'We will win': Gov. Greg Abbott makes rare El Paso campaign stop days before election

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott predicted he and other Texas Republicans would win next week during a rare campaign stop in El Paso.

"We will win and keep Texas red up and down the ballot," Abbott proclaimed at an evening rally Tuesday outside an Upper Valley restaurant. He estimated the crowd at 500 people.

Even as he struck his confident tone and leads his Democratic opponent Beto O'Rourke, an El Paso native, comfortably in most polls, he still asked his supporters to help text him to his third term.

He asked cheering supporters to send out 100 cell phone texts saying, "Go vote early for Gov. Abbott." If they did, he promised a victory would be ensured.

"A week from now, almost to the hour, I will be declaring victory," Abbott predicted. "And when I declare victory I'm going to say it was because 50,000 votes were turned out in El Paso that begun to be turned out this night, tonight."

Besides rallying his supporters in a parking lot outside the Riviera Cocina and Cantina on Doniphan Drive, where he also made a campaign stop in February, Abbott also spent Tuesday afternoon lauding the creation of jobs at a new call center in East El Paso.

His visit came a week before the Nov. 8 election and days before the end of early voting on Friday.

Abbott is on a statewide "Get Out the Vote" tour with Nov. 1 stops in Fort Worth, Amarillo, and El Paso. O'Rourke is on a similar tour.

Abbott stops in heavily Democratic El Paso have been rare this election season. He's visited El Paso four times this year, of which two were campaign events, reported Renae Eze, a spokeswoman for the governor.

The governor spent much of his almost 20-minute rally speech lauding what he said is a strong Texas economy and pounding against his opponent, O'Rourke, a former U.S. Congressman for the Borderland, who he labels as part of the radical left.

He said O'Rourke would increase taxes as he did as an El Paso city representative, and that, he said, would help destroy the Texas economy.

"What Beto's openly talked about is increasing your taxes and spending more of your money; he would decimate the Texas economy, kill jobs, and stoke inflation to increase even more," Abbott maintained.

Abbott reiterated his promise to use a portion of the state's $27 billion budget surplus to give Texans "the largest property tax cut in the history of the state."

He criticized President Joe "Biden's and Democrats' open border policies" and promoted his effort to build a Texas border wall.

East Side El Pasoan Virginia Gonzales, 56, explained her support for Abbott and Republicans as she waited in line with her husband, Anthony Gonzales, 58, to take a photo with Abbott after the rally.

"We're tired of the open border situation; we're tired of all the radical policies of the Democrats," Virginia Gonzales said.

Her husband added: "Beto stands for the socialist agenda we're totally against."

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West Side resident James Peinado, 36, said he came to the rally to "show support for keeping Texas red and preserving economic freedom and civil rights."

Abbott spent almost an hour taking photos with every supporter who wanted one after the rally.

Abbott's stop at the new Spectrum cable TV call center in East El Paso before the campaign rally was billed by Abbott's office as an official gubernatorial visit.

The governor spoke at the call center's grand opening to a roomful of guests with El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser and El Paso County Judge Ricardo Samaniego, a Democrat, seated next to him.

Before arriving in El Paso, Abbott tweeted that Texas has been named the best state for business for many years. That comes from a Chief Executive magazine poll of company chief executive officers and business owners that have given Texas that honor for 21 straight years, according to the magazine.

However, CNBC, the cable-TV news network, recently ranked Texas as the fifth best state for business based on 88 economic-related measurements in its annual ranking. North Carolina ranked first.

Vic Kolenc may be reached at 546-6421; vkolenc@elpasotimes.com; @vickolenc on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: Gov. Greg Abbott stops in El Paso to 'Get Out The Vote'