McALLEN, Texas — At every turn of their battle over the past year or so, Gov. Greg Abbott has linked Democrat Beto O’Rourke to President Joe Biden, who is unpopular in Texas.
The Republican incumbent, who’s seeking a third term, offered himself as a time-tested defender of Texas’ low-tax, light-regulation governing style – and of law and order and traditional values.
O’Rourke, a former Democratic presidential candidate, said the state has underperformed under GOP leaders such as Abbott. It’s time to “turn the table” on that era, said O’Rourke, a former El Paso congressman.
Early on, the race drew national attention — and donations from coast to coast.
Both men boasted of enlisting small armies of door-knocking volunteers. Shattering records, Abbott and O’Rourke have spent a combined $202.5 million since July 1, 2021, with 65% of that the two-term GOP incumbent’s expenditures. In those 16 months, Abbott has raised $83.6 million; and O’Rourke, $77.3 million.
In final public polls going into Tuesday, Abbott enjoyed an average lead among likely voters of 9.2 percentage points, according to Real Clear Politics.
The rivals pulled few punches in a contest that was hard-fought down to the wire Tuesday.
Abbott, 64, who’s been in statewide elective offices for more than a quarter-century, touted the state’s prosperity but provided few details on what he wants to accomplish in four more years as governor.
Instead, he mostly warned in stark terms that Texas’ very identity as a bastion of freedom was imperiled by O’Rourke’s liberal views. He said O’Rourke marches in lockstep with liberal national Democrats.
“Wrong Way O’Rourke Wants to Kill the Texas Energy Industry,” read the subject line on one Abbott email blast last winter.
On the eve of Tuesday’s vote, the Abbott campaign revised its nickname for O’Rourke but stuck to the long-standing charge that as governor, O’Rourke would endanger economic gains and public safety.
“Every Way Beto Will Destroy Texas,” it said in a news release, ticking off O’Rourke positions on taxes, energy, immigration, criminal justice, abortion and cultural issues.
For his part, O’Rourke shied away from his hearty endorsement of Biden in 2020, even criticizing the president’s handling of the Texas-Mexico border.
In the final weekend, though, O’Rourke welcomed a robocall of support from former President Barack Obama.
In a Monday fundraising email, O’Rourke said that “we are running against the worst governor in the United States of America.”
O’Rourke, 50, repeatedly branded Abbott a failure. He cited a troubling exodus of teachers from public schools, closures of rural hospitals, a February 2021 winter storm that buckled Texas’ electric grid and the governor’s advocacy last year of “extreme” legislation that outlawed abortion and eliminated permits for carrying of handguns.
But most Texans had other things on their mind, said Allan Saxe, retired professor of political science at the University of Texas at Arlington.
“Today we’re in a different world,” he said. “People are worried about crime, worried about education. They’re worried about immigration. They also believe the economy is in trouble.”
Kenneth Bryant Jr., a political scientist at the University of Texas, Tyler, noted that Texas Democrats failed to break through in statewide contests “with the wind at their backs in 2018 and 2020.” This year proved a “buzz saw” for them, he said.
“Even more than the national climate, (O’Rourke) was running against a relatively popular incumbent governor with a massive war chest,” Bryant said. “Where Democrats have been competitive in ‘red’ and ‘purple’ states this year are in places with weak Republican candidates. Beto wasn’t so lucky.”
Unlike in his first two gubernatorial campaigns, this year, Abbott shoved his entire pile of fundraising chips into the center of the table.
At the end of his 2014 race against then-state Sen. Wendy Davis, a Democrat, Abbott held back $12.5 million. Four years ago, against former Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez, he conserved $17.5 million. But in 2022, with 10 days left before the election, he reported a cash balance of just $3.7 million.
This cycle, Abbott faced two tense moments in his bid for reelection.
The first was a weekslong stretch in fall 2021 when Fox News personality Tucker Carlson hammered him for not sending enough National Guard soldiers to the Texas-Mexico border. Carlson invited Abbott’s GOP challengers, former state Republican Party chairman Allen West and former Dallas state Sen. Donald Huffines, to appear on his large-audience show. That forced Abbott to belatedly come on to explain to Carlson his state push to secure the border.
After the May mass shooting at a Uvalde elementary school and the U.S. Supreme Court’s June decision overturning Roe vs. Wade, Abbott also made some unforced errors and saw Democrats suddenly fired up.
As UT-Tyler’s Bryant noted, Abbott committed some gaffes.
“The post-Uvalde ‘it could have been worse’ comment was weaponized against him over the summer,” Bryant said. “But a combination of timing (it was months ago) and issue salience (gun reform is not a top priority for voters this cycle) has saved him from a more consequential political backlash.”
Abbott’s rightward tack during 2021′s legislative sessions apparently didn’t cost him much, because the race was “nationalized” by concerns about inflation and the border and Biden’s unpopularity, said University of Houston professor Brandon Rottinghaus.
“Abbott first campaigned for office as a right-of-center moderate, but the political trends pushed him to move to the right,” Rottinghaus said. “He’s a smart politician and knew that moving just far enough to the right would let him keep his base but not alienate moderates.”
Some longtime Abbott advisers said he once again heeded a time-validated “Rose Garden” strategy, in which incumbents grant challengers as few debates as possible, avoid media scrums and appear in public in controlled settings.
“Taking a page from the Rick Perry playbook, Abbott avoided the media and narrowed the importance of the debate. Even his modest gaffes … didn’t get traction in a pretty nasty negative race overall,” Rottinghaus said.
In a closing ad O’Rourke aired on TV in the campaign’s final 13 days, he spoke to camera in Houston’s Buffalo Bayou Park, framed by two Texas flags.
Abbott “failed us” by doing nothing to avert school shootings, high property taxes and the catastrophic failure of the state’s main electric grid last year, O’Rourke said. The Democrat pledged to attack those problems, “pay our teachers” and restore women’s ability to decide whether to have an abortion.
“Let’s turn the table on Greg Abbott and move Texas forward,” he concluded.
Abbott’s closing spot returned to footage of his devastating 1984 spinal injury. A tree fell on him as the future judge and attorney general, then a young law firm associate in Houston, studying for the bar, jogged in a residential neighborhood.
The ad also reprised shots the Abbott team used in 2014, of him working out in a Dallas parking garage late at night, propelling his wheelchair and pitting out a gray tee shirt.
“Thirty-eight years ago, his back was broken but his spirit was not,” a narrator says. “It’s that same determination that drives Greg Abbott to keep Texas strong.”
Amid video clips showing Abbott touring a factory, appearing at a crime scene and pointing to the banks of the Rio Grande River in a state speedboat, the ad visually reprised attack lines the incumbent has used to question O’Rourke’s fitness: jobs, full funding of police departments, a migrant surge at the Texas-Mexico border.
“Greg Abbott, securing the future of Texas,” the narrator concludes, against a backdrop of Abbott encircled by 11 cute youngsters.
(Staff writer Yamil Berard in Dallas contributed to this report.)
