Texas Executive: Governor Greg Abbott

QUESTION

1. Choose one elected official who is a member of Texas’ plural executive (Governor, Lt. Governor, Comptroller, Agriculture Commissioner, Land Commissioner, Attorney general) and briefly introduce them, their party affiliation, political experience and how long they have been in their current position. Use and cite at least one solid academic source from the list belowin doing so.
2. Explain how they have responded in their official capacity to the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. What official actions did they take? How did they address the issue with the people of Texas? Did they provide commentary or leadership at the national level? You are not taking a position on their actions this point, just explaining how they responded. Use and cite at least one solid academic source from the list belowin doing so.
3. Critically assess their response to the pandemic crisis, including an explanation of what you think they have done well and/or what they could have done better. Use and cite at least one solid academic source from the list belowto make your case. I am not looking for statements of opinion or explanations or justifications of your opinion about the response, but am looking for evidence-based argumentation using evidence in the form of things like statistics, research studies, case studies, expert analysis and the like from solid sources to support your position.

ANSWER

Texas Executive: Governor Greg Abbott

Greg Wayne Abbott is the current Governor of Texas who is also part of Texas’s plural executive. Previously serving as Texas’s Attorney General, Abbott was elected on a Republican ticket in 2014 as the new in 14 years 48^th Governor of Texas. He succeeded Rick Perry and is still in office eight years later. Abbott began his career in private practice. Vanderbilt University (2014) explains and served as a state trial judge from 1993, where he appreciated through his appointment to the Texas Supreme Court by then-Governor George W. Bush in 1996. In 2002, Abbot was elected as Attorney General and served for 12 years.

Governor Abbot led the Covid-19 vaccine campaign in Texas by getting vaccinated live on TV. His advocacy came after most citizens’ reluctance to vaccinate against the virus. According to Platoff (2020), the Covid pandemic tested Abbott’s leadership, leading to developing measures to protect the people he serves through recommendations from the national government- the department of health. The first steps included settling in for the pandemic routine that included a commentary like a statewide mask mandate, shutting down the tension between Democrats who had wanted the requirement earlier and Republicans who did not want it at all. Secondly, he ordered bars and restaurants to close together with the “Stay at Home” mandate. Governor Abbot ordered that every Texas remain put in their homes except for going for essential activities like groceries and barred elective medical procedures to free hospitals that were expected to respond to the surge (Platoff, 2020).

Abbott’s leadership during the pandemic was remarkable because he put party politics aside to respond to the crisis accordingly. As a Republican governor, he would have joined his party in the mask battle, where they did not want it at all but announced a mandate for every Texan, regardless of their party, to mask up (Platoff, 2020). This was a great and commendable response from the governor. However, Abbott somehow failed by moving too fast to reopen the state’s businesses. As soon as businesses reopened, the penalties in place to ensure compliance became a story and began to disappear. As Yu et al. (2021) explain, the low-risk reopening policy in Texas increased the contact rate by 2-4 folds after reopening. Therefore, reopening without policies to force compliance would have increased the rapidity of the pandemic wave to significantly higher numbers of infections, hospitalization, and death (Yu et al., 2021).

References

Platoff, E. (2020). A Singular Figure In Texas’ Coronavirus Response, Gov. Greg Abbott Leads A State Headed In An Alarming Direction. The Texas Tribunal. https://www.texastribune.org/2020/07/11/texas-greg-abbott-coronavirus-response/

Vanderbilt University. (2014). Greg Abbott ’84 elected governor of Texas. Vanderbilt Law School. https://law.vanderbilt.edu/news/greg-abbott-84-elected-governor-of-texas/

Yu, D., Zhu, G., Wang, X., Zhang, C., Soltanalizadeh, B., Wang, X., … & Wu, H. (2021). Assessing Effects Of Reopening Policies On COVID-19 Pandemic In Texas With A Data-Driven Transmission Model. Infectious Disease Modelling, 6, 461-473. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.idm.2021.02.001

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