Texas Politics

Bad week for Abbott?


 

 

Labor Day is when political campaigns kick into high gear.

For Greg Abbott, the Republican candidate for governor, it was the week before that got some attention. The Abbott campaign found that publicity of being attorney general can cut both ways.

Abbott saw Travis County District Judge John Dietz rule Thursday (Aug. 28) that the Texas school funding system is still unconstitutional.

Dietz, a Democrat, had re-opened the case after the Legislature in 2013 put back $3.4 billion of the $5.4 billion it cut from school appropriations in 2011.

Then on Friday, U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel ruled that the Legislature’s law to limit abortions, under the guise of protecting women’s health, unconstitutionally abridged a woman’s right to a legal abortion.

Yeakel’s decision stalled the closing of several abortion clinics around the state.

Republican Yeakel was appointed to the bench in 2003 by then-President George W. Bush – who, as Texas governor, had named Yeakel chief justice of the Texas Third Court of Appeals.

Yeakel had earlier ruled the anti-abortion law unconstitutional, but much of his ruling was overturned by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Ironically, the Republican dominated legislative actions that led to the legal cases had each sparked a filibuster by Fort Worth state Sen. Wendy Davis.

In 2011, she filibustered against the school funding cuts.

In 2013, her significantly more famous filibuster halted the anti-abortion bill.

In both cases, though the filibusters ran out the clock for those legislative sessions, Gov. Rick Perry called special sessions, and the measures easily passed.

But Davis’s 11-hour talkathon against the anti-abortion bill in June of 2013 made her an overnight sensation, and fueled her entry into the governor’s race. The anti-abortion bill — House Bill 2 — requires providers to meet the same standards as ambulatory surgical centers, including minimum sizes for rooms and doorways, and pipelines for anesthesia .

Yeakel ruled the ambulatory surgical center requirement “burdens Texas women in a way incompatible with the principles of personal freedom and privacy protected by the United States Constitution for the 40 years since Roe v. Wade.”

The law was supposed to take effect on Sept. 1 – Labor Day.

Yeakel said he “is firmly convinced that the State has placed unreasonable obstacles in the path of a woman’s ability to obtain a previability abortion.”

Sen. Davis called the ruling “a victory for women’s health care.” And, of course, slammed Abbott for defending the bill.

“These decisions should only be made between a woman, her doctor and her God — not Austin politicians like Attorney General Greg Abbott, who would make abortion illegal even in cases of rape and incest,” Davis said.

Abbott said he’ll appeal both decisions.

For both Abbott and Davis, the two cases present opportunities to appeal to their party’s bases.

Curtailing women’s access to abortions is popular with the Tea Party Republican base – as are cuts in tax spending for public schools.

Among Democrats, making abortions harder to get, and cutting school spending, aren’t winners.

The question is whether the timing on both these cases will help Davis convince Independent voters, and even some moderate Republicans, that the GOP has been taken over by ultra-conservative radicals.

They are represented in court by Abbott, and on the stump by him and the three GOP state senators who are nominees for other statewide offices: Dan Patrick for lieutenant governor, Ken Paxton for attorney general, and Glen Hegar for comptroller.

Abbott, also that Friday, backed out of an agreed-to debate Sept. 30, sponsored by WFAA-TV of Dallas and, the Texas Tribune — apparently deciding the conversational format was too risky.

That brought such a harsh reaction, even from some Republican officeholders, that the Abbott campaign hours later turned around and accepted another long-ago debate invitation from KERA-TV, the public station in Dallas. How the debate flap turns out remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, Patrick is limiting his debates with Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, the Democrat for lieutenant governor, to one. Paxton for attorney general, and Hegar for comptroller are thus far ducking any debates with Democratic opponents Sam Houston and Mike Collier.

On Saturday – Aug. 30 – Wendy Davis went to McAllen, to help package food at a food bank for hungry National Guard troops. Gov. Perry, running for president, had made a big show of dispatching them to the border. But news reports indicated some of them were strapped for cash because they had yet to get pay checks, and sought out a food bank.

The Republican candidates obviously presume that Texas is still solidly Red, this election is theirs to lose, and they need to duck appearing with their opponents and maybe undercutting their paid TV ads.

But they may be risking looking like The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight.

DAVE MCNEELY is a political columnist. You may contact him at davemcneely111@ gmail or (512)458 2963.


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