AUSTIN, Texas — A dozen years ago, the last Texas governor to run for president began a new term being coy about his White House ambitions.
But Rick Perry had a new book out, was crisscrossing the country and sprinted into that year’s legislative session quickly declaring as emergency items a ban on sanctuary cities and limits on government condemnation of privately owned land. Most players in Austin believed Perry was running for president. He announced nearly seven months later.
On Tuesday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott dropped few if any hints that he’s doing the same. The third-term Republican governor signaled few ambitions beyond trying to have a successful session. Abbott aides have discouraged speculation that he’ll begin traveling to early presidential primary states, to test the waters — at least, not while the Legislature’s at work. The just-launched session ends May 29.
Abbott sounded some themes that other, prominent red-state governors embraced in recent weeks. Later in the year, at least in theory, he could meld those into a presidential hopeful’s elevator pitch — lower taxes, parents’ rights when it comes to public schools, getting tougher on crime and on sealing the U.S.-Mexico border.
But there was nothing Abbott said in Austin on Tuesday that was even remotely as ear-catching as this line spoken by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in Tallahassee a fortnight earlier:
“We will never surrender to the woke mob,” said DeSantis, a darling of conservatives who is expected to seek the Republican nomination for president next year. “Florida is where woke goes to die.”
And while Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp in his inaugural address Thursday stressed “kitchen table issues” similar to ones Abbott emphasized, Kemp is selectively upping his profile. He accepted an invitation to speak along with six other U.S. politicians Tuesday at a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. He recently created a federal PAC, though it could be for a Senate run in 2026, and the 2028 presidential race, not next year’s.
It’s possible Abbott could assemble a national campaign later this year, as Perry did after the 2011 legislative session. Some former Perry advisers have lamented that Perry’s late launch — he announced in Charleston, South Carolina, on Aug. 13, 2011 — hobbled that ill-fated venture. Perry has said his wife, Anita, encouraged him to run, though he was happy to remain governor of Texas.
Just as easily, though, Abbott could remain governor and, four years from now, decide to retire and go make money, current and former Abbott associates have said. Or he could seek a record-breaking, fourth four-year term — something Perry never tried. Perry served 14 years as governor, filling out the last part of George W. Bush’s second term after Bush became president. Perry won three full terms on his own.
No testing the waters — for now
Abbott’s top political strategist Dave Carney, asked Monday if the governor would test the waters and visit early primary states to gauge interest in his possible presidential candidacy, said Abbott’s top priority now is to have a successful legislative session.
“What he’s always said is you know, when the session is over, he will take a look at the situation and see if there’s a need for his voice, his experience, to get into the fray,” Carney said. “But until then, we’re not going to New Hampshire or Iowa or South Carolina — or the things that you’d want to do if you’re blindly ambitious to run.”
For his part, Abbott said this Monday after Fox News asked if he’s not ruling out a potential White House run:
“I think a more accurate way to say it is it’s not something I’m ruling in right now. I’m focused on Texas, period.”
Tuesday’s term-opening spiel by Abbott was heavy on brags about Texas’ record revenue surplus of nearly $33 billion.
As in his two previous inaugural addresses, he waxed poetic — and at length — about Texas’ economy and population growth. If Texas were a separate nation, as it once was, the state’s gross domestic product would be the world’s ninth largest, he noted.
“The gas you put in your truck, the jeans you wear, the steak you eat for dinner, all of it is made in Texas,” Abbott said. As for Texas’ rapid population growth, he added:
“Americans are showing that what Davy Crockett said still rings true today: ‘You may all go to Hell. I will go to Texas!’”
As he mulled running for president in 2011, Perry would have loved having the state’s coffers so flush. He faced, though, a $30 billion revenue shortfall. It was a budget wallop caused by the Great Recession of 2008, with the pain to Texas delayed by former President Barack Obama’s federal stimulus money for states. Ruling out tax increases, Perry had little choice but to join GOP lawmakers in passing a budget that slashed spending.
Abbott has the luxury of being able to propose large property tax cuts as well as, probably, one-time “investments.” The state could further bolster the electric grid as well as continue to harden schools against mass shootings, a project the Legislature began in 2019, the year after a gun massacre at Galveston County’s Santa Fe High.
“To ensure that our booming state can meet the needs of our future, we must work this session to bolster our infrastructure including the roads we drive on, the water we use at home and in the fields, and the ports that we use to ship products around the globe,” Abbott said.
One luxury Abbott doesn’t have, though, is ample time to immerse himself in national policy and engage in debate practices, said Republican consultant and lobbyist Ray Sullivan.
Former Gov. George W. Bush lavished about a year’s worth of prep time on himself in 1998-99, at the urging of consultant Karl Rove. But Perry didn’t do that in 2010, and in 2011, he had a special session right after the regular one and didn’t get rolling on his presidential preparations until midsummer, Sullivan said.
Having to crisscross the country to raise money and build grassroots organizations “sucks up an inordinate amount of time,” said Sullivan, who worked for both Bush and Perry, in their gubernatorial offices and presidential campaigns.
“That’s time that you take away from policy prep, debate prep, other things that are really important and that proved to be our campaign’s undoing in 2011-2012,” he said, referring to Perry’s infamous “oops moment” in a 2011 debate when couldn’t remember the third of three federal agencies he wanted to abolish. “Governor Perry and our campaign didn’t give ourselves enough time.”
Keeping up with the governors
In Florida and Georgia, DeSantis and Kemp recently crowed in their inaugural speeches about surpluses. As did Abbott, both vowed to devote some of the money to tax relief. Like Abbott, they echoed a by-now-familiar GOP mantra about parents’ rights and shameful “indoctrination” of schoolchildren by liberal elites.
It helped Republican Glenn Youngkin reclaim the Virginia governorship from Democrats in 2021, and Youngkin could join next year’s GOP presidential contest, as could Republican Govs. Kristi Noem of South Dakota, Bill Lee of Tennessee and the more moderate Chris Sununu of New Hampshire and Larry Hogan of Maryland. Former President Donald Trump has already announced another run for the White House.
“We must remember this, our schools are for education, not indoctrination,” Abbott said. “Schools should not push social agendas.”
Abbott did not congratulate himself on his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, as DeSantis did, touting “the Free State of Florida.”
Nor did Abbott cast himself as the candidate of flyover America, far from Washington, D.C., as Kemp did.
“Your state governor should care a lot more about safe streets, good schools and good jobs than what the pundits are saying on cable TV,” the Georgia governor said.
Though today’s politics is polarized, Abbott ignored an ambitious Democrat’s recent shot at him and other Republican governors who over the past year have used state dollars to send unauthorized migrants to Democratic-dominated cities.
“Red state politicians, and the media empire behind them, selling regression as progress, oppression as freedom ... kidnap migrants,” said California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, in his second-term inaugural address.
Abbott stayed on safe rhetorical ground, connecting his themes by going line by line through “Texas our Texas,” the state song.
In Abbott’s telling, the 1924 song by a transplanted Britisher and a Fort Worth native “is a hymn. A hymn that glorifies the exceptionalism of our state. We work every day to live up to that excellence.”
It’s unclear if Abbott later this year and next year will start teaching the tune to non-Texans.
———
