(Bloomberg) -- Texas Governor Greg Abbott won a Republican primary election Tuesday that sets the stage for a November race against former Democratic congressman Beto O'Rourke.
The Associated Press declared O'Rourke winner of the Democratic race about 9 p.m. New York time and Abbott the victor in his about 15 minutes later.
During the campaign, Abbott fended off challenges from his right by pressing a conservative agenda on abortion, voting rules and transgender rights that often put him at odds with the state's burgeoning corporate community. The November race will test the increasingly diverse and urban state's appetite for such measures from the two-term governor, who was endorsed by former president Donald Trump.
On Tuesday night, O'Rourke, who nearly beat U.S. Senator Ted Cruz in 2018, vowed to reverse the “incompetence, corruption and cruelty” of Abbott's administration.
“This guy couldn't even keep the lights on in the energy capital of the world,” he said at a victory party in Fort Worth. “I'm going to be a governor who keeps the lights on.”
For his part, Abbott emphasized economic issues when speaking to supporters in Corpus Christi.
“Republicans sent a message,” he said. “They want to keep Texas the land of opportunity and prosperity for absolutely everybody.”
“We are going to deliver a Texas for working families who can flourish under the opportunities provided by the ninth-largest economy in the entire world,” he said.
Texans were deciding several other high-profile primary races. State Attorney General Ken Paxton is headed to a Republican runoff on May 24 with George P. Bush, the state's land commissioner and the nephew and grandson of presidents, AP reported. A seat on the powerful Texas Railroad Commission, the state's energy regulator, is up for grabs and there are key U.S. House contests in the Dallas and Houston areas, and in South Texas.
A closely watched race in a House district that stretches from San Antonio to the Mexico border will also head to a runoff as neither incumbent Democrat Henry Cuellar nor progressive challenger Jessica Cisneros won a majority to claim the party's nomination, AP reported.
The primaries were the first time Texans cast ballots under rules that Abbott signed after Trump's false assertions that fraud cost him his 2020 re-election. The law restricts how counties can handle election and voting procedures, including a ban on 24-hour and drive-thru voting, and requires extra identification for mail-in ballots. A significant number of mail-in voters failed to include the identification number on the form, resulting in a large uptick in rejections.
The gubernatorial results set up a tighter race than expected even a few months ago, between candidates with national profiles. Abbott, 64, and O'Rourke, 49, had essentially ignored primary opponents, attacking each other for months. The primary gave each a chance to test-run the get-out-the-vote efforts that may make the difference in November.
Tight Contest
The latest poll, taken in mid-February by the Dallas Morning News and University of Texas at Tyler, showed Abbott ahead of O'Rourke by 7 percentage points in a November match-up. That's the tightest margin in a governor's race since Republican George W. Bush beat Democrat Ann Richards by 6 percentage points in 1990. No Democrat has won a statewide office since 1994.
Abbott's main challenger, Don Huffines, took credit for driving Abbott, who got his start as a conventional, business-friendly Republican, far to the right.
“Our campaign has driven the narrative in Texas and forced Greg Abbott to deliver real conservative victories,” Huffines said in a statement after the polls closed.
For the past year, Abbott has championed an agenda that includes effectively banning abortions beyond six weeks into a pregnancy, restricting teaching about race in schools and directing that the state investigate families for abuse if they are suspected of seeking surgeries or puberty-blocking drugs for transgender children.
Read More: Texas Sued for Criminalizing Care for Transgender Children
“I don't think anybody would confuse Greg Abbott from the beginning of his career as anything other than a fairly doctrinaire conservative,” said James Henson, a professor at University of Texas at Austin and director of the Texas Politics Project. “He moved even further to the right in a way that tested a lot of boundaries of even conventional conservative politics.”
The governor ran on his stewardship of the economy, but the story told by the numbers is mixed. While Texas has bounced back from the pandemic and some cities -- led by Austin -- are booming, the recovery has been uneven.
In December, the latest data available, Texas's unemployment stood at 5%, compared with 3.9% nationwide. That may partly be explained by the inflow of people who flocked to Texas in the past two years.
Texas's economy was among the nation's fastest-growing in the third quarter (the latest data available), but at 3.7%, it was topped by Massachusetts, New Jersey, Delaware, Hawaii, Florida and the District of Columbia.
Huge companies, such as Oracle Corp., Tesla Inc. and Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., have moved to Texas during Abbott's time in office. But some businesses have opposed Abbott's conservative policies. One group, Texas Competes, collected endorsements from 1,400 companies last year asking the state to ensure that workplaces and communities “are diverse and welcoming for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people.”
Abbott's Hoard
None of that has stopped a flood of donations. Abbott has $50 million to bankroll a massive campaign, dwarfing O'Rourke's $6.8 million war chest, according to disclosure reports.
For months, O'Rourke and Abbott campaigned as if they were already running against each other. Abbott's campaign criticized O'Rourke for everything from immigration to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
O'Rourke staged a 12-day “Keeping the Lights On” tour in February dedicated to criticizing Abbott for last year's winter blackouts that killed hundreds of people.
Looking Ahead
Voters will likely see the war of words intensify, said Dennis Bonnen, a former Republican speaker of the Texas House of Representatives. Abbott's goal will be to tie O'Rourke to President Joe Biden, who has low approval ratings in Texas.
“Governor Abbott is going to define Beto O'Rourke for who he is early on, and I don't think Beto will ever be able to get off the mat,” said Bonnen, an Abbott supporter.
But Abbott's pivot to the right may allow O'Rourke to pick up moderate voters, said Matt Angle, founder and director of the Lone Star Project, a Democratic group. And many Texans disapprove of how Abbott responded to the blackouts. A University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll in October showed that 60% of Texans disapprove of how state leaders have handled the reliability of the grid.
“There's a lot of people in Texas who are on the line,” said Angle. “They don't get up in the morning and think of themselves as Democrats or Republicans, but for years, they defaulted to Republicans in the general election. I think Beto's got a chance for them to take a strong look at him and get some of their votes.”
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