Greg Abbott, Beto O’Rourke fight over guns, abortion in 2022 Texas election

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Last yr, Texas Republicans have been pumping out red-meat legal guidelines in a marathon of particular legislative periods, getting ready to lock in their dominance for an additional decade with redistricting and salivating at a midterm atmosphere that traditionally ought to have favored them.

Things have gotten a bit of extra difficult since then.

While the atmosphere in Texas nonetheless favors the GOP, it has been upended by two points in which public opinion has trended sharply in opposition to them: gun management and abortion rights. Now, as Republicans emerge from the standard election turning level of Labor Day, they’re set to strive laborious to recenter the dialog on points which are extra favorable to them.

“The No. 1 issue by far in the state of Texas is the border,” Gov. Greg Abbott mentioned in a radio interview Friday when requested to border the autumn marketing campaign. He went on to supply variations along with his Democratic opponent, Beto O’Rourke, on points associated to the border, in addition to police funding and the oil and fuel business.

“The contrast on those issues [is] gonna be prolific and it’s gonna be the contrast on those issues that’s gonna ensure my reelection,” he mentioned.

Abbott is dealing with his hardest November opponent in O’Rourke, and the 2 are poised to begin an unrelenting TV battle after Labor Day as they attempt to end up their bases and persuade the few remaining undecided voters. But it’s going to come after Abbott obtained a three-week head begin on O’Rourke, airing a pair of optimistic biographical adverts since mid-August, an acknowledgment that the two-term incumbent’s picture wants some buffing.

Polls present voters stay in a bitter temper, with majorities saying the state is on the fallacious monitor. And whereas Abbott’s approval score has rebounded from its document lows final yr, gone are the times of the sort of broad reputation he loved when he was final on the poll 4 years in the past and cruised to a second time period.

Abbott has steered the state sharply to the best since then, together with on the 2 points that Democrats now see as a few of their strongest property for November: abortion and weapons. Abbott signed a “trigger law” that has banned virtually all abortions in the state following the U.S. Supreme Court’s determination in June to finish the nationwide proper to abortion. And he has resisted supporting any new gun restrictions following the Uvalde college taking pictures in May — together with elevating the age to purchase an assault-style rifle, which he argued last week was not workable as a result of courts have discovered such an age restrict unconstitutional.

Polls commonly present that Texas voters, usually by extensive margins, oppose outlawing all abortion and wish stricter gun legal guidelines. Democratic candidates have been more and more express about how central they consider the problems shall be to the November election.

“This is one of the few truly unifying issues in the state of Texas right now,” O’Rourke mentioned throughout a news convention in late August marking the efficient date of the set off regulation. In a subsequent TV interview, he referred to as the election a “referendum on whether we’re going to go back literally half a century or whether this state is going to move forward.”

Both events — up and down the poll — purpose to woo ladies voters 

The identical day the set off regulation went into impact, O’Rourke launched his first normal election TV adverts. Both criticized Abbott over abortion.

In Harris County — which incorporates Houston and is the state’s largest county— Democrats see a lot upside in the problem that the county decide, Lina Hidalgo, began airing TV adverts in early August accusing her Republican challenger of being silent on abortion rights following the Supreme Court’s determination. The challenger, Alexandra del Moral Mealer, didn’t reply to The Texas Tribune’s request for touch upon her place.

Republicans are nonetheless looking for a rebuttal. Rather than defend the legal guidelines he has signed, Abbott has sought to argue O’Rourke is the one with excessive views on abortion, noting his longtime refusal to say whether or not he helps any limits on the observe. When he has needed to handle the legal guidelines, together with the dearth of exceptions of rape victims, Abbott has made awkward feedback like his suggestion Friday that victims can take emergency contraception to forestall a being pregnant.

At the identical time, Texas Republicans have been making not-so-subtle appeals to ladies voters. Last month, Comptroller Glenn Hegar and state Sen. Joan Huffman, a Republican from Houston and the highest funds author in the Senate, abruptly introduced their assist for repealing the sales tax on feminine hygiene products, an thought Abbott rapidly endorsed. Women even have factored prominently into his TV adverts to date, the primary of which was narrated by his spouse, Cecilia Abbott.

Democrats face headwinds, too: O’Rourke’s 2020 run, Joe Biden 

As for O’Rourke, Abbott’s marketing campaign has made little secret that it plans to hammer him over feedback he made across the time of his failed 2020 presidential marketing campaign, saying he would take border partitions down, expressing assist for the Green New Deal and praising activists who have been pushing to “defund the police.” The challenge of police funding is the subject of Abbott’s first detrimental TV advert in opposition to O’Rourke, which started airing Monday.

O’Rourke has denied that he helps defunding the police — a time period with an ambiguous which means to many — however mentioned in 2020 that he “really love[d]” the concept of taking cash away from “over-militarized” police departments and reinvesting it in social companies.

When it involves police funding, Republicans have discovered a contemporary wedge in Harris County. Last month, Hegar accused county commissioners of violating a brand new state regulation to cease native governments from slicing police spending, an accusation that Abbott swiftly amplified. The county has denied the cost and is difficult the comptroller in courtroom.

In addition to GOP efforts to alter the subject from abortion and weapons, Democrats additionally must deal with a president from their get together, Joe Biden, who stays very unpopular in Texas. The state Democratic Party is searching for to counteract that, saying Friday that it’s launching a four-week tour after Labor Day to tout the administration’s accomplishments.

Nationally, Democrats have felt some reduction from the robust political atmosphere as Congress has confirmed unusually productive for an election yr, passing a landmark well being care and local weather spending bundle final month. And they’ve been inspired by latest election victories in Kansas, Alaska and New York the place abortion was a number one challenge.

Cliff Walker, a associate on the progressive consulting agency Seeker Strategies, mentioned Texas Democrats have growing cause to be optimistic attributable to “unprecedented national action” on vital points, mixed with “unprecedented state failure” just like the 2021 energy grid collapse.

“This is a much better hand to play than anyone would have imagined, not just a few months ago, but at the start of the election cycle,” Walker mentioned.

Republicans eye South Texas, Democrats search rural, suburban edge 

It all factors to a extra complicated atmosphere than Republicans had anticipated. The emergence of abortion and weapons as top-of-mind points has thrown up new obstacles in the suburbs, the place that they had hoped to regain territory they misplaced beneath former President Donald Trump. One main instance of that’s Texas House District 70, a brand new open seat in the Dallas suburbs that represents one of many few pickup alternatives for both get together in the decrease chamber post-redistricting.

Republicans are additionally conceding they can’t take rural Texas, a long-time firewall, without any consideration, with Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick just lately launching a 131-stop bus tour focused at rural voters. O’Rourke has been barnstorming rural Texas, and Patrick is in a rematch along with his 2018 Democratic opponent, Mike Collier, who carried out higher than O’Rourke that yr in rural counties.

Republicans are nonetheless upbeat about their probabilities in South Texas, which they’re focusing on extra critically than ever after Biden underperformed there in 2020. In addition to the three congressional races there they’ve lengthy been focusing on, they’re getting extra severe about flipping an open state Senate seat in the Rio Grande Valley, which additionally occurs to be the one aggressive state senate seat on the November poll after redistricting.

The prime tremendous PAC aligned with the U.S. House GOP leaders, the Congressional Leadership Fund, just lately introduced it was reserving $3 million in TV adverts to reelect U.S. Rep. Mayra Flores, R-Los Indios, who flipped the Rio Grande Valley seat in a June particular election. The committee announcement was probably the most severe sign but that nationwide Republicans are dedicated to her November election, regardless of her operating in a district redrawn to be extra favorable to Democrats.

“South Texas continues to represent some of our best pickup opportunities nationwide,” mentioned Calvin Moore, a spokesperson for the Congressional Leadership Fund.

The best race in South Texas stays the open seat in the fifteenth Congressional District. Seeking to point out how dedicated Democrats are to defending the seat, their nominee, Michelle Vallejo, launched an inventory of over 100 endorsements from throughout the state Friday. It got here with a press release criticizing Republican nominee Monica De La Cruz for her “extreme and radical views” on abortion, amongst different issues.

De La Cruz, unsurprisingly, is speaking about one thing else in her marketing campaign. Her first TV advert options her flying over the Mexican border in a helicopter, touchdown and telling voters about “Biden’s border crisis” and the financial pressures beneath his administration.

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