Sorry, biggest cities in Texas, no invitations for you

As the legislative session has worn on, Gov. Greg Abbott has picked fight after fight with Texas’ cities, accusing them of trying to “California-ize” the Lone Star State with their protections for immigrants and local tree ordinances.

Abbott and the Republican Senate are also working hard to constrain cities’ and counties’ power to raise property taxes and require voter approval for annexations.

Abbott seems to particularly dislike the state’s biggest cities. In the latest slight, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, Austin and San Antonio were left off an invitation to a meeting that 18 mayors requested last week to discuss the ways in which the state is attacking local control.

Abbott’s disdain, however, is puzzling. Those five cities are both the economic engine of Texas and a large chunk of its votes.

Let’s begin with population. The five counties that contain the state’s five largest cities have a combined 12,309,787 residents, which is 44 percent of the state’s total. If you want to talk about elections, the registered voters in those counties make up 42 percent of Texas’ electorate.

Those counties outperform the rest of the state economically. Texas’ five biggest urban counties constitute 53.5 percent of total Texas employment. If you broaden it out to the metropolitan statistical areas, which include the suburbs as well, the proportion becomes 75.8 percent — and growth in those regions has outpaced growth in the state overall since the recession.