11 years: That’s how long Greg Abbott has been Texas governor. And if he wins again in November, he’s set to break former governor Rick Perry’s record of 14 years and one month in office.
So how has Abbott’s governing style evolved over his past three terms? And what might we expect to glean about how he’d approach a fourth?
Megan Stringer, who covers politics for Axios, joined Texas Standard for a discussion. Listen to the interview in the player above or read the transcript below.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: You write Abbott has redefined the powers of a Texas governor. How so?
Megan Stringer: Well, there are a few ways that he’s done this.
One is through disaster declarations. If you recall, during the pandemic around 2020, most all states had disaster declarations. That wasn’t anything new, but Texas was one of the states to keep it in for quite a while into 2023, the middle of 2023. So he really kept the governor’s powers going through that time during COVID.
Another way is veto threats. You know, in the 2023 legislative session, he did threaten a series of vetoes related to property taxes at the time. And that was just one way that Abbott was exercising the power and influence over the Legislature.
Of course, we saw right after that, his use of fundraising and money to exercise that power over the Legislature in the next year, the next election, he helped oust some of the Republican lawmakers who opposed the school voucher program that he was trying to pass.
And of course, he was successful in doing that. We had Steve Allison in San Antonio, who’s no longer in office because of that in major part.
So those are just a couple of ways that Abbott has grown his power over his time in office so far.
You interviewed a couple of political scientists for this story. What did they tell you about Abbott’s tenure that stuck out to them?
Yeah, what’s interesting is that in Texas, the governor’s office is traditionally weak.
One way that that is, for example, is that the governor is not unilaterally responsible for putting together the budget in Texas. Like other states, governors have that power.
And then also here in Texas we elect governor and lieutenant governor separately. So that’s something else in other states, you have governors choosing their running mates, running on the same ticket. And so it just creates a little bit more friction in Texas that you have another elected position that they can be at odds — Dan Patrick and Greg Abbott, of course.
So that’s just another way that the system is sort of weak and Greg Abbot is finding ways to still consolidate power within that.
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What about regular Texans? Do we have a sense of how Gov. Abbott is perceived beyond the fact that he keeps winning re-election?
Yeah, their polling is interesting. The last that we saw there in February, some polling from the Texas Politics Project at UT Austin did show that more registered voters did approve of Abbott than disapproved. But back in December, that was reversed. You did have more people who disapprove than approve.
You know, we’ll see those things shift sometimes in response to news events. The flooding last year was top of mind in the Texas Hill Country for a lot of voters. So, you know, that could have had something to do with that.
But largely he’s remained popular over these 11 years.
So he’s up for re-election in November. This time he’s running against Democratic state Rep. Gina Hinojosa. How is that race shaping up?
Yeah, it’s an interesting race. The Democrats, Gina’s team is saying that this is the right time for a change — kind of pointing, thinking about Democratic turnout in this year’s primary election. Statewide, I believe we had more Democrats casting ballots than Republicans, and so Democrats are hopeful about that, and that they can continue to turn people out in the state.
And then, as my colleagues have reported, we’ve had Hispanic voters in Texas, some signs that they’re turning back toward Democrats from the prior election. They had really kind of shifted rightward. We hear about this in the Valley in particular, but there are definite signs that those voters are turning back towards Democrats.
And so Gina Hinojosa and other Democrats are hopeful about those signs. We’ll see how that turns out come November.
