DALLAS — Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott delivered a fiery speech at the Dallas GOP midterm convention Thursday, making the case that the November's election is a clear choice between “common sense" and "crazy.” Speaking on the convention's second and final night at the American Airlines Center, Abbott, who is running for a fourth term, kicked off his address by showing love to his fellow Texans in the crowd. "I love everybody in this room.
But I have a very special affinity for my fellow Texans," he said, as he faces state Rep. Gina Hinojosa, D-Texas, in what polling shows to be a tightly contested gubernatorial race. Abbott credited President Donald Trump with unmatched border security efforts and compared the border situation today to how it was under the Biden administration. The 68-year-old governor also took some credit of his own for leading efforts to secure the nation’s borders.
“When Joe Biden was president, Texas had to step into the breach, and now Texas has the toughest laws on immigration of anybody in any state in the United States of America," he said. "We banned sanctuary cities. We’re the only state to build our own border wall.
And we made it a state crime to cross the border illegally into Texas." In an apparent shot at his gubernatorial opponent, Hinojosa, Abbott noted that Democratic candidates in Texas opposed those measures. “All the Democrats running statewide in the state of Texas, they had a chance to vote on those policies, and they voted against those policies," he said.
"They voted against common sense." Abbott also highlighted laws blocking foreign adversaries from purchasing Texas land and his executive order last November designating the Muslim Brotherhood and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as terrorist organizations.