Houston, Texas (KTRK) – We’re less than a month away from Election Day, and the governor’s race is on top of the ticket. Both candidates spent parts of the weekend in Houston, and ABC13 spoke with Republican Governor Abbott and Democratic contender Beto O’Rourke about a variety of issues, including borders.
Texas’ border with Mexico is among the hottest issues for voters, and Governor Abbott took advantage of that with unprecedented numbers of immigrants crossing into the United States. He has deployed thousands of National Guard troops in what he calls Operation Lonely Star and built part of a wall in the Rio Grande Valley. He wrote in a tweet on Monday that the country has moved more than 12,300 migrants to its sanctuary cities.
“It all started back in April when Joe Biden’s border policies overwhelmed small towns on the Texas border, 1,000 were dumping thousands of illegal immigrants into these tiny little towns that were completely unable to handle and were in need of relief,” he said. Abbott Governor.
When asked whether it was practical to send them to the White House or the Naval Observatory (the vice president’s residence), the governor said, “What is touching is for the Vice President of the United States to be in Houston or in Texas, and to say that the border is fully secured.”
His rival, Beto O’Rourke, fought his campaign in Houston Sunday and criticized the effort as a stunt.
“We know moving immigrants is not going to get the job done,” O’Rourke told ABC13. “We need Texas-based solutions like the Texas Guest Workers Program where Republicans and Democrats come together. We work with our federal partners and make sure that anyone who wants to work in this state has a safe, legal, and organized path to come here.”
O’Rourke also criticized the governor for not expanding Medicaid and helping some of the millions of uninsured Texans. Texas has more uninsured than any other state. Expanding it would bring in federal money that the state would not otherwise have access to.
“Medicaid expansion is something that every of our border states has done. Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and New Mexico,” O’Rourke said. “Because if we take a yes for an answer, we can return $10 billion in federal income taxes to Texas, connect more people to care, reduce our property taxes, and create hundreds of thousands of jobs in Texas.”
See related: Governor Greg Abbott discusses key themes of abortion and immigration in exclusive interview with ABC13
The governor said it’s not that simple.
“Texas has an extraordinary number of uninsured residents who are legally unable to obtain insurance in one of many ways,” Abbott said. “They are legally unable to get Medicaid, and legally unable to access the Obamacare expansion. So, as in many ways, the Beto campaign was misleading Texas.”
We also asked both candidates about women’s reproductive health. Texas abortion law makes no exceptions in the case of rape or incest. The only allowance is for the health of the mother. But the chief abbot told us Sunday, the current law, as written, may not be enough to that end, even if it doesn’t include the rape or incest allowance, which polls show the vast majority of Texans support.
“We must make it clear and make sure that the medical profession is doing everything in its power to protect the mother’s life,” said Gov. Abbott. “We must make it clear that the life of the mother is just as important as the life of the child and that doctors must take measures to protect the life of the mother.”
See also: Topics Governor Greg Abbott and Beto O’Rourke expected to discuss in Edinburgh
The governor is also anticipating bills that would reinstate abortion, some of which he says would go too far in the opposite direction and allow the procedure until the moment before birth.
“What Peto stands for is unlimited abortion at the taxpayer’s expense,” Abbott said. This is the extreme stance on abortion in Texas.
O’Rourke denounced it as a liar, as he did during the only two-candidate debate in South Texas last month.
“That’s ridiculous,” O’Rourke said. “And another lie he uses to try to distract us and discourage us from looking at him, he’s signed into law, the maximum abortion ban in America. It starts at conception. There is no exception for rape or incest.”
O’Rourke says he wants the law as it was in Roe v. Wade. And while Abbott won’t be specific about the language changes he will support or directly answer our questions about rape and incest exceptions, he clearly won’t support abortions as they were in Texas prior to this summer’s Supreme Court decision.
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