KSEV Mornings · November 3, 2026 · Hour 1
State Sen. Paul Bettencourt on turnout and why the U.S. Senate is the whole ballgame, Wayne on voting for the policy and not the person, caller Jimmy X on the impeachment threat, and why affordability is real.
Paul Bettencourt joined Craig Coglianese and Wayne Dolcefino on Election Day to talk turnout, the fight for the U.S. Senate and Ken Paxton’s record as attorney general. The message from the whole hour was simple: get off the couch and vote.
Paul Bettencourt: run on the good news
Senator Bettencourt said the Valley is “already on fire” with turnout, and that Republicans have to run positive campaigns. “There is so much about Texas,” he said. “We could be talking about jobs. We have to be talking about quality of life.” He pointed to Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s dementia initiative and property tax relief, with about 100 Texas counties where roughly 90% of seniors now pay zero property taxes, and said people need to hear that good things have happened and more are coming.
In Harris County, Bettencourt said leftist progressives have already raised property taxes 41%, something that has happened nowhere else in the state. Wayne said he searched for a local TV investigative piece on Letitia Plummer’s record and conduct on city council and found nothing beyond the debate. “Local television is gone as a political driver,” Wayne said, and he wants the state and Harris County Republican parties to take a very hard look at their communications people.
The Senate is the key
Bettencourt said the U.S. House looks gone in a normal midterm pattern, so all eyes are on the Senate, and on Texas at 7 PM when the early ballot numbers post. On Paxton’s record, the hour noted he beat the Biden administration 80% to 85% of the time, and Bettencourt said he called Attorney General Paxton many times when Harris County went too far, including the attempt to send mail ballot applications to 2.3 million people, and Paxton weighed in. Craig said Mayes Middleton will do a great job as the next attorney general. Bettencourt’s bottom line: until the numbers come in, there are no safe Republican seats anywhere, so everybody has to turn out.
Craig said what bothers him is talk of Republicans sitting this one out. “You gotta vote for the person that’s gonna vote like you,” he said, because if Republicans lose the Senate too, “this impeachment train is going to come down the tracks in a big way.”
Wayne: “I’m voting for the policy”
Wayne said Texas traded a senator people were tired of for an attorney general who is “incredibly effective,” and that plenty of his professional friends have given him grief for backing Paxton. Wayne has sued Paxton before, but in the voting booth, “it wasn’t even a close call for me,” he said. “I ain’t voting for the person. I’m voting for the policy,” to continue what is starting to look like “a real economic miracle,” including the new manufacturing numbers.
Craig added that crime is “incredibly down,” a fraction of what it used to be, as a byproduct of removing people who shouldn’t be here. Wayne explained that President Trump used tariffs to bring manufacturing and investment back, with short-term price pain as the cost of new jobs. On Iran, he said the regime wanted a nuclear bomb: “You don’t build nuclear sites under mountains because you want to run the blenders.” Wayne also dismissed the idea that Israel runs America’s government as nonsense.
Jimmy X on the impeachment threat
Caller Jimmy X said early voting lines in Montgomery County were unbelievable, and that the left should be called what they are: communists. Craig defended Senator Bettencourt’s approach of using the progressives’ own words against them, which he said can reach people in the middle better. Jimmy warned that a Democratic Senate could remove President Trump and then go after JD Vance. Craig noted a conviction still takes two-thirds of the Senate, and said he still has hope: that turnout goes crazy today and Texans tell James Talarico, “your values don’t match ours.”
Craig said Democrats are running on “a Marxist agenda” and are “full on communist and they’re not even hiding it anymore.” As for Talarico’s last-minute turn to the middle: “Talarico for one month is not normal if for the last 10 years he’s been insane.”
Affordability is real
Wayne said the networks “are all just arms of the Democratic Party,” and that the America PAC ad on Talarico is right, but Republicans made the race almost entirely about it. He said the bigger mistake was calling affordability a hoax. He paid $17 for a Styrofoam cooler, and fajitas for two with his son came to $80. “That’s affordability, and that’s a problem, and that needs to be fixed.”
Hear Craig and Wayne live weekdays from 7–9 AM Central on AM 700 KSEV, The Voice of Texas. Visit the KSEV Mornings show page for live-listening controls and more episodes. Listen live weekdays 7-9 AM CT on the KSEV app.
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