Abbott v. Beto: The Race for Governor
March 7, 2022
The position of Texas governor has opened for reelection. Current Gov. Greg Abbott, republican, is running for reelection to his third term against former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke, democrat.
The primary elections for each party were held March 3 and both candidates swept the spot in their parties with ease.
At the republican party primaries, Abbott made the ballot with 63% of the votes. There were a total of 1,938,036 votes and Abbott received 1,286,525.
“Tonight, Republicans sent a message that they want to keep Texas the land of opportunity and prosperity for absolutely everybody — the prosperity that we have delivered over the past eight years,” Abbott said at a Corpus Christi rally.
Gov. Abbott has also received former President Donald Trump’s endorsement in his campaign.
In the democrat party primaries, O’Rourke won with 91% of the votes, receiving 966,210 out of 1,057,786.
“THANK YOU, TEXAS,” O’Rourke said via Twitter. “We are going to win this race with one another, for one another.”
These candidates will campaign, represent their parties and try to gain support of the community in a race to be elected governor on Nov. 8.
If O’Rourke wins this election, he will become the first democrat to be governor of Texas in 30 years.
A growing lack of support for Abbott is spreading due to a new wave of Gen-Z voters entering the voting pool. Many young Texans don’t respect Abbott because of his long history of supporting anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-abortion laws.
However, much of the voting pool in Texas still lies republican and Abbott will be a fierce competitor due to his ingrained support from holding the position for the past eight years.
Abbott has been serving Texas as governor since 2015. He also served as Texas attorney general from 2002-2015 and served on the Texas Supreme Court from 1995-2001.
Abbott has historically supported anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ+ bills and laws.
In May 2021 he signed the SB-8 bill which effectively banned abortions in Texas after a heartbeat is detected. This received a lot of backlash because most women typically don’t know they are pregnant at this point.
O’Rourke has plans to repeal SB-8 and expand Medicaid, especially for pregnant women, if elected.
Most recently, Abbott has been pushing an anti-transgender directive, claiming that medical procedures on transgender adolescents are child abuse and encouraging people to report cases of these medical procedures. President Biden has condemned Abbott on this act.
However, Abbott has had several other aspects to his governorship. He has a very strong educational platform and has put lots of money to border security and public safety.
Along with repealing SB-8, if elected, O’Rourke plans to create a legal orderly immigration system and uphold asylum laws.
In terms of education, O’Rourke has claimed that under the Abbott administration, schools have been underfunded by about $4000 per student compared to the national average and teachers have been underpaid by about $10,000 compared to other states. He seeks to aid this by increasing teacher pay and pouring more money into the public education fund.
In public safety he plans to repeal permitless carry, invest in police and provide mental health services, crisis counselors and social workers to reduce the burden on police and help address mental health challenges, substance use and homelessness more effectively.
O’Rourke is also the founder of Powered by People, an organization that has helped to register over 250,000 unregistered Texan voters since Dec. 2019.
So far, Abbott has a lead on O’Rourke in approval ratings, but there is still eight months until the official election.
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