Polling Is Broken, Exxon Comes Home, and the Resolution Poison Pills to Watch

Daniel Miller opened this Late Night Coffee Talk on a victory lap for the new Texian app, the movement’s own do-it-all platform that now hosts the livestream, the county organizing portal, courseware, and the relational-organizing tools that used to live on TNM social. His pitch was blunt: no Silicon Valley middleman sits between the TNM and its supporters anymore, and once you cross the threshold into a relationship with the organization, everything you do moves into that one space.

From there the conversation ranged from ExxonMobil deciding to reincorporate in Texas instead of New Jersey, which Miller read as one more major firm simply coming home and a clean signal that Texas is doing something the rest of the union is not, to a hard defense of comptroller candidate Don Huffines over the Zorro Ranch smear. Miller traced the Epstein-ranch spin straight back to people in Greg Abbott’s orbit, called it a nothingburger once unpacked, and reminded viewers that the TNM does not endorse candidates. It runs a pledge, a public oath that becomes a litmus test for putting Texas first.

He spent the longest stretch on why polling is fundamentally broken, from the roughly 25 percent compression that bad question wording inflicts on independence support to the Paxton primary polls that had the race badly wrong. He also walked through the GOP convention resolutions the TNM is pushing, flagged a citizen-initiative resolution that secretly exempts anything touching the Texas budget as a poison pill aimed at killing an independence referendum, and asked supporters to send him intel on any casino-gambling resolutions moving through their conventions.

Questions answered in this episode

• Does ExxonMobil reorganizing in Texas instead of New Jersey actually help the case for TEXIT?
• Should the Zorro Ranch purchase and the Trump and Cruz endorsements make supporters distrust Don Huffines, and why does the TNM run a pledge rather than endorse?
• What does Don Huffines becoming comptroller mean for the transactional gold bill he would be charged with implementing?
• Instead of full independence, should Texas join an independent southern country or a federation of red states?
• How does the new Texian app mesh with the existing TNM web presence, and what is going away versus staying?
• What are the resolutions the TNM is recommending at the Republican precinct, county, and senate-district conventions?
• Why is a resolution calling for citizen initiative and referendum actually a poison pill if it exempts the Texas budget?
• How does Texas rank among the states for the share of campaign money that originates out of state?
• Does a poll showing Talarico leading Paxton and Cornyn mean anything, and would a Cornyn reelection actually be better for the TNM?
• If Texas becomes independent, why not adopt a one-party system for the sake of unity?