Forcing government’s will on business
What’s conservative about Abbott’s mandate against vaccine mandates? It’s still a mandate.
So what’s a good number? About 75,000? How about 85,000? Maybe 100,000?
How many deaths from COVID-19 will it take, we’re wondering, before Gov. Greg Abbott shifts attention from his political ambitions to the health and well-being of his fellow Texans? We’re closing in on 70,000 deaths, about the equivalent of the population of Missouri City, the population of Spring. As we head into winter, that number is sure to keep climbing, particularly if Abbott The Craven continues to kowtow to the anti-vaxxers who rule Republican primary voting.
Despite the dire death numbers, the governor issued an executive order last week banning COVID-19 vaccine mandates by any “entity in Texas,” including private businesses, hospitals, schools, nursing homes and any other place where people gather in sizable numbers. Abbott said violators will face a fine up to $1,000, which will remain in effect until the Legislature passes a law that formalizes it.
The governor’s order conflicts with a soon-to-be-enacted federal regulation that will require businesses with 100 or more employees to ensure they’re either vaccinated or tested weekly. Butting up against President Joe Biden is precisely the point.
“In yet another instance of federal overreach, the Biden administration is now bullying many private entities into imposing COVID-19 vaccine mandates,” Abbott wrote in the order.
Abbott’s anti-mandate mandate also conflicts with the classic conservative tradition in this state and elsewhere of the primacy of local control. Since Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Attorney General Ken Paxton have ruled the Capitol roost, such rank hypocrisy is par for the course. Still, it’s one thing when the governor ignores local control over the use of plastic bags, cutting down trees or restricting fracking within the city limits; it’s another when thousands of lives are at stake in a global pandemic.
“This prohibition against vaccine mandates is like as if the governor were telling me that I can’t issue an order to evacuate the coastal areas when a hurricane is barreling toward us,” Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo said at a news conference. (Abbott probably wouldn’t hesitate to do even that if he saw some sort of political advantage.)
What’s infuriating during these difficult times is that the governor’s swerve to the hard right on a number of issues during a legislative session seemingly without end is pure (or, rather, impure) politics. Personally and politically over the years, Abbott has been relatively moderate — compared, that is, to the ideologues who have taken over the GOP — but now that two extremist challengers to his political future have cropped up, the governor has veered to the fence-line verge of the political highway.
What’s the man afraid of ? He has millions in his campaign war chest, and his GOP opponents, Don Huffines and Allen West, are right-wing lightweights.
Huffines is a former state senator from Dallas who was obscure even before he lost a bid for reelection in 2018 to a Democrat, Nathan Johnson, by 8 percentage points in a district Donald Trump won by 4. A man who curried disfavor with both Democrats and his fellow Republicans in the Legislature, Huffines calls himself “the only real Trump candidate in this race,” even though the former president bestowed his “Complete and Total Endorsement for re-election” on Abbott.
“Greg Abbott is a political windsock and today proves it,” Huffines tweeted after the governor issued his vaccine order. “He knows conservative Republican voters are tired of the vaccine mandates and tired of him being a failed leader.”
West, who served one disputatious term as a Florida congressman before moving to Texas, is known mainly for outrageous outbursts. He announced for governor after briefly serving as chair of the Texas Republican Party, hoping the position would serve as a trampoline for his political aspirations. Currently out of the hospital after recovering from a recent bout with COVID, he’s a loud and proud antivaxxer who insisted that his treatment include doses of ivermectin, the horse de-wormer.
Maybe the governor knows something we don’t know about his political weaknesses, but it’s hard to see either of these characters as an Abbott-tamer.
What’s glaringly obvious, though, is that Abbott, under the apparent influence of his challengers, is a danger to the people of Texas. Dr. Peter Hotez, co-director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children’s Hospital, explained the consequences of their intransigence. “We’re still at a high level of transmission in the nation, and in Texas only one-half of the population is vaccinated,” he tweeted last week. “We need all tools possible, including vaccine mandates, to close the gap and halt COVID-19 transmission.”
Scott Gottlieb, the former Food and Drug Administration commissioner in the Trump administration, told CNBC last week he disagreed with Abbott’s order and worried about the broader consequences.
“I think we're going to see this fight over vaccines bleed into other realms,” he said, “vaccinations for children, vaccinations for flu, and we're going to see vaccination rates decline across the country now that this is something that people think defines their political virtue.”
Hotez worries about more immediate consequences. “We’re probably looking at 80,000 deaths by the end of the year,” he told
MSNBC. “This is the single greatest tragedy that’s ever befallen the state of Texas, most likely.”
The single greatest tragedy. That’s Abbott’s legacy as governor, in large measure because he’s desperate to be reelected, not because he’s desperate to lead his fellow Texans through the valley of the shadow of COVID death.
It could be, of course, that Abbott — who is vaccinated, by the way — is a mere clanging symbol, nothing more. Once the federal regulation takes effect, Texas’ larger employers have to require vaccines, creating a conflict with Abbott’s order, and any subsequent legislation, that most legal scholars suggest will be preempted under the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution.
A large number of Texas-based companies, including Southwest Airlines, AT&T and Houston-based Hewlett Packard Enterprise, already have employer vaccine mandates in place. Recognizing that they have proven effective in other countries — and in states not in thrall to recalcitrant Republican governors — companies are likely to keep them.
“The governor’s executive order does not support Texas businesses’ ability and duty to create a safe workplace,” Bob Harvey, president of the Greater Houston Partnership, said in a written statement. “While the courts will likely decide the validity of this order, we encourage all employers to continue to promote the importance of vaccinations with their employees. Vaccinations are our path out of the pandemic, and the Partnership remains focused on supporting steps that lead to improving the rate of vaccination in our community.”
Many Texas companies are likely to agree with Harvey and with Amber Gunst, chief executive of the Austin Technology Council. She told the Washington Post that Abbott’s mandate “simply is a nuisance to have to deal with at this point.”
We’re trying to fight our way out of a pandemic that for nearly two years has hobbled our economy, disrupted our daily lives and killed more than 700,000 of our fellow Americans. The last thing we need, Gov. Abbott, is a nuisance. Back off.