Huffines Upstages Abbott Border Wall Steal
with Plan to Close Federal Bridges to Mexico

Capitol Inside
June 22, 2021

The ball is back in Governor Greg Abbott's court after former Texas Senate Republican Don Huffines accused him on Tuesday of campaign platform poaching the plan that he unveiled last week for a new border wall that he wants private donors to build for him to run.

“Greg Abbott stole my campaign’s idea to build a wall along the Texas-Mexico border," Huffines contended today in an email to supporters.

Huffines sought to stop the Abbott steal with a dramatic act of one upsmanship this past week - pledging in a television interview to shut down all of the bridges and other vehicular crossings on the southern border in Texas when he's the governor here. Huffines said such a move would force Mexico to take action to keep residents there from coming to America illegally.

Huffines vowed on May 17 to make the construction of a wall on the Rio Grande a paramount priority in his bid to unseat the second-term incumbent in the GOP primary election less than nine months from now. Abbott unveiled his own plans for a border barrier on June 16 at a Capitol press conference that he recruited 30 GOP state lawmakers to attend in an apparent attempt to create the appearance of momentum, widespread support and unity.

The monumental photo op appeared to pay off when Abbott was portrayed on Monday in an article on POLITICO as the leader of a national Republican revolt against Democratic President Joe Biden and the Democrats who control Congress.

But Abbott faces a decision now on how he will respond in kind to the challenger's promise to close more than two dozen bridges that link Mexico to the Lone Star State. Abbott could try to upstage Huffines by saying that he would have all of the bridges on the border torn down or blown up to demonstrate how serious he is about stopping a tsunami of drug cartels, terrorists and other dangerous criminals flooding into the state like a human tsunami. Weapons of mass destruction might be an eventual option in the competition to see who will crack down on immigration the hardest as the top leader in Texas.

Huffines could expect to encounter some resistance to the border bridge shutterings in light of the fact that the federal government owns and controls all of 28 bridges and other crossings that are spread over 1,254 miles from the Rio Grande Valley to El Paso at the western tip of the state.

An executive order from the governor would not supercede federal law. The Texas Department of Public Safety would be hesitant to pick a fight with the U.S. military that would be guaranteed if troopers tried to start shutting down bridges that don't belong to the state. The Texas economy would collapse in a matter of days if the border bridges really were closed as a consequence of the massive amount of trade between the U.S. and Mexico.

But those might be irrelevant details in the minds of Abbott and Huffines when it comes to milking a record surge of migrants for political gold with border security as the nation's most pressing issue as far as conservative voters are concerned.

Huffines has the higher road nonetheless in terms of who dreamed up a plan for a state border wall first. A wealthy developer in Dallas, Huffines said the Abbott copycat proposal is severely flawed and destined to fail.

"The governor claims that he will mostly fund a wall through donations from conservatives who support the effort," Huffines said on Tuesday. "Does he really think that will work? It is never going to get done. Abbott is expecting hard-working conservatives in Texas to pay their taxes—including our ever-increasing property taxes—and then donate even more of their money to build the wall. Additionally, parts of Abbott’s proposed ‘wall’ will be made of chain-linked fencing. His plan is unacceptable and impractical."

Huffines said last month that he would immediately authorize the construction of a border wall without the need for the federal government's help or permission. But Huffines - after apparently ruling out higher state taxes and private donations as sources for the barricade's financing - hasn't said where he would get the money to build his wall.

Outgoing Texas GOP Chairman Allen West, who's been considering a race for governor as well in 2022, will have a chance to come up with a bold plan of his own for the border if he takes the plunge into the race.