Abbott details his burn injuries
Governor offers answers while stumping for House candidate
Gov. Greg Abbott revealed Saturday that he suffered the severe burns that sidelined him from the Republican National Convention in July when he was taking a shower while vacationing in Jackson Hole, Wyo.
“I was in a shower with scalding water on my feet,” he said. “Because of my paralysis I couldn’t feel the burns that were taking place. And as a consequence, it was like having my feet in scalding water for several minutes.”
The hot water left Abbott’s feet covered with third-degree burns.
“I got tremendous treatment from the skilled experts at Brooke Army Medical Center,” he said. “They had to do grafting on both of my feet, and it has healed miraculously.”
Abbott, whose lower body has been paralyzed since a tree hit him while he was jogging at age 26, shared the experience during a question-and-answer period with media at a campaign event for U.S. Rep. Will Hurd, R-Helotes.
Hurd’s race against former Congressman Pete Gallego is considered the only competitive U.S. House district race in Texas. About 70 volunteers were gathered at Hurd’s San Antonio office to launch an afternoon of block walking.
The district stretches from San Antonio west to El Paso and south to Eagle Pass. While predominantly Hispanic and Democratleaning, it has Republican
strongholds in northwest Bexar County, as well as Medina and Val Verde counties. The district has flipped from Democrat to Republican and back five times in the past decade. Midterm races tend to favor Republican candi- dates, but when there’s a presidential election, the Democrats turn out.
“It’s been a toss-up basically the whole cycle, ever since Gallego decided he wanted to run again,” said Kyle Kondik of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. “I think as an incumbent, Hurd has generally done the right thing. It’s just that sometimes when you’re a House member, particularly a freshman House member, you can do a lot of the right things and still end up losing. ... It’s sort of the national political environment against you.”
So while Hurd has ad- vanced bills on federal information technology procurement and leveraged his background as an undercover CIA agent to become outspoken on improving cybersecurity, Kondik saw his fortunes largely tied to the race between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
Republican donors have heavily invested in the race, giving Hurd an approximately 2-to-1 fundraising advantage to Gallego. But Gallego, a longtime Texas legislator from Alpine, has his own heavy-hitting Democrat support behind him.
Friday evening, Gallego took the stage with Housing Secretary Julián Castro and U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio. The Castro twins urged the crowd to vote not only for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, but also for Gallego.