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| Facebook selfie photo shows Glenn Hegar and kids who are twins at Houston Astros playoff game October 21 |
Hegar Top and Only Choice for Best
Statewide Campaign in Texas Vote
Capitol Inside
November 14, 2022
Comptroller Glenn Hegar is probably the only Texas Republican who could have won statewide this year in the battleground states that will decide the 2024 presidential election like Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georga.
Hegar is the unassailable choice for top statewide campaign in the Capitol Inside Best of the Texas Elections honors for 2022. Hegar - quite frankly - is the only bonafide candidate in that particular category based on the high standards here.
Governor Greg Abbott's team would certainly argue that he was the premier statewide contender in Texas this year based on the standard check lists that the pundits have cited when lavishing praise based on money, message, the level of competition and victory margin compared to the polling on his re-election race. But Democratic challenger Beto O'Rourke had lost his novelty as a candidate for U.S. Senate, the White House and governor in a span of four years. And O'Rourke still raised more campaign cash than the second-term incumbent and whipped him in the Rio Grande Valley that Abbott had been vowing to turn red for months.
You could make the argument that Abbott would have won by more than 11 points if he would have remained a steady leader who may not have been very exciting or brimming with charisma but governed as though he represented all of the state's 29 million residents as opposed to only Republicans like himself. That's the mark of true leadership - and Hegar was the only GOP nominee on the statewide slate that fit the bill in that critical department. But Abbott recreated himself in Donald Trump's image on the far right - and he may have no chance to ever advance his current post in the nation's most conservative and least progressive major state.
The quick and easy answer when analyzing the statewide races in Texas this year is that all of the winner won first and foremost if not exclusively because they're Republicans in the Lone Star State. But Hegar was the one who really deserved to be re-elected as a veteran elected official who focused on doing his job the best that he could as the state's chief fiscal officer without the need for repackaging to impress the Trump base. Hegar - unlike the governor - didn't waste his time and the taxpayers money trying to impress the former president who tried to overthrow the democratic American election before orchestrating the riot on January 6 when Congress was certifying Democratic President Joe Biden's election in 2020.
A candidate who's a true fiscal conservative isn't going to raise any more money than they need to be competitive and to win. You can't say that about Abbott and Patrick. A strong leader doesn't have to rely on puppet shows and publicity stunts like Operation Lone Star or voter fraud reward funds to demonsrate why they should be re-elected. Attorney General Ken Paxton was facing criminal charges and an FBI investigation throughout his campaign for a third term as the state's top lawyer. Paxton was associated with Trump more than Patrick or Abbott after using state funds to try to cancel the 2020 based on bogus claims of voter fraud.
Abbott was the only GOP statewide cast member who was competing against a Democrat with experience in elective office and a sufficient amount of money to be competitive. But you can tell a lot by the margins of victory and defeat in an attempt to determine the quality of campaigns. The attorney general was the only victorious statewide candidate who failed to win by double digits in the Texas general election last week. But Paxton was close when he defeated Democrat Rochelle Garza by 9.84 points in the general election last week. Patrick beat Democrat Mike Collier by 10.4 points in a rematch while Abbott pitched a third strike to O'Rourke when he beat him by 10.99 points based on the tally at the Texas Secretary of State's office. Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller and Railroad Commissioner Wayne Christian clobbered no-name Democrats by 12.74 points and 14.89 points respectively.
Hegar prevailed by the largest margin of the bunch when he defeated Democrat Janet Dudding by 15.52 percentage points in the general election last week. The Abbott apologists could point out that Hegar raised more than 11 times as much campaign cash as Dudding, who raised about $278,000 for her debut campaign thanks in part to $42,000 in loans. But Hegar rounded up less than $5.7 million in his bid for a third term while Abbott raised a jaw-dropping $143.9 million. Hegar received almost 4.59 million votes compared to 4.43 million for Abbott.
The governor could have raised half as much and still won by double-digits. It's a safe bet that he would have garnered more votes than the comptroller if he had been true to himself without feeling like he had to wrap himself in Trump to survive in the new GOP that moderate Republicans outside of Texas roundly rejected in a general election that the Democrats won big at the national level. |
