The Dirty Little Secret of Texas’ Big Business Success

In this post I cover Texas’ huge success rate at luring in big businesses with its relatively low state tax burden before I emphasize how the current tax scheme unfairly burdens the lowest income brackets in the state with far-reaching negative economic consequences even as businesses continue to relocate to Texas.

Luring Big Business: Texas’ Tax Advantage

Rick Perry’s renewed campaign to lure competing states’ businesses — from California to Illinois to New York — seems to be continuing Texas’ long history of winning business and creating more jobs for its residents. At the height of California’s disinvestment woes in 2011, a quarter of the companies that left Orange County ended up in the Lone Star State. Earlier this year, journalists began breaking what is possibly the biggest business relocation story of our times: Illinois-based State Farm Insurance was quietly purchasing about 2.5 million square feet of workspace in Dallas.  In the past two decades, nearly $2 billion net adjusted gross income left New York for Texas.

At the heart of Texas’ efforts to attract new jobs is a pretty impressive record that is proudly displayed on the Texas Wide Open for Business website — it’s pretty difficult to not feel proud to be a Texan if you watch Rick Perry’s latest ad (see the 30-second video down below) targeting new business and domestic immigration. Texas created 337,000 jobs in 2012 — more than any other state in the nation. This has helped draw in 1400 new Texans daily, contributing to the 2nd highest civilian workforce in the country. However, Texas' biggest lure for businesses, a low tax burden with no corporate income tax and no individual income tax, may have very serious downsides.

I’m a huge supporter of big business and I think, as most Texans do, that economic development should be the top political priority of our times. It’s great that Texas is consistently ranked as the best or one of the best states to do business and that it consistently breaks The Tax Foundation’s State Business Tax Climate Index top 10 list. Yet this same conservative research group’s report ranks Texas in the bottom 20 states when it comes to the corporate tax rank, sales tax rank, and property tax rank (basically everything other than unemployment insurance tax and individual income tax).

In fact, Texas’ tax structure has highly troubling implications that are not obvious at the surface-level.

Economics 101: Progressive Taxes vs. Regressive Taxes

Unless you’re an economics or business major, you could probably use a quick a review of the major tax structures (but feel free to skim this section to get to the real meat of this post). Every tax scheme out there is either progressive or regressive. Under a progressive system, there are graduated rates which increase the percentage of income paid in taxes as income increases — a regressive system does the exact opposite. The United States federal income tax rates for single Americans, for example, are progressive (they increase as taxable income increases):

• 10% on taxable income from $0 to $17,400, plus
• 15% on taxable income over $17,400 to $70,700, plus
• 25% on taxable income over $70,700 to $142,700, plus
• 28% on taxable income over $142,700 to $217,450, plus
• 33% on taxable income over $217,450 to $388,350, plus
• 35% on taxable income over $388,350.

Property and sales taxes, by their nature, tend to be regressive because everybody pays the same flat rate. That may seem counterintuitive — a flat rate sounds like a proportional tax, not a progressive or regressive one, right? The trick to understanding the nature of these taxes, which just so happen to be Texas’ sourcees of revenue, is to consider these taxes as a percentage of Texans’ income just as we consider the federal tax rate as a percent of taxable income.

For example, $3000 worth of electronics bought in Austin will be subject to an 8.25% sales tax rate whether they were bought by a John who earns $10,000 a year or a Jane who earns $100,000 a year. For either person, the sales taxes paid would total $247.50. Obviously, this example is unrealistic because you hope that John would not be spending that kind of money on electronics, but you can see that the sales taxes paid would make up 2.48% of John’s annual income while making up just 0.25% of Jane’s. Thus, John has a more difficult time carrying that burden because he’s effectively taxed at a 10 times higher rate than Jane is.

Since taxable purchases like food, clothing, and shelter make up a larger portion of low-income consumers’ budgets, sales and property taxes effectively take out a bigger portion of their income. Texas’ revenue is based on a regressive system which means that it asks its poor to sacrifice more.

Fundamentally Unfair: Poorest Texans Pay More 

Of course, deciding on one taxing scheme over another is a moral decision — as is any other decision where something may be taken from somebody to be given to somebody else. Progressive systems are more moral and more practical for government. Human nature makes it pretty easy for most people to come to this conclusion instinctively once they understand the concepts behind the John and Jane example mentioned above, but it’s also possible to point out that tax progressivity is consistent with recent results in optimal tax research or that government expenditures possibly empower the wealthy more than everybody else anyway.

Yet Texas relies on a regressive system: a 2013 report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) confirmed that the middle 60 percent of Texans pay 8.80% of their income to state taxes while the top 1 percent of Texans ends up paying a mere 3.20%. Meanwhile, the lowest 20 percent of Texans pay a full 12.60% of their income to state taxes — that’s literally about 400% the effective rate for the top 1 percent of Texans. The terrible pattern behind these shocking numbers is easy to contrast with the federal income system mentioned above:

• 12.6% effective total state and local tax rate for Texans in the poorest 20 percent.
• 10.4% effective total state and local tax rate for Texans in the second 20 percent.
• 8.6% effective total state and local tax rate for Texans in the third 20 percent.
• 7.4% effective total state and local tax rate for Texans in the fourth 20 percent.
• 6.1% effective total state and local tax rate for Texans in the next 15 percent.
• 4.8% effective total state and local tax rate for Texans in the next 4 percent.
• 3.2% effective total state and local tax rate for Texans in the top 1 percent.

I praised Texas business to the extent that I did at the start of this post because I know that that is the context against which Texas’ unfair tax system has managed to thrive on the sacrifices of its lowest income residents while the state dedicates about $20 billion a year in tax breaks and other incentives to continue attracting businesses to Texas. Texas’ regressive taxing system is unrealistic and it forces the state to continue obliterating the education system, abandoning the needy on the curbsides, and forcing the elderly out of their nursing homes.

Even with serious budget cuts, Texas ends up having to maintain some of the highest property taxes and some of the highest sales taxes in the nation (which means supporting some of the lowest spending in the nation too). Under Article VIII, § 24(f)-(g) of the State Constitution, two-thirds of any revenue from an income tax would be used to reduce property taxes while the remainder would be dedicated to education spending. Of course, suggesting an income tax within the halls of the Capitol has been tantamount to political suicide, so a business franchise tax was passed instead in 2006 to help lower property taxes. Since then, the problem with this tax has literally been that it does not act more like an income tax: since businesses pay this tax on gross receipts, business owners can be forced to spend their personal assets in trying to carry the franchise tax burden during unprofitable years.

In other words, not only do working Texas citizens suffer from the currently broken taxing system, but so does their ability to establish and run successful small- and mid-sized businesses. Considering that Texas has the third-highest ratio of minimum wage hourly workers and the 11th highest poverty rate despite miraculous job growth, the careful observer cannot help but wonder if the efforts to lure big business have started to lean away from economic development toward corporate welfare — all for the sake of remaining a low-tax utopia for ultra-wealthy business people.

Should Texas enact the restrictions on abortion included in Senate Bill 1?

This post was originally created for the Blackboard Discussion Board for this class. The question was, "Should Texas enact the restrictions on abortion included in Senate Bill?"

Here’s a summary of my positions on Texas SB 1 — feel free to read more detailed arguments below if either position interests you:

1. The ban on abortions after 20 weeks post-fertilization is reasonable: that’s plenty of time for couples to make a decision, and the government probably does have a duty to protect unborn children somewhere around 20 weeks post-fertilization.
2. The safety regulations imposed on abortion clinics are unreasonable: they place a serious economic burden on the clinics while doing nothing to actually lower the risk of a medical procedure that is extremely safe to begin with.  

A Summary of Texas SB 1

I know that many folks could use a handy summary of the bill in question, so here it is (just scroll down if you want to skip ahead to the parts where I say the time limit is good and the safety regulations are bad). The actual text of Texas SB 1 is a mere 19 pages, but it does several things:

• it articulates the idea that the government has a compelling interest in regulating abortions to protect unborn children from experiencing pain in the womb, 
• it outlaws abortions after 20 weeks post-fertilization in most cases, and
• it places new regulations on physicians performing or inducing abortions.

Like most anti-abortion bills that ban otherwise legal abortions in some way, SB 1 says exceptions can be made in certain cases. The 20-week time limit does not apply for the following scenarios:

• cases in which an abortion is necessary to prevent the mother’s death or serious injury,
• cases in which the abortion is being performed on an unborn child with “severe fatal abnormalities”, and
•  cases in which the time limit will “impose an impermissible undue burden” on the mother (this probably means cases of rape or incest).

Not Bad: 20 Week Time Limit for Abortions

While I think that the no level of government should impose itself on the private health decisions that women and their doctors decide to make, I also believe that the government has the duty to criminally punish anybody found guilty of infanticide. As a matter of fact, I am sure that almost everybody agrees that killing a child that has already been born is a punishable crime. Moreover, almost everybody would also probably agree that killing a baby that has been born prematurely is still a crime. If modern medical advances have allowed a baby to survive its birth after just 21 weeks and five days into the pregnancy (which actually happened a couple years ago in Germany), it would obviously still be wrong to kill that child.

Thinking along those lines, I think that the 20 week time limit is reasonable. As a matter of fact, Texas defines its time limit for legal abortions at 20 weeks post-fertilization and not at 20 weeks since the woman’s last menstrual period (LMP). This means that the Texas bill really bans abortions at 22 weeks of pregnancy. I think that five and a half months is a reasonable length of time for women to make an abortion decision, especially considering the that the bill waives the 20 week limit for certain scenarios (mentioned above). Even those who would bring up issues of “viability” have to admit that there may be something wrong with neutralizing a fetus that has been in the womb for 23 weeks when nearly 30 percent of babies born into the world at 23 weeks go on to survive. 

Just Outrageous: “Safety” Regulations on Abortion Clinics

On the other hand, I completely disagree with the so-called safety regulations the bill would impose on physicians. These purported safety standards are so severe that most clinics will have to quit offering legal abortion services in order to stay in business. Therefore, many women who would have otherwise undergone a legal abortion would no longer be able to do so. In turn, this will have all sorts of terrible consequences, probably including all of the following and more:

• it’ll lead to a boost in the illegal abortion black market,
• it’ll force women to deal with pregnancies and children they never wanted,
• it’ll lead to an increase in state healthcare expenditures,
• it’ll increase the population of welfare-dependent children, etc.

I think most decently-educated people know about the negatives that the regulations will result in, so the question should be: What positives do the safety regulations offer?  A typical answer might be “Safety, of course, is the purpose of safety regulations! SB 15 makes women safer! Sometimes regulations are needed to make healthcare safer!” ... only that answer is totally wrong.

The truth is that abortion is already one of the safest clinical procedures out there. Over 99.97% of all abortion patients will never suffer any serious complications. This makes abortion literally safer and less risky than childbirth, but obviously an anti-abortion bill cannot ban childbirth! Physicians across Texas and America agree that the regulations do nothing to reduce medical risks associated with abortion. I’ve blogged a full-length post on why the safety regulations of SB 1 make no sense. Check out my casual cost-benefit analysis.

Texas College Republicans’ Ignorant Abortion “Debate”

Democrat Youth vs. Republican Youth

I recently came across an interesting post by David Jennings offering an obviously biased comparison of a young Texas Democratic blogger versus a Republican one. Jennings concluded that politically conservative kids of my generation seem to be smarter and more moral after he hopped onto a pretty popular conservative bandwagon by picking on a viral article posted by UT Austin (Hook ‘em!) blogger Ben Sherman (Bro-Choice:How #HB2 Hurts Texas Men Who Like Women). Sherman argues against the controversial abortion bill’s provisions for stricter “regulations” saying that the bill (1) incentivizes black markets for unsafe abortions, (2) effectively intrudes on women’s legal choice, (3) increases chances for unwanted pregnancies, and (4) makes sex a generally riskier proposition both for men and women who are unprepared for parenthood. Of course, conservatives like Jennings are simply enraged by Sherman’s audacity: they’re choosing to ignore pretty much his entire article to just ask readers about that one last point — how dare this man even consider the interests of those evil liberals who engage in casual sex outside of marriage? Who cares if sex becomes a riskier proposition?

Texas College Republicans on the Abortion Debate

I was about halfway through this assignment, when I decided I didn’t want to really write a defense of Sherman’s article — it does a pretty good job of standing on its own. I became curious about the other article that Jennings had only barely mentioned in his so-called “clear contrast”. I figured that my political reading could use some healthy conservative influences and if that failed, maybe I could try performing some Jennings-style commentary bashing. And so I turned to this political commentary by Texas State University student Kristopher Infante: “TexasCollege Republicans on abortion debate – let’s make it safer for women”. The article is really well-written and I actually think that a few of the questions it raises are pretty though-provoking — is five months really not enough time to make an abortion decision? I personally made it a fully one-third of the way down this conservative article before I started laughing.

A Bit About the Texas Bestest Blogger...

If you’re reading this blog post, I think you should probably know two things about me, but if you think you’ll be fine without know those things, feel free to skip this section. Anyway, the first thing is a bit of a disclosure: I completely admit that I actually have yet to thoroughly study the conservatives’ so-called “make it safer for women” arguments. The second thing is that I come from a pretty medical family — though I am considered a bit of a disappointing outcast because I’m working on a business degree instead of going to med school — I’ve spent enough time around my uncles and aunts to develop some sense for judging new medical regulations that make headlines. When I read Infante’s rationale for holding abortion clinics to the same regulatory standards as ambulatory surgical centers (ASCs), I laughed but then immediately felt bad for it — maybe he simply did not have the time or resources to perform better research. Who am I to judge?

The Medical Case for Abortion Regulation?

Infante’s brief mention of ASCs essentially argues that ASCs meet regulatory standards for medical procedures like “colonoscopies, carpal tunnel surgeries, and ear tubes for children” the same way planes do (Huh?). Of course, Infante probably did a better job of connecting colonoscopies to plane crashes than I just did, but the basic idea seems to be that regulatory standards are necessary for safety, whether it is 30,000 feet above the ground, or a few inches into a colon. That almost sounds reasonable — except that colonoscopies are not exactly performed at ambulatory surgical centers (emphasis on the word “surgery”: by definition, those surgical centers usually take in patients who are at least slightly knocked out by some anesthesia over the course of the procedure). 

Acronym Soup: The ACOG, the AMA, and the THA on Abortion Risks

Of course, since I am just a business major, you don’t have to make my word for it. Science-based opinions from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), the American Medical Association (AMA), and even the Texas Hospital Association (THA) all concur that there is no medical case for the sort of regulation that Texas Republicans are calling for. Infante’s colonoscopy mention became doubly funny to me because a quote by the chair of the Texas district of ACOG specifically uses the example of colonoscopy to highlight the oddness of the new law: “The regulations are much more stringent than for other surgical procedures at similar risk, such as a colonoscopy.” Sorry district chair, your sarcastic statement is falling on deaf ears: it is abundantly obvious that members of your audience have no idea what the medical risks of an abortion or a colonoscopy are. In case anybody needs any clarification, the physicians agree that the risks are extremely low in both procedures — so is Texas just trying to eliminate an already-low risk through these regulations? Is Texas so concerned with its women’s health that it wants to eliminate even the tiniest risks to their health?

Cost-Benefit Analysis of Eliminating Abortion Risks

As a business major, I can at least talk about the idea of cost-benefit analysis of risk elimination with some degree of confidence: when the risks resulting from a highly beneficial procedure are extremely low, the costs of mitigating those risks usually outweigh the benefits of mitigating those risks. In other words, it’s not worth eliminating a beneficial procedure if its risks are extremely low while the costs of eliminating that procedure are high. Armed with these relationships between cost, risk, and benefit, we can analyze how much the so-called abortion safety provision is worth. For this analysis, we will have to plug in a few variables into the relationships described above: (1) we have to consider how beneficial abortions can be to the women seeking them, (2) we have to consider what costs the new provisions will incur and which parties will have to carry those costs, if there are any, and above all (3) we will have to keep the extreme lowness of the risks in mind: more than 99.97% of women who have legal abortions do so without any serious complications. 

The Benefits of Making Legal Abortion Readily Available
In our analysis of the “benefits” of abortion, we have to remember that the safety regulations are purportedly intended to protect abortion patients, and not to prevent the “murder” of a fetus (but the 20-week time limit is there for that, right?). Keeping this consideration in mind, we can simply list some of the possible benefits of abortions for the mother and father of a fetus. 

Couples with a family history of severe or fatal genetic disorders can terminate unwanted pregnancies. Women who are too young or too old to carry an unplanned pregnancy can terminate the pregnancy and slash possible health risks to themselves and the unborn child. Women who do go through with unintended childbearing have higher rates of depression while their children have lower quality relationships with their parents — abortion eliminates all that. I won’t even detail societal benefits: more manageable population growth, decreased societal healthcare expenditures, possibly fewer welfare children, possibly fewer women unwillingly forced out of the workforce, and so on — I mean, how consequential can such benefits really be?

The Costs of Making Legal Abortion Unavailable
Moving on, let’s see a great example of how economic incentives are passed down economic chains the same way that costs are passed down supply chains. We obviously consider the fact that the new regulations would massively increase costs for doctors performing abortions in Texas because they literally call for doctors to spend money to upgrade their facilities in a way that the doctors know is not necessary. That is, the regulations will create an economic incentive for many doctors to quit offering abortion services rather than take on the additional costs. The safety regulations effectively eliminate the availability of a beneficial clinical procedure.

In turn, this will create a cost for Texas women: fewer places will offer abortion services in Texas. Of course, places that do remain in business will face less competition and will easily pass on their additional costs to their patients. These additional costs will create an economic incentive for many prospective patients to quit seeking legal abortion services. Some women will seek illegal abortions while others will go through with unwanted pregnancies. The neat thing about studying the costs and benefits of abortions is that they flip very easily: the costs will include more unwanted children suffering from severe disorders, more irresponsible parents made parents too soon, more depressed mothers and children, less manageable population growth, increased healthcare costs, and so on. 

The Cost-Benefit Verdict: The Regulations Make No Sense
Finally, we now return to the relationships between risk, cost, and benefit. My casual economic logic suggests this: the regulations seriously raise many types of costs for medical professionals, their patients, and Texas society as a whole, but maybe they do manage to reduce the risk of serious complication that about 0.03% of abortion patients face (actually, the physicians agree: the new regulations do little to affect the already tiny risks). From a strictly cost-benefit point of view, the “let’s make it safe for women” agenda makes no sense even if it reduces the tiny percentage of risk involved in abortion. As a matter of fact, the regulations probably make it more dangerous for women, couples, and society as a whole. When complications associated with actually giving birth are way more frequent and serious than complications resulting from legal abortions, perhaps Texas would be better off regulating childbirth. Let’s make it safe for women, right? Of course not. Messrs. Infante and Jennings, could you possibly have a nonscientific reason for supporting the abortion safety regulations? Hmm...

The Real Reason for the “Women’s Safety” Regulation

I think that when the abortion regulation provision ends up in courts, as it inevitably will, the debate may bear striking resemblances to the Texas voter ID case: courts consensually established that a voter ID law that allegedly lowered Texas voter fraud really just disenfranchised minority voters. Similarly, so-called safety regulations are really just there to place an unbearable economic pressure on small clinics around the state to either upgrade or shut down their services for the sake of pseudoscience. Infante’s article is probably one of the better written conservative blog posts on the subject, but it still serves the same audience — an audience that passively looks for others to merely reconfirm its preexisting convictions, and not one that would look here, and here, and here to read about physicians’ recent statements on the safety of medical abortions, and most definitely not one that would read up on real medical research produced by established medical professionals. Nevertheless, maybe it really is wrong to blame and laugh at Texas Republicans who grow up to confuse surgeries that require ASC regulations with one of the safest medical procedures possible — after all, Texas is the home-state of an education board that openly dislikes scientists, historians, and any other “experts”.

How the Abortion Debate Should Be Held

All joking aside, I honestly do not think laughing at and bashing other Texans’ political opinions offers any productivity or meaningfulness to policy debates. However, I also do not think that the most divisive political issue for members of my generation can be handled productively when one side is pretending to “make it safer for women.” We all know that the debate is really about the rights, or lack thereof, of a fetus that is not viable outside a mother’s womb, and the definitions of terms like murder, citizenship, and rape, and the duty of the government to act for the greater good of the public. We also know that the other side of the debate is about the Constitutional rights of a mother to choice and privacy, possibly tremendous economic benefits to society, and the duty of the government to only act for the greater good of the American public. It is about time that Americans began arguing more honestly and more productively when it comes to such serious and contentious issues.

Governor Greg Abbott: A Completely New Texas Story

A recent opinions column by a certain Josh Brodesky literally forecasts the entire political ideology of, potentially, the next executive government of Texas. I want to argue that Brodesky’s analysis is seriously lacking before offering an alternative political forecast.

State Attorney General Greg Abbott’s Relevancy for 2014

With Rick Perry, one of the longest serving state governors in American history, officially out of the running for the next Texas gubernatorial election, the fight to the Texas Governor’s Mansion will be more competitive than it has been in over a decade – at least theoretically. Premature political speculation is often pretty far off, especially without Nate Silver style statistical analyses, and especially when it comes to Texas. Nevertheless, I think that Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has already achieved ubiquitous enough name-recognition and a massive enough campaign war chest to eventually secure the Republican nomination – and no Texas Democrat candidate, including State Senator Wendy Davis, is going to win the state’s Governorship in 2014.

Josh Brodesky’s Answer to the Abbott Question

Perhaps time will prove my speculation to have been far off, but one thing is for sure: right now there is a strong enough possibility that Abbott will win the Governorship that it’s worth asking ourselves what an Abbott Governorship may look like. Columnist Josh Brodesky does just that in a recent op-ed published by the San Antonio Express-News. Like many left-leaning observers, Brodesky, answers the Abbott question with an unbalanced argument settled from the title onward: “New candidate, familiar story”.[1] Even as a relatively left-leaning Texan observer myself, I have to say that Brodesky’s analysis is pretty substance-less and that a Governor Abbott would be noticeably distinct from his predecessor.

In his analysis, Brodesky mentions that Attorney General Abbott has sued the federal government 27 times during the Obama Presidency, including to defend the state of Texas’s “freedom to pollute and the freedom to restrict voter registration.” Brodesky goes on to list pretty legitimate-seeming political contradictions in Abbott’s history as a Republican supporter of big government for only certain “freedom” causes:

• Greg Abbott’s fight for the freedom of religion in public spaces is a fight against the religious freedom of the Texas public.
• Greg Abbott’s fight against the Environmental Protection Agency is a fight against the Texas air. (Sorry Brodesky, but this point can’t even be stated as a supposed political contradiction.)
• Greg Abbott’s fight for voter ID law and redistricting is a fight to disenfranchise minority voters.
• Greg Abbott’s for budget cuts to family planning and preventive care services is a fight for unwanted pregnancies and abortions.

Right after this list, a Governor Perry statement supporting Abbott’s fight against Planned Parenthood is thrown in, and then Brodesky quickly wraps up the article declaring “it’s still the same old story.”

Texas Bestest’s Argument for the Abbott Possibility

Given the evidence he provided, Brodesky may have been justified in concluding that Greg Abbott often used the office of the Attorney General for conservative activism rather to defend the laws and constitution of Texas. However, Brodesky’s observations do not follow from the evidence presented: he suggests that Abbott’s career is one of political inconsistencies and that an Abbott Governorship would be substantially similar to the Perry Governorship. An  overview of my observations is listed below:  

(1) In reality, the very definition of political conservatism suggests that the aforementioned Abbott “fights” were politically consistent. (2) Abbott’s political actions and stances are distinguishable from Perry’s, (3) and Abbott is a well-established Republican whose foothold in the party base simply predates any serious far right organization. Over the next few months, (4) that simple fact, coupled with mounting political involvement from the small left will allow Abbott to safely inch a bit closer to the center of the political spectrum in a pattern that would probably (5) be replicated in his hypothetical and politically distinguishable Governorship.

(1) Abbott is politically rational as a political conservative.

I completely acknowledge that there do appear to be glaring contradictions whenever an advocate for smaller government fights to use governmental power for disenfranchising voters, interfering with women’s rights, and the other examples Brodesky lists. However, I also think that Abbott’s political actions are actually rendered completely coherent when contextualized within the framework of political conservatism. Political conservatism has actually been defined as the political ideology that favors the governmental regulation of individual behavior for ordered liberty while disfavoring the governmental promotion of equality.[2] By definition then, the conservative Texas Attorney General’s actions were politically consistent. In other words, Brodesky’s catalog of Abbott’s contradictions is probably fallacious at best and worthless at worst – it does nothing to substantiate his claim that an Abbott Governorship would be another round of Perry Governorship.

(2) Early indicators suggest Abbott may be less politically conservative.

There are several glaring indicators that Abbott takes less politically conservative stances than Perry. The most readily-visible indicator of this is literally in the differences between Abbott and Perry that the Abbott campaign has already emphasized. Voters know that Abbott does not support Perry’s business-over-people approach of using tax subsidies to lure businesses to Texas. Voters know that Abbott does support increased transparency and that, as Attorney General, he actually required Perry to disclose government documents on at least two occasions. Another indicator that Abbott is taking and will probably continue to take different political stances than Perry is in the very fact that it is hardly five days into his campaign and Abbott has already managed to begin trying to distance himself from his would-be predecessor. That is, Abbott knows that Perry fatigue has grown strong enough that a little ideological distance and freshness can only be healthy.

(3) Abbott has absolutely no pressure to appease far right voters.

Greg Abbott is actually well-positioned to moderate his politics during the gubernatorial race. Abbott has such a strong foothold in the Republican base that he is practically immune to pressure from its far right tea party faction. After all, he has already been able to assemble a formidable campaign marketing team that’s effectively tapped into social media platforms coupled with a powerful funding operation that’s raised over $20 million in such little time. It’s no wonder the Mr. Attorney General is already widely considered the gubernatorial favorite and it’s no wonder that even his only credible GOP rival so far, Tom Pauken, refers to Abbott as the “anointed one”. Forget the tea party political pressure wave that Abbott helped U.S. Senator Ted Cruz appease – Abbott’s campaign is more likely to end up scratching its head at the concentrated but surprisingly high political pressure from a newly activated, left-leaning electorate.[3]

(4) Abbott will moderate his politics during his 2014 campaign.

This is the point where I become truly speculative about Abbott’s political future. I predict that State Senator Wendy Davis will enter the gubernatorial race because her famous pro-women filibuster has obviously resulted in the name-recognition and heavy funding (over a $1 million in just a few days after the filibuster) conducive to the Texas Democrats’ only hope to win a run for the Governorship. Of course, this hope will more than likely prove to be just that – hopeful thinking in the red state of Texas. Even if Davis races for a statewide office other than the Governorship, the legacy of her filibuster will still affect Abbott’s race in almost the same way:  his already relatively moderate campaign will encounter an additional, noticeable leftward pull by only-recently activated sectors of the Texas electorate. In 2014, Davis will count her losses and then leverage her post-election popularity to be propelled onto the national political stage – but that’s a story for another day and another blog post.

(5) Abbott will continue to moderate his politics in office.

Someday a few months from now, Greg Abbott’s astonishing fundraising engine and his relatively moderate campaign promises will earn him and his wife Cecilia a bed in the Texas Governor’s Mansion. Of course, the Texas version of “relatively moderate” is still “pretty darn conservative” and it definitely will not be a day of celebration for liberal Texans. Perhaps more liberal columnists will detail rants like “The Most Self-Contradictory Texas Governor Ever” and perhaps more college students will point out that said columnists seem to be fundamentally unfamiliar with the academic concept of “political ideology”.

What I can say with more confidence than all of that though, is this: even if a “pretty darn conservative” Greg Abbott is elected Texas Governor, his time in office will definitely NOT turn out to be that of a “Perry level conservative” – the political realities of Greg Abbott’s time are just too different from what Rick Perry’s were. During his considerable tenure, Perry managed to rip $4 billion out of education funding, appoint a young-earth creationist to manage the textbook approvals decisions for Texas public schools, and reject billions of dollars in readily-available federal Medicaid assistance for citizens in a state with more uninsured people than any other. Those same tax subsidy incentives that Abbott opposes are what Perry used to win cronies’ political favor before turning around to ask them for campaign donations. Most recently, Perry called for a special legislative meeting to pass a law that can effectively put doctors out of business and increase unwanted pregnancies by the hundreds until a federal court strikes it down anyway.

There is simply no way that Abbott will be able to relive this line of conservatism – Texas politics have simply changed too much since an ambitious Texas Lieutenant Governor assumed the chief executive office in late 2000 when his predecessor left to become the United States President. I predict that Governor Abbott will not be able to lock in a single reelection if he exercises the line of conservatism that Governor Perry did during his term. As a matter of fact, Governor Abbott’s tenure will be marked by the restoration of a relatively respectful relationship with the Texas Legislature, because Governor Abbott knows that pointless political provocation will only spawn more Wendy Davises and unlock more passionate, left-leaning sectors of the electorate. Abbott will be a man who won against Tom Pauken because he was more attentively attuned with the direction his electorate is taking, and he will not be a Governor who forgets the value of such attention.  

Or perhaps Abbott will head strong into 2014 before this entire blog post is rendered void when a major skeleton makes its way out of his closet, leaving his reputation too damaged to hold its own against the Democratic nominee on election day. After all, one never really knows when it comes to Texas weather or politics. 

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[1] Brodesky, Josh. "New Candidate, Familiar Story." San Antonio Express. N.p., 17 July 2013. Web. 19 July 2013.

[2] Hello Keith, Gary A., et al. Texas Politics and Government: Roots and Reform. 4th ed. New York: Pearson Longman, 2012. 22.

[3] Hylton, Hilary. "Filibustering Days Over, Wendy Davis Faces a Big Decision." TIME. N.p., 9 July 2013. Web. 19 July 2013. As a Rice University political scientist quoted in this article puts it, “[Davis] has revived a moribund party, given Democrats a sense of enthusiasm and optimism, but whether that can be transformed to success at the polls is another question.”

Understanding Public Opinion on Rick Perry’s Ethics

Governor Rick Perry, the longest-serving governor in Texas history, made waves with his recent announcement that he will not seek gubernatorial re-election next year, though he left open the possibility that he may run for the United States Presidency again. His departure sets the stage for the biggest political scramble in Texas history since they day Perry assumed the governorship in 2000 when George W. Bush resigned to become President. 

Over a 12 tenure as the Chief Executive of Texas, Perry made it no secret that he used the power of the office to reward political and financial allies with executive appointments, but somehow Perry never faced much pressure over this tendency. A recent article by The Texas Tribune’s Jim Henson and Joshua Blank analyzes recent poll results to explain how Ricky Perry’s ethics encountered a generally positive public opinion despite his questionable use of executive power. The article, which is actually a pretty compelling read, ties its explanation to Texans’ partisan preferences and contextualizes its analysis in terms of a possible Perry for President 2016 bid — in a word, Rick Perry would face much greater pressure to explain his executive style before an American rather than Texas electorate.