Abbott owes apology to local Republican — and Houston voters
At first, it was just odd that Texas’ highest elected official, Gov. Greg Abbott, would take time out of his busy schedule to meddle so personally in a lowly state House race.
It was odd that he was backing the opponent of a popular veteran lawmaker in his own party, Republican state Rep. Sarah Davis. It was odd that, in doing so, Abbott was making his own party vulnerable to defeat in the highly educated West University Place district where moderates like Davis abound. But now, Abbott’s behavior is beyond odd. It’s flat-out shady, petty and deceitful. Dare I say it? Flat-out Trumpian.
At a recent fundraiser for Davis’ opponent, Abbott reportedly told the crowd that Davis nearly thwarted Texas’ response to Hurricane Harvey.
“Just a month before Hurricane Harvey hit Houston, Texas, she engineered an effort to convince the Texas House of Representatives to cut ($70 million) of the Texas Disaster Relief Fund,” Abbott was quoted as saying by the Texas Tribune. “Now, fortunately, the Senate was wise enough not to go along with her. But, imagine where we would have been had … Sarah Davis’ wisdom had prevailed.”
Any mention of Harvey in these parts gets people’s blood pumping. It was a painful, disastrous event. Abbott’s contention would be a powerful blow to Davis’ campaign but for one thing.
There’s not a shred of truth to it.
In fact, there’s photographic proof that Davis did the opposite of what Abbott claimed she did.
Abbott appears to be talking about House Bill 25 in the special session, in which Davis tried to restore funding cut in a previous session for disabled children’s therapy services. Lawmakers widely acknowledged that the cut, based on a flawed study, was a mistake and was hurting vulnerable families.
Davis’ bill would have tapped
the so-called Rainy Day Fund to pay for the restoration in funding.
But use of the multibilliondollar savings fund is controversial among conservatives, many of whom believe it should be tapped only for one-time emergency expenses. So, another lawmaker, state Rep. Matt Krause, R-Fort Worth, a member of the conservative Freedom Caucus, pushed an amendment that would have taken the money from the governor’s disaster relief fund instead.
Davis did not support the amendment. In fact, an archived video of floor debate shows she actively argued against it.
She thanked Krause for his passionate support of the children affected by the Legislature’s mistake but told lawmakers she didn’t think it was a good idea to renege on previous funding agreements with the Senate and the governor.
And she didn’t feel comfortable depleting the governor’s disaster relief fund, which can be used immediately in an emergency, as opposed to the slower process of tapping the Rainy Day Fund, which requires legislative approval.
“Having felt natural disasters in my own district,” she told members, “I’m also not comfortable reducing (the governor’s) fund … and I think it’s a little unrealistic to think that a natural disaster could hit and then we would all magically be able to get to the floor and vote to withdraw money out of the Rainy Day Fund. The governor can act immediately. So, I move to table.”
‘The record is so clear’
Tabling a motion sets it aside. She lost the vote. The House voted 53-73 to keep the amendment that took the governor’s disaster money. Applause rang out in the chamber.
The House then passed the bill on second reading unanimously, 138-0, but not before Davis reiterated her concern.
“I think that we’re going to end up doing the right thing,” she told her colleagues. “I know I disagree with some of you on the method of finance but at the end of the day, we all want to make sure that these therapy rates are restored.”
The next day, on third reading, Davis tried again, unsuccessfully, to alter the funding mechanism. The bill died on the Senate side.
Now, Abbott’s insinuation that Davis tried to deplete emergency funds is one thing. But the motivations he assigned to her make his untruths even worse.
According to the Tribune, he told the fundraiser crowd that HB 25 was an example of how Davis “completely disregards her very own constituents and puts her own, personal petty politics ahead of the greater good for the people of the state of Texas.”
Since when is it petty to try and restore funding for disabled children?
If someone is being petty here, it’s Abbott. The governor, who is many things but usually somewhat dignified in his delivery and strategy, appears to have sacrificed honesty for political gain.
“It doesn’t make sense to me,” Davis told me Tuesday. “The record is so clear. I did everything I could to make sure the money did not come from the governor’s disaster relief fund. To say things that are so patently false, he’s just losing his focus to the point that truth is not even going to be a stumbling block.”
Another fellow Republican, County Judge Ed Emmett, also a moderate who has clashed with Abbott in the past, came to Davis’ defense. He called Abbott’s attack on Davis “almost laughable” and “factually wrong,” in an interview with Quorum Report.
“Is this similar to when he called out the state guard on Jade Helm?” Emmett was quoted saying, referencing Abbott’s controversial decision to ask state military to monitor a federal military training exercise that had raised suspicions of farright conspiracy theorists. “Is it similar to when he called for all of us to evacuate Harris County and caused all kinds of trouble?”
‘Bad judgment’
Davis says she doesn’t know exactly what she did to raise the governor’s ire. Maybe it was the fact that she didn’t support all his priorities during the special session, including the bathroom bill and anti-abortion items. Maybe it was the fact that she pushed for ethics reform to be added to the agenda, for which Abbott accused Davis of “showboating.”
Or, maybe it’s not a single issue. Maybe it’s the fact that she dares defy at all, dares on occasion not to walk lock-step with the priorities of top Republican officials, moving ever farther to the right.
“If we just keep limiting and narrowing the definition of what it means to be a Republican, we’re going to alienate so many people and we’re going to lose power,” Davis says.
Her district, she says, includes business-type Republicans, not people motivated by social issues.
In a Republican purity contest, she will sometimes fail because her voters understand that issues are complex, require rational thought and compromise to solve — not mere obedience.
Abbott’s spokesman responded Tuesday by trying to deflect attention from Abbott’s disaster relief accusation and toward other reasons the governor doesn’t support Davis, including her positions on an earlier ethics reform bill and property tax reduction.
“If her vote to cut disaster relief was the only issue, then the governor would have written it off as bad judgment and wouldn’t endorse against her,” the spokesman, John Wittman, wrote in an email.
Good try. But the facts speak for themselves. The only “bad judgment” here is the governor’s.
He is punishing Davis for disobedience as if she were an underling in a dictatorship rather than an independently elected official in a democracy.
Abbott owes an apology not just to Davis, but to the thousands of people across the Gulf Coast for whom Harvey was a devastating, life-altering event. For many, it was a tragedy, the stuff of nightmares — not the stuff of private fundraisers aimed at settling petty political scores.