Calling Texas GOP `the party of results,’ Abbott looks to 2020 elections

Describing Texas Republicans as emerging from the 2019 legislative session as "the party of results," Gov. Greg Abbott said he plans to actively back every Republican state House and Senate candidate seeking reelection in 2020 and to look to a more diverse array of GOP candidates to try to win back seats lost last year.

'We showed this session there is a very powerful brand of the Republican Party," Abbott told the American-Statesman in an interview late Friday afternoon in his Capitol office. "The Republican Party is the party of results; we delivered very meaningful results, for the first time limiting the ability of taxing jurisdictions to raise your taxes more than ever before, delivering very meaningful property tax cuts, delivering the biggest school financial reform package I've ever seen."

Abbott, the most popular figure in Texas politics and the undisputed leader of the state GOP, is letting it be known that he has no interest in seeing any Republican legislative incumbents face primaries next year as Democrats seek to use what promises to be a record-smashing turnout, with President Donald Trump seeking a second term, to wrest control of the Texas House ahead of congressional and state legislative redistricting in the 2021 session.

Only last year, Abbott sought to use his party's March primary to oust three Republican members of the House, whom he considered thorns in his side, failing in two out of the three cases.

But after a general election in which Democrats flipped two congressional seats, two state Senate seats and a dozen state House seats, Abbott, House Speaker Dennis Bonnen and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick focused the 2019 session on big, mainstream issues, and, heading into the next election, the governor is putting a premium on party unity, not purity.

"I will very aggressively campaign for Republican House and Senate members," Abbott said. "They were heavily involved in delivering one of the most successful sessions in decades, and they deserve to be rewarded for their hard work with reelection by their constituents."

In a Quinnipiac University survey taken May 29 to June 4, President Donald Trump was locked in too-close-to-call races in Texas with seven top Democratic challengers, and was trailing one, former Vice President Joe Biden, by 4 points.

"Obviously, in a presidential election year there are the national forces, but because we had such a remarkable session that really does connect with issues that voters care about, I think that we've established a Texas brand for Republicans that resonates with constituents and will enable and empower the members to get reelected based upon their brand, based upon their accomplishments," Abbott said.

Next Sunday is the deadline for the governor to sign or veto bills passed during the 140-day legislative session, a process he said he hopes to complete by Friday.

"I feel that the president will win Texas in the election," Abbott said. "Candidly, I'm anticipating the possibility that the Democrats may realize that they, in the end, do not have the ability to win Texas, and will begin to spend their money in other states like they always do."

But Abbott believes that the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, a group led by former Attorney General Eric Holder and backed by former President Barack Obama, will remain committed to turning the Texas House blue -- one of 12 statehouses targeted by the group. If Democrats picked up nine seats they would gain control of the chamber.

"I do anticipate that that will continue, which is one reason why it's necessary for me to get fully engaged on the Republican side, to be able to counter what I expect Barack Obama and Eric Holder to be doing in the state of Texas, as they are trying to do whatever they can to reshape the redistricting process in Texas," Abbott said.

Asked about the possibility of an independent redistricting process, like that called for by Democratic presidential candidate and former El Paso congressman Beto O'Rourke in the voting rights reform package he released last week, Abbott indicated that nonpartisan redistricting is an oxymoron.

"This is just not the nature of redistricting," he said.

Abbott said he supports the Trump administration's decision, now before the U.S. Supreme Court, to include a citizenship question on the 2020 census -- "it seems like it would yield valuable information" -- describing concerns that it could lead to an undercount as "nothing other than conjecture."

First elected governor in 2014, defeating state Sen. Wendy Davis of Fort Worth by 20 points, Abbott said he intends to seek a third term in 2022 and has no ambitions beyond being governor.

In 2018, Abbott, a prodigious fundraiser, defeated an anemic Democratic challenge from former Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez by 13 points. His well-oiled campaign machine is credited with saving U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who defeated O'Rourke by only 2.6 points, and maybe also Attorney General Ken Paxton and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who also had surprisingly close calls in a state that has not elected a Democrat statewide since 1994.

According to the recent Quinnipiac survey of 1,159 Texas voters, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points, 60 percent of Texas voters approve of the job Abbott is doing, with 28 percent disapproving.

Seeking diversity

In the 2018 Republican primary, Abbott made a great show of targeting three Republican incumbents for defeat. Two -- state Reps. Sarah Davis of Houston and Lyle Larson of San Antonio -- prevailed in their primaries and were reelected in November. The third, Wayne Faircloth of Galveston was an easy mark for a well-funded challenge from Mayes Middleton, who prevailed.

In an interview with the Statesman the Thursday before the session ended, Bonnen, R-Lake Jackson, said in his view no incumbent of either party should oppose any other incumbent's reelection, and that anyone who tried it would suffer reprisal from him.

"My job is to make sure every member has a great session. We deliver successful results, and every member has something they can proudly talk about so they all get reelected. That keeps a Republican majority," Bonnen said.

Asked about Abbott's decision to support primary challenges in 2018, Bonnen said: "You'll have to visit with the governor about that. But the governor and I are going to work together to reelect the members of the Texas House."

Unlike Bonnen, the governor and his operation will be seeking to defeat Democratic incumbents, beginning with freshman Democrats who claimed seats by sometimes fragile margins. But the governor agreed with Bonnen on the sanctity this cycle of GOP incumbents in the March primary.

"So part of my job I feel is to go to the districts of these Republican House members and help explain to their constituents what a great job their House member did in working to reduce property taxes, working to reform school finance without a court order forcing us to do so, in making our schools safer and responding to Hurricane Harvey," he said. "We did so much this session, in just 140 days, it's remarkable. And these Republicans should be rewarded by being reelected."

Noting his active support for Pete Flores in his successful bid to pick up a Democratic state Senate seat in a special election last September, Abbott said that heading into 2020, "we will be looking for women candidates, for candidates of color who embrace the Republican values, which so many do, and we will be working to actively campaign for those candidates."

Of the 83 Republicans serving in the Texas House, six are women, one is African American and one is Hispanic.

"If you just do nothing, just let things naturally, organically occur, you tend to get the more conservative, older Anglo white males, who emerge out of the primary process," Rice University political scientist Mark Jones said. "But if you want to, you can increase your chances of probability of winning those seats substantially if you have an Anglo woman or in some of the districts, a Latino or Asian American man or women. To what extent is Gov. Abbott going to be actively involved in candidate recruitment as they try to flip the 10 to 15 most vulnerable Democratic-held seats?"

Abbott said he did not envision recruiting those candidates so much as expressing his preference for candidates who fill that bill and helping them emerge victorious from primaries and get elected.

Michael Quinn Sullivan, the acerbic CEO of Empower Texans, self-styled guardians of economic and social issue conservative orthodoxy, has proclaimed the session a failure on critical issues like spending, abortion and gun rights, suggesting the likelihood of primary challenges from the right.

Meeting with reporters on the last day of the session, Bonnen sharply rebuked Sullivan and his organization for their critique.

"You will never please or appease those folks, and I'm sure as hell not going to waste my time trying," Bonnen said.

But that kind of sharp criticism is not in Abbott's nature.

Big issues

Abbott identified what he considers the two biggest issues for Republican primary voters.

"One is addressing property taxes, which we did through two strategies," Abbott said. "One is by spending $5 billion to buy down the amount that they have to pay in property taxes, and the second is by limiting the ability of local governments to grow and increase your property taxes."

But it's unlikely that many homeowners will see tax bills drop. Rather, the rate of tax growth will slow, according to tax policy experts and a Statesman analysis.

The second big issue for Republican voters, Abbott said, is the border, "and once again, we've invested almost a billion dollars in making sure we're doing everything we can to address the border security-based issue."

State troopers support the U.S. Border Patrol but don't have the authority to enforce federal immigration law, as the number of illegal crossings soar this year.

"And so we are delivering on the two primary things that Republicans care about the most," Abbott said.

The Legislature, however, did little to further restrict abortion as some other states have done this year.

"Do they care about pro-life issues? Absolutely," Abbott said of Texas GOP voters. "But I can tell you, and this is very important, and that is Texas has the strongest pro-life law that's been upheld by a court."

On the ultimate constitutionality of its anti-abortion legislating, Texas has a mixed record.

Although Texas overcame challenges to 2011 laws requiring a pre-abortion sonogram and removing Planned Parenthood from a state-run medical program for low-income women, abortion opponents were dealt a significant setback on regulations passed in 2013.

The U.S. Supreme Court struck down a law requiring all abortions to be done in hospital-like settings and all abortion doctors to get admitting privileges in a nearby hospital. Those rules would have left nine abortion clinics open in Texas, down from 42 when the law took effect.

That 2016 ruling required restrictions to have health benefits that outweigh their burdens, a standard that will make it harder to justify future regulations that limit access to the procedure.

Texas is still fighting challenges to 2017 laws that outlawed the most common type of second-trimester abortion and required fetal tissue to be buried or cremated, although the Supreme Court recently upheld a similar law from Indiana. Both Texas laws have been blocked by lower courts.

This session, the Texas Legislature passed the "Born Alive Act," imposing criminal penalties on doctors who fail to treat babies born alive after failed abortion attempts. Abbott will sign the bill into law this week.

Democratic opponents contended it was a trumped-up issue.

"There have been zero reported instances of any child born alive after an abortion in Texas," Rep. Donna Howard, D-Austin, said during debate on the House floor.

"Then they should have no trouble voting in favor of it," Abbott said.

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