West faces long odds in bid against Abbott
Governor holds major fundraising advantage, support from Trump and strong poll numbers
Republican Allen West has made a political career out of ignoring conventional thinking and taking on long odds.
While that approach helped the conservative firebrand get elected to Congress in Florida during the 2010 tea party wave and become chairman of the Republican Party of Texas a decade later, his latest move may be his tallest task yet: taking on Gov. Greg Abbott.
In a long expected step, West announced on July 4 that he was entering the fray against Abbott in the GOP primary. The incumbent has a massive fundraising advantage, strong poll numbers, superior name recognition and the backing of former President Donald Trump.
Still, West said in television interviews that he is not intimidated by the task ahead.
“When David took on Goliath, he just had three little stones and dropped Goliath,” West, 60, said in an interview on Fox News Channel last week. “So I’m not worried about the size of anyone’s war chest or who they have behind them.”
While Abbott’s campaign has previously insisted it is taking nothing for granted in 2022, its internal polling, which was obtained by the Houston Chronicle, shows little cause for concern so far. Polling conducted in June shows 87 percent of Republican primary voters approve of the job Abbott has done, according to Public Opinion Strategies.
“Abbott’s high marks on the issues put him in a dominant position against any Republican challenger,” according to an internal polling memo.
At first glance, it is hard to see West’s path to victory in a GOP primary, said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston.
As a statewide officeholder for 25 years — and having led the state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic for a year and a half — Abbott, 63, has greater name recognition than any potential challenger and more than $50 million in his campaign account to fend them off.
But Rottinghaus said there is no doubt West brings something to
the table that Abbott has not contended with in the past.
“His strength is an outside-thebox political campaign style that Abbott has never seen before,” Rottinghaus said.
Abbott avoided primary challenges when he ran three times for attorney general and faced only token opposition in his two primary campaigns for governor.
And Abbott has more than West to worry about on his right flank. Former state Sen. Don Huffines of Dallas also announced he’s running for governor and has already released campaign ads and dotted Texas highways with billboards vowing to do more to fight illegal immigration and to cut property taxes.
West is campaigning on reining in the governor’s use of emergency powers, such as during a pandemic; using the Texas National Guard and Texas State Guard more on the border to fight illegal immigration; and examining the feasibility of eliminating property taxes.
Dems waiting on O’Rourke
Those primary challenges come as Democrats wait to see if former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke of El Paso will run for governor. O’Rourke has already hosted rallies in front of the Capitol and blasted Abbott’s handling of the
state’s power grid. The grid broke down during a cold snap in February, leaving millions in the dark and without heat and killing more than 200 Texans.
Some local officials in the Houston area have also sharply criticized Abbott’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, from a spring 2020 reopening that he quickly backtracked on after infections began spiking to blocking local efforts to limit public activities. More than 52,000 Texans have died from the coronavirus.
O’Rourke has not ruled out running for governor and has been crisscrossing the state holding rallies akin to his 2018 U.S. Senate campaign, in which he came within 3 percentage points of defeating Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz for re-election.
Abbott, meanwhile, has been preparing for 2022 by shoring up his GOP base of support. In the last two months, Abbott has picked up a formal — and public — endorsement from Trump. And just last month Trump and Abbott spent hours together on the Texas border professing their admiration for one another.
“I gave him a complete and total endorsement,” Trump said on June 30, with Abbott by his side. “You’ve done a great job and I’m going to be with you.”
Still, West, whose term as state GOP chairman ended , has been undeterred. He has used the post to speak his mind and to be a thorn in the side of some elected
Republicans in Texas, including Abbott.
Stirring the pot
He’s been critical of Abbott’s use of executive orders during the pandemic and even took part in rallies outside the governor’s mansion in Austin. West called Abbott’s order a form of “the tyranny that we see in the great state of Texas.” He’s also called House Speaker Dade Phelan a “traitor” for seeking the support of Democrats and accused Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick of holding up pro-gun legislation — a charge Patrick adamantly denied.
All the attacks on fellow Republicans have drawn ire from some GOP loyalists who say West went too far in trying to raise his own political profile.
“It is now clear that Allen West’s entire tenure as Texas GOP chair was intended to do only what many suspected: provide him a platform for his political future, not an opportunity to build the party,” said Travis County GOP Chairman Matt Mackowiak.
West, who now lives just outside
of Dallas, was elected to represent a Palm Beach County, Fla.based district in Congress in 2010.
During his brief tenure in Congress, West made a habit of scolding Democrats. He made headlines when he said Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels would be impressed with the media tactics used by Democrats. As one of two Black Republicans in Congress, he called President Barack Obama “a low-level socialist agitator,” according to news reports. He wrote a fellow member of Congress from Florida, Democrat Debbie Wasserman Schultz, to say she was “the most vile, unprofessional, and despicable member of the U.S. House of Representatives.” At another point, he claimed to know that up to 81 members of the Democratic Party were members of the Communist Party.
The Republican-led Florida Legislature redrew the boundaries of West’s district, which had included Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, and West was forced to move into a swing district.
He lost his re-election campaign despite raising $19 million — more than any incumbent House member in the nation.
Before politics, West, a Georgia native, served in the U.S. Army for 22 years, earning a Bronze Star and other service medals before retiring as a lieutenant colonel.
But his tenure in the Army ended in controversy when he was relieved of his command in Iraq after being accused of using improper methods to obtain information from an Iraqi detainee in 2003. At a military base just north of Baghdad, West was interrogating an Iraqi policeman who was believed to have information about a plot to ambush West and his troops.
When the informant didn’t talk, West watched four of his soldiers beat the man. Then, Army prosecutors said, West threatened to kill the man and fired a pistol near the detainee’s head to get him to talk.
“I know the method I used was not right, but I wanted to take care of my soldiers,” West testified at a military judicial hearing before he was allowed to retire from the Army in 2004.
After he left Florida and moved to Texas, West said he had no intention of running for office again.
“I came back to Texas in 2014 with no intention of ever re-entering the despicable cesspool called politics,” West said in a message to supporters last week.
But he said the Democratic surge in 2018 played a big role in forcing him to reconsider. Democrats that year flipped 12 seats in the Texas House, two state Senate seats and two congressional seats. Texas Republicans held their own in the 2020 elections.
“It was disconcerting to me to hear about ‘turning Texas blue,’ and I was committed to making sure that did not happen,” West said.
“(West’s) strength is an outside-the-box political campaign style that Abbott has never seen before.”
Brandon Rottinghaus, UH political science professor