Opinion: The Texas governor had time for one last play to cater to the merely 11% of Texas registered voters who would cast ballots in the GOP primary.
Gov. Greg Abbott speaks to supporters the night before the March 1 primary at Rancho El Chema Event Center in San Antonio.It was Feb. 22, exactly one week before the Texas primary election. Gov. Greg Abbott knew from his own polls and public ones that he was in no danger of being forced into a runoff by two candidates running to his right, former state Sen. Don Huffines and former state Republican Party Chairman Allen West.
Abbott also issued the same day a press release making sure that his order would receive prominent play in the state’s media outlets so that voters would know that he was taking on the pressing issue of how doctors, psychologists and parents were treating children with gender dysphoria. APP’s director, Terry Schilling, had previously been on the podcast accusing Abbott of engaging in back-room maneuvers in the Texas House to kill a bill passed along strict partisan lines by the Texas Senate that would make gender-affirming therapy criminal child abuse, even though a range of medical experts had testified against the bill.
Schilling continued, “It doesn’t happen without Ken Paxton and his leadership and what he came out with, and it also doesn’t happen without the support of the ‘War Room’ Posse. and everything they’re doing to help us really make this pro-family movement more muscular.”