San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
WORRIED YET?
Restless City: Abbott and Co.’s political posturing could slow business relocations.
Most major corporations aren’t up in arms — at least not publicly — over Texas’ near-total ban on abortions or rules intended by GOP lawmakers to suppress voters in big, Democratic-leaning cities.
And if they’re bothered by the state’s new “constitutional carry” law, which allows most Texans 21 and older to carry firearms without a license or background check, they aren’t saying.
They also don’t appear to be stewing over elected officials’ attempt to whitewash Texas history by banning the teaching of “critical race theory” in public schools.
Ditto Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton’s legal war to stop local governments and school boards from requiring masks to protect adults and children from the coronavirus.
One of the last times business leaders unabashedly weighed in on any aspect of this mess was early May. At the time, Fair Elections Texas — a coalition of more than 50 business organizations and companies including Fort Worth-based American Airlines, Microsoft and Levi Strauss & Co. — sided against the election bill then moving through the Legislature.
The group called on elected officials “to oppose any changes that would restrict eligible voters’ access to the ballot.”
A month earlier, American said it “strongly opposed” the election bill, eliciting a tonguelashing from Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.
“Texans are fed up with corporations that don’t share our values trying to dictate public policy,” he said in an April 1 statement. “The majority of Texans support maintaining the integrity of our elections, which is why I made it a priority this legislative session.”
‘Our values’
Texas has embarked on a hugely consequential experiment. It’ll answer this question: Can a state strip women of their rights over their own bodies, marginalize and scapegoat minorities, shrug off science, dump on its large cities, and make community life coarser and potentially more dangerous — and still maintain an enviable economy?
Abbott is betting the answer is yes.
On Sept. 2, the host of CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” asked Abbott about a poll, publicized by Forbes magazine, that found a majority of college-educated women wouldn’t move to Texas because of the anti-abortion bill he’d signed into law. The new restriction — no abortions after a mere six weeks of pregnancy — had kicked in the day before.
A good political tactician, Abbott used business leaders’ silence to his advantage.
“Regardless of some handwringing by some publications, the people who are not wringing their hands are the people who create jobs, that run businesses, that care about their daily lives,” the Republican governor said. “And people are choosing Texas over any other state, and part of that is because of our low regulations, our no income tax . ... Companies are choosing Texas because it has the superior business climate.”
This was the same interview in which Abbott claimed billionaire Elon Musk, the force behind SpaceX and Tesla, was good with Texas’ fundamentalist social policies.
In a quarterly report earlier this year, economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas described the influx of people and corporations Abbott was referring to.
“Data on population growth, U-Haul rental truck movements and a national builders surveys all suggest that net in-migration into Texas from other states remained high last year,” they wrote. “Texas’ population increased 1.3 percent in 2020 — about the same pace as in 2019 and the fastest rate of growth of the 10 largest states.”
They noted several of the biggest corporations that have either moved their headquarters or expanded operations to Texas: Tesla, Oracle, CBRE and Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
Political sleight of hand
But Abbott was pulling a sleight of hand in his CNBC appearance, playing politics with time. He knows the corporations that have moved to Texas didn’t do it on a whim; most put plenty of time and thought into their decision-making.
Same with most of the individuals who’ve set up house in Texas. Safe to say most hadn’t foreseen the state’s sharp turn to intolerant, hard-right populism — the noises Abbott, Paxton and Patrick had been making to that effect for years notwithstanding.
The harsh reorientation of Texas government, engineered by those three and the GOPcontrolled Legislature, didn’t really harden into state law until this year.
So what’s next for corporate relocation and expansion in Texas? Their current silence aside, will Fortune 1000 companies embrace our MAGA paradise?
I asked Jenna Saucedo-Herrera, CEO of Greater: SATX, the region’s main economic development organization, if the new abortion and voting laws make it harder to attract out-of-state employers. She answered cautiously.
“We’re certainly continuing to monitor local, state and federal activity that may affect our business and workforce recruitment efforts,” Saucedo-Herrera said. “While it’s difficult to predict how specific people and companies will respond, we’re anticipating and prepared for questions.
“I’m confident the broader value proposition for San Antonio and Texas will prevail,” she added.
That proposition includes Texas’ old reliables: no state income tax, moderately priced housing and few regulations to get worked up over.
But about those questions she’s anticipating — some of them will likely come from college-educated professionals. On that front, the poll CNBC host Morgan Brennan asked Abbott about is instructive.
Why worry?
PerryUndem, a public opinion research firm, surveyed 1,804 adults with college degrees about abortion restrictions. San Francisco-based Tara Health Foundation, which pays for research on women’s access to health care, commissioned the Aug. 31 poll. Most of the men and women surveyed — 1,689 — didn’t live in Texas.
The pollsters described Texas’ new abortion law to the out-of-state respondents this way: “Texas lawmakers recently passed a law that bans abortion after six weeks, which is before most women know they are pregnant. That means it’ll be illegal for most people to get an abortion. This law also calls on people to report each other in order to enforce the law. People would get a reward for reporting anyone, like healthcare providers or friends, who help a person get an abortion.”
Which is an OK summary of SB 8, the bill Abbott signed into law. It doesn’t “call on” Texans to snitch — it grants them that opportunity. And describing the $10,000 or more that informants could win in court for successfully outing lawbreakers as “a reward” is loaded, invoking the idea they’re money-grubbing bounty hunters. Instead of antiabortion zealots. But every other facet of the setup was accurate.
The question was: Would this law discourage you from moving to Texas? Three out of 4 women, or 74 percent, said yes. Among the men, 58 percent said they, too, would steer clear.
Whether you’re an in-state corporation or one considering a move to Texas, your main challenge is hiring the best available talent. Those prospective employees have to want to come here.
That’s why the direction in which Abbott and company are pushing Texas on has got to worry you.
Even if you don’t say it out loud.