Abbott Blazes Trails But Can't
Get No Respect for 2024 Race

Capitol Inside
September 3, 2021

Governor Greg Abbott leads a group of white men in Texas who are telling the women of the United States what they can and can't do with their bodies after effectively writing the tentative law of the land on abortion without any apparent clues that they were doing so. Abbott drafted a summer agenda that - according to Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick - provided the cornerstones for the Texas conservative foundation with a voting bill, critical race theory and abortion bans and a perennial infusion of state funding for border security.

Then - just when the Texas governor should be basking in the afterglow of historic success in the second of two special sessions in the past two months - he failed to make the list of preliminary presidential contenders again on Friday in the latest poll on the race.

Abbott may have received the supreme compliment on Friday in his view when President Joe Biden branded the Texas abortion ban as un-American. Biden was outraged by vigilante bounties for snitches who report doctors who perform abortions after six weeks pregnancy, people who work with them and even Uber drivers that take the women to facilities for such procedures.

Biden characterized Abbott as neanderthal when he ignored warnings from doctors and other experts with the repeal of the statewide mask mandate in March. Abbott took credit for four months as the number of new COVID-19 cases, deaths and hospitalizations declined steadily. He's sought to play down the fourth wave after telling Texans at Christmas that the pandemic was almost over here.

Abbott can portray himself as a trailblazer now nonetheless after Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said today that he may consider a push for an abortion prohibition that would ostensibly be modeled after the new Texas ban that the U.S. Supreme court let stand this week. Abbott and DeSantis have patterned mask and vaccine bans on each other's - and they've appeared to have a vigorous rivalry under way during the last month with both aggressively promoting Regeneron antibody infusion centers where people who haven't been vaccinated can go to try to prevent trips to the hospital or the morgue.

But Abbott can't seem to find anyone to take his White House aspirations seriously based on a new Emerson College survey that shows DeSantis leading a hypothetical field of Republican presidential candidates with 32 percent support when Donald Trump was not an option. Trump had 67 percent compared to 10 percent for DeSantis as a distant second in the poll when the former president was included in the choice.

Abbott wasn't a close second to DeSantis, however, in the Emerson poll on potential presidential candidate if Trump doesn't run again. Mike Pence - the former vice president who Trump supporters threatened to hang - was the DeSantis runner up with 24 percent. U.S. Senator Ted Cruz - an Abbott protege - was third with 13 percent while ex-South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley at 10 percent.

There was little interest among GOP voters in moderates like U.S. Senator Mitt Romney, who was deadlocked at 6 percent rookie Republican U.S. Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri. The only other possible presidential aspirant who was mentioned by name in the new survey - U.S. Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas - reaped support from 1 percent of the respondents.

The ever-optimistic Abbott might see a potential base in the 8 percent who favored "someone else" in the Emerson College gauge for 2024. But the Texas governor might have to fight for the undecideds with other potential rivals who were snubbed in the poll like South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem and even Donald Trump Jr. if his father isn't in the ring.

While Abbott keeps getting snubbed in polls on individual potential candidates in 2024, he was matched up against DeSantis on Thursday with corresponding drops in popularity that the governors of Texas and Florida experienced in a survey made public on Thursday.

Forty-eight percent of voters approved of both Abbott and Florida in the Morning Consult poll. But DeSantis had the bigger fall - dropping 6 points from the ratings he'd received a month ago. The Morning Consult survey showed a three-point dip for Abbott.

Only 41 percent of the voters here gave Abbott positive marks in a University of Texas poll that found him with a record 50 percent disapproval rate in August. Abbott was unpopular with 50 percent of the suburban voters in the Texas Politics Project poll that showed him with 41 percent support in suburbia - the same levels that he'd had with voters overall.