10 Things to Know about Governor Greg Abbott

1. Greg Abbott is a very good lawyer. That should be kept in the back of your mind when discussing his agenda. Especially, obviously, any issue regarding Texas law. A lot of governors decide on a policy and check its legality while Governor Abbott has reverse-engineered the process and figures out what’s legal and then decides what to do. A good bet is that he has already role-played a case before the Supreme Court on arresting lawmakers or for curtailing minority voting rights and in those mock courts the governor believes that he wins. He may be right.

2. Speaking of the Supreme Court: A former high-ranking Texas official, who is in a position to know, said that Justice Abbott was first viewed with suspicion by his Republican colleagues on the Texas Supreme Court, where Greg Abbott served until 2002 (first appointed by W.) Other Republicans on the court thought he was not conservative enough. Those were the exact words used, “not conservative enough.” Abbott’s moderate reputation continued through his first term as attorney general. Then, per this source, Abbott went to campaign school—which apparently does not actually involve going anywhere, the consultants come to you. He became more outspoken and, frankly, more arrogant. His third term as attorney general was apparently the period of his famous quote about his typical workday, a one-liner that was actually pretty funny, going to the office, suing the Obama Administration, and going home. He was the longest-serving attorney general in the state's history.

3. His later period as AG was the beginning of a gradual assault on open records enforcement, fyi. This was in contrast to Abbott’s predecessor as attorney general (and as Supreme Court Justice) incumbent U.S. Senator John Cornyn, who respected the unspoken understanding between Democratic and Republican lawmakers regarding the integrity of the Texas Public Information Act. Abbott began the lax enforcement and questionable opinions that has reached its depths under incumbent AG Ken Paxton. Interestingly, two of Abbott's open records abuses involve his own office. Newspapers in the state have tried unsuccessfully to find out how much the governor spends on security, not the actual security measures or displacements but a dollar amount. Denied. Also, a request for who the governor has invited to the Governor's Mansion and who has spent the night there was met by a release of hundreds of names of tourists who have visited the Governor Mansion, not the people who Greg Abbott invited. My source above said that legislators are largely indifferent to attacks like these on the Public Information Act because it’s not in their interests, either, that governmental processes be transparent. Don't you love Austin?

4. Governor Abbott faces little scrutiny because, for one reason among many—W and Rick Perry and now Greg Abbott have turned the historically weak Texas governor’s office into one of the most powerful state offices in the country. And there has not been a State Auditor in Austin since the last one resigned five years ago. The Office of the State Auditor still exists, overseen by an assistant auditor, but the appointed head has not been appointed. If this sounds like it gives the governor extraordinary power, it does. The first inquiry of a truly independent auditor might be, for example, scrutiny of a wall on the Rio Grande or its funding. Traditionally in Texas, in the spirit of separation of powers, the State Auditor has been a big player at the Capitol, a thorn in the side of Democrats and Republicans alike, said my guy above, and no one in the Legislature is speaking out now, demanding an appointment to the post of State Auditor, because neither party particularly wants independent scrutiny of state government. Love Austin again.

5. The demanding and impatient Greg Abbott that you see on television may be heavily influenced by stagecraft. The guy obviously has a sense of humor and his in-laws are an awesome family, btw, the Phalens of San Antonio and before that, of Mexico. Even people who can’t stand Greg Abbott adore his wife Cecilia, who has been a great First Lady and her sister, who is a well-regarded internist in the Live Music Capital of the World. Someone loves Greg Abbott, therefore, even if that someone is not in the Democratic Party.

6. Governor Abbott needs to act now. Demographics may lose him his base. If it is reasonable to assume that a lot of people moving into the state are not more conservative than the average current Texas voter—who is pretty fucking conservative—the red will eventually be diluted by blue. Or so that is the hope. There may be a long lag before Democrats become competitive in Texas but that delay won’t last forever, in Democratic theorizing. According to this theory, if Greg Abbott is ever going to live in the White House he needs to make the move soon. 

7. He may or may not have made a big mistake in the handling of the pandemic, the research hasn’t been done yet. Governor Abbott made his calls regarding closings and masking and one day researchers will say if he was right or wrong but they were apparently his calls to make. He does have a logical inconsistency in how he views local power, btw, what cities and counties can do. He is all for local control until somebody is doing something he doesn’t like and then it becomes a state prerogative. Probably not a fatal flaw to his aspirations. Whether Democrats like it or not, Greg Abbott is member of a minority group, people with physical disabilities. It makes him an attractive candidate because voters want to show acceptance. He's an interesting guy but whether he would be a good president—let's just say that the constituency he most needs to win over is the Republican Party's right wing, a disquieting number who live in Texas.

8. Whenever Governor Abbott is addressing the cameras regarding the border, you’ll see standing beside him a taciturn-looking white guy in accountant’s glasses and tan uniform. That is Colonel Steve McCraw, commander of the Texas Department of Public Safety that includes the Rangers, Highway Patrol and all the other lawdogs who have been sent to stop refugees crossing the mighty Rio Grande. Colonel McCraw is the quiet enforcer behind the Abbott administration. A former Democratic sheriff who knows the Colonel says that the description “conservative Republican” does not do the DPS commander justice, but this old sheriff adds that McCraw was always a straight-shooter with him. The Colonel is from the West Texas shithole of Marathon, near Alpine, in the God-forsaken Trans Pecos, and he served as a trooper before joining the FBI and then coming home to Texas as Governor Rick Perry’s criminal justice advisor. There are two interesting stories about Colonel McCraw, in the Greg Abbott context, one that is scurrilous and may not be true and another that may be true and is definitely funny. We’ll tackle the latter here. According to a very good law enforcement source, a top guy who knows the Colonel but did not get the story from him, when Agent McCraw was in the FBI he served for a time on the organized crime squad in New York where he became familiar with none other than a young Donald Trump, who at the time was a wannabe wiseguy. (The ex-president could not be reached for comment.) Apparently, per my source, “Everyone in the New York office knew Trump,” which helps to explain why the ex-president was so anti-FBI even before things turned to shit for him in D.C. How cool an anecdote is that? It could even be true. My question is if, when the former president comes to Texas, and there’s a moment when Governor Abbott is tied up with something else—or they’re all kicking back on the DPS plane, on the way to the border, do Colonel McCraw and the ex-president talk about goombahs they knew back in the day? It’s a cool story, even if it’s not true, but my source, who is very good, says it is true, from a time when Donald Trump wanted to be Don Donald, apparently, or was running with a Mafia or Mafia-like crowd. DPS refuses, btw, to discuss Colonel McCraw's past postings.

9. There were actually two surges of state troopers ordered by Governor Abbott, one to the Rio Grande and one to Austin. The governor talks a lot about helping law enforcement in the capital city and occasionally you do see troopers on the hike/bike trails downtown—but they are most visible at the Governor’s Mansion and on the Capitol grounds, naturally. There's been a lockdown ordered by the Governor's Office, through Colonel McCraw. The Capitol used to be open 24-7 but is now closed 7pm to 7am, including the grounds. The governor advantage of the Black Lives Matter protests last year, around the Capitol, and around the Governor’s Mansion frankly, to restrict access to what Ann Richards liked to call the People’s House. The Mansion today looks like Fort Apache, no disrespect to Native Americans intended. For example a few blocks from the Abbott crib, the same night of the most recent and deadly Sixth Street shooting, in which one person was killed and a dozen wounded, that night around the Governor's Mansion there were troopers everywhere, hours before the shootings. In unmarked cars, for instance, shining search lights on pedestrians, another trooper out on foot to check pedestrians out personally if they approached the Big House. My source on DPS, who is none of the guys mentioned above and who is in well-regarded in the Republican establishment, said that troopers were on “high alert” at the Mansion that night but would not say why. Greg Abbott was apparently home, if that's what you're wondering, and it’s important to remember this is his home, but it’s also important to remember what the Mansion used to be like. When Ann Richards lived there you could walk by at night and, literally, hear women’s laughter. When W was governor, there was still a sidewalk at the back, on Lavaca Street, and you could walk by on a summer afternoon and peek through the fence and see the fashionable parties and barbecues, the Bush family and various Bushites. When Rick Perry became governor all that changed. The sidewalk was removed. There were a lot of people who hated Perry, to be honest, but it was also that times had changed, crazies had upped their game and a couple of troopers with handguns was no longer adequate defense. There was the famous incident when Governor Perry himself was out jogging, on a trail somewhere here in our bucolic River City, and carrying a pistol under his shirt, or his shorts or whatever, he said, “for coyotes,” you remember that? A good guess today is that DPS drones are over the Capitol day and night, it is what it is, security is the governor's call both at his home and up to a point on the border. But who does Greg Abbott fear more? Not the antifas or whoever on the left, but the kind of nutjobs who wanted to take over the U.S. Capitol. In other words what Governor Abbott most fears is his own right wing. Which is also a metaphor for his life politically. 

10. It is now against the rules to film or take photos in the Legislative Reference Library in the State Capitol. No shit, a library. Which is kind of scary actually, what’s next, you can’t turn the pages? Or are we going to have a good old-fashioned book-burning, out on the South Lawn? Arrangements like these are made by the State Preservation Board (consisting of the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Speaker of the House and a handful of public members.) The Preservation Board controls the grounds—the Capitol and the Mansion, the whole state complex, actually. There's an actual public meeting of the board, or supposed to be, and used to take place a few times a year but no longer. Like the State Auditor’s Office, the Preservation Board is now run out of the Governor’s Office, like everything else in state government. Not to be judgmental. Preservation Board meetings were, actually, great moments of transparency in Lone Star government, from a time when the Governor was less powerful than today and the Speaker and Lieutenant Governor had bigger balls, both physically and politically. The three men would all sit down and talk about the grounds of the Capitol, exhibits in the state buildings, and remodelings of the Mansion, or whatever, and these were the three most important people in the state, with big egos, and you see could see how our leaders interacted among themselves, as they talked about the Capitol or Capitol grounds. You could tell who was a big dog, who was a little dog, who was a bitch and who had a big dick, frankly, not to sound all macho. And the public knew or could ascertain who was a big dick, in a metaphorical way. These days, whenever you see the three together, the Governor, Lieutenant Governor and Speaker of the House, Greg Abbott is the one doing the talking. Speaker Phelan who is said to be a decent guy who just made a wrong turn somewhere in the Republican Party, looks squirmy like a kid in church. Lt. Gov. Patrick nods like the good lieutenant he is. It's Greg Abbott’s state and the rest of us just live in it. 

The Lubbock Singularity

In nursing school you get these assignments, they’re more like projects really and usually involve working in groups of two or three students, maybe more. My teammate last semester was Veronica, who is a labor & delivery nurse on the Gulf Coast and our assignment for Population Health was to look at a county in Texas—there are 254 to choose from. And examine outcomes in light of the pandemic. 

It's easier read in a syllabus than done, let me and Veronica tell you. 

We chose Galveston County for a couple of reasons, one being that we are both graduates of Medical Branch, on Galveston Island, the state’s oldest School of Nursing, btw. Also Medical Branch takes care of health needs for the vast majority of the nearly 150,000 inmates in the state prison system, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice as it is euphemistically called, or just plain TDCJ. Where COVID-19 was said to be running rampant at the time, last semester. So, like—long story short—Veronica told me one day in March that there were about 250 deaths, at that point, on the Galveston County COVID-19 dashboard. Which is run by the Galveston County Health District.

Which struck us as strange actually. Because in order to judge our stats, we had been instructed by our Professor to make a comparison to another county in the state and we’d chosen Lubbock, on the High Plains. And there were a couple of good reasons to choose Lubbock, actually—or so we thought. There were similarities to Galveston and differences as well. One, Lubbock is the other side of the state, the High Plains versus the Gulf Coast, polar opposites and all that. Whatever might influence healthcare outcomes during the pandemic in one county might not be important in the other, across the humongous Lone Star State. It was a roll of the dice but our idea was that Galveston and Lubbock would serve as experimental controls for each other.

The two counties are also very close in population, like Numbers 13 and 14 on the Lone Star list of counties, both just over 300,000 inhabitants, so it seemed fair, whether it made scientific sense or not. 

We were instructed to check a University of Wisconsin website that tracks health data in counties across the country and it showed that Lubbock and Galveston were very close in terms of healthcare resources and outcomes, with a slight edge maybe to Lubbock. Both counties are home to large academic healthcare institutions, btw, Medical Branch and Texas Tech Health Science Center in Lubbock, respectively—the latter institution where our schoolwork was taking place.

So, like, long story short, both hospitals take care of state prisoners, although Medical Branch cares for eighty percent of inmates in the state while Texas Tech handles the remainder. Anyway—long story short again—at the same time that Galveston County was reporting about 250 deaths from COVID-19 (a figure which included any prisoners who died at Medical Branch), Lubbock County was reporting 750 deaths from COVID-19 (including state prisoners), three times as many, which seemed a lot, in our not-yet-scientific view. For two similarly sized counties. And it didn’t make sense. A few percentage points, sure—between two equally-populated places—but two hundred percent seemed a tad extreme, in our graduate student view. According to our limited understanding of statistical probability, p-values and all that. Informing our instructor of these numbers, of these data, she wrote back, ironically, that maybe it was the cotton gins around Lubbock. On the heavily-agricultural High Plains, an area that runs from the Panhandle to the Pecos River. There had to be something in the air, you might say.

Lubbock is famous for dust storms. This would be something carrying COVID instead. As compared to the briny ocean air of Galveston County, down on the Gulf of Mexico. Our instructor pushed us to inquire further. The Lubbock County health authority did not respond to our queries, nor the City of Lubbock Health Department which apparently handles the local public health operation and runs the dashboard. Where we were getting our information. 

A further dive into the data pointed to a gross healthcare outcome discrepancy, actually. Between Lubbock County and the state prison system. If you were looking to do that comparison. 

At the same time that Galveston was reporting about 250 deaths (the numbers change, obviously, every day, but that was the level when this was happening, about halfway thru last semester, in my unscientific recollection) the state prison system was also reporting 250 deaths from COVID-19. That figure has to be normalized because the total number of inmates in Texas prisons hovers around 150,000, half the population of Galveston or Lubbock County. So. Like, if the prisons were the same size as the two counties, the number of dead prisoners (and one supposes guards) who died would be closer to 500. To set the scene. 

In sum, we had three rates of COVID-19 deaths in Texas: about 250 for Galveston County, from start of pandemic, about 500 for TDCJ and about 750 for Lubbock County. If there's something wrong with that math let us know, but that meant to us, to misquote Apollo 13, “Lubbock, we have a problem.”

It’s just a snapshot in time, of course, what the dashboards were showing that day, but the picture is not good, if accurate. And the extreme nature of the Lubbock figure, higher even than for the state prisons, was more pronounced when you consider that state inmates are housed cheek by jowl and did not have quick access to vaccines, for example, and they couldn’t self-distance, as a free-world population can. Lubbock’s death rate was higher than in prison cells, really? That’s a scary thought. And certainly didn’t sound hygienic. And, btw, the Health Authority for the state prisons, where one-fifth of the inmates go to Lubbock if they need to be hospitalized, and the rest go to Galveston? He said TDCJ’s infection numbers in the Lubbock sector were not particularly high and were not the reason for any possible high incidence of COVID-19 deaths on the High Plains. 

One’s first inclination is to blame poor adherence to guidelines, such as mask-wearing—and not to blame cotton gins or “something in the air,” the famous Lubbock dust, or whatever. As nurses we can educate the public but we have to respect cultures and if people in Lubbock County are really really really opposed to masks, for example, and willing to die for it (as students we don’t know the full extent of the danger, because we haven’t seen the data) but a lot of people in Lubbock County apparently are like that, according to news reports. Just as in many other parts of the country.

 Or if the people of Lubbock are very conservative socially, as evidenced by the city’s recent official rejection of abortion, is it really our role as caregivers to object? You just take care of people and answer any questions they may ask. You can teach but you can't lecture.

You may say, well, some of the 750 people who died—if they died because of the community’s poor masking for example, what then? They themselves may not have rejected masking and died only because others did. In other words they were infected by someone whose healthcare practices were different from their own. Healthcare outcomes are not always fair, it seems. Local standards are local. 

Choices made by a cultural group—or a population, as in our just completed class Population Health—may well influence the welfare of individuals who do not agree with the choice. That’s what we learned by doing our project for the School of Nursing.