Why Gov. Greg Abbott and Texas AG Ken Paxton are seeking to influence voters in Bastrop

BASTROP — In a rural county next door to the Capitol, Gov. Greg Abbott's and Attorney General Ken Paxton's revenge tours are playing front and center as the top state GOP officials are backing different candidates for House District 17.

Rep. Stan Gerdes, R-Smithville, who is seeking reelection to a second term, is campaigning with Abbott's support to continue representing Bastrop, Burleson, Caldwell, Lee and Milam counties in the Texas House. Tom Glass, who lives on a ranch in western Lee County, is challenging Gerdes with Paxton's backing.

The two candidates are facing off for a second time. Gerdes first won election in House District 17 in 2022 after clinching the GOP nomination in a runoff against longtime Bastrop County Judge Paul Pape. Glass — who is married to Kathie Glass, a libertarian candidate for governor in 2010 and 2014, going up against Abbott in her latter run — came in third in the 2022 GOP primary.

Despite both embarking on separate, revenge-driven endorsement campaigns to influence the makeup of the Texas House, Paxton and Abbott are throwing their political weight behind opposing candidates in District 17 for different reasons.

After the Legislature was unwilling last year to approve a school voucher program, an initiative to spend public money to help pay for private school tuition, Abbott is standing by Gerdes in recognition of his support for the governor's marquee legislative priority.

Paxton, on the other hand, is fighting for Glass as part of his vengeance tour against GOP House members, such as Gerdes, who voted to impeach the attorney general on 20 charges, including bribery and abuse of office. The Senate, largely along party lines, cleared Paxton of wrongdoing in a trial in September, and the attorney general has since been emboldened to go after those who wanted to oust him.

After riding the school choice issue hard through the regular legislative session and a series of subsequent 30-day special sessions, Abbott has tamped down his focus on school vouchers in favor of addressing border security and other hot button GOP priorities.

But days after hosting nearly two dozen Texas House Republicans for a news conference at Shelby Park along the Texas-Mexico border in Eagle Pass, Abbott on Feb. 10 — 10 days before early voting in the primaries was to begin — told a crowd of Gerdes supporters at a campaign rally in Bastrop that he wants to see the incumbent continue his work to fund border security initiatives, property tax cuts and a school voucher program.

"Stan and I are going to be working together to build a conservative bulwark right here in the Lone Star State, where we protect your freedom, protect your opportunity, protect your ability to prosper," Abbott said.

Glass, a conservative firebrand and staunch Paxton ally, has won the attorney general's favor by going on a condemnation crusade against Gerdes for his vote, along with an overwhelming majority of the Texas House, to impeach Paxton. Glass said he had anticipated staying out of the current election cycle but decided to run for the House seat directly in response to Gerdes' vote.

Glass has painted the impeachment vote as evidence that Gerdes is taking cues from Republicans at the Capitol as opposed to listening to the voters in the rural House district east of Austin.

"It is the biggest winning issue I've ever seen in any political involvement I've had," Glass said of his revamped, Paxton-driven campaign.

Abbott's school choice endorsement called a 'disservice'

Outside of decrying Gerdes for supporting Paxton's initial ouster, Glass has also been critical of Abbott's interest in the race and his emphasis on supporting candidates who are not averse to school choice legislation.

"What's ironic about the endorsement of the governor in this situation is that it was done on one vote, one vote on one issue — school choice," Glass told the American-Statesman in an interview.

Acknowledging that he would "love to have the governor's endorsement," Glass argued that Abbott's backing being based on the potential future support of school vouchers is a "disservice" to the accreditation and driven by an issue that is largely unimportant to voters in District 17.

"It cheapens the endorsement if you're doing it on one issue and one issue alone," Glass said.

Alongside Gerdes in Bastrop, however, Abbott made little note of his failed school voucher push, only making passing mention of future efforts to advance such legislation and to remind voters of internal GOP support on the issue.

Similarly, Gerdes did not make much of the school voucher issue, instead focusing on a recent trip to the border with Abbott and touting Republican successes in the Legislature last year, including increasing funding for Abbott's border initiative, Operation Lone Star, to more than $11 billion total and strengthening criminal penalties for illegal border crossings and human smuggling.

"We don't have anything to run from; we put ourselves out there, let folks see who we are and ask for them to support us again," Gerdes told the Statesman after his campaign event with Abbott in Bastrop.

More: Texas elections: Deadlines and other key dates to know

School choice is less of a priority compared with border security for GOP voters ahead of the March 5 primary, according to a poll released earlier this month by the University of Houston Hobby School of Public Affairs.

Only 60% of Republican primary voters polled in the survey would be less motivated to vote for a candidate who voted against school voucher legislation, while nearly 90% would be more likely to support an incumbent who voted to bolster illegal immigration penalties.

Along with the border focus, Abbott's endorsement of Gerdes revolved around touting the state's economic successes and celebrating lawmakers for passing a property tax plan last year that, combined with previous funding, totals roughly $18 billion.

In teasing a potential budget surplus ahead of the 2025 legislative session, Abbott said a preliminary estimate of about $20 billion could be used to pass additional tax cuts.

More: How the border crisis sparked the worst Texas-federal relationship in modern memory

"Stan and I want to work together and return that money to you with another large property tax cut," Abbott said during the event in Bastrop.

Paxton endorses for revenge

Standing before a crowd of more than 100 of Glass' supporters during a campaign event in Bastrop in late January, Paxton railed against the House impeaching him, arguing that Republican voters should be focused on flipping those seats to more conservative candidates.

Paxton used the stage in Bastrop as a pulpit to lay out his vision for rooting out subversive House Republicans who voted to impeach him stemming from accusations by former top aides in his office that the attorney general had abused his elected position to help a campaign donor, who has since been charged with multiple federal financial crimes.

Seldom mentioning Gerdes or the ongoing primary election, Paxton gave voters his personal testimonial against what he called an improper probe into his conduct by the House and reflected on his time serving in the Legislature as a fight against lobby interests in "the swamp in Austin." Before being elected as the state's top law enforcement officer, Paxton represented a Dallas-area district for 10 years in the House and two years in the Senate.

"But it's going to all tie back to why it's so important to elect Tom and others like him," Paxton said.

More: John Cornyn and Ken Paxton trade punches over aid for Ukraine, highlighting Texas GOP split

Continuing his crusade against House Speaker Dade Phelan, R-Beaumont, who joined the lower chamber in impeaching Paxton, the attorney general has endorsed nearly 50 House candidates, many of whom are challenging incumbent Republicans, including David Covey — Phelan's primary challenger and a well-funded former Orange County GOP chairman who has also won former President Donald Trump's endorsement.

"Instead of the law being a shield, which it should have been to protect me, it became a sword," Paxton told Glass' supporters.

For Glass, a frustration over the influence of special interest groups on lawmakers in Austin, overreach by the federal government into Texas' affairs and groundwater availability concerns in the district are motivations to run for the House seat again.

However, in praising Paxton, the impetus for the campaign is solely an outcome of the impeachment's aftermath.

"I started considering it and finally decided to take the plunge," Glass said. "So you can say the Paxton impeachment vote was the crystallizing event for me to do it."

Candidates agree on water concerns

Regardless of falling on opposing sides of the Republican power struggle, both Gerdes and Glass cited groundwater accessibility and sustainability as a major focal point for the district moving forward.

"Here in this district, this is ground zero for groundwater," Glass said, expressing frustration about ongoing water export projects from the Burleson, Bastrop and Lee counties to the San Antonio metro area.

After a 150-mile pipeline was completed and began exporting water from the area in 2020, complaints of declining water levels and issues with groundwater pumps have skyrocketed, both candidates said.

"They have to lower their pump or they're drilling new wells," Gerdes said of constituents in the district. "And those types of things are happening more and more, especially with the demand and the growth that is coming here."

Gerdes said he will continue fighting against the water exports that began before his tenure, pointing to legislation to assist water well mitigation programs as part of the sustainability response.

"Water is a very complex situation," Gerdes said. "I look forward to peeling back that onion more and delving into it to continue to deliver results that help folks here."

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, AG Ken Paxton's revenge tours reach Bastrop