Running Scared: Dan Patrick Braces for a Runoff, the Lockdown He Says Never Happened, and a Legislature Run From Washington

This was a campaign-cycle Coffee Talk, recorded in the thick of Daniel Miller’s run for lieutenant governor against Dan Patrick, and the headline coming off the road was simple. Patrick is scared. Miller relayed what he was hearing from inside Republican circles, that Patrick fully expects a runoff with him after March 1 and is bracing for it, because a runoff favors the challenger over the incumbent. The tell, Miller argued, is the spending. Patrick just made a statewide TV buy and refuses to appear at a single candidate forum, because he will not stand on a stage and answer for his record. The strategy is to smother voters in television, radio, and digital so that people who do not know there is an alternative walk into the booth and pick the name they recognize.

Miller spent the front half walking through the absurdity of the statewide trail, where candidate forums hand you fifteen to thirty seconds to answer a question and a venue once told him he had no table and owed fifty dollars for the privilege. He also went after Patrick’s claim on Newsmax that Texas never shut down, calling it a denial of reality when churches and businesses were closed and nearly twenty percent of Texas businesses shut their doors during the lockdowns and never reopened. With cold weather moving in, he tied it back to the grid, and to Abbott and Patrick’s insistence that it is fixed, a promise most Texans do not believe.

Underneath the campaign talk sat the TNM case itself. Roughly half of the bills filed in the Texas Legislature reference federal law, regulation, agencies, or court rulings, which means Austin spends much of its energy reacting to Washington rather than serving Texans. Out-of-state money pours into Texas races and props up incumbents, which is why Miller wants foreign contributions, meaning anything from outside Texas, banned outright as a sovereignty issue. He pointed viewers to the Take Texas Back slate, where more than sixty candidates have signed the Texas First Pledge, and teased a coming episode built entirely around deconstructing Patrick’s voting record.

Questions answered in this episode

• Of the three candidates for governor, which one is the most pro-Texan?
• As lieutenant governor, will you push a bill outlawing out-of-state campaign contributions?
• I trade futures for a living. After Texas leaves the union, will I still be able to trade on the exchange?
• As an elected official, what would your actual mission be?
• Can the website’s HB 1359 “find my legislators” tool be replaced with one showing which candidates are on the Take Texas Back slate?
• When is there going to be an actual lieutenant governor debate?
• A rival candidate claims an independent Texas would just leave us under the same state government we have now. How do you answer that?
• Blue cheese or ranch?