s Tom Steyer all the time. And so you’re buying that name ID in the state of California. I mean, that’s basically what he had to do. We saw it with San Jose mayor, Matt Mahan, who got into the race late. And you know was going to have all this tech wave behind him and they were going to spend all this money and it was sort of the campaign that was it because he’s in this poll that’s coming out tonight. They don’t even mention him. It goes Becerra, the two Republicans, Tom Steyer and Katie Porter and then everyone else. He’s not even mentioned in that conversation. And I will say it, you know, look. We can have a whole other discussion about polling and how accurate it is in in this day and age and how honest voters are uh because you know we could see something totally different on election day I mean our presidential elections have shown us that but there is a good chance that we could have Xavier Becerra and Tom Steyer in the run-off and honestly that’s what we’re hoping for out here in California among the journalists because let’s have a real debate about the issues here because the way the math is, look, I’m not in the prediction business, and I know what don’t come from me in the comments, but we know what the math is here in California. The public has not won for a really long time. So if we see Steve Hilton and Xavier Becerra advance past June, we know what the race is going to look like. We know what a likely outcome is going to be.

 

Alex Wagner: Well, you might you might get a really interesting race down ballot in the mayor’s race in Los Angeles where I must ask you about Spencer Pratt aka Pratt Daddy, conspiracy theorist, I would say MAGA adjacent even though these mayoral uh races are non-partisan. He um was the villain on The Hills the reality tv show that is old enough that I remember it from my youth. Um, and I think has a website where he sells crystals, which is of course, you know what every candidate for mayor does. The natural stop on anyone’s resume is to be a crystal seller. You interviewed Spencer Pratt, I think it was in March. Let’s take a listen to a clip of that interview.

 

Nikki Laurenzo: Alright, so make your pitch to them. Why should they vote for you?

 

[clip of Spencer Pratt]: ‘m going in to stop the fraud and corruption that has overtaken the city of Los Angeles I am going to make the safe streets clean again. You’ll be able to walk your dog. You’ll able to push your stroller without fentanyl smoke blowing into your child’s nose and God knows what harm is coming I’m gonna do everything that none of these candidates will do or even talking about doing and especially what mayor Karen Bass has not done in four years. So I mean I can keep going but I should feel like no fentanyl smoke at the park is is worth the vote right there.

 

Alex Wagner: I mean, it really sounded like he was kind of coming up with his candidacy on the fly there, Nikki. What’s your impression of him and his potential pro, I can’t believe I’m saying this, the potential prospect of Spencer Pratt being the mayor of Los Angeles.

 

Nikki Laurenzo: 2026, right? [laughter] I mean, who would have seen this? So this is really interesting. You know, back then, Spencer, there were so many discussions about who was going to run for for mayor of L.A. Because Karen Bass was underwater with the voters. You know she had a little bit of a resurgence with the ICE raids in Los Angeles and and sort of the, you know, push back against the administration and what they were doing. Her image, you know, she saw a little bit of a rise, but that was short-lived. And when billionaire developer Rick Caruso decided not to run, it left this opening with, okay, what are we going to see here? And Spencer Pratt announced his candidacy at an event in the Palisades, the one-year anniversary of the fire. And I don’t think that that’s an incorrect take, is that he was sort of just kind coming up with it on the fly because he said, look, I didn’t want to do this. I just felt like no one was going to run. And I needed to step in because there’s no way that I could allow Karen Bass to just waltz back in to the mayor’s office. And nobody took him seriously. To be honest, he started railing against politicians in California, right after the fire. He was sparring with the governor’s office, And he’s moved away from that, and all of his ire has been focused on Karen Bass and Nithya Raman. And people just sort of laughed it off, but really in the last, I would say, month, there has been this groundswell of what seems to be support and seems to be attention. A lot of it is national, a lot of is focused on social media. I think this is gonna be a real study into are voters seeing these videos he’s posting on social media? Are they seeing these interviews? Are they hearing this message? Or is the traditional, you need to be up on the air on the local stations. He’s getting a lot of earned media. He’s doing a lot interviews in Los Angeles. And I really do think, I mean, you can talk about where the bar was for that debate. Nobody really knew what to expect. But there were like 2015 president, then candidate Trump vibes during that debate where people didn’t know what to expect. And it’s very zeitgeisty. I will say he is tapping into something in Los Angeles, the angry Angelino, where they’re like, OK, enough. Like, I don’t know how accurate the polls are. We’ve done some polling down there. But there could be some voters who are not going to be honest with pollsters or not be honest their friends and vote for Spencer.

 

Alex Wagner: Can we just, just as an example of that, he has been getting a lot of attention for those ads. And some of them are AI generated ads that his campaign says they have nothing to do with, but that sort of is, that’s equally compelling because that means someone out there is taking the time with robots to make these pretty sophisticated ads on behalf of Spencer Pratt. Let us, for people who are unfamiliar with the Spencer Prat AI Batman ad, let’s take a look at that.

 

[clip of ad]: Ha ha ha ha! Next! Mom, look! [sound effects]

 

Alex Wagner: Okay, if you blinked and missed it there, there’s more there’s a Gavin Newsom eating cake. There is Kamala Harris swigging vodka. And of course, the archenemy is mayor Karen Bass. Obviously a Democrat as the Joker.

 

And I think Marco Rubio is a DJ in it. [laughs]

 

Yes, Marco, I can’t even address that. But like put on your like national politics hat for a minute. Like this is an ad for a candidate with no experience a very inarticulate message. No particular solutions. But that candidate, nonetheless, has been gaining real traction in the city of Los Angeles. And, like, I just think there’s some level of alarm in all of this as it concerns the Democratic Party and potentially, you know, how Democrats need to think about both messaging and position. Going forward. I mean, it’s the fact that Spencer Pratt has a legitimate shot at becoming the mayor of Los Angeles based on literally nothing but virality and bluster is, I mean I’m not hitting the panic button, but my hand is like moving towards that. What do you think this phenomenon suggests for Democrats writ large? I mean national Democrats are in that ad.

 

Nikki Laurenzo: Agreed. And like you said, it’s messaging, you know, I feel like there was this element after the last election, like where did we go wrong? And I’m thinking of, you, the press conferences during the Biden administration when they were talking about the economy and it being transitory and just speaking in a way that just voters don’t feel like it’s resonating with them. Like for instance, you know, when Karen Bass talks about homelessness in Los Angeles, she talks about it being down 18%. Well, people are still seeing tents on the streets and they’re seeing people suffering and they are seeing open drug use and that 18% doesn’t mean anything to them. There was a pivotal moment in that debate where I thought that, I said, this is why. Spencer, I think, is resonating with people. There was a moment where they were talking about offering housing and beds to the unhoused population. And Spencer said, I will go with Councilmember Raman under the Harbor Freeway tomorrow to offer one of these beds to one of these individuals, and she’s going to get stabbed in the neck. It is unsafe. And so just creating that visual and that plain speak, it really, Alex, I’m telling you, it took me back. I was covering the presidential election in Texas. At the time. And I went to a rally for then candidate Trump. I went to a rally for Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz. I went back to my newsroom and I told my news director, I said, Donald Trump’s going to be the nominee. And he goes, the you’re fired guy? I go, yeah. I’m like, I’m telling you there is something in the way he is speaking to these voters. They’re hanging on every single word. I said it’s I’ve never seen anything like this in all of my years of covering politics in elections. And he’s able to speak to them and resonate with them, where these very seasoned politicians just aren’t able to do that. So after the last election where Kamala Harris’s message clearly did not resonate with voters or she just didn’t speak to them I really do think that needs to be something that’s studied or taken to heart by a national Democrats because if Spencer Pratt can come out of nowhere and say, I don’t have all the answers. I mean, he’s even said it. Look, I don’t have [both speaking] answers. But what else? I mean it’s literally, what else do you have to lose? I remember Donald Trump in a rally saying that to African American voters. What the hell do you have to lose? And that’s basically what he’s saying. And another line that was similar. I don t have all the answer, but I know all the smart people and it will bring smart people around me. And there are people that want to help rebuild LA. So There are very, even though his campaign is like, we’re not partisan, I don’t know what MAGA is, I’m not part of this, my party is Angelino, there are some similarities there with his ability to just plainly speak to the public and kind of tap into that frustration that they’re feeling.

 

Alex Wagner: Yeah, in a Batman suit, even if it’s AI-generated. Whoo, baby. OK, Nikki. Listen, I think a lot of us have been so focused on, I mean, unsurprisingly, we always are, the media. New York, Washington, the Acela quarter. But what’s happening in the largest state in the country is incredibly important, not just for that state, but for, obviously, the National Party and the dynamics. You know, the future political course ahead. So it’s great to get firsthand perspective from someone who knows it well and is deeply embedded. And I’m grateful for your time and thoughts. Thanks for joining Runaway Country.

 

Nikki Laurenzo: Of course. Happy to be here. Thank you.

 

Alex Wagner: Good luck in the next week.

 

Nikki Laurenzo: Oh, it’s going to be a I won’t be sleeping for quite some time. [laughter]

 

Alex Wagner: So or maybe after.

 

Nikki Laurenzo: Yeah, I just like I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in two years, but that’s OK.

 

Alex Wagner: Political reporting in the age of Trump. Thanks, Nikki.

 

Nikki Laurenzo: Thank you.

 

Alex Wagner: After the break, we’ll put this all into context with Crooked’s Dan Pfeiffer.

 

[AD BREAK]

 

Alex Wagner: I thought about what this week would portend, might portend and what the coming week would portend. And I said, get me Dan Pfeiffer. Get me Dan Pfeiffer. I actually didn’t say it like that at all, but I said maybe we could ask Dan to come back on Runaway Country and lo and behold, you are available.

 

Dan Pfeiffer: I’m always available for Runaway Country.

 

Alex Wagner: Bless you. You are one of the very elite group of repeat guests on Runaway Country.

 

Dan Pfeiffer: I’m sure I’ll be getting my jacket like the five timers club at the, at SNL.

 

Alex Wagner: You actually have to arrive in a tuxedo much like the five timers and then you get your jacket.

 

Dan Pfeiffer: Cool. Cool, cool.

 

Alex Wagner: Dan, thank you for joining Runaway Country again.

 

Dan Pfeiffer: Of course.

 

Alex Wagner: Before we get to the second biggest state in the union, I want to talk about the state of California where you, if I am getting this right, you live there.

 

Dan Pfeiffer: I do live there, yes.

 

Alex Wagner: And perhaps you can explain to me what in the same hell is happening over there. It is supposed to be the hotbed of progressive thought and enthusiasm, and it looks a lot more right now like a hotbed of chaos and ambivalence. What’s going on, Dan?

 

Dan Pfeiffer: I think it’s more ambivalence than chaos. Let’s talk with the state of the race first, and then we can talk big picture about why we have this level of ambivalent and this hotbed of progressivism.

 

Alex Wagner: Well, let’s first start. And there are two races that I’m interested in. Primarily, I’m interesting in the gubernatorial race.

 

Dan Pfeiffer Yep yep.

 

Alex Wagner: In so far as it, it tells us anything about democratic party politics writ large come 2028. Talk to me about where you think this race is headed and what has surprised you about its ambivalent mechanics.

 

Dan Pfeiffer: As the learned audience of Runaway Country certainly knows, California has what is called a jungle primary. So the top two finishers, regardless of party advanced the general election. And for a long period of time, there was this very real fears that you’d ended with two Republicans at the top and Democrats would be locked out, which is really the only way Democrats could lose the California governor’s race. The chances of a lockout are low, but not gone because Xavier Becerra, the former state attorney general, Biden, HHS secretary, has risen to something, some nature of a potential lead here. And Tom Steyer, the billionaire who has spent, who will end up spending a quarter billion dollars on this race, it seems at least, is the second leading Democrat. We have three high quality polls coming out later this week, which should give us a better picture of it. But as it seems right now, the next governor of California is either going to be Tom Steyer or Xavier Becerra. And people are not particularly excited about this. And it’s not, some of that’s about the individual candidates. Some of it is about the fact that this race has just felt stuck the whole time. I think what has led to this feeling of meh about it is first, everyone thought Kamala Harris was gonna run. So they were excited about that. Then they thought Alex Padilla, state senator, was going to run. And then he did not. We were left with this field of people, which included a bunch of people who are all qualified and have interesting resumes on their own, but have not got people excited in a way in which they are used to after 16 years of Jerry Brown and Gavin Newsom.

 

Alex Wagner: So they’re at once very specific reasons why this race at the gubernatorial level is, shall we say, confusing to those of us on the outside. But I also, I mean, to get into how this plays, how this dovetails potentially with national party politics. I mean I worry that we see like a totally similar dynamic could unfold with a messy complicated primary process for the presidential nomination. I wonder if you think that there’s any sort of warning signs ahead about how Democrats choose their next nominee based on what we see in California. And I mean both in terms of candidate sort of qualifications and how the party itself coalesces.

 

Dan Pfeiffer: You know, that’s a, it’s an interesting question. What I think makes this makes California unique and separate from the presidential is, people freaked out a few months ago about the possibility of a lockout. And people really got in their head that they should vote strategically. Because absent that fear, which has never really been a fear we’ve had in California politics before at the state level, people would just vote for who they liked and you could be passionate. But now you’re like, my ballot is sitting on my kitchen table. Every single thing is filled out on than the governor’s race. And I am waiting for these three polls.

 

Alex Wagner: You are with half of the Democrats in the state who are waiting to fill out their ballot.

 

Dan Pfeiffer: And normal, I would just say this is the candidate I like most and I would vote for that person. But now I am waiting to see should I, how worried should I be about a lockout? Should I vote for my third or fourth favorite candidate because they would help reduce the lockout. So we’ve injected this idea of strategic voting into it, which has led to people not turning their ballots in. And it’s led to this thing of, I can’t really fall in love with a candidate because I’m gonna probably have to pull the lever for someone or fill in the bubble to use a modern terminology in a mail ballot state, um, fill in the bubble for a candidate that I do not love because that’s the best way to get it, keep a Democrat in office. And I just really sucked a lot of the passion out of the race.

 

Alex Wagner: But don’t you worry about that. I mean, I think what happened between Biden and Harris was Biden was he’s electable, Harris was like, she’s all we got. So, and then in the aftermath, and we’ll talk about the 2024 autopsy in a little bit, in the aftermath of Harris, the electability question has become so dominant in democratic politics and, and like, you know, there’s great fear about what awaits the other side. We would be talking about a race in which Donald Trump is not running. So maybe the electability argument softens a little bit, but still there’s deep-seated terror about what another MAGA firebrand could do, someone marginally more capable or at least awake, could do if they got into office in 2029. I mean, I guess I wonder if you think any of those fears are assuaged in a bigger primary for the presidential.

 

Dan Pfeiffer: They could be that a couple candidates catch people’s attention, like that could happen. And you could end up with what you had in 2008 between Obama and Hillary, where just sort of, there were a bunch of candidates in that field. A lot of people ran, people forget how many people ran. And it really came down to a three-person, but really two-person race between Obama and Hillary. And it captured the party’s attention and captured the nation’s attention. That could theoretically happen again. I agree with you that electability is going to hang over the whole thing. And it’s stupid because it’s a little bit different than what’s happening in California, but it’s stupid because no one really knows what electability is. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. You’re only electable once you win. And if you lose, you’re automatically unelectable. So what does it really tell you? But that is going to hang over it in a particularly hang over it if Kamala Harris runs because she actually ran and lost, which will, which complicates things for her. Obviously now we can have a long conversation about why that’s fair or unfair for her, given the circumstances by which she became the nominee. But. It’s going to hang over and hung over it in 2020 for sure. I think depending on how 2026 goes in the mood of the party in the country, we are either going to think about electability in a bold way or think about the electability in a defensive way. In 2004, facing Bush with high approval numbers, Democrats thought about electability very defensively and thought we need to nominate the war hero veteran in John Kerry. In 2008, after Bush was in the toilet, and Democrats had won these huge victories in 2006, we were able to think about electability in an offensive way and nominate someone like Barack Obama. Had we not taken the House and Senate, I don’t think there would have been an appetite to nominate the first black American named Barack Hussein Obama with his resume to be the Democratic nominee. I think we don’t know yet what electability is gonna look like to voters, but it will hang over it. I also think it’s very possible, given today’s media environment, and see its attention economy. That. Many of these candidates who get in early are not gonna wear well over time. And people are, I think there’s a very real chance for six months into the race, Democrats are gonna look at each other and say, this is all we got. That’s probably unfair potentially, but just there is something about the process that is diminishing.

 

Alex Wagner: Yeah.

 

Dan Pfeiffer: You know, all of a sudden, you’re the governor of California. You’re the former vice president. You’re a superstar at this. And then all of the sudden you’re on a stage with 11 other yahoos probably determined through random straw draws from the DNC. You’re up there with some member of Congress no one’s ever heard of. They’re yelling in your face. Kamala Harris had Tulsi Gabbard yelling in her face in 2019.

 

Alex Wagner: 20, yeah.

 

Dan Pfeiffer: Well, yeah, she didn’t make it to 20, so it was 2019. And you’re standing on a soap box, you’re getting harangued at a diner in New Hampshire. And so it does bring you down. So we’ll see. I don’t think these are perfectly analogous, but I think there’s a world in which people halfway into the democratic nomination process will look at the field similarly the way California Democrats have been looking at our field.

 

Alex Wagner: Okay. I mean, that gets me so unexcited for the 2028 race. The Tulsi Gabbard of 2028 haranguing one of the leading nominees. I’m mean, barf.

 

Dan Pfeiffer: It’s going to be messy, but it is the stakes are high. And it is like for all the marbles and it’s our, it will be our best chance, particularly if Kamala Harris doesn’t run, although even if she does run to have a real honest, full throated debate about what the post Obama, post Trump, post Biden democratic party looks like that was delayed in 2016 because of Hillary delayed in 2020 because of Biden delayed in 2024 because of everything. And so this, this is the chance that that I think will be fascinating and interesting and great content for all of the people listening to Pod Save America and Runaway Country.

 

Alex Wagner: Please subscribe.

 

Dan Pfeiffer: Yes, do not throw your phone in the toilet.

 

Alex Wagner: More of my conversation with Pod Save America’s Dan Pfeiffer after a quick break.

 

[AD BREAK]

 

Alex Wagner: I think that you’re so right that the outcome of the 2026 midterms is going to really dictate how ambitious people are with their nominees. But I do wonder the degree to which, I mean, back to your state for a second, the degree to which there are lessons that should be and have been learned in California. And specifically, let’s just talk about the outgoing governor because I wonder, A, how much do you think Newsom sort of set a playbook for the state and like what we, we as the other 49 residents in the other 49 states should expect. I mean, I can imagine Tom Steyer punching Trump in the nose. I have a harder time imagining Xavier Becerra punching Trump in the knows just because he constitutionally is more of a, I don’t know. He’s a more moderate person if in, in personality, yeah, exactly. But and also how much has Newsom written a script for other Democrats in terms of pugilism and joyful warrior and meme bot?

 

Dan Pfeiffer: Meme bot, governor meme bot. I think Becerra, I agree. You can see Tom Steyer, like Newsom, doing a lot of very aggressive press aggressive social media stuff to position himself as the anti-Trump. Becerra is less aggressive communications-wise. I do think but he, as attorney general, he did sue the pants off of Donald Trump more than anyone else and was pretty aggressive about that. So policy-wise, I think he, I don’t have any reason to suspect, I, I don’t think it’s fair to say, and I think there are many, many, many fair critiques of this there. I don’t think one of them to say is that he would be more accommodationist towards Trump. I just think he might be less showy in, in that than, than Steyer would be. You know, I do some sort of a one-of-one, um, for Democrats. I don’t, you know. There was a brief period of time when his tweets took off or other people started doing it where it looked terrible and didn’t really work. And even he has sort of slowed down on that in the last year. Like he has seemed, I think he has—

 

Alex Wagner: His book’s come out and the book—

 

Dan Pfeiffer: But even long before that, in 2025, I think David Axelrod said this when I had him on Pod Save America weeks ago that Gavin Newsom won the 2025 part of the primary.

 

Alex Wagner: Mm hmm. Yeah.

 

Dan Pfeiffer: And it’s unclear who will win 2026. We got half the year to go. You know, I think that there, people want a fighter and people will, democratic candidates will embody that in ways that are different than the way Newsom did it, but you can’t not be that. Like I think, that’s table stakes in this primary.

 

Alex Wagner: That’s baked in. I I it’s interesting because there are two races that make you question like whether up is down and down is up as a Democrat. And the gubernatorial race has been unnerving I think to watch right even if the reasons make total sense. The mayoral race is what’s the trick, goat rodeo comes to mind, like unmitigated potential disaster comes to mind. And I think it’s worth unpacking a little bit of the dynamics there because weirdly on a policy level, LA seems to be more of a cautionary tale, the mayoral race, than even the governor’s race, right? This is where you’re seeing Democrats, I mean, where you are seeing a wholesale kind of rethinking of what Democrats’ positions should be on certain issues. And I want to talk to you a little about how and why the fuck a reality TV star from The Hills named Spencer Pratt is doing so much better than anyone expected. Do you have a theory of the case, Dan?

 

Dan Pfeiffer: I do have a theory of the case. I think politics is a war for attention. He understands that and is very good at it the way he is, because reality TV stars, our current president is a reality TV star. Reality TV stars have a natural advantage in this media environment where it is all on all the time and they understand the value of how to get attention because their livelihood depends on grabbing onto the public’s attention, holding onto it for as long as possible. And Spencer Pratt. The Hills came on a very, very long time ago. He has remained in some measure of fame and quasi sea level relevance for decades now, and that takes some, some kind of skill. So that’s part one of why he is—

 

Alex Wagner: Shamelessness is another word for it. But anyway.

 

Dan Pfeiffer: Yeah, yeah, I think that you absolutely need shamelessness to survive in this media environment in a certain way. The second thing is he is an outsider, and people want outsiders. You see that in Democratic primaries. You see it in Maine. We might be seeing it in a state like Michigan. We saw it with, and that’s not a particularly new phenomenon. That’s why Barack Obama won. It’s why Donald Trump won.

 

Alex Wagner: Wait, wait, can I interrupt you though? Because like in Ohio, Sherrod Brown could win, in North Carolina, Roy Cooper could win and Georgia, Jon Ossoff—

 

Dan Pfeiffer: But they’re also running against, well, I’d say a couple of things to that. One, being an outsider does not mean you automatically are going to win.

 

Alex Wagner: Right.

 

Dan Pfeiffer: It is in Ohio and North Carolina, it’s a race between two insiders.

 

Alex Wagner: Okay.

 

Dan Pfeiffer: And Ossoff is interesting because you can be in the Senate in code as an outsider.

 

Alex Wagner: Yeah.

 

Dan Pfeiffer: And being young in the democratic party really could use an outsider. And he even Obama was in the Senate when he ran and he was still seen as an outsider, Bernie Sanders been in the Senate since God was a boy and he’s an outsider or a girl, I guess. For a very long time, yes.

 

Alex Wagner: Or no gender.

 

Dan Pfeiffer: Or none, if none, depending on who you ask.

 

Alex Wagner: Let’s open that door.

 

Dan Pfeiffer: Yeah, but he’s been in the Senate for a very long time and he’s still an outsider. And like there is a lane, particularly in a multi-candidate race for an outsider and then LA has unique circumstances because of the way the city’s run, the, you know, specifically by Karen Bass, specifically because of of the fires and specifically just because the city is impossible to run because of how it works, what the mayor has control over, what the Board of Supervisors has control of, with the county has control over. And so, you know, you have three main candidates in that race, and if one of them is an outsider, that is a very real lane that can be filled. And so when an insider versus an outsider maybe the insider can win, but an outsider getting attention in a multi-candidate race with insiders is not shocking.

 

Alex Wagner: You don’t think it has anything to do with him, and I’m just playing, I don’t even want to say devil’s advocate, just for people who haven’t been following this race. Pratt has been going after Bass for her management, of course, of the aftermath of the fires. He’s been living in, I think, a show trailer as an example of how uprooted—

 

Dan Pfeiffer: But also also the Bel-Air Hotel, right?

 

Alex Wagner: Yes, also, I mean, you know, who among us doesn’t stay at the Bel-Air hotel when our house is in need of renovations. But, um, but it has also been going after the city’s unhoused homeless population, right?

 

Dan Pfeiffer: They’re like, they’re real issues.

 

Alex Wagner: Real legitimate issues and is a little, you know, he’s very MAGA, um light in his kind of take no prisoners. I’m going to say the thing that everybody’s thinking that nobody wants to say out loud, um, in our inclusive political, uh, landscape. And I wonder if you think Democrats, this is the state of fucking California and Los Angeles. Is there a lesson there for Democrats needing to be more vicious, less? I mean, I don’t know what the right word is to give up on some of the more, um, progressive, at least language, if not position on a number of social or economic issues. Do you see anything in that, any cautionary?

 

Dan Pfeiffer: I think we got to see the results in the race. Like, Republicans get votes in the California mayoral race. Rick Caruso did quite well before before not doing so quite doing quite well. So it’s not surprising that he is getting votes. I wouldn’t I really would not take that to me. Now, if he wins, I think that’s something else. Or if he makes the runoff and then you end up with a very, very close race that Karen Bass or Nithya Raman or whoever else wins, then that’s something else. Let’s just like right now. He’s getting a swath of a voters in a candidate race. I think there are things to be said about how you get attention, how you grab attention, how you consolidate a certain segment of the electorate, but I would put a pause on the lessons from the guys from The Hill piece just yet.

 

Alex Wagner: Okay, when you say it like that, I’m sorry I even asked the question.

 

Dan Pfeiffer: [laughter] Sorry, didn’t mean to be so dismissive.

 

Alex Wagner: I mean, it’s happening, people. What’s happening is that Spencer Pratt is almost neck and neck with Karen Bass. That’s why I’m asking, for those of you who are not in California and not paying that close attention to it, your opinion, your position on this seems to be a lot like mine, which is, I think it’s honestly, if Democrats speak with authority and conviction and passion about basically anything, they could stand a very good chance of getting the nomination because it just feels like the party’s wide open. And like what voters want is authenticity and they want fight and they wanna spirit and they people who are gonna deliver on what they say, regardless of what those things are. I mean, people always ask me, do Democrats need to stake out a harder line on immigration or? You know economic inequality, although I think the economic inequality piece is probably pretty essential for any platform. But I do think it almost it’s like it could be anything. You could do anything you could you just have to have and believe in a set of proposals and sell them like you got nothing left to lose and I I honestly think that that’s gonna be the nominee is the person who best does that to say nothing of any specific position.

 

Dan Pfeiffer: I agree with that with one addendum, which is I think that also people hate politicians and they really hate democratic politicians. So you need to find ways that make you seem not a typical politician. That can be with heterodox views on some issues. It can be by running against the party establishment itself. It could be as some Senate Democratic candidates have done deciding to say they’re not going to vote for Chuck Schumer. It could be by. Not taking corporate impact money. It could be by embracing a very, very aggressive campaign finance proposal that is hard on our side. It can be with criticizing Democrats for being corrupt when they’re corrupt. I just think if you, it’s not simply you just have to sing from the hymnal with the most passionate authenticity. It’s that you have to find a way to separate yourselves from the choir in a way. See the way I tied that in together?

 

Alex Wagner: You really you really used a lot of good church metaphors.

 

Dan Pfeiffer: It doesn’t really, it doesn’t, honestly, if it’s one of those things where if you look carefully, it does really withstand scrutiny, but on the surface, there was a lot of church metaphors in there.

 

Alex Wagner: Dan, if you were in the NFL, Dan, we know who would be spiking the football in the end zone, and his last name rhymes with Sneiffer.

 

Dan Pfeiffer: Actually, would more likely would be me spiking on the one-yard line, I think, into just there, so.

 

 [AD BREAK]

 

Alex Wagner: This all brings to mind how Democrats move forward and the ways in which they are having honest conversations with themselves and doing, I don’t know, systematic and thorough assessments of what went wrong. I do, because Pod Save America has been such an engine in all of this, have to ask you about… I use the word phrase goat rodeo. I don t like using the word fuck show. I’ve been told I curse too much on this show and I have to agree with everybody who’s sent in their criticisms. So I’ll use the word clusterfuck? I don’t know. The DNC autopsy. For people who have not had the bandwidth to follow this, and I understand why, the DNC chair, Ken Martin, really went back and forth over releasing the autopsy of the 2024 race and then he made it public while also simultaneously essentially disowning it. What? What, Dan? It made no mention of Joe Biden’s age. The sort of compromises in and around the Biden White House to get him to run again, no mention of Gaza and how it very much was a fracture point in the Democratic coalition. What was the point of all this, Dan?

 

Dan Pfeiffer: There was no point, is the problem. So the way to look at this is not to think about the results of the autopsy, it’s to think of the process that brought us the autopsy, which is Ken Martin ran promising to release the autopsy, was quite critical of the post 2016 DNC for not releasing the autopsy, something they should have done, but did not wanna do because it would have been very critical of Hillary Clinton. And then hired, didn’t even hire, asked a political crony of his named Paul Rivera to do the autopsy. Paul Rivera didn’t do the autopsy. He basically talked to some people, never really wrote anything down. And then I guess Ken Martin didn’t, or no one was like writing hurt over the process. So when they got it after many, many months, they looked at it and said, this can’t be released because it’s incomplete. Paul Rivera somehow refused to give them any of the underlying information like interview transcripts and data he used like that’s quite questionable. But instead of saying the autopsy is not finished We need more time and then hiring someone else to finish it ken martin just decided to say that it was done It was helpful because they kept talking about it as he did in his interview with John Favreau about how it informed the Democrats’ playbook, but didn’t want to release it because it would divide the party. Which, I mean that.

 

Alex Wagner: It would divide the party between people, sorry, I don’t mean to exhaust you on this, it would divide party between people who wanted Ken Martin to stay in his position and people who were like, get the fuck out, Ken Martin.

 

Dan Pfeiffer: Yeah, it’s just, the whole thing was so stupid. It was poorly managed. It was dishonest. It broke trust with the DNC. It just, it just, it’s a, if any, if you had hired anyone to do a project, like the Democratic members of the DNC hired Ken Martin to do this project, you would fire them immediately because it’s, just a, just massive incompetence followed by lying to cover up the incompetence.

 

Alex Wagner: Sort of sounds like the repainting of the reflecting pool.

 

Dan Pfeiffer: Yeah, it’s it would fit in quite well. Look, it is one of those things where I have somehow like positive America has become very much associated with this for reasons that I don’t particularly like it really. Well, I mean, here the story like, when Ken Martin came on the show and said he would, when he was running said he would do the autopsy. We said that is great. When he said he wasn’t gonna release the autopsy. We said that it’s bad. You should release it.

 

Alex Wagner: Also, why?

 

Dan Pfeiffer: Yeah, like, yeah, like that was I think it’s a fair point and then Ken Martin got really mad at Jon Favreau for a text that Ben Rhodes, a tweet Ben Rhodes sent, came up to him and started, I don’t want to use the term yelling, but because I wasn’t there, um, but, uh, expressed his displeasure. John said, come on the show. He came on the show, couldn’t answer the questions to the show he came on to answer, and now here we are. And so, and I, I did, I, did, uh. When they all types of came out and call it did publicly call on Ken Martin to resign, which has made me very popular with a lot of people. This is just, look, here’s the thing. Is this the biggest thing in the entire world? No.

 

Alex Wagner: No. Honestly, we shouldn’t even mention the autopsy itself. What it does for people who are never going to read the autopsy and just have a glancing interaction with this is like, oh, it gives rise to the worst fears I think progressives have about the Democrats have about Democratic Party, which is it’s a shit show. There’s been paper over the windows because the Trump show has been so eye catching, shall we say. Nobody’s been paying attention. The captain’s wheel is spinning. Nobody has their hands on it, and it’s a mess. And this is like one of the most basic things you do. We lost, we got our butts handed to us in November. What did we do wrong? Let’s figure it out. They can’t execute on, I mean, hindsight then is supposed to be the thing that is 20/20, right? Which if you can’t get the hindsight part right, what does that mean about moving forward? And I think it really makes people scared about what the party institutions, the leadership and like what this portends for, what is going to inevitably be allowed and fractious. And complicated primary process, especially actually if Democrats are in control of Congress, because then they’ll have real power.

 

Dan Pfeiffer: This is the important point. So people tend to think out there, the DNC is this incredibly important organization where like all the leaders come together and make decisions on messaging and recruit candidates. They don’t do any of that. The DNC plays a very, very limited role in the midterms, but they play a role. They, they raise money and they give that money to people. Right.

 

Alex Wagner: Yes.

 

Dan Pfeiffer: Not campaigns per se, but state parties. And that can, that can be very valuable, um, in various state races, but where the DNC really matters is in the presidential election. And what they do is they run the primary. So the DNC is gonna decide what order the states come in. If states disagree with that and try to jump the calendar, the DNCs decides how we allocate delegates from those states. They make the rules about whether we have super delegates or not. How much do those super delegate votes count. They sponsor the debates. They make rules for the debate. They’ll be the ones, if we have 20 candidates, which you probably will, they’ll be the ones who decide which candidates are on the big stage, which candidates on the small stage, how it’s gonna be organized, what order people are gonna be in in the podium. They’re gonna make the, at some point, there’ll be a criteria to get on the debate stage. How much money did you raise? What’s your poll numbers, all of that. They’ll make those decisions. And if people can’t trust the DNC, what is gonna happen is they’re gonna think the process is rigged against their candidate. And in the way that Ken Martin has handled this, he has made it very hard for people to trust the DNC. That to me is the biggest issue here. The DNC will play zero role in what a Democratic House and Senate do. They, the House and Senate people will not, they will not even take Ken Martin’s calls because that’s not, it’s just, it is not even like, he, if he has an idea on what policies they should pass, they don’t care. That’s not his job. His job is to raise money and run the Democratic primary process. And we’re currently $4 million in debt, which is not awesome. And we have this [indecipherable] issue. So that’s sort of where we are. It’s not the end of the world, but it’s not great. And it just, it is, as you say, it adds just more logs on the fire of people Democrats who don’t trust the party and think it’s not up to the task before us.

 

Alex Wagner: This is all getting very depressing, let’s start talking about Republicans.

 

Dan Pfeiffer: Okay, perfect. Perfect.

 

Alex Wagner: I put this at the end. It’s not dessert, but it is delicious in the way that dessert often is.

 

Dan Pfeiffer: Yes. Okay.

 

Alex Wagner: So I know you have a message box post about this and I want a, it’s fresh news. Last night, John Cornyn, the incumbent four term Senator was defeated by Ken Paxton. I think got his wig blown off is the more official political term. Huge, just a catastrophic loss for Cornyn. So much so that you almost feel bad for him. And I, I like the word almost, almost. Um, Mark McKinnon, um, who I used to work with. On a program called The Circus, who is a reliable Texas analyst when it comes to politics in the Lone Star State, said that James Talarico, the Democrat that Ken Paxton will now run against in the general, could be the next Moses. And by Moses, he means a Democrat who could finally turn Texas blue. Now, we’ve all been there before.

 

Dan Pfeiffer: Would he be parting the Red Sea in there? Is that how this works?

 

Alex Wagner: Very good. It’s like Bible Day in the Pfeiffer House.

 

Dan Pfeiffer: Perhaps.

 

Alex Wagner: Hymnals, choirs.

 

Dan Pfeiffer: It’s undeserved. I will say that, yes, despite my Jesuit education.

 

Alex Wagner: Listen because of what do you think is this over? I mean, okay. Let me just put it more succinctly how much should Democrats calibrate their optimism going forward in this Texas race?

 

Dan Pfeiffer: I think that Democrats have their best shot to win Texas in a generation. Now, the closest we’ve come in a generation is 2.6 points in 2018, but let’s just. I think there’s a couple of ways to look at this, right? So let’s use 2018 as our benchmark. So that was the year that Beto O’Rourke ran against Ted Cruz, ran this incredible race, raised millions of dollars, kind of became a cultural phenomenon in the moment when he did, you know, Beyonce is wearing the Beto hat or like, it was a very big deal, but Beto fell short, outperformed partisanship, outperform Democrats, fell short. So Ted Cruz in September of 2018, So, month and a half before the election. Had a nine, he was nine points above water and superfluous. So he was 9 points more favorable than unfavorable. Ken Paxton has never been above water. He is, you know, five points in the last poll, but he is generally always very unpopular. So this is a hard thing to say and hard to believe, but Ken Paxten is less likable and less popular than Ted Cruz.

 

Alex Wagner: That is a low bar.

 

Dan Pfeiffer: The Mendoza line of likability, okay? And so that’s one. Two, the political environment in 2026, as we sit here today, and it could change, but as we see today, is better than it was in 2018. Trump was—

 

Alex Wagner: For Democrats.

 

Dan Pfeiffer: For Democrats, Trump was basically even in his approval rating in Texas in 2018, he’s underwater by some number of points. And perhaps the biggest thing is in 2024, when Trump won Texas by about 14 points, he won Texas Latinos by 10 points. Okay. We don’t have a lot of Texas specific Latino polling with sufficient sample size, but we do know that Trump is 50 points underwater nationally, according to the New York Times poll. On the generic ballot, Latinos are favoring Democrats by 30 points. And we know that in actual voting in Texas in that states in a special election a couple of months ago, that the Latino vote shifted 34 points towards Taylor Rehmet, the Democrat.

 

Alex Wagner: Unlovable.

 

Dan Pfeiffer: These are all conditions that would, and then you get into Ken Paxton, who has been indicted, was impeached, is an adulterer, there is a—

 

Alex Wagner: Bribes, adultery.

 

Dan Pfeiffer: Every single thing, securities fraud, accusations. And he was impeached by the Republican house in Texas.

 

Alex Wagner: Yes.

 

Dan Pfeiffer: Not exactly a bunch of woke libs. And so he is a very vulnerable candidate. And so I expect that this is an environment where James Talarico will do better than Beto O’Rourke. And now will that be enough to cross the finish line? Actually those last 2.6 points are, that’s a long last mile. But I think he has a very real shot. He’s going to be under withering assault. But the question is, can he navigate it? But he’s very well funded, he raised $27 million last quarter. And so I think, he’s got a very, real shot.

 

Alex Wagner: Do you worry about his inroads? I mean, Jasmine Crockett, that primary was contentious and it exposed some real rifts inside the Democratic Party. Jasmine Crockett was, in analysis that I read this morning, there’s talk about Talarico’s support among the black community in Texas, the degree to which they’re pretty apathetic about Talarico. Do you think that matters? I mean I would assume it does, in a race that could be one on the margins. How worried should the Talarico camp be?

 

Dan Pfeiffer: I think, look, to win, they have to do everything perfect. They have to persuade a significant number of people who voted for John Cornyn last night, and they’re going to have to absolutely blow the doors off in terms of turnout among the Democratic base, and that is going to include the Black voters that Jasmine Crockett was talking about and had so much success with. And so yeah, they had to be watching that very carefully. I have not seen like evidence that that is a problem, but that you don’t really need to see its problem. You just have to do everything you can to avoid it being a problem. And so yeah, we should be actually be very concerned about that. But it’s too early to see like polling that says that there is diminished turnout among Black voters or, you know, presidential year Black voters or first time [indistinguishable] like that. Like it’s too early to know that but it’s something the campaign has to work very hard to juice that level of turnout.

 

Alex Wagner: The person that is going to feel the effects of this other than, well, uh, potentially, well other than John Cornyn, I kind of wonder whether you think Trump has screwed the party over more by getting behind Paxton or himself behind in, in, and forsaking John Cornyn because John Cornyn still has seven months, seven months of a Senate term to finish out. He’s not. You know, he is not a bleeding heart centrist, the way that perhaps maybe Bill Cassidy is. I don’t even want to say that because Bill Cassady is definitely a Republican, but he may not flip on as many things as, for example, Bill Cassidy might. But he definitely isn’t going to be boosting Trump on some of his more controversial proposals like the slush fund and the ballroom and all the rest and even maybe Iran. So it’s a problem. Trump, Truth Socialed this morning. In a bid at, I don’t know, diplomacy. John, as in Cornyn, will remain my friend for a long time to come as we both watch Ken become a fantastic, common-sense senator, one who is respected by all. I don’t even, is that intended on being an olive branch to John Cornyn? Because if it was me, it would piss me off even more.

 

Dan Pfeiffer: I think it’s in an olive branch to the rest of the Republican Senate, who right after this endorsement basically torpedoed his reconciliation bill over both his ballroom and his slush fund. And so I think Trump has a minor Republican Senate problem right now, both in terms of just angering everyone because of the Paxton endorsement and then with Cassidy and Tillis hanging around. So the question is, will Cornyn be like Cassidy and Tillis and be a thorn in Trump’s side? I’m skeptical. I could not hold John Cornyn in lower regard in terms of his political courage. He really is just a party automaton and he’s in leadership. And so that makes it harder to sink bills when you’re the person responsible for counting the votes on the bills. So I don’t know, but you know what? There could be on some nominations or a couple of things—

 

Alex Wagner: The slush fund is not a Democratic or Republican issue, that’s just pure corruption.

 

Dan Pfeiffer: Yeah, like I think that I think the Republican in order to pass that bill, they’re going to have to do something on the slush fund. It’ll be something between what the slosh fund currently is and what it should be, which is gone. But I think in situations like that, Cornyn will matter. But it’s like the question is, will Cornyn flip his vote on the war powers resolution like Cassidy did? I’ll believe that when I see it.

 

Alex Wagner: So it sounds like you think Trump is fucking the party over more than himself. Like that his agenda is not necessarily imperiled by by losing Cornyn as an ally, but he’s actually maybe measurably fucked the party over by making the Texas Senate race up for grabs at best.

 

Dan Pfeiffer: So he’s fucking the party over in two ways. One, if James Talarico becomes the 51st Senator, he’s fucked the party and himself.

 

Alex Wagner: Right.

 

Dan Pfeiffer: But the party is now going to have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to defend that seat. Something they would not, that could money that could be in Alaska, it could be and Michigan, a state, or Georgia. It’s gonna prevent them from going on offense in one or two places where they think they might have a shot to expand the map and force Democrats [indistinguishable] and they will not be able to do that. And it hurts, but Ken Paxton is, first off, for an absolute criminal known to exchange access for financial incentives, Paxton’s a pretty bad fundraiser. He did not raise a ton of money in his race. He doesn’t have connections to the larger Republican billionaire class who funded John Cornyn. Maybe they will come in and help Paxton for the sake of the party. I don’t know, but the party’s gonna have to spend. A quarter billion dollars to defend Ken Paxton, that we probably would not have had to spend for John Cornyn.

 

Alex Wagner: And John Cornyn, I think I might get this number wrong, but was a prolific fundraiser, not just for himself, but for other Republican candidates.

 

Dan Pfeiffer: Yeah, he was the NRC chair back in the day.

 

Alex Wagner: $400 million he raised. I mean, a rainmaker. And now that rain cloud has passed and it, the party could be coming in for a dry spell in the West Texas heat. Do you do biblical metaphors? I do meteorological ones.

 

Dan Pfeiffer: I’m basically podcasting with Taylor Sheridan right now.

 

Alex Wagner: In fact, we look a lot alike, and both of us have written really successful scripted dramas, so, you know, fantastic for both of us. Daniel Pfeiffer, known to the world as Dan. I love hearing your incisive analysis about where things are at, and I really applaud your dismissiveness on some of the more loony-tune theories that I threw out there today.

 

Dan Pfeiffer: I was not dismissive in any way shape or form.

 

Alex Wagner: Well, you know what I mean. Like, you’re just, you tell it like it is. You tell it, like, it is, man. You’re not sugarcoating it. You’re just fucking giving us the real dope. So, thank you for coming back to Runaway Country. The country’s still on a runaway course. We’ll see where it lands. The great Dan Pfeiffer. Don’t forget to check out Dan’s indispensable Substack, The Message Box, which is now its own political juggernaut. And always listen to Dan on Runaway Country and Pod Save America.

 

Dan Pfeiffer: Alex, thanks for having me.

 

Alex Wagner: Thanks for coming on. [music plays] That is our show for this week. Don’t forget to check out the show and our rapid response videos on our YouTube channel, Runaway Country with Alex Wagner. And if you are not sick of me yet, please take a look at my sub stack, How the Hell with Alex Wagner. Last, but certainly not least, if you have been impacted directly by the Trump administration or its policies, please do send us an email or one minute voice note at runawaycountry@crooked.com and we may be in touch to feature your story. A huge thank you to everyone who has written in already. Runaway Country is a Crooked Media production. Our senior producer is Alyona Minkovski. Our producer is Emma Illick-Frank. Production support from Megan Larson and Lacy Roberts. The show is mixed and edited by Charlotte Landes. Ben Hethcoat is our video producer and Matt DeGroot is our head of production. Audio support comes from Kyle Seglin. Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Adriene Hill is our Head of News and Politics. Katie Long is our Executive Producer of Development. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writer’s Guild of America East.