VP Kamala Harris rallies Democrats, affirms support for abortion rights during Austin visit

AUSTIN — One month before the midterm elections, Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris came to Republican Texas, aiming to buck up a state party that hasn't seen a statewide victory in a generation and one still facing headwinds caused by economic uncertainty and rampant unchecked migration across its southern border.

Still, Harris pushed an optimistic message that highlighted the national party's slogan of "Democrats deliver" and urged Texas Democrats at their annual "JJ Reception in Austin" to embrace Biden administration successes on a range of legislative issues ranging from a deal aimed at lowering prescription drugs prices, spending on infrastructure renewal projects and to COVID relief.

"Democrats stood on the floor and delivered relief to the American people," Harris told attendees at the JJ Reception, named for the late President Lyndon B. Johnson and the Congresswoman Barbara Jordan. "People are suffering."

The first woman ever elected on a national ticket also used her two stops in Austin to champion efforts to restore the reproductive freedoms that were struck down when the Supreme Court on June 24 overturned the 1973 landmark case, Roe v. Wade that had affirmed the right to abortion.

Before the reception, Harris appeared at the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library on the University of Texas campus, where she affirmed her support for abortion rights and likened the effort to restore them the civil rights struggle of the 1960s that helped define the 36th president's administration.

She said the recent high court ruling that struck down the constitutional right of a woman to terminate a pregnancy "has profound ramifications."

"At its core, this is about freedom, liberty," Harris said during a question-and-answer session. "And on every level." She reminded the 200-plus invited guests inside the library's 10-floor Atrium Room that the midterm elections are one month away and that "it matters" who gets elected up and down the ballot.

She also cast the abortion issue in generational terms after the Supreme Court's ruling striking down the landmark Roe v. Wade decision of 1973.

"We have a 23-year-old daughter and I have an 83-year-old mother-in-law," she said. "Our daughters will have fewer rights than my mother-in-law did."

At the reception, Harris denounced Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's support for the Texas law that now forbids abortion with no exception for rape or incest as "radical" and stated that Texas must "elect Beto O'Rourke as governor." However, the Democratic nominee and former congressman from El Paso did not attend either function in Austin.

A spokesman said O'Rourke was sticking to his long-planned "weekend of blockwalking" campaign schedule.

Abbott's campaign derided the vice president's Texas visit, saying her agenda in the state was misguided.

"Instead of coming to Texas to fundraise for border crisis-denier Beto O’ Rourke, the vice president should  take time to visit the border to see first hand the complete disaster she and the president created," said Abbott spokesman Mark Miner.

Abbott, seeking a third term as governor, has made illegal immigration a central theme of his re-election effort. Harris was tasked early on as the Biden administration's point person on immigration, specifically as the Associated Press reported at the time, "to oversee diplomatic efforts to deal with issues spurring migration in the Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, as well as pressing them to strengthen enforcement on their own borders."

The task is also to include finding a "long-term strategy that gets at the root causes of migration from those countries."

Harris made little mention of immigration during her Austin visit. But she did reaffirm the administration's commitment to establish a pathway to citizenship for the children of immigrants who came into the United States without legal authorization "because America is their home."

Harris in September was in Houston where she chaired the National Space Council and toured a space-vehicle mock-up facility. And last year, she visited El Paso where she toured Border Patrol facilities amid what was then the beginning of a burgeoning crisis in unauthorized immigration.

Harris loudest applause from the Democrats was when she reminded them of Biden's recent action pardoning people who were convicted on simple possession of marijuana on federal cases.

"The bottom line is no one should have to go to jail for smoking weed," she said.

John C. Moritz covers Texas government and politics for the USA Today Network in Austin. Contact him at jmoritz@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter @JohnnieMo.

This article originally appeared on Corpus Christi Caller Times: Kamala Harris brings 'Democrats deliver' message to Austin