On campaign stop, Abbott vows ‘to make the RGV red’
Visits by governor, O’rourke underscore Valley’s pivotal political role
Gov. Greg Abbott was back campaigning in the Rio Grande Valley this week just miles from where Democrat Beto O’rourke rallied his supporters two weeks earlier.
The back and forth between Abbott and O’rourke in the Rio Grande Valley shows how pivotal both campaigns see the region for the 2022 elections.
At the start of his 20-minute speech at a restaurant Tuesday in Edinburg, Abbott focused on what he’s done to boost education and improve health care in the Rio Grande Valley — two issues O’rourke had drilled on during his own visit to the region.
“There has been no governor in Texas history who has come to the RGV more than I have,” Abbott told a crowd of more than 250 people at at University Draft House. “More important than just coming to the RGV is what we do to support the RGV.”
He talked about the pay raises he approved for teachers, road improvements in the area and the creation of the first Level 1 trauma center in the Rio Grande Valley.
Two weeks earlier, O’rourke criticized Abbott for not being supportive enough of teachers in the region during the pandemic and taking away the ability of health officials to impose restrictions to fight COVID-19. In Hidalgo County, where Abbott spoke on Tuesday, O’rourke noted that few places were hit harder by COVID deaths.
Hidalgo County has had more than 3,100 COVID deaths according to state health records — the fifth-highest total in a Texas county despite having a population under 900,000 people.
While O’rourke triggered record turnout through most of the state in 2018 during his U.S. Senate campaign, he struggled to replicate that in the Valley.
Abbott meanwhile lost all of the counties along the Rio Grande in 2018 but sees hope there after President Donald Trump did better in many of those counties than Republicans have historically done.
“We’re going to make the RGV red,” Abbott said to a loud round of applause at University Draft House in Edinburg.
But before Abbott, 64, can take on O’rourke, he first faces the most competitive GOP primary of his career. Former Florida Congressman Allen West and for
mer state Sen. Don Huffines have both declared they are running against Abbott in a March 1 primary.
Abbott didn't mention either of those Republicans during his speech on Tuesday. Instead he focused on O'rourke, calling the former congressman from El Paso a socialist and attacking his positions on gun control and the border.
O'rourke, 49, points to his own experience creating a small business in El Paso as proof that he understands what entrepreneurs contend with, and has called on Texans to look beyond “the divisiveness, the extremism, and the real small politics and policies of Greg Abbott.”
At one point Tuesday, Abbott elicited applause for calling O'rourke by his full name “Robert Francis O'rourke,” a tactic U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz used in 2018 to make sure voters along the Rio Grande Valley didn't mistake O'rourke for a Hispanic because of his nickname.