Speaker 1: Today's trip Cast is sponsored by the Texas Tribune Festival
this November in downtown Austin. Hello, and welcome to the
Texas Tribune trip Cast for Tuesday, April twenty ninth, twenty
twenty five. This is Matthew Watkins. And if you are
watching on YouTube, I am not recently homeless. I am
just dressed like a slob because it's technically my day off.
And fun story, eleanor my wife, Susan, who you know
very well, accidentally kicked my son's door last week and
shattered her pinky toe, and so we were all up
at five am this morning at the outpatient surgical center
getting a metal rod inserted in her toe. So this
is why I look this way.
Speaker 2: That story has so many twists and turns. She accidentally
kicked your son's door hard enough to break her toe, yes,
in a way that required a metal rod to be
put into the pinky toe.
Speaker 1: That is correct.
Speaker 3: How big of a metal rod can they put into
a pinky toe?
Speaker 1: It's you know, I could show you the extra is
very very very small. Yeah, maybe more of a metal
pin I guess is actually would be a better way
of putting it. But yeah, so careful when you're walking
around in the dark after putting your kids to sleep. Everyone, seriously,
you might have to get a metal rod.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So that voice, as you know, is Eleanor Kleimanoff.
Speaker 3: Hello Eleanor, Hello Matthew.
Speaker 1: So I have two other other things to report to you.
Thing Number one is that I was talking to someone
today who will be not named, who mentioned that they
really enjoyed Eleanor's podcast.
Speaker 3: Oh amazing love that.
Speaker 2: As on Twitter some people, some people are calling it
the clib.
Speaker 3: Cast, which I think is great, and it just it's
not because Matthew is not equally important.
Speaker 2: It's just because his last name doesn't easily translate to
the name of a podcast.
Speaker 3: No, Yeah, that's that's very funny.
Speaker 1: The second thing you actually know about but pretend like
you don't, which is that listeners of the trip Cast
may remember our guests last week, Patrick's v Tech who
joined us, who said the thing he missed the most
about Texas was AGB and then as he was signing off,
shouted out, send tortillas. And I'm happy to report that
our friends at AGB did, in fact send Patrick's v
Tech tortillas and other AGB goodies. So what a heartwarming story.
That's the impact we talk about when we talk about
our journalism. I congratulations to Patrick.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I love that. And I just do want
to say, like, if anyone from.
Speaker 2: I don't know, like a car company is listening, I
miss your Carses Mercedes. Yes, I have an update Matthew
for you, which you also know about, but you're going
to pretend like you don't, which is that After we
did last week's episode on the race between John Cornan
and attorned General Ken Paxton, I ran into Senator John
Cornyn at the airport. I advised him to, you know,
give the podcast a listen, share if you had any thoughts.
We invited him on, as we invite you know, everyone
anyone in Texas politics that wants to join us on
the podcast to be on. He very politely took my
card and said he would pass it on to his assistant.
So we stand by awaiting an RSVP from Senator Cornyn
to join us on the podcast.
Speaker 1: The ball is in your court, yeah, John Corn's assistant. Yes,
I think I think the only assumption that we could
make if he doesn't join is that the assistant dropped
the ball, and not at all that the Senator would
not want to join our fine podcast.
Speaker 3: Right, not at all.
Speaker 2: That he put that card in his pocket and probably
promptly sent those pants the dry cleaner and never thought
of it again.
Speaker 3: But I had a nice time chatting with him.
Speaker 2: So if you would like to come on, and then,
you know, consider that also an open invitation to Attorney
General Paxton to join us as well.
Speaker 1: All right, yeah, okay, Well this has been good. I
think I think that's enough for the podcast all day. Yeah, okay,
So this week we are going to talk about the
Texas Lottery. It's been an issue that has been gaining
steam all legislative session, and during this session, when he's
not presiding over the Texas Senate, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick
has been doing his best Marvin Zindler impression, showing up
unannounced at stores and a state agency office to expose
what he's portrayed as a growing scandal in the Texas Lottery.
You know, this is a kind of a political atmosphere
these days of dark rhetoric and fear, but this has
actually been a pretty fun, old fashioned political scandal. It
includes accusations of stolen jackpot store clerks preventing Dan Patrick
from entering mysterious back rooms. In multiple resignations of state officials,
We're likely to see a shake up of the agency
that funds Texas Eduction later this year the Texas Lottery Commission.
Here to talk about this is Aiden Runnells, a general
assignment reporter for the Texas Tribune. We recently hired Aiden
for those who are not familiar from the Las Vegas Sun,
where I believe they never wrote a single story about gambling.
But since we hired Aiden here, Aiden has written ten
stories on the topic and they've been great stories to watch.
Speaker 4: So welcome Aiden, thank you for having me. And yeah,
it's a it's an irony that you pointed out one
of our meetings, and I just can't believe that I
almost avoided doing gambling coverage in Las Vegas because it's
so complex, and then now that I'm here, it's like
half of my brain is just lottery.
Speaker 3: It's pretty simple here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, but it's but it's it's been. It's a
pretty fun story to be involved in. You Yeah, all right,
all right, Well, Aiden has been doing a great job,
so thank you for that. And let's just start here.
I really struggled with where to start, because there's so
much to this story. These a lot of complicated different
things here, But I'm going to start with just a
very simple question, Aiden, can you tell us what is
a lottery courier?
Speaker 4: Of course, of course, So a lottery courier is a
website or an app in which customers can can go
on to it and order draw games, which is the
games where you pick your numbers or a scratch ticket,
And somewhere in the state, usually in Austin or some
in San Antonio, there is a storefront that will print
the ticket that you order. They will physically scan it
on usually like a Xerox scanner, and then send you
a picture of that lottery ticket. And if it's a
winner under six hundred dollars, they'll just cash you the
money through the app, and if it's over six hundred dollars,
they'll actually mail you that ticket so you can cash
it in yourself. So that's what it is on its
simplest terms.
Speaker 2: So like I could play the lottery from my couch,
even though as I understand it, right under state law,
I'm supposed to have to go in in person.
Speaker 4: Yes, oh yeah, so yeah, you can order it pretty
much anywhere within the state of Texas. Most of the
apps have like geolocation, and many will require like scanning
of your ID and facial scan But yes, you can
order it from anywhere within the state of Texas. But
the only restrictions on buying it in Texas from the
apps are from the apps themselves. There's no law saying,
you know, an app has to have that state restriction.
But there is a state restriction on buying lottery tickets.
You have to be in the state when you buy
the ticket.
Speaker 1: Interesting, okay, And so this is a sort of novel
approach that has gotten a lot of attention in recent years,
specifically related to two kind of jackpots that have been
awarded or not awarded. I guess in recent years won
a ninety five million dollar prize in twenty twenty three
and another one for eighty four million dollars this year.
Let's start with the ninety five million dollar prize in
twenty twenty three. Tell us what happened with this individual
prize and why lawmakers may or may not be upset
about it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely so. In April of twenty twenty three, what
we now know from a combination reporting from Eric dex
Sheimer with Houston Chronicle and a team at the Wall
Street Journal. Two overseas gamblers worked with several companies in
the state of Texas to order roughly fifty lottery terminals
which prints lottery tickets, distributed them across four storefronts, some
of which didn't really sell products. I think one of
them sold cooozies and boating trips in Montana and printed
ninety nine percent of the possible ticket combinations over a
three day period. And so that roughly amounted to about
two point five million physical tickets to essentially game that
jackpot and win ninety five million dollars. And this was
done with communication with the top lottery official at the time,
former Executive Director Gary Grief.
Speaker 1: What do you mean by with communication?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so from what we know, there were emails and records,
emails and requests from the groups that were trying to
sort of put the scheme together that said, you know,
if we come and we order these terminals within under
your process, is this legal?
Speaker 3: Is this illegal?
Speaker 4: And what Gary what Grief it said at the time,
and what lawmakers had maintained up until about February of
this year is we have no purview over lottery couriers,
which what they meant by that is current law says
that you can't play the game by telephone, and so
telephone they took to mean physically, you know, ordering over
the phone, like making a phone call, Yes, making a
phone call. And so what they told couriers in including
one courier that was involved in this bulk purchase lottery
dot Com and other couriers which describe themselves as legitimate couriers,
is that because we have no purview, as long as
you're not running the store yourself, you know, you don't
need a license. So what these some of these companies
would do is they have LLCs that are owned by
the same parent company. They would operate these stores, request
the lottery terminals install them throughout, and then print the
tickets that way.
Speaker 2: So essentially, like someone went to the state and was like, Hey,
we are going to scam the lottery.
Speaker 3: Is that legal? And they said, like, we technically have
no grounds in which to stop you.
Speaker 4: It was in a little bit more vague terms than that,
and from my understanding for I've talked with some former
lottery officials who told me it was very much a
top heavy operation. So Gary Grief was in contact, you know,
limited capacity with these groups, but very little other people
were in contact with these groups, so they sort of
flagged that this was going to happen, and they sort
of turned a blind eye.
Speaker 1: All right, So, I mean basically what we're talking about
here is where these couriers are creating a system that
allows people to buy massive amounts of tickets, whether that's
scratch offs or or lotto like right like pick number tickets. Right.
Speaker 4: So this is where sort of some of the confusion
has occurred in hearings with lawmakers is So there was
a courier company involved in the bulk purchase lottery dot com,
but in Texas at that point they actually hadn't sold
a ticket in months, but they used their store to
facilitate this bulk purchase. So no purchase for the for
the bulk purchase, as they've described it, nothing was done
through the app. The administrators of the company just said
we're going to print it ourselves. And a lot of
courier apps right now that exist do have limits on
like you can't buy more than a thousand tickets in
a day. But the same infrastructure was used for this
bulk purchase.
Speaker 2: So there's two problems, right, There's there's bulk purchasing. In
the eyes of lawmakers, right, the problems are bulk purchasing,
and then the other problem is couriers, and couriers can
in some cases facilitate bulk purchase exactly. Yeah, but lawmakers
have a problem with couriers, even if it's just me
myself trying to buy one ticket.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, I understand.
Speaker 1: What do we know about the person or people who
made this bulk purchase that allowed them to win supposedly
ninety five million dollars.
Speaker 4: We know very little about the people. We know from
the Wall Street Journal article that one of the gamblers,
whose name is escaping me right now, it was very
experienced in going to lotteries and sort of using the
odds in order to you know, win large jackpots. As
far as the companies we know again, lottery dot Com
was sort of one of the big facilitators. Their company
was at one point a legitimate lottery courier service that
had sold tickets online mostly I think through a website,
and they worked with this these two gamblers to basically,
you know, facilitate the bulk purchase because they already have
the machines, and they figured, if we partner with some
other retailers, we can get go from you know, twelve
lottery terminals to again. I think the final number they
had was about fifty in order to facilitate the means
necessary to print you know, two point five million tickets
twenty five million combinations in a three day period.
Speaker 3: It's good, such a crazy little little scheme.
Speaker 4: It would make a good movie one day, or a
limited Apple TV show exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So okay, Now let's talk about the eighty four
million dollar purchase that has lawmaker's attention this year. Tell
us about that one.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so that one has a lot less I guess
suspicion around it. Basically, Texas woman who has remained anonymous
as most jackpot winners over a million dollars tend to
do purchase ten tickets through the nation's largest career at Jackpocket,
and so she bought ten tickets. One of them was
the eighty three point five at roughly eighty four million
dollar jackpot bought at The ticket itself was printed at
Winner's Corner, which is a retail store that sells board
games in Austin that has now become famous because of
two appearances by our Lieutenant governor in videos he's on
X and so she bought those with as legally as
someone who can buy a ticket through a courier can.
Speaker 3: She went to.
Speaker 4: Try to redeem the ticket in a march alongside her lawyer,
and the Lottery Commission told her, no, we're not giving
you that that jackpot until we're done investigating the win,
which the Attorney General's Office and the Texas Rangers are
currently investigating the lottery Commission and their proliferation of couriers.
Speaker 1: All right, So these two cases have exposed, as Eleanor
sort of mentioned, two different problems through the eyes of lawmakers.
The one the practice of both purchasing. I think we
can all sort of understand why lawmakers might not like that, right, Like,
if you're playing the odds, I think in the I
think it was the ninety five million dollar one, right
your one of your previous stories said they spent about
twenty six million dollars buying you know, almost all of
the different possible combinations for that lotto pick, which then
you know, guaranteed them to win what like some fifty
something million dollars after tax and that right.
Speaker 4: So that fifty four million was just like the main prize.
I went back and looked, and they also won another
extra one or two million in the lower prizes as
well from redeeming those smaller prizes.
Speaker 1: So you know, that's not fair, and there are a
lot of people who were playing kind of honestly in
that who might have lost the opportunity to win a jackpot.
And also, presumably you have to have a lot of
sort of startup capital in order to buy twenty six
million lottery tickets, So I can see why the Texas
legislature might not be crazy about that practice. Why do
they not like the practice of buying these tickets really
the phone? I mean, you know, presumably you know or not?
Presumably it is is publicly stated the reason that the
lottery was created was to fund education programs in the state.
Buying them via the phone would presumably allow more tickets
to be purchased and more education to be funded in Texas.
So what's the problem here?
Speaker 4: Yeah, So the first argument is that it's not in
the spirit of the lottery, and that goes back to
that law that we mentioned about not being able to
purchase it by telephone and So during the very long
February twenty fourth State Affairs hearing, there was a point
where Senator Mays Middleton asked, you know, do you feel
they asked courier executives. Three of them went to testify,
you know, do you feel like you're breaking the law?
And they responded, you know currently or we don't violate
any of the statutes, and sort of that open up
conversation about sort of circumventing it based off very fine language.
So part of it is the spirit. Another concern with
both the bulk purchase and couriers is that the regulation
that careers currently have, for example, the geolocation, the facial
ID scanning, all of that is done basically at the
goodwill of the couriers. Because there's no regulation right now,
it could open up for illegal purchases to miners. You know,
if a child grabs their parents' cell phone and then
buys a ticket that's already like pre approved through the
app purchases out of state. I mean, you know, if
VPNs are used to trick the geolocation, I don't know
if any instances, but I know that's something that lawmakers
have been worried about. And then money laundering was another
concern about buying tickets, and that goes more to the
bulk purchase. But I think really the illegal sales to
miners and out of state are the big concerns about
couriers specifically.
Speaker 2: I mean, how much of this is just like I imagine
least some of these lawmakers. We have like a pretty
conservative and in many cases conservative Christian.
Speaker 3: Legislature.
Speaker 2: Obviously, I think some of our lawmakers are at least
you know, their priority sort of focus around like morality
and Christianity things like that.
Speaker 3: Does that come into play at all? Is there's sort
of just like a distaste for the lottery these days?
Speaker 4: Absolutely, I would say, you know, there was a hearing
in which one representative called the Texas lottery I think
they called Texas the state's biggest bookie. And so there
is definitely also like a natural disdain for the lottery,
and I think you see that as you know, calls
for the lottery to be abolished outright, there were sort
of just a few people saying that right from the outset.
But now that's sort of a really picked up steam
as we've gotten later into the session and as things
keep happening resignations keep being filed and so on and
so forth. So I think there's definitely the disdain for
gambling in general, I think has definitely bled over into
the lottery. And there are big gaming interests in the lottery.
The jack Pocket, the company that sold that eighty four
million dollar jackpot ticket, they're owned by DraftKings, which is,
you know, one of the largest sports gambling companies in
the world. So there's definitely a lot of the ven diagram.
Speaker 1: There is very wide. Yeah, I mean, it's it's you know,
worth noting that this conversation is happening during a time
where a lot of gambling interests are spending massive amounts
of money trying to lobby the legislature to push to
legalize sports gambling or online gambling or casinos in Texas.
And Dan Patrick, who's been one of the sort of
leading voices criticizing you know, the lottery, has has been
very resistant to that idea too. Right, So, so the
the ideology here, you know, aligns in that kind of way.
I want to talk a little bit more about the
legislative response to this, but first let's pause and hear
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May first, so purchase them now at Texastribune dot org. Okay, Aiden,
you have spent a lot of time sitting in committee hearings,
hearing the discussion of this. What is the legislative response?
What might we see come out of the capital in
response to these scandals that have hit the lottery Commission?
Speaker 4: Yeah? So, I think the big one that's gotten a
lot of coverage is Cenatebill twenty eight, which is one
of Dan Patrick's priorities, which would criminalize couriers entirely, So
would explicitly ban internet sales of lottery t ticket purchases
and make it, I believe, a class A misdemeanor. But
there's there's also uh, there's also a bill that would
ban both purchases. I believe that was authored by Senator
Hughes that would just say if you buy all the tickets,
then you know that's illegal and we're not going to
pay out your jackpot. But right now I think the
lottery itself is in a very treacherous spot on its own.
Uh that will require I think legislative input in order
to fix. You know, the current House budget proposal strip
the lottery of all of its funding to zero, and
so you know that can get put back in conference committee.
But at the same time, the lottery is under sunset review,
which means that they're going enough to pass a bill
in order to continue the agency's existence. And so far
that neither there's two sunset bills, one in the House
one on the Senate. Neither has gotten a hearing so far.
So those are the two big things. There's also some
other restrictions on being proposed about how much retailers can
get paid because right now they get about five percent
cut of the ticket sales. Some people want to increase that,
some people want to decrease that. There's a bill that
would you know, sort of restrict how much a jackpot
can get paid out relative to how much is being
donated to the Education fund, so it's sort of rebalance
that proportion. So there's a lot of little things, but
I think the two big things right now really are
the courier ban, which unanimously passed in the Senate, and
then again whether they're going to, you know, let the
lottery have its money back.
Speaker 3: What what does the lottery fund in Texas?
Speaker 4: So the lottery funds to primary things, the education education,
I think their education a yearly. I forget the name
of the fund right now, but it gets about two
billion a year in funding K twelve education, Yes, K
through twelve public education gets about two billion dollars, give
or take. And then they also have several millions of
dollars a year that go to veterans programs. So they
have a specific game that goes to the proceeds go
to veteran charities and things like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm so.
Speaker 2: I'm from Georgia originally, and Georgia has a like program,
and the lottery is how they fund what they call
the Hope Scholarship, which basically says, if you have I
think it's like a B plus average in high school,
you can go to any state university for free. And
it's been like this huge program to really sort of
keep people in in Georgia, keep people in state, keep
them going to school there.
Speaker 3: I mean you go to the University of Georgia, Georgia Tech.
Speaker 2: It often is criticized, I think because it you know,
it does there's no income requirement, so it sometimes goes
people who maybe could afford to go there, but they
want to keep those people in state. So the lottery
there is very enmeshed in like that Hope Scholarship. I
mean that two billion dollars to education, Like despite our
recent investments in education here in Texas, I think imagine
people kind of want to there's a motivation to keep
that money coming in.
Speaker 4: I think one of the most interesting things I've heard
in these hearings is actually, Lawmick, you're sort of writing
off that two billion during the first hearing that had
the lottery, and at the February twelfth Senate Finance hearing,
I think somebody said like, oh, well, that amounts to
about two three days of public education, and so we
could do we could do with that. I think Senator
Perry said, we're addicted to the dollars. So there is
some sort of you know, conflict on how badly. We
really do need the two billion dollars. But I was surprised,
I think personally, to hear people saying they're willing to
lose that money if it means getting rid of you know,
what they call a corrupt agency.
Speaker 3: Right, I mean, we just put all this money to
public education.
Speaker 2: So I guess you could, you know, you could say, like,
you know, it evens out in the end. You add some,
you take some back, and that's the public education story.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Also among this is you know, charitable Bingo is also
a game that runs under the Texas Lottery Commission, and
they're sort of being held hostage amid all of this confusion.
There is a bill right now in this Senate that
would sort of life flight the Bingo Commission out of
the Texas Lotteries priview and put it under the I
think the Department of Licensing and Regulation. So I think
it'll be interesting to see that bill as well, you know,
whether or not the lottery stays, to see how much
they trust the agency going forward if they move this
you know game to another agency entirely.
Speaker 1: Aiden you talk about kind of trusting the agency, I mean,
the agency has been under a significant amount of heat
this legislative session. It has been interesting to watch kind
of their response. Right you had the Commission sort of
saying we can't regulate these couriers, and then the legislature
getting mad at them and then sort of being like, well, actually,
maybe we can legislate these careers been there have been
a couple resignations. Can you help me kind of understand,
like how much of this is you know, neglect or
poor management by an agency and how much of is
just like them not having the tools, whether it's you know,
statute saying you can't do this, or any kind of
enforcement capability to prevent these things that lawmakers don't like
from happening.
Speaker 4: Unfortunately, I think a lot of it is that agency
sort of you know, I don't know if I have
the authority right now based on my reporting to say
outright malpractice, but you know, they did on February twenty
fourth announce that they would start censuring any retail stores
that we're partnering with couriers, And that was done the
monday before. They were in two different hearings, hearings, one
of them being on Senate Bill twenty eight. So they
sort of turned on its head after years of saying, oh, well,
we have no purview over these couriers, we can't regulate them,
we need to wait for an opinion from the Attorney
General's office to suddenly saying, actually, if you're with these,
you know, if you're partnering with these couriers, we're going
to pass a rule saying you're gonna have your license
revote revoked. The vote finalizing that rule actually happens today
on Tuesday, and so I don't think there's any expectations
about there being contention. I think it's expected to pass
pretty easily and unanimously. But it really does come down
to I think the agency either not wanting to or
just not feeling the need to regulate these until it
reached ahead. Could there have been legislation, you know, that
could have attacked this problem earlier? I mean Senator Hall
had I think was Senate Bill eighteen twenty last legislative session.
That was exactly it is what Senate Bill twenty eight
is now. So there was an attempt. This wasn't a
problem that is completely blindsided. Lawmakers have been having conversations
about this in public hearing since twenty twenty two, so
I guess there is some culpability there in not recognizing
it as a problem that would grow, and sales among
curriers have grown a lot too in those few years.
Speaker 1: Aden you with the lawyer of the woman who won
the eighty four million dollar jackpot that she has not
been able to collect yet, tell me a little bit
about her situation. I mean, that's a lot of money
at stake for one individual person here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So from my understanding, she's just a normal woman
in somewhere in Texas. Her lawyer wouldn't tell me where,
and she just played on jackpocket because she didn't like
going to the gas station alone, and so she just
bought ten tickets on the app and one big and
then you know, got a lawyer, as many people who
win these jackpots do, and they took the ticket from
her and sort of lying in wait. The lawyer when
I when I talked to him, he said, they're waiting
on litigation. It's not an impossibility they may sue to take,
you know, to get this winning that she as it
appears she'd of a fair winning ticket. But I think
there's also some hope that those two investigations will wrap
up sooner rather than later, and she'll just get her
money and be on her way. So there's some optimism happening.
Speaker 2: Can you imagine like playing the lottery for years not winning,
and you finally win, like at the at the exact
moment that the wind changes on this and now you're
like eighty three million dollars just.
Speaker 3: Waiting for you.
Speaker 1: It's really an amazing confluence of great luck and terrible luck.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yes, I honestly feel like you.
Speaker 2: She must be like, maybe the universe doesn't want me
to have this money, like there's something is in my way.
Speaker 4: There's a there's another lawsuit I don't think has other
people have written about it. It's smaller where the man
who won the Lotto Texas jackpot after the ninety five
million dollar purchase is suing the Texas Lottery Commission saying, well,
they won by cheating, so that should have been my
money that should have never been paid out. So there's
sueing the company that won the ninety five million purchase
saying well, I think that money belongs to me because
you cheated, And so he wants one hundred million dollars.
Speaker 2: Sames, I would also like us to be sponsored by
one hundred million dollars one hundred million dollars.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. So there's one last thing I want to
cover on this, which is the the Dan Patrick web show.
I mentioned earlier at the start that he's been doing
his best Marvin Zindler impression. I will ask y'all later
whether either of you know who Marvin Zindler is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I keep laughing, but I'm gonna be honest, I'm
not sure.
Speaker 1: Reference Okay, We're going to save that to the ends
because I want to talk a little bit about this.
This is basically he has been making videos, posting them
on social media right where he shows up and interviews
people involved in this, including at the store winners Corner
that we've already mentioned. Just describe for us briefly these
these videos aiden because I'm really enjoying them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean so when the first one came out,
I was just stounded. So Dan Patrick is standing outside
of this storefront, and I've been to several of these
storefronts myself and they're really not that large. So he
starts filming in front of the storefront. Then he goes
inside and sort of questions the uh, you know, the
manager as it were. That's at like the cashier register
and saying like, can I see the back? These are?
You know, you guys sell board games. That's kind of strange.
In his latest video, he actually swabs one of the
board games for dust to.
Speaker 1: Point out I would like to I would like to
clarify too, which who who among us doesn't have a
seller of baton board game gathering dusts.
Speaker 3: That's gonna say a dusty settlers a katan.
Speaker 4: And so you know he in the first video, he uh,
you know, has sort of a back and forth with
the manager and then they get a lawyer on the phone,
and then he mentions that they actually did get to
see the back this time. I think in his latest
video they didn't. I thought was interesting. His latest video,
he also took a visit to the Texas Lottery Commission
itself and he was like, well, their office is empty,
and I have to give props to his camera person
because there's a shot in there of there's like a
whole bunch of frames of lottery officials and there's one
right in the middle that's missing from the lottery director
who resigned on last Monday. And they did just a
little like something out of the office, like a little
zoom just done too the empty part and then back
over to Patrick as he keeps sort of giving his monologues.
So it's there's a good amount of production that's gone
into I think there's some like side transitions and things.
So whenever I went out and visited these stores, I
think I told my editor I was doing my best
Dan Patrick impression, trying to live true to form.
Speaker 2: No, I mean Patrick's been doing this a lot, Like
he did this to a THHC store which carded him, right, yeah,
and they they carded him as per you know your
you know the regulation requires, So yeah, he's getting out there,
getting out to people.
Speaker 1: I watched these I watched the one at Winter's Corner
before we came on, and it's just like, I have
such sympathy and agony for this this store manager who's
like he's like calling up his boss. He's like, the
Lieutenant governor wants me to show him behind this door,
and you know, I guess like they cut off then,
and clearly whoever he called on the phone like told
them not to let the Lieutenant governor back, which is
just like, oh man, this is I feel terrible for you.
Patrick is in his in all fairness, like very nice
to this guy and like sort of says like, I
recognize you're just doing your job here, but high comedy. Okay,
So Marvin Zendler, Aiden, did you look up Marvin Zendler?
We were talking about it in slacks I did. Yeah, okay,
So Marvin Zindler, are you familiar Eleanor with the musical
best little whorehouse in Texas? Yes? I am so. For
for over a century, the Chicken Ranch, a brothel in Lagrain, Texas,
popular among Texas A and M students back in the day,
I understand.
Speaker 3: Back in the day.
Speaker 1: How back back in the day. Yes, it no longer exists.
For the record, I went to Texas A and M
well after nineteen seventy three when Marvin Zimmler, a TV
reporter for Eyewitness News in Houston, showed up to bust
the Chicken Ranch. He is this sort of flamboyant legend
of Houston television, most known for his sort of you
know what is it? Sort of stake out journalism. He
helped get the Chicken Ranch shut down and then did
some reporting on how it was allowed to operate for
so long, where he got into a confrontation with the
Fayette County sheriff at the time, who apparently broke two
of his ribs and ripped his two pay off his
head in the confrontation. The film from that was destroyed
in the confrontation, but Katie r. A K kept the
audio and yes, Marvin Zendler his legendary sign off Marvin
Zendler eyewitness news classic. So look it up.
Speaker 3: I love that. That's a classic Texas story.
Speaker 2: Yes, and I mean sort of relatedly, we should mention
it's funny timing we're doing this now. You mentioned Eric
dex Sheimer from He's a Chronicle who really broke this
story initially about the bulk purchase sound. He just over
the weekend was named the Texas Managing Editors Reporter of
the Year, which really restores some dignity to the title
base after a really low point for it last year
when I was the Star report for the year.
Speaker 3: So Eric dex Seimer.
Speaker 5: By the way, by the way, I just like I
want to congratulate Eric Eric dex Sheimer, which was not
at all a venue to mentioned that I was text
managing Editor's reported.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you, Okay, Eleanor we're going to need
you to work on your Marvin Zindler like sign off
For next week's podcast, see if you can workshop some
things moving forward here. But that's about all that we
are going to do today. Thank you to Aiden for
your great reporting on this topic. Thank you to Rob
and Chris are producers and rob our theme music composer.
We will talk to you all next week.