Campaigning hard for a third four-year term, Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday discounted the idea that the Republican Party is hopelessly factionalized by saying his candidacy is having a unifying effect.
Abbott didn’t directly answer when asked if he would be able to overcome intra-party dissension like the Ector County Republican Executive Committee’s censure of him during the height of the pandemic for his mask mandates and the support by some committee members for his top two March 1 GOP Primary opponents, Don Huffines and Allen West, in their efforts to rid the party of “RINOs,” or “Republicans in Name Only.”
“We’re already seeing the way the Republican Party is coalescing with the support I’m getting from all sectors,” he said. “Texas was one of the first states to get back to business and we have more jobs growth today than at any time in the history of our state.”
Referring to last spring’s state legislative session in Austin, Abbott said, “We made sure that we had the most conservative session ever with Republicans rallying around to support law enforcement, eliminate the teaching of critical race theory in our schools and make sure we protected innocent lives and the Second Amendment.
“Texas is spending more then $3 billion to secure the border and build our own wall.”
Abbott encouraged an estimated crowd of 60 at the Copper Rose Building downtown to vote during the early voting period that opened Monday and will run through Feb. 25 at the elections office in the county administration building at 1010 E. Eighth St., the Elegante Hotel, the Globe Theater of the Great Southwest, Kellus Turner Community Center and Salinas Community Building.
Often mentioning Democratic gubernatorial candidate Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke of El Paso but not Huffines or West, he said, “We cannot allow the radical leftist agenda to destroy energy jobs.
“I’m running for re-election to protect energy jobs right here in the Permian Basin. Texas ranks No. 1 in the United States as the best state to start a new business in and the best state to do business in. More Texans have jobs now ever in our history.”
Pausing to have photos taken with supporters in his “Securing the Future of Texas” campaign before briefly taking questions from reporters, Abbott said, “We need to recognize that no government program can ever replace the role that parents play in the education of their children.
“That’s why we need a parental bill of rights to restore parents as the decision-makers for their children’s educational and health care needs. The radical leftist agenda has the idiotic idea of defunding the police, which has led to chaos wherever it has taken place, as it did in Austin. We don’t defund the police. We support law enforcement and we passed a law to defund any city in Texas that defunds the police.”
Abbott said O’Rourke is an ardent opponent of the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, notwithstanding his recent waffling on the issue. “O’Rourke also wants to eliminate tax exemptions for churches that refuse to bow down to his agenda,” he said.
“I will not let that happen in Texas. O’Rourke said last week in Tyler that he would not take away anyone’s guns, but hell, yeah, he is going to take your guns! You can’t believe anything he says because he keeps changing his positions. I would like to see him come to Odessa and take a gun from anybody.”
