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How Greg Abbott and Under 4 Percent of Texans Are Ruining the State for the Rest of Us
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/03/opinion/texas-republicans-abbott.htmlhttps://archive.ph/AE7Ng
How Greg Abbott and Under 4 Percent of Texans Are Ruining the State for the Rest of Us
June 3, 2022
By Mimi Swartz
HOUSTON — Greg Abbott probably thought he was doing the right thing when he skipped out on the N.R.A. convention last week and headed to Uvalde to play the part of a concerned Texas governor. Maybe something showed up in instant polls suggesting that he — and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Senator John Cornyn — avoid the pro-gun crowd just this once. Maybe it was the banner over the George R. Brown Convention Center that promised “14 Acres of Guns & Gear.”
The Avenida de las Americas, the boulevard in front of what locals call the G.R.B., was barricaded on both sides. Protesters, many of them young, lined the sidewalk in front of Discovery Green, having spent much of the day in the blazing sun listening to Beto O’Rourke and others plead the case for gun safety.
On the convention center side stood a phalanx of Houston Police Department and other officers, some on horseback, there for the convention and its visitors. Many convention attendees did not respond to chants and signs from the protesters across the avenue about dead children and gun safety.
The scene made for a pretty good metaphor: two sides, separated by a great distance, with communication impossible. In a different world, you might have expected the leader of a state that has had this year alone over 20 mass shootings (in which four or more people were killed or injured) to go to great efforts to comfort and conciliate his constituents. If not the governor, then maybe a senator, or at least the lieutenant governor. But that was not in the cards.
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