Voting data offer clues on Abbott’s mask order
Fight over mandates, vaccine is purity test in Trump’s GOP
When Texas had its first big surge of COVID hospitalizations, Gov. Greg Abbott responded by shutting down bars and mandating masks.
As the second surge hit, Abbott put in place an automatic trigger to restrict the operating capacities of businesses and halt non-emergency surgeries to free up hospital beds in areas with high hospitalizations.
But now as the state hits a third surge, Abbott — who faces re-election early next year — is doing none of that. Instead, he is suggesting that people wear masks when appropriate and get vaccinated, but only if they want, and vowing not to enact any more mandates.
“There’s no more time for government mandates,” Abbott declared last month in an interview with KPRC in Houston. “This is time for individual responsibility.”
While that has confounded health officials and many big-city leaders as hospitals fill up with patients with COVID-19, the election results for 2020 offer a glimpse into why Abbott, who tested positive for the virus this week, isn’t about to change course.
A Hearst Newspapers analysis shows a strong
correlation between the counties with the lowest vaccination rates for COVID-19 and counties that voted heavily for former president Donald Trump, whose supporters Abbott will need to win his primary next spring.
Trump won 80 percent or more of the vote in each of the 10 Texas counties with the lowest vaccination rates.
No county demonstrates that vaccine hesitancy better than King County (population 300) near the Texas Panhandle. President Joe Biden won just 5 percent of the vote in a county that only had 17 percent of people 12 and older vaccinated — the worst in the state, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services.
On the flip side, the counties with the highest vaccination rates in Texas almost all went overwhelmingly for Biden, led by Presidio County on the border in West Texas. Over 90 percent of the county’s 6,700 residents are fully vaccinated. Biden won 66 percent of the vote.
It all means Abbott — facing two GOP primary opponents who have been highly critical of his business shutdowns and mask orders early in the pandemic — has little political incentive to impose new restrictions with absentee voting starting as early as mid-January.
“These voters are done with mandates,” said state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Republican from Houston.
And the lack of mandates doesn’t mean people won’t get vaccinated or wear a mask, Bettencourt said, but Texas Republicans are tired of being told how to protect themselves.
“Whatever the next mandate is, the answer is already no,” he said.
‘It ain’t working’
Instead of requiring masks or shutting down businesses, Abbott has asked hospitals to consider postponing non-vital surgeries to free up beds for COVID patients and ordered the Texas Division of Emergency Management to open anti-body infusion centers that can treat patients with the coronavirus to keep them out of the hospital.
He’s also taken steps to bring in an expected 5,500 medical personnel from other states to support strapped Texas hospitals.
“The state of Texas is taking action to combat the recent rise in COVID-19 cases and ensure that our hospitals and communities have the resources and support they need to mitigate the virus,” Abbott said.
But Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo has been pleading with Abbott and state leaders to give local governments the authority to put in mandates that tamped down the last two big surges.
“Personal responsibility is great, but as a disaster response strategy, it ain’t working,” Hidalgo said last week as COVID numbers climbed to a seven-month high. This is Houston’s fourth wave.
As for his own COVID infection, Abbott put out a video update on his condition Thursday in which he didn’t appear to have any symptoms. He said he continues to quarantine and his wife, Cecilia, continues to test negative.
But Abbott’s messaging hasn’t changed: new mandates are nonnegotiable.
“Going forward, in Texas, there will not be any government-imposed shutdowns or mask mandates,” Abbott said earlier this month in Dallas. “Everyone already knows what to do.”
Abbott’s stand has eroded one of his key political liabilities heading into 2022, which could be his first serious primary challenge since he first rose to statewide office in 1995 as a Texas Supreme Court justice.
Abbott has not been seriously challenged in a primary in his two previous campaigns for governor and never faced a primary opponent in three elections for attorney g eneral, the office he held before becoming governor.
His opponents, former Republican Party of Texas chairman Allen West and former state Sen.
Don Huffines have both tried to appeal to GOP voters by targeting Abbott for his earlier mask restrictions and vowing to oppose other mandates — the very message Abbott has sent since March.
“Abbott’s mask stance has sucked the oxygen out of the room for those guys,” Bettencourt said.
Still, the challengers aren’t giving up on it.
“If you don’t want to wear a mask you shouldn’t have to wear a mask,” West, a Republican from Garland, told supporters in a video conference on Wednesday. “We’re supposed to be governed, not ruled over by edicts, mandates, orders and decrees.”
Huffines, another primary opponent, continues to highlight mask requirements too, blaming Abbott for not doing more to stop school districts that are defying Abbott’s orders by requiring students to wear masks.
“While Greg Abbott brags about banning mask mandates in Texas, the largest and most populous counties in the state are imposing them on citizens,” Huffines said.
Internal polling by the Abbott campaign shows he has been watching his numbers closely — particularly those related to COVID and the border.
O’Rourke’s eyes on seat?
Public polling shows 85 percent of Texas Republican voters approve of how Abbott has handled the state’s response to the virus, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released in late June. That poll also showed that while 51 percent of all Texans believe schools should be able to require masks, just 21 percent of Republicans agree. And there is a huge divide based on where people live. Almost 60 percent of respondents in cities supported schools requiring masks; in rural Texas, it’s under 40 percent.
Bettencourt acknowledged Abbott may be opening himself up to attacks in the general election, but the matter at hand right now is the primary.
Former El Paso Congressman Beto O’Rourke hasn’t announced if he’s running for governor, but the Democrat has been on national television questioning Abbott’s leadership and blasted him on social media for not doing more to protect Texans.
“Gov. Abbott, it is long past time to act to protect the lives of Texans, especially children,” O’Rourke said earlier this week , echoing President Joe Biden’s recent criticism of Abbott. “Lead, or get out of the way of the county judges, mayors and school boards who are willing to do the right thing.”
But a political reality remains in Texas: Democrats haven’t won a governor’s race in more than 30 years. The bigger concern among incumbent Republicans in Texas remains primary challengers, not Democrats.
Which is just the sort of politics that frustrates state Sen. Carol Alvarado, D-Houston. Standing in Houston’s East End, she said Abbott made a lot of good decisions last year, but now seems bent on stopping communities like hers from taking steps to stop the spread of the disease.
Alvarado said it almost sounds like Abbott is trying to keep up with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in some battle over who can do the least at a time when the public needs them to step up. Like Abbott, DeSantis is battling local school districts that are trying to impose mask mandates over his objections.
“Now he’s in this competition with DeSantis and it’s almost like ‘who can be the most hands-off,’” Alvarado said. “I think he needs to go back to being responsive as he was back then.”