A Texas newspaper that has been around for a long time says it was “wrong” to support Texas Governor Greg Abbott 10 years ago. They say that Abbott is “spewing lies and half-truths” and going after other Republicans who don’t support his school vouchers plan. In addition to focusing on illegal immigration, Abbott—elected in 2015—has supported Texas statewide candidates running against 16 Republican lawmakers who voted against his voucher initiative, which would have allowed some students to attend private schools with taxpayer money.
The initiative failed with 21 Texas Legislature Republicans last year. The Daily Sentinel, which has covered Nacogdoches since 1899, wrote, “A decade ago, we endorsed Greg Abbott, saying the then-Texas Attorney General was a man of good character who had ‘the respect necessary to govern our state,'” in a new editorial.
Our view of a good governor hasn’t changed, but Abbott has. He’s Texas’ Disrespecter-in-Chief. “After listening to Abbott stoop to fear-mongering, spewing lies and half-truths and twisting logic in contradictory and baffling ways, we believe he no longer respects the rural voters who have sent him to Austin for three terms.”
Abbott failed to get his party to support a bill in November that would have provided taxpayer subsidies of up to $10,000 per student for private and religious schools. Most Republicans who supported eliminating vouchers from state education funding are rural.
Texas newspaper turns on Greg Abbott: “Spewing lies” https://t.co/XwyjMgtQ1v pic.twitter.com/3VWfGqgnkS
— Newsweek (@Newsweek) February 22, 2024
Abbott defeated Democratic gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke in 2022 with 886,166 votes, or 79.35 percent, from rural Texas counties, according to the Texas Politics Project at UT Austin. It was up 2 percent and 4 percent from his 2018 and 2014 election victories.
Rural voters made up 13.37 percent of registered voters and 13.84 percent of all votes in the 2022 election. Abbott’s voucher campaign is surprising, according to Rice University political science professor Mark Jones, because the governor rarely supports challengers to Republican incumbents. Before this election, Abbott had three endorsements in 2020.
“For Abbott, endorsing these challengers has two principal goals: The first is to oust a significant proportion of the anti-school choice GOP incumbents to pave the way for the passage of school choice legislation during the 2025 regular legislation session that begins in January of 2025,” Jones said.
“The second is to warn state legislators that defying Governor Abbott and blocking his priority legislation has serious consequences. You get the horns if you mess with the bull.” Abbott “put a target on the back” of conservative State Representative Travis Clardy, who voted against Abbott’s school voucher proposal, according to the Sentinel editorial.
Represents East Texas’ House District 11, which includes Cherokee, Nacogdoches, and Rusk counties. The governor also publicly criticized Republican State Representative DeWayne Burns, saying on X (formerly Twitter) this week that he doesn’t “trust” Burns’ school voucher vote. Abbott is supporting Helen Kerwin, Burns’ Republican primary opponent for Texas House District 58.
The Cleburne Times-Review reported that Abbott attended Kerwin’s 200-person rally and Burns’ 500-person rally on Monday. The Daily Sentinel also criticized Abbott’s Monday statement: “Some people get elected and they go to Austin, Texas, and they represent Austin values, not Nacogdoches values.”
Abbott may have been talking about himself since Pennsylvania GOP mega-donor Jeff Yass gave him $250,000 in October and $6 million in December, according to Houston Public Media. Abbott and his “billionaire buddies” are running a propaganda campaign to buy rural Texans’ votes, according to the editorial.
It adds: “If Abbott were a Texas House member, such a campaign could get him expelled from the GOP per caucus rules. We expected the Texas Republican Party standard-bearer to follow the same rules as the House members he desperately wants to control.”
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Since busing migrants to Democratic sanctuary cities in 2022, Abbott has become one of the most divisive figures in the nation in his third term, sparking a larger ideological battle between Texas and the federal government. A record number of illegal immigrants into Texas led to razor wire along the U.S.-Mexico border and an 80-acre camp for thousands of Texas National Guard soldiers for years.