Greg Abbot was able to win his third election as the governor of Texas on Tuesday, November 8th 2022 by defeating Democratic elect Beto O'Rourke. This came to no surprise for many of Texans as a democratic governor hasn't been elected in over three decades. However, that doesn't mean that it wasn't a close race! With many of controversial topics on the agenda for both men, the people of Texas viewed two drastically different viewpoints on how they would conquer the issues at hand if they were elected.
The election itself was one to remember with talking points about the COVID-19 Pandemic, gun control laws, new voting rights, abortion restrictions, deadly school shootings, and of course the power grid failure.
"We started this campaign in South Texas, we celebrated my primary victory in South Texas and tonight we return to South Texas to celebrate my being your governor for four more years,” -Abbot≈
Greg Abbot is a 64 year old republican who was able to acquire 4,437,099 votes to Beto O'Rourke's 3,553,656 votes. The percentages came 54.76% going to our incumbent Abbot, and 43.86% to O'Rourke. With such a close race people on both sides were very eager and excited to find out if who they had voted for was going to win election. Republicans were adamant that they had done enough campaigning to be able to stay in control of the governorship, however, O'Rourke was actually able to out fundraise governor Abbot by $5.8M. Abbot was able to raise $70.7m while O'Rourke was able to raise a staggering amount of $76.6M. Even with the extra money the great state of Texas wasn't yet ready to change its color over to blue.
The state of Texas with its two running candidates
Abbot who was able to win by sticking true to his beliefs on the economy of Texas, border patrol, and crime in Texas, and circumnavigating the waters after the school shooting in Uvalde, TX as well as the abortion ban laws. Beto was able to give Abbot a real run for his money after both these two issues came to light after the power grid failure had just happened months before. Beto was able to really bring about an underlying feeling in some Texans that maybe Texas needed this change and switch up governor because what is going on in the society can no longer be looked at as normal and correct. Beto however, was not able to do what he needed to do to convince people that going from "too conservative" to "too liberal" was needed for Texas to get back to the great state that it once was. "Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47.”-Beto after a shooting in Walmart in 2019 in his home town of El Paso
This quote really stuck out to almost all republicans in Texas and honestly was a huge reason in why a lot of voters on the fence decided to go with comfortability and identity and vote in the way of Abbot. Such a vast history of being able to uphold the second amendment in Texas that most of its population did not want their guns being taking away from them due to the actions of others. Abbot was able to appease the population by not implementing what was done in Chicago and other cities on the topics of gun control. In addition to constantly attacking Abbot for not doing anything on this topic he really went for his knees on the idea that he already signed a "trigger law" that went on to ban abortion for the most part if Roe v. Wade was ever overturned. Beto came out and said this “Reproductive health care is under attack in this state more than it is anywhere else in this country, probably anywhere else in the developed world,” O’Rourke said. “There’s one person who is responsible for that, and that is Governor Greg Abbott.”
Greg and Beto
Governor Abbot definitely was pushed to the edge and looked over it and decided he liked the view from up there so he would give it another four years. Heavily tested again and again he was able to stay composed and ward off the jabs and haymakers being wildly and effortlessly thrown his way by his political competitor. This reelection just confirms that greg Abbot is tough, and very reliant on being able too stick to his guns when push comes to shove. After a record setting $200 million campaign Abbot was able to come out onto and show why he has been so dominant for the past eight years. He is adapting to the growing population of Texas that is getting younger and more aware of the political climate. "Tonight, Texans have sent a strong message," the governor said Tuesday night during a speech in McAllen.
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