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"For The First Time Since 2002 Democrats Outvoted Republicans in Texas" - An Uplifting Conversation With Kendall Scudder, Chair Of The Texas Democratic Party

Watch James Talarico's inspiring general election kick off speech

Simon Rosenberg

Mar 5

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Greetings all. Excited to send along a new interview we just completed with Kendall Scudder, the Chair of the Texas Democratic Party. A recording is above and a transcript is below.

Texas Democrats had a very good week, and Texas Republicans a potentially very bad one. Here is how Chairman Scudder starts our conversation:

I’ll say headline to me is for the first time since 2002, Democrats outvoted Republicans in Texas. That is remarkable because even though we’ve seen elections that have been tight in Texas, we haven’t seen primaries that have been tight. Republicans usually outvote Democrats, 65/35, 70/30 in the state. And so to have a swing like that, that’s thirty points… it starts to build out a trend line… we overperformed in Senate District 9 by 31 points and won that seat back back in January. Now we’re overperforming a primary by thirty points. It starts to make you wonder if those data points are about to become something that is consistent. And, you know, you love to see it

In Texas on Tuesday night we saw what we’ve been seeing in elections of all kinds all across the country this cycle - strong Dem intensity, Republicans struggling. While we came out of the Senate primary with a unified party behind our young, talented nominee, James Talarico, the Republicans are heading into a very contentious and difficult run-off between a tired incumbent and one of the most corrupt, extreme politicians in modern American history. While winning in Texas will be hard this year - we’ve haven’t won a statewide race there in 32 years - things are aligning in a way to give us a shot.

In our discussion we cover the full landscape, hearing from Chair Scudder on bringing the party together after a tough primary; his optimism about our ability to compete in the new House maps Republicans passed last year; his remarkable success at recruiting candidates in every meaningful race in the state, something not done since the 1970s; and his building of a true, and serious, statewide coordinated campaign for the first time in decades.

We’ve been supporting Chair Scudder’s important work through our Audacious Expansion Fund, and he spends time explaining how critical that early support has been to their success so far and what they are building now. I want to thank everyone who has contributed, and encourage you to donate today if you haven’t yet - this early support of state parties in these critical expansion states has been deeply strategic and effective.

Finally, we’ve also announced our endorsement of James Talarico for in the Senate race. I’m proud to say we’ve raised over $22,000 in just the first day of our campaign and are shooting to get to $100,000 by March 31st. Chip in any amount - it all ads up, and this early money is particularly important as it allows him to get out there and introduce himself to voters at a time when Republicans will be fighting with one another. We have a shot in this race, and James is an exceptionally gifted campaigner. Watch his inspiring victory speech (link here) from yesterday to see what a remarkable candidate he is:

Here is how Chair Scudder closed out our discussion:

I am so grateful to you and your community for helping there. I mean it was scary. We walked in the door – I didn’t know how we were making payroll the Friday I walked in the door on a Monday. It has been this huge effort to be able to make sure we are responsibly managing this organization, setting it up for long-term success, working all of our weird internal compliance systems, and things like that aren’t sexy but are really important to what a party does to function. We would not have been able to do it had Hopium and your community not come in to help us in our time of need there. And I’m so grateful for it.
And I’m living every day to make you proud and make you know it’s worth it. So I want to make sure every person knows that when they’re putting dollars into the apparatus in Texas, it is being maximized to the best of its ability. And we’re stretching it as far as we can to make it count. And it’s not just going to a bunch of consultants that we’re going to try to get to buy our way out of a problem. And I’m just really grateful to y’all for all of your help and support there. I’m feeling like this is going to be a great team and glad to have Hopium on board our coordinating team.

Enjoy this uplifting conversation with another inspiring young leader of our party, and keep working hard all. Together, we are making a difference. A real difference - Simon

Bio - Texas Democratic Party Chair Kendall Scudder

Kendall is the son of a mental health professional, paramedic, and corrections officer who taught him values like service to others—their dedication to improving themselves and their community lit a fire inside him, pushing him to work hard every day to leave the world a little better than he found it.

As a teenager, Kendall helped support his family working at his local Dairy Queen, juggling both his job and political activism on behalf of his LGBTQ+ family. Kendall received his degree in Political Science at Sam Houston State University before moving to Dallas to work as an affordable housing professional and then for a real estate analytics company, before opening his own land acquisitions firm.

Kendall has dedicated himself to helping elect Democratic candidates across the state, and improved financial transparency and strategic planning within the Texas Democratic Party in his elected role as Vice Chair for Finance (Finance Chairman). He has also served on the City of Dallas’ Civil Service Board, on the legislative committee of the Apartment Association of Greater Dallas, and as co-chair of the Greater East Dallas Chamber of Commerce’s Young Professionals.

In the height of the pandemic, Kendall also notably filed a criminal complaint with the Dallas County District Attorney’s office against Attorney General Ken Paxton in an effort to protect Dallas County residents’ access to the ballot box amid safety concerns of in-person voting activity.

Kendall also holds a Masters Degree in Political Management from The George Washington University. He and his wife Carly reside in the east Dallas’ Junius Heights Historic District, where he plays pickleball, volunteers with the Funky East Dallas Democrats, and serves as a “Volunteer In Patrol” for the Dallas Police Department. He was the Dallas Central Appraisal District Board Director, Pos. 2, a county-wide elected role he has held from Spring 2024 until his election as Chairman in March 2025.

Democratic Party of Kendall County, Texas – Building the Bluebonnet Blue Wave

Transcript - Simon Rosenberg And Texas Democratic Party Chair Kendall Scudder (March 5, 2026)

Simon Rosenberg:
Hey, welcome everybody. We’ve got a really fun event today. Joining me is Kendall Scudder, the dynamic, remarkable new chair of the Texas Democratic Party, a good buddy. Kendall, welcome. Thanks for being here today.

Chairman Kendall Scudder:
Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.

Simon Rosenberg:
You've had a good week, my friend.

Tell us… you've had two days now of sort of looking at all the results and everything. Tell us what happened and what you think about what may happen next.

Kendall Scudder:
I think there’s a lot to unpack here. But I'll say headline to me is for the first time since 2002, Democrats outvoted Republicans in Texas. That is remarkable because even though we've seen elections that have been tight in Texas, we haven't seen primaries that have been tight. Republicans usually outvote Democrats, 65/35, 70/30 in the state. And so to have a swing like that, that's thirty points… it starts to build out a trend line… we overperformed in Senate District 9 by 31 points and won that seat back back in January. Now we're overperforming a primary by thirty points. It starts to make you wonder if those data points are about to become something that is consistent. And, you know, you love to see it. So that's kind of the first piece to me.

The second is, you know, we had different we have a coalition party with a lot of different types of folks under our umbrella. And we had two really great nominees. And it drove a lot of people out to the polls. But what it did was kind of steer what direction our Democratic activists around the state want to see the party go in. And, what they chose that they want to do is to find us to be strong in our values, but try to work where we can to recruit in votes where we're able. So that seems to be kind of the path forward. I think James Talarico is going to be a phenomenal nominee for us, as Jasmine Crockett would have been as well.

It just kind of recalibrates your strategy a little bit. And so now I think we have a candidate that scares the absolute shit out of Republicans in a traditional way. Beyond that, I mean, we saw some races like the Tony Gonzalez race in TX-32, where our nominee Katie Padilla Stout won outright. That's a district that I don't think was originally thought [of] as being one in play. But as we're looking at the turnout numbers in South Texas, [in] that district, Democrats outvoted Republicans. It's suddenly looks like that district it's in play. And the same thing happened in Congressional District 9, which is formerly Al Green's district that's been drawn where Democrats outvoted Republicans. So to synopsize, even though Republicans tried to gerrymander and steal a bunch of seats in the state, it turns out that Democrats are out voting there anyways and we have a lot of opportunity laying at our feet.

Simon Rosenberg:
Well, and I think the big question that everybody had, I mean, the other thing that happened this week, right, was that you guys had a clear, decisive nominee come out of the Senate, right? So you've got a candidate for governor who's young and new on the scene, but obviously has got some chops. You know, you had these exciting House results in the House races. And on the other side, on the Republican side, they have, you know, one of the biggest primary runoff messes that any of us have ever seen. And what's your sense of that a couple of days in now?

Kendall Scudder:
You know, if you elect a bunch of clowns, you should expect a circus. And here we are. I have said this for almost a year now. I'll say it again. Ken Paxton's gonna be their nominee. It's gonna take divine intervention or Donald Trump pulling some crazy, crazy stunts to make it not happen.

Runoffs in Texas are where Republican incumbents go to die. In Texas, if you're a Republican incumbent and you make it into a runoff, your success rate of getting out to that is like five percent. It's very low. And so John Cornyn is not going to fare well here, [and] even if he does, I don't think that the Republican base is energized to show up and vote for someone like John Cornyn. So let's say they nominate Cornyn. Well, I think you'll end up seeing lower turnout for Republicans and higher turnout for Democrats because we're excited, reminding people that in 2024, Kamala Harris got more votes than Greg Abbott did in 2022. It is a turnout game in Texas. And so I think regardless of who they nominate, we're going to have a great opportunity. But Ken Paxton sure as hell would be a fun punching bag.

Simon Rosenberg:
You know, let me just go through some of the traditional political math for everybody on this. So John Cornyn, the incumbent, only got 42% of the vote in the primary in a relatively high turnout primary. And that means that 58% of the Republicans that went to go vote voted against him. And historically, that means that the incumbent loses the runoff… the way this just works, you know, and again, every election is unique and sui generis… you can't predict what's going to happen based on what's happened before. But, you know, as the Chair mentioned, you know, 95% of the time now, Cornyn loses. And that's why it's going to be very interesting to see if Trump actually really endorses him. I mean, if they've come to a decision that Paxton is going to win, you know, does Trump endorse? Trump doesn't like to lose. Does he endorse a guy who gets beat in the runoff? And the other problem they have – how do you ask the candidate who is more likely to win in the runoff to get out of the race?

And that’s why that initial thing that you saw yesterday morning about [how] Trump said, the guy I don’t endorse has to get out. I don’t know, Kendall, I’ve been doing this a long time in national politics. I don’t know that I can remember a time when a party asked the front runner in an election that already happened, right, [to get out of the race?] Like, it isn’t like this is September of the odd year and people haven’t voted yet. People voted and, you know, they’re now going to ask the guy who’s going to probably be ahead in all the polls in the next few days to get out of the race. What a shit show this is. I’m honestly….. I’m kind of stunned with how badly they’ve managed this whole thing and how much trouble they’re in here.

Kendall Scudder:
No, I'll tell you… and I told you earlier, forgive me, I'm a little hoarse. I've been doing lots of interviews and stuff since Tuesday. But what I'll say is interesting about that Trump statement is a couple of things.

Number one, he said all of his endorsements always win. And so it's insurmountable. Literally Tuesday, his endorsed incumbent candidate for agriculture commissioner in Texas lost. So, not true. His endorsements don't go as long of a way as he thinks that they do. So that's kind of number one. Number two, didn't we just sit through over a year of Republicans kicking and screaming about the Democrats anointing Kamala Harris and how disrespectful it was to voters? And now they're going to eject the front runner and handpick a United States senator against the will of the voters? And you think that the electorate's going to go over with that? They're going to be just fine with it? You've got to be kidding me.

If he handpicks John Cornyn, you're going to see Republicans saying, absolutely not. You don't get to pick my senator. I do. And I think it helps us even more. So I mean, right now, I think the hand that's dealt to us is a great one. I'm never going to be the guy that kind of lies to everybody and says, “I think we're going to run the board… we're going to win all the races,” but, you know, maybe it would be more sexy if I were, but I do think we have a huge opportunity in front of us. We can win some seats this year. And even if we don't, which I think we can, I think we can build this long-term infrastructure to be able to take Texas in play that hasn't been built in the past.

And this is just a perfect storm for us right now. We just have to harness it and meet the moment.

Simon Rosenberg:
Talk about what happened in South Texas and the Hispanic vote statewide. I mean, what are your initial takeaways about what you saw? Because as we know, the new maps were drawn, the congressional maps, based on the 2024 numbers, which certainly look like a high watermark for Trump with Hispanic voters. They sort of reverted back, nationally anyway, to where the Republican Party had kind of been for a long time. And they've sort of lost a lot of that the gains that Trump had made. What's your takeaway from the vote that you saw? What are you thinking about what that means for the fall?

Kendall Scudder:
So Democrats outvoted Republicans in the Valley by about seventy percent. On its face [what that] tells you is perhaps there's a world where those voters are starting to have a little bit of buyer's remorse for choosing to go with a guy who told him he was going to make their life better. And they were Hail Mary’in, right? But realizing that he sold them a false bill of goods. What I will warn anyone in looking at those numbers is that the undervote for top of ticket in South Texas is notorious. People always show up and vote in Democratic primaries to help local elected officials. Even in the last election where Donald Trump won a bunch of those states, all the down ballot Democrats were winning. And so [the] Democratic primary is home for those people. And we, as a party, have to act like we're their home and treat them like they're our base that we respect and are listening to. And we're working towards doing that with them, in teamship with the folks on the ground there. And I think it's starting to pay dividends for us.

What it will mean is that all these districts that were redrawn based on 2024 numbers will be completely obsolete. If we are able to swing those numbers back, if those districts that were redrawn perform on 2018 numbers, we're going to gain a seat. And so I think that the Republicans are going to find that they got out over their skis.

Simon Rosenberg:
Yeah, I mean, the term everyone's using is a dummymander. And not a gerrymander. I kind of enjoy that term.

Talk a little bit, Kendall, [about] a couple more things and I'll let you go. The state of bringing together the Crockett voters and the Talarico voters. I mean, it seems like Jasmine Crockett gracefully and courageously yesterday morning endorsed Talarico despite all the issues that had happened in Dallas County, right away, and he has been I think equally gracious back to her. His initial remarks… how are you thinking as the party chair about how you're going to help bring everybody together here after a pretty hard-fought primary over the last couple months?

Kendall Scudder:
Jasmine Crockett's a superstar, and I have known her for years. And a thing about Jasmine that I hope people see, and if they don't, they should, is that she has a North Star. She's not doing this because it's fun. She does this because she has a clear ideological drive towards doing what's right for people. And I knew without a question in my mind that Jasmine was going to be a good team player if this situation went down, just as I knew that about James Talarico as well, who I used to do college Dems with. I know where their hearts are. And so I know we're going to be able to work together.

But here's an important point that I will make. I want to warn any Democrats from thinking that the solution here is to tell a bunch of people that they need to shut up and fall in line. The right answer is not to tell people to get over it and vote blue no matter who. It is on James Talarico, and myself, to earn those votes back. I think he's up for the occasion and I hope that those people will allow him the opportunity to do it. But as a party, we have to stop taking our base for granted and we have to start treating them with the respect that they deserve. I think respect is the key word. And we just rolled out a thirty million dollar coordinated campaign in Texas with the funding secured. And what that means is that we are going to have one of the most robust GOTV efforts in Texas we've ever had. And everyone has to be operating on a team together to make it work. And it feels like folks are doing it. We've just rolled out 160 around the state that are coming in as partners on this for us. We're ready to go. I think I would advise James Talarico if I if I speak with him… that he needs to spend some time making sure that he's earning the respect and the votes of those people. Because I'll make one more point.

I think if you take the factor out of James and Jasmine running against each other, I think James Talarico is a candidate that Jasmine's base largely would have really liked. He's a very progressive guy. And he speaks in these religious overtones that I think would resonate in religious communities like the Black community and like in Hispanic communities that tend to have high levels of religiosity. He's the type of candidate that I think could resonate really well there. But this one factor is kind of in the way. And so we have to move past it. It's only been two days. But I think we're going to be able to do it and be on a team. James is willing to put in the work. I am too. We've got to get the team together to get it done.

Simon Rosenberg:
Well, and you said something, Kendall, I just want to put an exclamation point on – that we have these ideas in our head about politics, and the base and swing. And you used the term coalition, which is the right way, for anyone who's actually really worked in politics and been responsible for winning elections. What you do in every election is you build a coalition, meaning that everyone in the coalition has to be honored and respected and feel like their voice is being heard. There isn't a base and a swing. There's a coalition that's diverse and complicated that you have to manage.

It's one of the hardest jobs of politics, forging and maintaining these kinds of diverse coalitions, particularly in a state as large and diverse as Texas is. And so what I'm hopeful just listening to [him] and I've spent time with James, and know him, is that he's the right guy to build a coalition, right? Like he creates space for others. He's welcoming and encouraging people to be part of it. He's just got the right temperament and the right approach for building what will be, hopefully, an unprecedentedly successful coalition for you in Texas, but one that's going to take a lot of work.

I just appreciate the way you're talking about this because this is the only way this actually really works if you want to be successful, as opposed to just playing the game in politics that some people play some time on these things. And so, look, we just saw in Virginia and in New Jersey, both Sherrill and Spanberger were incredibly successful at building broad and diverse coalitions that had high turnout and performance among all parts of the coalition. That happened in both of those states. And so I just want to say, you know, I love the way you're talking about this. And I do think that James has it in him to do this. Because you haven't won a statewide race in Texas since 1994.

Kendall Scudder:
That's right. 1994 when Morris Overstreet was on the ballot, the the only African-American to ever win statewide in Texas was in 1994. And that was the last time we won.

Simon Rosenberg:
So last question. Last time you spoke to us, you talked about one of your great achievements, which was to recruit somebody to run in every major race. Can you talk about that? And also talk about… I didn't know that you had announced a $30m coordinated campaign. That's pretty remarkable, given where you were the last time we spoke, frankly. You know, you got a lot done. Just walk us through, given that Hopium is an investor in your party. Talk a little bit about just the party mechanics of the recruitment that you did… what Kendall's about to describe, what the Chair's about to describe is what happens when you have a strong party and the difference that it can make. So talk about the recruitment you did, the unprecedented success, and then how you're the coordinating campaign.

Kendall Scudder:
Well, we certainly have come a long way and not bad for a volunteer party chair, I will say myself. You know, whenever we came in, the party had a lot of debt that we were staring down. We were having a lot of challenges. Today, the party is debt free. We are now on track to have twelve offices around the state of Texas by June. And we did this robust effort to recruit a Democrat in every state and federal office in Texas. That means state House, state Senate, state Board of Education, all of our statewide judicials, and all of our statewide candidates, all of our congressionals. It hadn't been done since 1972 because Texas is so big. I mean, it is hundreds of candidates to get that accomplished. And some of those areas, I mean, particularly with the way we draw these districts, are unbelievably red in their historical voting projections.

And so we wanted to have a candidate everywhere, so that we can have a player all over the field and have people from all these different communities able to speak the language of their communities. And relay what our values are to their local communities. It was a huge effort. It probably took about two thousand man hours to get it accomplished. And we were recruiting all over the state, helping to fund filing fees to get it done because Texas has pretty high filing fees….. so that was one piece. We've put together a coalition of partners that have all pledged money up [to help]. And so we announced about two weeks ago what our new coordinated campaign was going to be. We launched it the day after the primary. It's called Texas Together. And it's us, Beto O'Rourke's group powered by people, the Texas Majority PAC and the House Democratic Campaign Committee. We're going to try for the first time to funnel all of our GOTV efforts through the same pipeline so that people are sharing data.

In the past, every major metro and every county has their own coordinated campaign and we're not talking to each other. And so we step on each other and duplicate processes a lot and duplicate voter contact here. We can make sure we're all on a team together and we're not doing that. Secondly, we're going to do cost sharing where we're working with vendors to try to reduce rates. It's silly for all this money that comes in to not go into the field and go to a bunch of consultants. And so if there are ways for us to be able to bundle rates, we're going to try to get that done. And then third, an item that we don't have in Texas that states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania have had is a research consortium. So we launched 254 Labs, Org that will allow all of our candidates and partners in the state to do cheaper research. So instead of having to pay for a whole poll, you can pay for a question in a poll.

And this structure has been successful in swing states, but Texas has never structured itself that way. And it's hard to get everybody in such a diverse state with so many geographically and ethnically and all the different things to be all together in cohesion here. But it's feeling like everybody is ready for us to stop being amateur hour here and start getting it done. And so we're trying to take on that leadership role here at the state where we're saying we might make some mistakes, that's fine, but we're going to have each other's backs here and we're going to not duplicate efforts and we're going to spend money in a responsible way because we're always going to be outspent. So let's do this smart and let's make our donor dollars go as far as we can.

Simon Rosenberg:
Well, listen, put Hopium into your coordinated campaign for the eighty thousand bucks that we raised for you so far. I don't need to have a seat. You can have my seat on the coordinated campaign. But please consider us part of your your all of your groups that are down there. And remember, we were there with your early money before you stumbled into this… I remember the first time I talked to you, Kendall, you still had debt. You were barely making payroll and you've come a long way. And I think I'm just grateful for the people as part of my community that helped invest in getting you to this place where you're looking more like a real political party and not a ragtag bunch of well-intentioned kids, you know, and so congratulations on that transformation during this time.

Kendall Scudder:
I am so grateful to you and your community for helping there. I mean it was scary. We walked in the door – I didn't know how we were making payroll the Friday I walked in the door on a Monday. It has been this huge effort to be able to make sure we are responsibly managing this organization, setting it up for long-term success, working all of our weird internal compliance systems, and things like that aren't sexy but are really important to what a party does to function. We would not have been able to do it had Hopium and your community not come in to help us in our time of need there. And I'm so grateful for it.

And I'm living every day to make you proud and make you know it's worth it. So I want to make sure every person knows that when they're putting dollars into the apparatus in Texas, it is being maximized to the best of its ability. And we're stretching it as far as we can to make it count. And it's not just going to a bunch of consultants that we're going to try to get to buy our way out of a problem. And I'm just really grateful to y'all for all of your help and support there. I'm feeling like this is going to be a great team and glad to have Hopium on board our coordinating team.

Simon Rosenberg:
As somebody who was around in the earliest days of coordinated campaigns, I'm old enough now that I could talk about walking… you know to school with one shoe on or whatever… but you know part of the reason I asked you to talk about it is that we've raised almost $3 million for the DNC and for state parties in the last two years. And I've asked people to give to parties and people often are like, well, what does a state party do? And how does this all work? It's all very opaque. Or they are from a state that didn't have a functioning state party. And this morning, I released my latest interview with Anderson Clayton, who has been a role model for many of you. [She] took a kind of a moribund party and made it into a muscular, incredibly successful state party. She had a great night Tuesday night in North Carolina. And you know, that was our first big investment at a party level, and it has been wildly successful.

It is an operating principle of this community, or at least for me, that strong state parties are a requirement. Not just a requirement for us to have the kind of election we want to have this year… [but] to build the kind of politics we all want to build. And that the chronic underinvestment in state parties was an historic error by us over a long period of time. And so people like Kendall are coming in, moving a very big boulder up a very big hill. And I love the way you talk about it having this sense of incremental progress, recognizing that even just establishing a statewide coordinated campaign, which is incredibly common practice in many other states, that there had been an enormous atrophying of capacity around the country. And Ken Martin and Jane Kleeb and the new team… their central project was to lift the floor up for every state party in the country. To get you guys to a place where you could be on your own, raising your own money and having enough of a team.

And there have been great examples, everyone, throughout the whole country of this. We've been working in Alaska and Iowa and Maine. And you've heard from the leaders of those states about what they've been able to do with the resources we've raised, but also that they feel like they're building something meaningful that's going to be around after them. This is the kind of structural investment in infrastructure that is the stuff we desperately needed.

And what's important is that it's happening. And Kendall, congratulations to you because you have an incredible opportunity to really strengthen our party, when we look at the map, you and I discussed this last time, just to wrap up, for everyone to recognize, if we're going to expand our presidential map, the state that's next after the seven states that we played in 2024….. Texas. And so this is the investment we're making here… it's about creating a map over time that makes it more likely we can be successful in presidential elections. We have no choice other than to attempt to spend all the money in the world to make Texas competitive. This is not an option. This is not a nice-to-have. It's a must have. And we're lucky that we have a man who's met the moment here in Texas, Kendall Scudder, our great chair, who's put together and done more in a short period of time than I ever believed you could do, Kendall. So congratulations. And we're glad to be on your team now. Let's go kick some ass and get some wins this fall.

Kendall Scudder:
I appreciate that. What I'll add on as we're wrapping up, you know, I don't do this because I'm particularly into it. I’m a 36-year old unpaid chair with a seven month old at home. And so this is something that my wife and I are doing because we genuinely are concerned about this country and we're going to do everything we can to save it. And I have to make sure my baby's not going to be goose stepping through the streets. And so what we're doing every day is driven with this real purpose and understanding that the whole country's counting on us to get this one right. We feel that weight every day. And if we have a staff member that doesn't feel that weight every day, we have to have a serious conversation with them because this should be a stressful line of work, because people's lives are hanging in the balance of what we're doing. And I'm just so grateful for you and your team. And I promise next time I come on Hopium, my voice will be a little bit better.

Simon Rosenberg:
I wasn't going to keep you so long, and I tried to talk a little bit there at the end [both laugh.] Rest your voice, get some sleep, my friend. You know, it's a marathon, not a sprint, as you know, and you got to stay healthy and stay sane during what's going to be a year of opportunity for you in Texas. And we're glad to be by your side. So take care of my friend. We'll bring you back in a few months to get an update on everything.

Kendall Scudder:
I'm ready for it. Let's do it.

Simon Rosenberg:
Okay. Thank you so much Mr. Chair. Thank you everybody. That was a great interview. We've had a wonderful day with with Kendall Scudder and Anderson Clayton these refreshing you know young important leaders for our party and I'll just conclude by saying um that I do think that one of the things that is exciting is with James Tallarico and with Mary Peltola and with John Ossoff and with Anderson Clayton and Kendall Scudder and Paige Cognetti and other, Jasmine Crockett, I mean, I think we're gonna be able to, this cycle, by the spring, summer, be able to present to the American people something that feels like the next thing. For those that are concerned about our party being old and tired and not up to the modern ways, I think this collective set of candidates that are emerging for us are going to excite a lot of people about where we're headed. I think it's going to add and make our collective offering even more powerful um than it would have been otherwise and so you know you've been able to see and spend time with two of the most important next generation leaders in our family in the last twenty four hours and I'm just really grateful for all of you for making all this possible. If you like this interview hit like share with everybody you know if you're new to Hopium subscribe and let's keep fighting everybody. Take care.

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Thursday, March 5, 2026