Greg Abbott
Overall 30-4-9 |
Challenger Wins
Hickland, Holt, LaHood,
Olcott, Shofner
Incumbent Runoffs
Kerwin, Schoolcraft,
Spencer, Klick, Stucky, Frazier
Challenger Record 5-2-3
Incumbent Record 22-2-3
Open Races Record 3-0-3 |
|
Challenger Wins
Hickland, Holt, LaHood, Little,
Luther, Money, Morgan, Olcott
Incumbent Runoffs
Covey, Hopper, Kerwin, Lowe, Pierson, Richardson, Schoolcraft
Challenger Record 8-21-7
Incumbent Record 3-1-0
Open Races Record 3-1-1 |
|
Ken Paxton
Overall 14-23-8 |
Texas GOP Governor Who's Had No Coattails
Dominates as Primary MVP Who Bought Wins
Capitol Inside
March 9, 2024
Attorney General Ken Paxton set the stage in the fall with the conception of a revenge tour as a recruiting magnet for conservative candidates to run against Texas House Republicans who voted to impeach him last spring.
But after disappearing from the spotlight for months during the impeachment spectacle, Governor Greg Abbott swooped in and stole Paxton's thunder with a retaliation offensive of his own aimed at taking out GOP representatives who refused to cave to his demands on school vouchers.
Abbott has no competition for most valuable player on the Capitol Inside Best of the Texas Primary Election - and he wasn't even on the ballot in 2024. Abbott found the 10 best candidates that Paxton's impeachment had drawn from the woodwork - and he armed them to the hilt with obscene amounts of campaign cash that he had to spare after taking $6 million late last year from a newfound Pennsylvania donor who's the lead American investor in TikTok. Abbott Philly fan Jeff Yass is the nation's richest school choice champion. Abbott didn't say if he'd had any reservations about taking the all-time biggest single donation in Texas history after banning the TikTok app on state computers and phones just two years ago.
While Paxton touted three dozen challengers he'd endorsed in social media plugs and press releases, Abbott raised the bar dramatically on largess when he contributed $5 million to his challengers in the 10 target races with incumbents who'd been strong allies up until their votes against school choice. Abbott dished out close to $2.3 million more to incumbents and candidates for open House seats on the ballot this week.
Three Abbott challengers - Janis Holt of Silsbee, Marc LaHood of San Antonio and Alan Schoolcraft of Universal City - raised more than $1 million apiece for fights with targeted incumbents. Abbott's 10 candidates had $836,000 on average for campaigns that spanned no more than three months in most cases.
Abbott described the challengers as though they were robots who all agreed that parent empowerment, border security and property taxes are the most important issues facing Texans today. But governor didn't just fire off checks from Austin. He staged pep rallies for photo ops that showed large crowds that Abbott's team had whipped up in advance. Abbott was the state's busiest cheerleader with two or even three events in separate locations across Texas several days a week in the closing month of the primary campaigns.
Abbott plastered pictures of the festivities on X complete with the simple message that all of his candidates enthusiastically embraced and learned to repeat word for word. Abbott's vouchers vengeance crusade was a full-scale production on par with Operation Lone Star in terms of extravagance, scripting and spectacular splash.
But the mission that's been mostly for show without forcing a single migrant back to Mexico in three years at the Rio Grande. Abbott - in contrast - got real results from the school choice destruction derby that knocked out five House Republicans and expects to take down three more in the runoff election on May 28.
Make that four more in the wake of Abbott's belated endorsement on Thursday of Katrina Pierson in a bid to unseat State Rep. Justin Holland of Rockwall in overtime in House District 33. Pierson had been an ardent Abbott critic and even tried to get Donald Trump to recall his endorsement of the Texas governor before the primary vote in 2022.
Abbott could tell that Pierson had become the favorite after leading Holland by almost one percentage point in Tuesday's election. Abbott can pump hundreds of thousands into Pierson's runoff campaign in an attempt to bury Holland and run up the score. She will be indebted to him from that point on.
The fact that two Abbott-backed House Republicans lost on Tuesday night has been obscured amid the fanfare about the massive devastation he inflicted on lawmakers who dared to defy him. Two of the Abbott incumbent targets prevented him from running the table with wins in West Texas districts Tuesday night. Abbott could see three more GOP representatives who he's endorsed go down in runoffs if he doesn't try to buy those as well.
Paxton picked up a key victory in House District 65 where his impeachment lawyer Mitch Little upended State Rep. Kronda Thimesch of Lewisville as an incumbent on the Abbott slate. Paxton also backed primary victor Matt Morgan over Abbott-backed State Rep. Jacey Jetton of Sugar land. Paxton was instrumental in forcing Speaker Dade Phelan into a runoff that he might find all but impossible to survive. But Abbott deserves most of the credit for four other Paxton wins on election night.
Paxton made the mistake of pitching endorsements to a long list of challengers who were never competitive without the governor in their camps. The AG posted a record of 14 wins and 23 losses in the opening round with eight candidates he's backing in runoffs. Paxton would be worthy of significant credit if Covey puts the House speaker's re-election bid to rest in OT. But Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and Trump would share in the accolades with the AG if Phelan falls.
Abbott posted an overall record of 30-4 in Tuesday's election when Paul Dyson of College Station and Caroline Fairly of Amarillo claimed wins in open House races. Abbott has a shot at nine more wins in runoffs with challengers Helen Kerwin of Glen Rose, Chris Spencer of Texarkana and Schoolcraft, incumbent State Reps. Frederick Frazier of McKinney, Stephanie Klick of Fort Worth and Lynn Stucky of Sanger and three contestants in open races for the House.
The governor is trying to run up with the score with a the post-primary election endorsement that he issued to Pierson. But Pierson could have won without Abbott's better-late-than-never plug. So Abbott will not deserve to take any legitimate credit if she does. But Paxton will.
Paxton gets all the credit in the meantime for primary wins by a trio of challengers - Lee Finley, Gina Parker and David Schenck - in races for the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals against incumbent jurists who'd sparked his wrath. That's nice. But no one else pays any attention to court races outside lawyer and the most serious activist circles.
Abbott will get a chance to show Texans whether or not he loves his country beyond the rhetorical venom with Holt in Austin as a challenger who's vowed to fight for a vote on whether Texas should secede from the United States of America. Abbott contributed more than $600,000 in the month before the primary vote to Holt and challenger Stormy Bradley, who both signed the Texas First Pledge to push as lawmakers for an election on their home state leaving the U.S. Bradley proved to be a waste of Abbott's donor money when she lost to veteran State Rep. Drew Darby of San Angelo at the polls last week.
After claiming to love America throughout his life until now, Abbott has been conspicuously neutral on the move to break from the USA. Holt and several other pro-secession election candidates who prevailed in the Texas primary could end up flusing Abbott out from hiding on that.
The Best of the Texas Primary Election will be rolled out in single installments as per tradition here in recent election years. |
