TDP Boss Blames Abbott and McCraw
for Uvalde Fiasco as Patrick Decries BS

Capitol Inside
May 28, 2022

The leader of the Texas Democratic Party contended on Friday night that Governor Greg Abbott, the state's top cop and the National Rifle Association are all responsible for the massacre at a Uvalde elementary school this week and the paralyzed response by law enforcement officers at the scene.

The monumental backlash that Republicans are facing in Austin intensified on Saturday when Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick said Saturday that he and other top state leaders were fed erronenous information before a press conference that Abbott staged Uvalde on the day after 19 children and two adults were shot to death there.

"We've had a lot of funerals, a lot of memorial services, a lot of hospital visits," Patrick told Fox News. "So I take this personally, and I know the governor takes it personally. And for me, it's 140 or 150 people killed in Texas in the last six or seven years of collective anger when we're not told the truth."

As Texas Senate Democrats called for an election-year special session on gun violence that's clearly out of control here, TDP Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa slammed the blame on Abbott and the Republicans for passing seven bills last year that eliminated gun restrictions that could have prevented the atack that killed 19 children and two adults in Uvalde on Tuesday.

“Abbott blatantly lied about the response from law enforcement at the shooting and refuses to take accountability for his role aiding and abetting the NR," Hinojosa declared in an email today.

"The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) Director, who Abbott appointed, is attempting to blame local law enforcement for preventing officers from going into the school to prevent mass murder while it was occurring, despite the several 911 calls children were making inside the school building," Hinojosa added. "The fact of the matter is that DPS was in charge while these decisions were being made. The fault lies with the DPS Director and his boss, Greg Abbott."

DPS Colonel Steve McCraw could be on thin ice after allowing the governor to paint a false picture of a swift and couragoue response at the media event that the state's top half-dozen Republicans leaders attended 24 hours after the second mass school shooting in the past four years.

But Abbott has depended heavily on McCraw as the co-commander of the border security mission Operation Lone Star. McCraw has appeared with the governor at most if not all of the news conferences, roundtables, armchair discussions and other public events that Abbott has produced in recent months. McCraw suggested on Friday that he'd been given the same bad information as the governor before Abbott spun a false tale before a national audience of heroic actions by law enforcement during the rampage.

Abbott expressed his anger on Friday night after emerging details made it clear that he and his fellow GOP leaders had been clueless when they put on the press event as quickly as possible when the small community was still in a state of unfathomable shock. The timing, scope and hurried nature of the publicity event created an appearance of vultures sweeping into town to feed on the grieving more than to share in it as claimed.

Abbott and the Republicans appear to be stewing in anger now as a result of the way they publicly embarrassed themselves at the height of the grieving in Uvalde this week. Abbott might want to know if the veteran DPS chief knew that he and the other Republicans were spreading misinformation at the time of the news conference. If the answer is no, the governor might feel the need to know why the number one law enforcement in Texas didn't know what really happened in Uvalde after an entire day.

The governor said last night that all options are on the table when asked at a follow up press conference in Uvalde if would adhere to calls to summon lawmakers back to confont the gun violence that's erupted in mass on his and Patrick's watch as the top two Texas leaders for almost eight years.

The frenzy that the shooting has sparked has been far more intense than the Republicans' frantic rush to reform the Texas power grid after it collapsed in Winter Storm Uri in 2021. At least three Republicans - State Reps. Jeff Leach of Allen and Steve Allison of San Antonio and State Senator Kel Seliger of Amarillo - have joined in the call for a special session in an attempt to stop the bloodshed in the Texas schools.

But that may be unlikely if Hinojosa is right with his assessment of Abbott's last-minute decision to cancel a speaking appearance at the NRA annual meeting in Texas this weekend.

“By choosing not to attend the NRA Convention in Houston today, Greg Abbott loudly admits that the gun lobby and state leadership holds responsibility for the lethal gun laws in Texas and lives lost this week due to gun violence," the state Democratic Party boss said. "This is nothing but additional smoke and mirror theatrics from our Republican state leaders, who have taken no meaningful actions to prevent this from happening again in the future, but have taken countless political contributions from the NRA. 

“In the 48 hours following the Uvalde Massacre, eleven additional Texas schools responded to gun related threats," Hinojosa added. "During that same time, our Governor spent time fundraising for his campaign and pandering to the gun lobby with recorded videos. And when he has the nerve to show up in a grieving community, he does so alongside Republican leaders who urge us not to politicize the tragedy they and the gun lobby legislated into existence.

“Our kids deserve life-saving gun violence prevention solutions, and our Republican leaders must take legislative action to protect them immediately," Hinojosa added. "We cannot send Texas kids back to school in the fall without it.”

U.S. Senator Ted Cruz - the only major Texas GOP leader who didn't back out on the NRA with almost no warning - seemed lost last night night in a 1950s western with sound bytes that he rolled off at the gun group's affair in the state's largest city. "What stops armed bad guys is armed good guys," Cruz declared.

But Patrick was in a more serious mood and seemed more upset today than he has at any point in his role as the Texas Senate president.

"We were told that there was a security officer and they were a little hazy on how the engagement went, but that a security officer was there," Patrick said. "Well, it turned out he was not on campus. He drove on to the campus, but he was not on campus, as we were told and led to believe. No one mentioned the fact that there was this 45 minute-to-an-hour hold by the chief of the police of the school district while there were still shots being fired. Now, we believe that most of those shots were being fired into the door of the wall to hold back law enforcement. But we don't know.

"And so imagine the parent who has to go through this for the rest of their life and they will be thinking, 'Was my child still alive and could have been saved?' So that was another fact that we weren't told. And so this is heartbreaking. This is horrendous. With these shootings, one of the parts of this job that you don't ever want is to have to go to a funeral of, particularly a child, but anyone killed in a shooting or one of our police officers killed in the line of duty."

more to come ...