Daniel Miller opens this Late Night Coffee Talk with a message aimed squarely at the supporters who treated the March 1 Texas primary as a defeat. It was not a wipeout, he argues, it was ground gained. He runs down the Take Texas Back slate: all three candidates for Agriculture Commissioner had signed the Texas First pledge, so the office was won outright when Sid Miller prevailed. Two State Board of Education candidates won, a third is in a runoff, Bryan Slaton held his House seat, and Dan Mathews in HD 76 and Taylor Munday in HD 95 advanced to face Democrats in November. Raul Reyes is in a runoff in Senate District 24, Ashton Murray is fighting for SD 26 that the party had written off, and local wins for Clay Rankin and Mike Drury round out the picture. His point: the last cycle the movement fielded zero candidates, and now nearly 100 carried the banner.
From there he turns to the Republican precinct, county, and senatorial district conventions, where members went in to fight for the independence referendum resolution. He plays roughly five minutes of floor debate from Ellis County, where three delegates tried to kill the resolution by calling it treason and invoking the Civil War, and the rest of the room voted to keep it on. Then he reads a furious account from Galveston County, where the resolutions committee pulled a resolution that had already passed a precinct unanimously. The reason a committee member gave, in Miller’s telling, was the tell of the night: what happens if it makes it to the ballot and people vote yes. To him that fear is proof the idea has gusto, and it echoes the argument he has made since House Bill 1359. If they truly believe it would fail, put it on the ballot and prove it.
He closes on the press. After outlets spiked stories during the campaign, the Dallas Morning News watchdog column suddenly noticed the pledge effort, Business Insider ran a piece tying Texas independence to civil war fears, and Miller sat for an on-camera Spectrum News interview. He rejects the civil war framing as exactly backward, arguing that a free and fair vote is how you avoid violence, and he challenges the unconstitutionality claim head on: if it is illegal, show the law; if it is unconstitutional, show the provision. He also notes that the writers calling TEXIT unconstitutional have never once asked the movement for an interview.
Questions answered in this episode
- Does secession require executive action by the governor, or can it happen through a vote of the people or Congress alone?
- How soon can another independence petition be started?
- What is the actual difference between a TNM supporter and a member?
- If opponents really believe an independence vote would fail, why won’t they let it go on the ballot?
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