Texas Gov. Greg Abbott Makes It Official: He'll Seek Second Term Next Year

AUSTIN, TX — In not-exactly-surprising news, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott confirmed on Tuesday he would run for re-election next year.

The Dallas Morning News reported that Abbott made the announcement preceding a speech at the Dallas Regional Chamber. "I'm running for re-election," the newspaper reported him as having said. "That's 100 percent," Abbott reportedly added.

Abbott is in his first term as governor, winning the seat handily against Democrat Wendy Davis by some 20 percentage points. He succeeded Rick Perry, the longest-serving governor of Texas and a recent contestant on "Dancing with the Stars" who is now Secretary of Energy in the Trump administration.

For a while, it appeared that Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick might make a run for the governorship. But Patrick — who's taken an active and vocal role in pushing conservative legislative items — later announced he would not be a candidate for governor. Patrick is currently promoting passage of the so-called "bathroom bill" that would ban transgender people from using public restrooms matching their sexual identities.

The announcement of Abbott's bid for a second term as governor comes as no surprise to political observers, not only because he secured the seat with minimal opposition. The Trump administration's agenda is largely aligned with Abbott's, particularly the hard stance on municipalities enforcing immigration policy. Abbott has long called for across-the-board deportations of all undocumented immigrants — with or without criminal records — and his efforts have been buoyed by an equally strident stance by Donald Trump.

Another term for Abbott will enable him to push through his pet initiatives, including the immigration issue. In his recent Texas "state of the state"address, he made the elimination of so-called "sanctuary cities" he deems as having softened immigration enforcement standards and an "emergency item" of his administration.

Among Abbott's other legislative priorities, with comments attached from the "state of the state" address, are:

• Reforming Child Protective Services. "You will cast thousands of votes this session," Abbott told lawmakers. "Few will involve life or death decisions. Your vote on CPS is one of them. Last year, more than 100 children died in our Child Protective System. You can vote to end that. We can reform the system so that no more children die in it. We were right to inject emergency funding. But that’s not a lasting solution. We need more workers, with better training, smarter strategies and real accountability to safeguard our children."

• School Safety. In light of rising incidents of sexual assaults on students by teachers, the state has recently gained the dubious distinction of leading the nation in that scourge. Abbott outlined a series of steps that must be taken to diminish the trend.

"Texas schools are filled with some of the best teachers in America who are called to their profession," he began. "Unfortunately, a small number of teachers have given Texas an unwanted ranking. Texas reportedly leads the nation in teacher-student sexual assaults. Some of those teachers are not prosecuted. And worse, some are shuffled off to other schools.
"We are the ones with the duty to do something about it. Teachers who assault students should lose their license and go to jail. I want legislation that imposes real consequences for those teachers. We must also penalize administrators who turn a blind eye to such abuse.

• Border security. Abbott has been vocal in his calls to safeguard the southern border with Mexico throughout his political career, predating his election as governor. The Texas-Mexico border contains some 1,250 miles of the entire 1,900-mile-long U.S.-Mexico border, an expanse stretching delineated by the Rio Grande from El Paso in the West to Brownsville in the Southeast. His calls for robust border safeguarding has lately gained more currency given the Trump Administration's crackdown on immigration and proposal to build a physical wall separating the U.S. from Mexico.

"As elected officials, it's our responsibility to protect all Texans," he told the gathering. "It is our burden to deal with the consequences of the federal government not securing the border. Let’s be clear: We all support legal immigration; it’s what built America. What must be stopped is illegal immigration—and worse, the criminals who conspire with cartels to enter the U.S. illegally."
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• Hate crime status for police officer killings. Abbott said he wants to make cop killings a hate crime, reciting a list of recent killings of police officers — including the ambush-style killings of five officers in Dallas by a gunman last year.

"Texas will not tolerate attacks on law enforcement officers," Abbott said. "We will rise up as a state in support our law enforcement. I want legislation that increases penalties and makes it a hate crime for criminals who target peace officers simply because of their uniform."

• Protection of the unborn. Abbott, like most conservatives, has made opposition to abortion a key plank of his political platform. Recently, he's gained more attention to his commitment on cracking down on abortions by championing mulled rules that would require fetal remains in Texas caused by abortions or stillbirths to be buried as part of his broader Life Initiative effort. Traditionally, fetal remains have been disposed of in sanitary landfills.

• Improving education. "We must provide our children with the tools they need to succeed," Abbott said. "We do that through education." He then called for enhanced Pre-K education to accomplish that goal.

"Eighty percent of all voters agree: Texas should fund optional high-quality Pre-K education," the governor said. "They want our children on the path to reading and doing math at grade level by the time they finish third grade. Do your constituents know that each session you vote to spend about $1.5 billion on unaccountable Pre-K? The purpose of high-quality Pre-K is to set high standards, evaluate them and eliminate what doesn’t work. It’s to ensure that Pre-K works rather than wastes taxpayer money. Let’s do this right. Or don’t do it at all."

• Diversifying the economy. "Every man and every woman in this state should have greater opportunity for economic advancement," Abbott said. "To promote that goal, we need to further diversify our economy by attracting jobs to Texas from outside the energy sector. The Enterprise Fund has been doing just that. In the past two years, the Fund has attracted more than a half a billion dollars in capital investment and added thousands of new jobs."

He also called for cutting taxes and regulations on business toward his goal of economic diversification. "As far as I'm concerned, the only good tax is a dead tax," he said. He also called for relief from soaring property rates: "No government should be able to tax people out of their homes," he said. "No government should be able to disregard the private property rights of its citizens."

• Tort reform. "One reason Texas attracts so many jobs is because of the strides we’ve made on tort reform. But our work is not done. Hail-storm litigation is the newest form of lawsuit abuse. To reduce the economic havoc, I want legislation on my desk that limits abusive hail-storm litigation."

As part of "cleaning up government," Abbott also called for an end to the practice of government deducting union dues from the paychecks of employees. "Taxpayer money shouldn’t be used to support the collection of union dues," he said.

>>> Officials photo of Gov. Greg Abbott via State of Texas