The big money in the Texas primaries
Make Me Smart
Marketplace
4.6 • 5.5K Ratings
🗓️ 6 March 2026
⏱️ 20 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week’s Texas primary elections were heated — and historic in terms of campaign spending. On today’s show, Blaise Gainey, state politics reporter for The Texas Newsroom, joins Kimberly to share his election takeaways and the economic issues that brought voters out to the polls. Plus, what does the Texas Railroad Commissioner have to do with oil and gas? And, we’ll pit Texas icons against each other during a round of This or That.
Here’s everything we talked about today:
- "Winners, losers and runoffs: How Texans’ November ballot is shaping up after the primaries" from KUT News
- "Across Texas, early voters share what’s pushing them to the polls for the 2026 party primaries" from KUT News
- "Big money moved the needle and down-ballot chaos reigned in Texas' action-packed primaries" from The Texas Tribune
- "Bo French, Jim Wright head to runoff for seat on Texas Railroad Commission" from The Texas Tribune
- "Big Red Is Texas Barbecue’s Unofficial Signature Soda" from Texas Highways
- "Why Topo Chico Is The Fizzy Water With A Loyal Fan Base" from Southern Living
We love hearing from you. Leave us a voicemail at 508-U-B-SMART or email makemesmart@marketplace.org.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, everyone. I'm Kimberly Adams. Welcome back to Make Me Smart, where none of us is as smart as all of us. |
| 0:12.6 | Thank you for joining us, whether you're watching on the YouTube live stream or listening later on to the podcast. |
| 0:18.2 | Really appreciate you coming in. This is Economics on Tap, our weekly |
| 0:22.5 | happy hour episode, and this week has been full of global news. A lot of it really, really dark. |
| 0:29.4 | But we want to focus here on the United States today. Three states had primary elections this |
| 0:34.7 | week, and the races in Texas in particular got a lot of attention. |
| 0:39.3 | So today, we are checking in with Blaise Ganey. He covers state politics from the Texas |
| 0:44.0 | newsroom and KUT in Austin. Welcome to the show, Blaise. |
| 0:47.7 | Yeah, glad to be here. Thanks for having me. |
| 0:50.0 | Thank you for joining us on our economics on tap happy hour. But before we get to the news from Texas, let's talk drinks. |
| 0:57.8 | Blaise, what are you having? |
| 0:59.4 | Oh, I have a smoothie, a protein smoothie I like to make every morning, |
| 1:03.1 | but I chose to make it to be here on the show. |
| 1:05.6 | It's filled with yogurt, almonds, berries, and, of course, weight protein. |
| 1:11.6 | Of course. It reminds me of my colleague, Sabree Venashore, who always loves a smoothie for |
| 1:17.6 | economics on tap. For me, I brought, it's a little bit convoluted, but I brought plum wine |
| 1:24.6 | because I was in the store today and I saw this bottle and it looks like |
| 1:31.3 | it's got cherry blossoms on it, which I love, but it's probably plum blossoms, but that's okay. |
| 1:36.3 | It's called to zai blossom of peace and it's plum wine and especially given everything that's going on, |
| 1:43.3 | I'm here for the blossom of peace. |
| 1:45.3 | But also, it reminded me that we are entering cherry blossom season, and it's one of my favorite seasons here in D.C. |
| 1:52.8 | And just this week, they announced when the peak bloom for cherry blossoms in D.C. was going to be, it's going to be March 29th through April 1st here in D.C. |
... |
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