Abbott’s turn further right tightens race for 3rd term
Decades-long broad appeal fades as he shores up conservative support
Greg Abbott is seeking a record-tying third term as governor amid a rightward shift in Republican politics that had him overseeing one of the most conservative stretches in Texas political history.
While always a conservative’s conservative through three decades in Lone Star State politics, not even his past campaigns could foretell how he would transition from solid Republican to conservative culture warrior.
“I’m governing from my principles,” Abbott said during a debate in Edinburg last month when asked about his shift to the right.
In the last year, he’s signed a complete ban on abortions in Texas, even in cases of rape and incest.
He’s ordered Child Protective Services to investigate parents of transgender children for possible child abuse. And he twice called special sessions to mandate how teachers in Texas can talk about racism and slavery in the classroom.
It’s a far cry from his first run for governor in 2014 when he promised to free teachers from Austin mandates, talked about women having months to make a decision about abortion before the state would get involved, and touted his successes on bipartisan issues.
Abbott says he’s not the one who has changed, it’s the left: Liberals have intruded into all kinds of areas of public life, he says, forcing Republicans to respond. Nowhere is that more apparent than in public schools, he said.
“It’s completely different now,” he said. “It’s like everything has completely changed. There was no teaching or attempt to teach anything like critical race theory or some of these provocative progres
sive sexuality base issues in our schools.”
But political experts say there is no doubt Abbott has adapted to Donald Trump-style Republican politics.
Faced with the threat of hardright primary challengers in such a polarized environment, the governor clearly moved to shore up his flank, they say.
“He had to,” said Billy Monroe, a political science professor from Prairie View A&M University. “Politicians seem to be very afraid of losing — at least the smart ones are. When he felt the challenge coming in the primary, he had no choice but to go further right.”
While it may have been smart primary politics, it has created damage for Abbott among moderates and independents who see him differently than they did four years ago, according to public polls.
In 2018, Quinnipiac University polling showed Abbott with a whopping 62 percent favorability rating among all voters and 56 percent of independents. Recent Quinnipiac polling shows that has plunged to a 50 percent approval rating with all voters, 48 percent with independents.
Democrat Beto O’Rourke has been more than ready to use Abbott’s rightward shift as a central piece to his campaign, saying the Republican has become too extreme.
“Greg Abbott has spent the last eight years failing Texas as he continues to put his extreme agenda over the people of this state. Abbott is too radical for Texas,” said Chris Evans, O’Rourke’s campaign communications director.
While public polling shows Abbott in a strong position to win re-election, those same polls confirm Abbott likely will have the closest re-election of his 30year career in politics as he tries to win over the independent voters who helped O’Rourke nearly topple U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz in 2018.
Accordingly, Abbott’s final campaign message has been focused less on partisan wins and more on the good business climate and low unemployment numbers in Texas under his watch.
“Texas ranks No. 1 for the most new jobs created since you reelected me,” Abbott said during the only debate with O’Rourke, held last month. “We’re No. 1 for Blue Ribbon schools, No. 1 for Tier One research universities and No. 1 in so many different categories. I’m running for re-election to keep Texas No. 1.”
Riding a red wave
Abbott was practicing toneddown judicial politics in 1992 when he won his first election, an uncontested primary for judge of the 129th Judicial District in Harris County. It was a big year for Republicans in judicial races in Harris County, and he won easily in the general election.
The GOP won 19 of the 25 district judge races with President George H.W. Bush at the top of the ticket seeking re-election.
Just a few years later, thenGov. George W. Bush would appoint Abbott to the Texas Supreme Court, beginning a dominant 27-year run in statewide politics. Abbott has hardly broken a sweat in winning every race he’s ever entered, usually without GOP opposition.
That streak included a 2002 campaign for attorney general in which he sounded less like a partisan warrior and more like a judge who vowed a “strict enforcement of the law” as he faced then-Austin Mayor Kirk Watson. Abbott made clear he was against abortion and was conservative through and through. Once elected, he put public safety front and center, beefing up the agency’s law enforcement division and launching initiatives to go after fugitive sex offenders and fight cybercrime.
That’s not to say he veered away from battles that drew conservative praise. He would flex his conservative credentials as he fought successfully to keep the Ten Commandments displayed on the grounds of the state Capitol, backed measures barring same-sex marriage and defended the state’s contentious voter ID laws in court.
Still, during his first run for governor in 2014 as Abbott touted his tenure in the AG’s Office, there were few hints in his statewide debate against Democrat Wendy Davis that he’d be the governor he has been these last two years. During that debate, Abbott made sure to tout his work to improve the state’s child support collection system and his collaboration with Democrats on criminal justice reforms and open government laws.
“I’ve been very effective at working with members of both parties to pass legislation,” Abbott told a statewide television audience during the debate. “I’m going to be focused on issues that affect all Texas families.”
While Abbott was always antiabortion, and consistently jabbed at President Barack Obama’s administration, his campaign dominated with independents and moderates. After the 2014 election, exit polls showed Abbott won 62 percent of independents.
There was no talk of cooperating with Democrats in the 2021 legislative session, when Abbott and Texas lawmakers served up a red meat bonanza for Republicans. The sharp right turn also kept Abbott and the Legislature in good standing with Trump, as well as helping Abbott fend off two well-funded primary challengers who attacked him from the right.
Evolving abortion rhetoric
On abortion, Abbott signed laws that allowed people to sue anyone who helps someone get an abortion after a heartbeat is detected. That same session, Abbott signed the trigger law that eventually banned all abortions in Texas.
Just a few years earlier, during a debate in 2014, he seemed to support the abortion standards codified in Roe v. Wade, allowing the procedure in the first five months of pregnancy.
“Texas is ensuring we protect more life and do a better job of protecting the health care of women by providing that women still have five months to make a very difficult decision, after that time the state has an interest in protecting innocent life,” Abbott said.
Reminded of that statement, Abbott said what he was doing then was reciting the law and that he has not changed his views on abortion. “I was explaining to the public what the law was. The law has changed,” he said.
Similarly, in 2014, Abbott made clear that he thought teachers were being micromanaged by the state government.
“Most importantly I want to put trust where it belongs and that is with our teachers and get all these one-size-fits-all mandates from Austin, Texas, off the backs of teachers,” Abbott said then.
But last year, Abbott led the charge to restrict how teachers talk about race in classrooms and called for ridding public schools of so-called "critical race theory" — a term that has become a catchall to describe diversity and equity initiatives as well as teachings about systemic racism and the effects of slavery.
Finally, on guns, Abbott spent most of the years before 2021 avoiding taking a clear stand against constitutional carry laws that allow any gun owner to carry weapons in public, openly or concealed, without any permits or training requirements. Law enforcement had consistently opposed the legislation.
Then he went on a conservative radio station early in 2021 to announce he supported constitutional carry and would sign the legislation if it made it to his desk, essentially green-lighting a bill that had been headed nowhere.
Thinner in the middle
Democratic strategist and Harris County Democratic Party Chairman Odus Evbagharu said that, at first glance, it looked like Abbott had veered dramatically to the right.
But Evbagharu is convinced Abbott has always harbored these beliefs and simply held them back to appeal to a broader electorate until he was under pressure to win Trump’s endorsement for re-election. Trump held a rally in Montgomery County for Abbott earlier this year.
“Abbott’s always been this way, but Donald Trump has clearly revealed more of who Greg Abbott is,” Evbagharu said.
Evbagharu said Abbott’s past appeal to independents and moderates was based on showing a different side of himself in general election campaigns, and many voters didn’t pay close attention to see how his messaging changed.
Until now.
O’Rourke has a shot at ending Abbott’s long run in Texas politics, according to Evbagharu, because Abbott went too far in trying to appease die-hard GOP voters at the cost of middle-of-theroad Texans.
The governor said he knows he’ll secure another term in office as long as he can get his voters out.
“We know we have the voters out there that support me and we’ve got to get them to the polls.”