Texas leaders aren’t representing the people
Abbott, Patrick and Paxton are tarnishing the state’s reputation with politics of hate and fear.
Once every four years, Texans of different races and generations and beliefs come together for a timehonored ritual that is at once divisive and unifying.
No, it’s not Election Day. Think painted faces, meat roasting over pits and battle lines that may divide families for a few hours but not for months or years.
The Houston Texans and Dallas Cowboys, who face off in regular season games only in gubernatorial election years because they’re in different conferences, last met on Oct. 7, 2018, at NRG Stadium (the Texans won in overtime). NBC had scooped up the all-Texas showdown for its “Sunday Night Football” national broadcast and asked Kyle Chandler, known to Friday Night Lights fans as Coach Taylor, to narrate the game’s introduction.
“In Texas, if you really understand it, you know it’s about way more than just football,” Chandler says, with music from Texas instrumental band Explosions in the Sky swelling and Texas high school and college football highlights rolling on a screen in the background. “It’s about people coming together. It’s about people finding common ground — and it’s about people expressing who they are — in small towns and big cities all across this great state.” Oh, if only that were true. These days, that Texas is pretty limited to the gridiron and the nostalgic stories of old-timers — and maybe the Houston Rodeo. We still get along at the rodeo.
But the bipartisanship we used to brag about in Austin has been replaced with Washington-style acrimony. Basic decorum that lawmakers from the Hill Country to Deep East Texas used to observe in equal measure is eroded. And basic rights that used to be respected in a state known for personal freedom have been sacrificed.
Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Attorney General Ken Paxton and a Republican-led Legislature have, in the past year, repeatedly found ways to make our state more divided, less respectful of individual rights and more dangerous for the populations targeted and left unprotected.
And they’ve basically given up any pretense of representing all of Texas for the self-serving benefits of representing
Republican primary voters — and not even all of them.
Ask yourself: What’s more divisive than encouraging fellow citizens to spy on each other and tattle or sue if they suspect someone has “aided and abetted” abortion, which has been constitutionally protected since 1973? Cars with Texas license plates now fill parking lots in Kansas and beyond as those seeking abortions drive hours or fly across the country. How long until an anti-abortion radical tails a family driving a woman or girl back across the Red River, following her home and threatening her safety?
And who were Texas lawmakers and other Republican leaders representing when the Legislature essentially ended women’s right to abortion, a right that the vast majority of Texans generally support?
Who were Republican leaders representing when they allowed people to carry handguns without any training or even a permit, a policy that around 60 percent of Texans oppose?
Who were Republican leaders representing when they passed another round of unnecessary “election integrity” measures limiting voting access, when around 80 percent of Texans are smart enough to know voter fraud isn’t common and is certainly not the “epidemic” Republicans have claimed it to be?
Who were Republican leaders representing when they claimed to address vulnerabilities in the Texas power grid and then created loopholes for the gas industry big enough to drive a snow plow through?
And who on earth are the governor and the attorney general representing when they block local officials and superintendents from San Antonio to little Paris ISD in Northeast Texas from requiring masks in schools and other public places? It certainly isn’t the kids and families who are filling hospital rooms across the state.
The list just goes on and on. Abbott on Friday signed a law designed to combat critical race theory teaching in schools, despite educators and advocates’ testimony that CRT isn’t taught in primary or secondary schools. Teachers said the bill would make it harder to address current events and teach history thoroughly.
What are the consequence of a state government that doesn’t reflect the priorities and values of the people they’re elected to serve?
Many of us are beyond exhausted by the narrow portrayal of what it means to be Texan that is full of bluster without substance and contrived fear of the “other.” Numerous readers have sent us letters articulating the shame they feel in being Texan today. A recent poll found that 52 percent of those surveyed believe
Texas is “on the wrong track,” the highest figure in that poll since 2008. The phrase “As a Texan” trended Friday on Twitter as past and present Lone Star State residents unleashed feelings of embarrassment and rage over the onslaught of bad news.
Companies are expressing concern about how the state’s far-right politics will affect their businesses. One Houston-based startup, Solugen, already said it would have to open a research and development facility outside the state because the abortion ban and other social policies will hinder recruiting.
Patrick, echoing the language of far-right nationalists, on Fox News accused Democrats of promoting an “invasion” of immigrants at the border as part of an elaborate scheme to important future Democrats who will eventually sway Texas elections in the decades ahead.
“This is trying to take over our country without firing a shot,” Patrick said.
Many of us, despite our shame over the yahoos leading this state, still feel pride in being a Texan. We yearn for it to once again be a place known not for discrimination and backward thinking but ingenuity, opportunity and wide open spaces where individuality and common good can coexist.
We don’t have to look only to the bipartisan days of yore in Austin to find that world. Republican-led commissioners courts across the state have organized vaccine hubs to make it easier for their constituents to get inoculated. Progressive and conservative leaders alike responded to February’s winter storm by firing up their trucks or vans and checking on their neighbors. Multifaith coalitions are working to support Afghan refugees building new lives here.
Texas has never been as simple as a friendly rivalry football game.
Among the nearly 30 million of us are people willing to come together to defeat a virus, care for our neighbors and stand up for Texan values from hospitality to opportunity to inclusion. We know that the future of Texas can still be bright. We can still win the long game if we can remember to keep our eyes on the ball and get it back in the hands of a player, a team, a leader, who’s playing for the people, not themselves.