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Primary runoff election night ended with some big changes for the Austin area and across the state. We’ll bring you the latest on last night’s results and the races we’ll be watching this November.
After a shooting spree this month by three teenagers ended in Manor, Austin Police say they could have caught the suspects sooner if they had license plate readers. Now, Mayor Kirk Watson is considering proposals to bring this kind of technology back to the city.
This week in Texas music history: an experimental composer and pioneer of the practice of “Deep listening” was born.
The Kathy Dunn Hamrick Dance Company is moving forward after the loss of its namesake leader. Their new performance this weekend is an embodiment of that spirit.
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The full transcript of this episode of Austin Signal is available on the KUT & KUTX Studio website. The transcript is also available as subtitles or captions on some podcast apps.
Jerry Quijano [00:00:08] The primary runoff election night ended with some big changes for the Austin area and across the state of Texas as a whole. We’re going to bring you the latest on last night’s results and the races will be watching this November. And after a shooting spree this month by three teenagers ended in Maynard, Austin police say they could have caught the suspect sooner if they had license plate readers. Now Mayor Kirk Watson is considering proposals to bring this kind of technology back to the city. We’ve got more about those two stories coming up on today’s show.
KUT Announcer: Laurie Gallardo [00:00:37] The Austin Signal is a production of KUT News, hosted by Jerry Quijano.
Jerry Quijano [00:00:43] Plus, the Cathy Dunhamrick Dance Company is moving forward after the loss of its namesake leader. Their new performance this weekend is an embodiment of her spirit. We’ve got more about that story coming up next, and it’s right here on Austin Signal. Howdy out there, you are tuned in to Austin Signal here on community powered public radio KUT News. I’m your host, Jerry Keconnell. It is Wednesday, May 27th. Thank you for listening and making us part of your day. Williamson County officials have lifted an evacuation order for the area near the Shady River RV Resort in Goodwater RV Park in Georgetown. Jake Isbell, Williamson County’s deputy director of emergency management, said three rescue missions involving vehicles were conducted overnight. The National Weather Service also canceled a flood warning that was active Wednesday morning for the South Fork of the San Gabriel River in Georgetown. The service says there’s a small chance of showers and storms tonight and tomorrow in the Austin area, but nothing like the storms we saw last night. Either way, always be weather aware and keep it tuned in to KUT. For the latest. Yesterday’s runoff election made headlines across the nation with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s victory over decades-long incumbent John Cornyn for the Republican nomination for the Texas Senate race. We’re going to have more about that in a bit. For now, we’re going to take a look at the results from the Austin area races we were watching last night. Joining us is KUT’s Travis County reporter, Katie McAfee. Katie, thanks for being on the Thank you.
Katy McAfee [00:02:24] Thanks for having me on, Jerry!
Jerry Quijano [00:02:26] So one of the races you have been watching for a few months now was the Travis County Commissioner Precinct 4 race. Tell us about that race and who came out victorious.
Katy McAfee [00:02:36] Yeah, so that race was a big deal for folks in south and southeast Travis County. The position for Precinct 4 Travis County Commissioner has been held by Margaret Gomez since 1995. But she announced last year that she was ready to retire at the end of her term. So that kind of opened up a rare opportunity for new leadership in the area. Four local Democrats initially ran. All of them had a lot of experience with community organizing and all of them have a strong connection to the area. But just two candidates advanced to the runoff last night, Del Valle ISD trustee Susana Ledesma-Woody and George Morales, a former Travis County constable. The early voting results came in last night and Morales had a comfortable lead initially and he kept it until the end of the night and no Republican candidates ran. So he will very likely be the next commissioner.
Jerry Quijano [00:03:27] Some of the races that we were watching last night had some very quick results and the races were called very fast. This one not so much. It went a little bit later into the night. Did you have a chance to talk with George Monalas?
Katy McAfee [00:03:37] I did. I called him after midnight, but we made it happen. He told me that he’s excited for the community, but more than anything, he said he’s exited to get to work. In previous interviews that I did with him as I was covering this race over the past few months, he said his biggest priorities are to fix roads in the area and to work with Cap Metro to expand bus service out there. He also said he really wants to focus on public health care. Morales is a former Travis County constable. He was constable during COVID. And during that time, he did a lot of work providing vaccines to folks who otherwise wouldn’t have access to a vaccine. He stressed that that was a really big accomplishment for him, and he wants to continue helping folks like that as commissioner.
Jerry Quijano [00:04:21] Another race that we were watching last night, House District 49. That area covers Austin, primarily between Mopac and I-35, and from Breaker to just south of William Cannon. So a large swath of the city. Who was running in that race, and who came out on top?
Katy McAfee [00:04:35] Yeah, so that seat was previously held by Gina Hinojosa, who stepped down to run for governor. Now she’s the Democratic candidate for governor that drew eight Democratic candidates to run in the primary to advance to the runoff election, a name that many Austinites probably recognize Kathy Tovo. She was a long time Austin City Council member and also a formal mayoral candidate. And Mansur Agaribai, she is a former Austin ISD teacher. And she also worked with the Biden administration in the Department of Education while he was in office. Both candidates campaigned on reforming the public education system in Texas, something that Hinojosa really fought for while she was in Office. But Garibay got a nice lead early into the night and she kept it to the end and she won with 61% of the vote. Also in that race, no Republican candidate ran. So Garibay will likely assume the seat.
Jerry Quijano [00:05:32] Okay, did you get a chance to hear from that campaign?
Katy McAfee [00:05:34] I did not get a chance here
Jerry Quijano [00:05:35] Okay, no worries and I know the other big race we were watching here in the newsroom was in Hayes County. What race was that?
Katy McAfee [00:05:42] Yes, we were watching the race for Hayes County Judge. That race was between the incumbent Ruben Becerra. He’s been in office since 2019 and Hayes county commissioner Michelle Gutierrez Cohen. The night ended and Gutierre’s Cohen won by a decent margin. She got 58% of the vote. She told us on election night that she wants to work on public health initiatives and she said she wants to create a strategic plan to reform criminal justice procedures in the county. Unlike those first two races we talked about. Um, she does have a Republican challenger in November. She will face off Jeffrey Tawawa.
Jerry Quijano [00:06:18] Okay, well, the KUT newsroom was hard at work last night to cover the elections. Big thanks to you, Katie, as well as Andrew Weber and Kaylee Hunt. They were the election team, in addition to a bunch of editors and lots of other people working throughout the night. But we really wanted to say thanks to all of you for keeping us informed. And we have been speaking with Katie McAfee. We’re going to have a link to her reporting and all the reporting from last night’s results in today’s podcast, Show Notes. Thank you, Katy.
Katy McAfee [00:06:44] Thanks so much, Jerry.
Jerry Quijano [00:06:45] And in that Texas Senate race we were speaking about earlier, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton took down longtime incumbent Senator John Cornyn to become the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate. Cornynn gave his concession speech not long after polls closed last night. The four-term incumbent ignored mentioning his opponent directly, but the Texas newsroom’s Blaise Gainey says he did mention his overall support for his party.
Blaise Gainey [00:07:10] Cornyn has been Texas senator since 2002, before that he was Texas attorney general. Tuesday his political career came to an end early in the night, as polls opened with him trailing attorney general Ken Paxton by a sizable amount. The two were in an intense battle where Cornynn had said Paxton winning the race would be bad for the Republican party, but in his concession speech he said he will support any Texas Republican in November. I’ve always supported the Republican ticket, and I intend to do so.
John Cornyn [00:07:40] Again in this general election.
Blaise Gainey [00:07:42] Paxton will now advance to the general election where he will face Democrat James Tallarico.
Jerry Quijano [00:07:47] And Texas Capitol reporter Blais Ganey points out Paxton got a head start going after Austin State Rep James Tellerico.
Blaise Gainey [00:07:53] Before the endorsement from President Trump came in last week, Paxton had already been launching attacks toward his Democratic opponent, Texas State Representative James Tallarico. While polls show the race will be close, Paxton says he believes Texans won’t let him down.
Ken Paxton [00:08:08] Texas will be the radical left’s number one priority. But if there’s one thing I know about Texans, it’s that we’re not going to let them take it.
Jerry Quijano [00:08:16] Talarico calls Paxton, quote, the most corrupt politician in America, end quote, and wasted no time responding.
Blaise Gainey [00:08:23] Minutes after the winner was cleared, Taylorico’s campaign sent an email out featuring a new campaign video where he highlights Paxton’s impeachment.
James Talarico [00:08:31] Three years ago, Ken Paxton was impeached by his own party for using his public office to enrich himself and his donors at the expense of the people.
Blaise Gainey [00:08:43] Paxton also quickly came out with his own bar, calling Taylorico the most well-funded radical democrat in America. Polling for this potential matchup had Taylorico ahead by one point, something that if true would make history as no democrat has won a statewide race in three decades.
Jerry Quijano [00:08:59] That was the Texas newsroom’s Blaise Gainey reporting. After a shooting spree earlier this month by three teenagers ended in Maynard, Austin police say they could have caught the suspects sooner if they had license plate readers. Now Austin’s Mayor Kirk Watson wants proposals to bring this type of technology back to Austin. Host Jennifer Staton spoke with KUT’s government accountability reporter Andrew Webber about these cameras.
Jennifer Stayton [00:09:32] Andrew, so first of all, what exactly are we talking about when we say license plate readers? What are those?
Andrew Weber [00:09:39] It’s just a camera, like put simply, it’s just a camera that’s stationed various points throughout any given city. And their job is just to read license plates. And if a license plate pops up that is, you know, flagged for a stolen vehicle or some other sort of crime, then it notifies police and they can sort of track that vehicle down.
Jennifer Stayton [00:10:01] So the city of Austin used to use them, but then stopped. Why did they stop using them to begin with?
Andrew Weber [00:10:08] They stopped using them after some concerns about privacy. The sort of industry leader is a company called Flock Safety and they’ve been involved in some situations in which there has been either a data breach or there have been cases in which people have been wrongfully accused of a crime and then flagged on this sort of, they call it a hot list, pulled over, arrested, and turns out that they were innocent of a cry. So there were concerns around that and folks sort of pushed the city too. Just swear off them completely and that’s sort of coming back into the conversation.
Jennifer Stayton [00:10:44] So these flock cameras, there are still some in Austin, though it wasn’t just the city that was using flock cameras. Where else are they? Who else was using it?
Andrew Weber [00:10:53] Yeah, they’re all over the place.
Jennifer Stayton [00:10:55] All over the place. I mean, that’s so weird. That’s so like.
Andrew Weber [00:10:59] Private entities are allowed to have these. So a good example is on my bus ride into work today, there’s a half bar’s books coming to South First Street. They have a flock camera on that site for whatever reasons, security reasons I would imagine. But DPS has a bunch of these around town on state owned roads. And police departments like Sunset Valley and Pflugerville also have them as well.
Jennifer Stayton [00:11:23] So why do Austin police say they could have used these in the recent shooting spree by those three teenagers?
Andrew Weber [00:11:30] It’s an interesting sort of use case, if I can use a jargony term, because this was, you know, these were crimes that allegedly happened all over the city at different parts of the day, different parts of town, so they argue, you now, if we had one of these cameras that’s fixed at, you know whatever intersection, they could have maybe flagged that car and at least had a sense of where these suspects were going.
Jennifer Stayton [00:11:55] Interesting. In that case, though, there actually are multiple vehicles. Yes. Yeah. But I guess if at multiple points.
Andrew Weber [00:12:01] Yeah, I think their argument was that there were so many witnesses to a lot of these alleged crimes that they flagged a certain kind of vehicle that they would be able to find it.
Jennifer Stayton [00:12:09] So what have we heard from the Austin City Council about this request from Mayor Watson?
Andrew Weber [00:12:15] I talked to two council members who have sort of pushed back against the use of these, Chito Vela and Mike Siegel, and they both said, you know, in light of the shooting, they would be open to the discussion. And sort of in the foreground of all of this is the city’s regulations on any sort of surveillance tech. They passed a resolution called the Trust Act in February that would basically rethink how the city does these sort of agreements between APD and these sort of security tech companies.
Jennifer Stayton [00:12:50] Andrew, have other people been weighing in on this besides Austin City Council members?
Andrew Weber [00:12:54] I haven’t seen any yet because it’s kind of early days. You know, they’re open to sort of looking, re-examining how they would function in the city with regulations, but there hasn’t really been anything put on the table yet. So, you know, folks like Electronic Frontier Foundation were very, very vocal against these. They haven’t put out a statement or anything like that.
Jennifer Stayton [00:13:15] So what is the next step with this then and the City of Austin and the city council?
Andrew Weber [00:13:19] It’s kind of amorphous right now. The city staff can sort of put together a plan to say, okay, this is how we can do it with safeguards. And we can map out these sort of exigent circumstances in which we would need to use these as a city. That hasn’t happened yet, so it’s kind of a waiting game.
Jennifer Stayton [00:13:39] We’ve been speaking with KUT’s government and accountability reporter, Andrew Weber. Andrew, thanks so much for talking with us on Austin Signal.
Jerry Quijano [00:13:46] Yes, ma’am. Thank you, Jen. And thank you for making KUT part of your day. This is Austin Signal. We’ll be back after a break. Howdy podcast listeners, we can’t include our segment this week in Texas Music History in this podcast because of music streaming rights, but if you want to keep up with Texas Music History, and we know you do, not to worry, just head on over to KUTX.org. The Kathy Dunhamrick Dance Company got its start in Austin back in 1999, named after the woman who spearheaded the routines and company direction for more than two decades. But in 2023, Cathy was diagnosed with stage four cancer and handed over her studio to Alison Dolan. Cathy Dunhamrick passed away in February. And the story of how the KDH dance company grows and learns from loss was covered by Robert Farris, a reporter for KUT’s Artbeat. He’s joining us now in the studio. Robert, thanks for being here. It’s a pleasure. So tell us a little bit about Cathy Dun Hamrick. First off, as a dancer, who was she?
Robert Faires [00:14:56] She was a modern dance choreographer and I know that is a term that can sometimes put people off. You put modern in front of anything having to do with art and people think it’s cold and distant and abstract. Her dances always impressed me with a level of humanity and a sense of connection between the dancers. I remember going to see her dance work and watching the dancers make eye contact, watch each other dance and smile. And that’s just not something you see in a lot of modern dance choreography. So in that sense, she was kind of a pioneer in developing relationships among dancers in the work and doing something that was abstract but also human and funny. There are a lot of great modern dance choreographers in Austin. She had a company. That remained consistent through the years. A lot of dancers who worked together over the course of many years, and that showed the level of ensemble among the company members was truly exciting to watch, and they just sort of moved together almost like one entity.
Jerry Quijano [00:16:13] You’ve been covering arts here in Austin for a long time. Is it normal for a dance company to last more than two decades and to continue to push the envelope? You know, it’s kind of f—
Robert Faires [00:16:24] You have the companies that last three or four seasons and then the companies disperse and a lot of times it’s because somebody wants to move to another city. And then you have companies like Cathy’s or Andrea Ariel’s that last two decades, three decades. Some of them are still going on. And I think it was really exciting that Cathy was one of the ones that had that. Longevity because she offered something really special to Austin.
Jerry Quijano [00:16:58] And the Cathy Dunhamrick dance company is still going forward now under the direction of Alison Dolan. You got to speak with her for this story. How did her journey get started with the KDH Dance Company?
Robert Faires [00:17:10] You know, she was in Florida originally, and she and her husband, who was a composer, were looking to relocate. And they had a friend in Austin and said, well, let’s go check it out. And she saw that Kathy was holding auditions for a male dancer. And Allison is not male, but she called Kathy anyway, and they met for coffee. And they just had this wonderful connection. And they had both. Gone to Florida State University, they both studied under the same mentor. They had the same sort of philosophy of choreography and they had the bedrock commitment to making a life in dance and Kathy knew right away that she wanted Allison in the company and if she ever gave up the company, she wanted to give it to Allison.
Jerry Quijano [00:18:02] And she took the company over in 2023, and Kathy was still providing notes, providing a little bit of motivation in your story you talk about, pointing out things that maybe you don’t notice whenever you’re in the thick of it, but how helpful it is to have a friend who can continue to point out the things that are working for you. Kathy passed away earlier this year. I’m sure there are lots of emotions going at the company in this time. What did you find in your reporting that really stuck out to you?
Robert Faires [00:18:36] Well, everybody took their direction from Cathy in a way that not a lot of companies do. Alison told me at one point, Cathy loved being the boss. She loved being a person. She didn’t always tell the dancers what to dance or how to move, but she was the star. She was the the person from whom all of the dancers took their sense of direction this is the first time she hasn’t been there and Because Cathy so desperately wanted Alison to make the company her own. Alison has felt and the other dancers have felt, let’s not just try to copy a dance that Cathy would have made. Let’s try to do something that comes out of us and how we work together as a company now. And they obviously miss her a great deal, but I watched a rehearsal and I got to see them. Putting their own spin on things that made it feel like a Cathy Dunhamrick dance and like something new and original. Well, tell us about this new performance. It starts on Friday, correct? Yes. It starts Friday. It will be somewhat like other dances, but the rehearsal I watched, they had just Introduced a bunch of small cord cardboard boxes, just like the kind that, you know, a delivery service will leave on your porch, and four of the dancers had boxes, and they were simply using them in different ways. They were kind of props, but they would swing them in the air, they would use them as drums and bang on them like percussion, they’d fall on them, they could hold them up in the here. It’s hard to say exactly how that deals with love or loss or constellations, but it was something fun and original to watch.
Jerry Quijano [00:20:56] All right, well, you can take a little sneak peek over at KUT.org. That’s where you can find the story from Robert Ferris. We’ve been speaking with him about the Kathy Dunhamrick Dance Company and their upcoming performance for KUT’s Artbeat. Robert, thank you for your time. Oh, it’s been a pleasure. Thank you. And thank you, for spending the day here with Austin Signal. That is it for today’s show. There’s more in the podcast show notes, and always at kut.org slash signal. Rayna Sevilla is our technical director, Alexandra Hart is our producer, and Kristen Cabrera is our managing producer. I’m your host, Jerry Quijano, Austin Signal, we’ll be back tomorrow at the same time. We’ll talk to you then. Have a lovely day.
This transcript was transcribed by AI, and lightly edited by a human. Accuracy may vary. This text may be revised in the future.
