Beto O’Rourke is expected to paint Greg Abbott’s signing of a law that banned nearly all abortions in the state as too extreme tonight during the gubernatorial debate. The law has only narrow exceptions to save the life of a patient.
and Department of Public Safety troopers to the border and providing additional funding to local officials in border counties seeing large number of migrants crossing through their jurisdictions. “The governor wants to highlight his concerns about the security of the border,” Deen said.
“He wants to blame President Biden for what he calls a ‘porous border,’ an increase in illegal immigration, the recent sponsoring of buses [full of migrants] to cities in the north. The way that he talks about the sharing of the burden that Texas experiences with the cost of undocumented immigration, all those things are winners for the governor.”in acknowledging a problem at the border while at the same time outlining his vision for a better way to deal with the large number of migrants arriving in Texas every day. This month, federal authorities announced that the number of migrants encountered by officials at the U.S.-Mexico borderduring the 2022 fiscal year, the first time the country has crossed that threshold. Michael Adams, a political scientist at Texas Southern University, said the immigration issue could give O’Rourke an opportunity to launch into Abbott, particularly on some of the more controversial parts of the border mission, like the“This is a race where a choice between the two candidates could not be more clear. If you think about a Venn diagram, I’m not quite sure if there’s any overlap.”“He would have to make the governor out to be someone who is very callous and not considerate of immigrants,” Adams said. “He’ll want to push for much more of a human approach.” But that will be a challenge, as polls show that Abbott’s border security policies are largely popular with the Texas electorate. A Texas Hispanic Policy Foundationthis week showed that 54% of voters are supportive of Abbott’s efforts to bus migrants to cities in other states. On the issue of abortion, O’Rourke is expected to paint Abbott’s signing of a law that banned nearly all abortions in the state as tooSylvia Gonzalez-Gorman, a political science professor at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, said Republicans, including Abbott, have struggled with some female voters since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down constitutional protections for abortion this summer and triggered into effect a Texas law that bans nearly all abortions in the state. O’Rourke has capitalized on that issue in campaign stops and is expected to hit on it during the debate. “When it gets to the abortion issue, that gets more sticky because that includes no abortion for incest, rape, [even] if it’s a young woman or a child. [Abbott’s] going to have a tough time navigating that space,” Gonzalez-Gorman said. “If you listen to the GOP talking points, there’s not a cohesive message for them.” Democrats have banked on the issue to flip voters to their side this election cycle and saw some promising signs last month when voters in Republican-ledBut polling has shown little movement on the issue, Adams said. “Beto was hoping that the Dobbs decision would give them some traction, but there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of movement in terms of getting new women voters to come over,” he said.school shooting in UvaldeO’Rourke has pushed for gun safety measures and advocated for raising the age for owning a semi-automatic rifle from 18 to 21. The families of Uvalde shooting victims have joined him in that call and will hold a news conference before the debate asking Abbott to call a special legislative session to pass that change into Texas law.