The Dan Patrick Show: How to build an audience — and political power

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Six weeks ago, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick paid a surprise visit to an Austin storefront that sold a winning $83.5 million lottery ticket through a courier service. Video team in tow, Patrick lobbed questions at the manager about the courier sale, a practice Patrick says could unfairly tilt the lottery.

A month later, Patrick visited three cannabis dispensaries in Austin, again armed with questions and accompanied by an aide to film the encounters.

The product of the lottery and cannabis visits was a pair of amateur investigative-style videos, each featuring the Republican lieutenant governor dropping in on retailers from industries he wants to ban or regulate, overlaid with Patrick’s commentary promoting his case. Barring couriers and cracking down on Texas’ exploding hemp industry are among Patrick’s top priorities this session, each issue brought to the fore almost single-handedly by the lieutenant governor.

For Patrick, the videos are a callback to his roots covering sports and weather for television stations in Scranton, Pennsylvania; Washington, D.C.; and Houston in the 1970s and 1980s.

Recently, there have been many questions raised about the integrity of the Texas Lottery. Last night, an $83 million winning ticket was sold in Austin. Turns out, the retail establishment that sold the winning ticket in the front of the store was owned by the courier service that… pic.twitter.com/i4MyR2wQXd

— Office of the Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick (@LtGovTX) February 19, 2025

Such maneuvers, Patrick said in an interview with The Texas Tribune, are not “theatrics for theatrics’ sake.”

“It’s not theatrics to say, ‘look at me,’” he said. “It’s theatrics to tell a story, so that people can connect with what we’re doing here and why we’re doing it.”

The average person on the street “is not paying attention to anything that we’re doing up here” at the Capitol, Patrick added, noting the distractions of work and kids and other competing interests. “Our job is to break through that.”

The videos are low-budget productions — recorded via a “poor man’s” phone camera setup, Patrick said — and unlikely to win any Emmys. Yet, they have yielded results, with the Texas Lottery Commission’s executive director moving to ban couriers days after Patrick’s video. And they capture Patrick’s unique communication style that fueled his rise to become the state’s most consequential legislative leader.

𝐈𝐂𝐘𝐌𝐈: Last month, I paid a surprise visit to a lottery store operated by a courier service owned by the sports betting company DraftKings. Within a week, the Texas Lottery Commission suddenly banned all courier services, and the Texas Rangers launched a broad-scope… pic.twitter.com/VyxsaQaYIi

— Dan Patrick (@DanPatrick) March 19, 2025

For one, the novelty of a lieutenant governor starring in investigative videos underscores Patrick’s tendency to use attention-grabbing exploits that go outside the bounds of how most politicians connect with everyday Texans. The approach is modeled in some ways off his style as a flamboyant sportscaster for KHOU more than 40 years ago, when he donned a large cowboy hat and painted himself blue on broadcasts to show support for the Houston Oilers. More recently, as an elected official, he has piled $1 million on a table to protest state spending and brandished handfuls of $100 bills in a TV interview to pitch his property tax-cut plan.

Also on display in the videos is Patrick’s comfort selling his agenda through confrontation — whether through clashes with House speakers or, in this case, questioning the legitimacy of state lottery practices, on camera, while talking to an attorney for the storefront that sold the winning jackpot ticket.

Patrick has long seemed to revel in the bloodsport nature of politics, dating back to his time as a conservative radio host on KSEV-700 AM, the Houston-area station Patrick bought in 1988. On his talk show, Patrick would rail against establishment politicians on either side of the aisle who were not pursuing his uncompromising brand of fiscal austerity and an approach to social issues centered on Christian values.

Patrick revived the flagging radio station in part through his fortuitous decision to give airtime to a then-little-known conservative commentator, Rush Limbaugh, whose skyrocketing popularity carried the station with it. Meanwhile, Patrick’s populist message attracted a devoted following that later helped him conquer crowded primary fields for the state Senate and lieutenant governor’s office.

Patrick has long credited his drive-time talk show and KSEV’s listeners with launching his political career. When Limbaugh died in 2021, Patrick issued a statement saying, “I owe everything I have to him. I wouldn’t be Lt. Governor today without his help in building an audience for my station and my own show.”

Although Patrick’s sometimes abrasive style plays well with the conservative base, it has not always translated to success at the Capitol, particularly souring his relations with House speakers. While Patrick has started on good terms with first-term Speaker Dustin Burrows, R-Lubbock, his relationship with Burrows’ predecessor, GOP Rep. Dade Phelan of Beaumont, devolved into a bitter feud that at times brought Republicans’ agenda to a standstill.

“Dan Patrick’s not happy being lieutenant governor,” Phelan said in 2023 amid a period of particularly intense strife. “He wants to be the speaker, too.”

Still, even Patrick’s critics grudgingly acknowledge he is an effective communicator — part of it coming from his ability to deftly transition from confrontation to presenting himself as the stolid voice of reason. In his lottery and THC videos, Patrick wraps up with direct-to-camera monologues delivered from his desk at the Capitol, laying out his case for banning lottery couriers and THC products.

Sherry Sylvester, a former aide who advised Patrick on communications and policy for years, said he is “probably one of the strongest voices of the conservative movement in the country” — and is also adept at connecting with people outside the conservative grassroots when he’s on the stump or speaking to interest groups.

“In traveling with him over the years … people would come up to me and say, you know, I didn't think I liked Dan Patrick, but I agreed with everything he said today,” Sylvester said. “Hundreds of people have said that to me.”

Patrick credited a big part of his communications style to a lesson from the news director at WTTG in Washington, where he covered sports in the late 1970s before moving to Texas for the KHOU gig. In Patrick’s retelling, the then-director told him to report as if “you just walked into a bar and someone said, ‘Who won the game tonight? What happened?’” Patrick recalls that director saying that he should be “talking to the people at the same level,” without just reciting scores and stats. The goal was to “make sports come alive.”

“That has served me so well my whole life, and in talk radio the same way,” Patrick said. “Just talk to people where they are, respect their level of intelligence and their curiosity. Those are the things, I guess, that frame how I communicate a little differently.”

Patrick’s critics say it’s not just the smooth messaging, but also his iron grip on the Senate that keeps senators in line — all but guaranteeing his priorities will make it at least halfway to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk.

Among those priorities this session is Senate Bill 3, which would ban products containing tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the psychoactive element in marijuana.

Patrick and Senate lawmakers are taking aim at the more than 8,000 licensed hemp retailers that they say have exploited a loophole in a 2019 state law authorizing the sale of consumable hemp, which Patrick says was only intended to boost agriculture by allowing non-consumable products.

While hemp products are not allowed to contain more than a 0.3% concentration of delta-9 THC — anything higher is classified as marijuana — Patrick and SB 3’s author, GOP Sen. Charles Perry of Lubbock, contend that the industry has endangered public health by putting products on the shelf with dangerously high levels of THC well beyond the 0.3% threshold.

That was the topic of Patrick’s questions when he visited a handful of cannabis retailers in Austin a couple weeks ago. The video put out by Patrick’s office shows the lieutenant governor questioning store employees, expressing dismay about the “powerful” amount of THC in some products and highlighting one store’s proximity to a high school across the street.

“They say you have to be 21 to get in the shops. Doesn’t mean they’re enforcing it,” Patrick, facing the camera, says after motioning toward the school. (Not featured in the video was security footage later released by the store showing that Patrick — who turns 75 Friday — was carded upon entering.)

Yet SB 3’s passage is far from guaranteed in the House, where industry leaders are hopeful about pushing for stricter oversight and licensing requirements instead of a full ban.

“His bully tactics and coercive strategy works in the Senate every time, but it’s having less of an influence in the people’s House,” said Heather Fazio, director of the Texas Cannabis Policy Center, arguing the lower chamber’s regulation approach was more in touch with what Texans want. “Hopefully that prevails this session and they stick to the people that elected them, rather than this top-down coercive strategy that is being really pushed on them by the other chamber.”

Patrick, for his part, recently said he would block must-pass legislation to force a special legislative session if lawmakers fail to ban THC. He also left open the possibility of returning to the field for more investigations — as long as the right opportunity presents itself, he said, cautioning, “you can’t milk a story too long.”

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