AUSTIN, Texas — After the Uvalde school shooting, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott spent nearly three hours in Huntsville at a campaign fundraiser that he was criticized for not canceling.
But the governor didn’t touch down and quickly depart, as he implied, after news outlets reported he’d gone ahead with the May 24 fundraiser at a private home in East Texas. Some expected Abbott to instead rush to the South Texas town where residents awaited news about unaccounted-for relatives.
The following day, Abbott said the stop in Huntsville was to “let people know that I could not stay, that I needed to go” to Austin to continue working with law enforcement on the response to the 21 killings at Robb Elementary School.
