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Greg Abbott (born Gregory Wayne Abbott, November 13, 1957) is the governor of Texas, a position he has held since January 20, 2015.
He previously served as the Texas Attorney General from 2002 to 2015, and as a member of the Texas Supreme Court from 1995 to 2001.
Abbott is a conservative politician belonging to the Republican Party.
Governor of Texas
Abbott announced his intent to run for governor on July 14, 2013, a week after Governor Rick Perry announced that he would not seek a fourth full term. He won the Republican primary on March 4, 2014, with more than 90% of votes cast. In the general election he faced state senator Wendy Davis of Fort Worth, beating her by about 19%.
During his first term, Abbott presided over a period of economic growth, oversaw Hurricane Harvey relief, and promoted a socially conservative agenda. He ran for reelection in 2018 touting rising employment rates, rising high school graduation rates, and a crackdown on gang violence. Abbott defeated Democratic Lupe Valdez with about 56% of the vote.
During his second term, Abbott worked with the Texas Legislature to increase public education funding in 2019, including teachers’ salaries.
In 2020-2021, he oversaw the state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. His executive actions during the pandemic drew attacks from both the left and the right. Critics on the left accused him of not doing enough to protect the vulnerable and tying the hands of local officials. Critics on the right accused him of infringing too far on individual liberties, harming businesses, and overemphasizing the severity of the pandemic.
As the pandemic wore on, Abbott increasingly took executive actions to ban local governments from enacting their own restrictive pandemic rules or precautions. He also issued a largely symbolic executive order attempting to ban vaccine mandates by private businesses. Abbott himself contracted COVID-19 in August 2021 but quickly recovered. He said afterwards, “I am told that my infection was brief and mild because of the vaccination I received. So, I encourage others who have not yet received the vaccination to consider getting one.”
During the final year of his second term, Abbott adopted an increasingly aggressive approach to border security, launching Operation Lone Star, which involved the deployment of National Guard and Department of Public Safety troopers in a show of force meant to deter migrants from crossing into Texas. For the first time, Texas law enforcement also began charging migrants for trespassing on private land, an approach that Abbott said was necessary because of non-enforcement of immigration laws by federal authorities.
State forces also deployed razor wire and other physical obstacles in certain areas along the border, and Abbott declared that Texas would build its own border wall, after the Trump Administration failed to complete its stated goal of building a wall along the border.
Throughout his time in office, Abbott has advocated for laxer gun regulations. In June 2021, he signed into law HB 1927, a bill that eliminated the requirement for Texans to obtain a license to carry a handgun.
Texas experienced a rising number of mass shootings during Abbott’s tenure. He held a number of roundtable forums with survivors, including after the 2018 Santa Fe High School shooting and the 2019 El Paso Walmart shooting.
Judicial Career
Abbott first held public office in Houston, where he served as a state trial judge for three years. In 1996, Governor George W. Bush appointed Abbott to the Texas Supreme Court. He then won election to the court in 1996 and 1998.
In 2001, after resigning from the Supreme Court, Abbott briefly went into private practice and worked for Bracewell & Giuliani LLC, before running for the post of Attorney General.
Attorney General of Texas
Abbott launched a run for lieutenant governor in 2001, but switched gears after campaigning for just a few months, opting instead for a run for Texas Attorney General, after the incumbent John Cornyn vacated the post to run for the U.S. Senate. Abbott defeated the Democratic candidate, former Austin mayor and then-state senator Kirk Watson, 57% to 41%.
Taking office in 2002, Abbott took a combative stance toward the Obama Administration, suing the federal government more than 40 times. These lawsuits involved carbon-emission standards, health-care, transgender rights, and other issues.
Abbott personally appeared before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2005 to defend a monument to the Ten Commandments on the grounds of the Texas Capitol. In a filing in the case (Van Oren v. Perry), Abbott wrote, “the Ten Commandments are a historically recognized system of law.” The Supreme Court held 5–4 that the monument did not violate the U.S. constitution.
Early Life, Education
Greg Abbott was born on November 13, 1957, in Wichita Falls. His mother Doris was a homemaker and his father Calvin was a stockbroker and insurance agent. When he was six years old, they moved to Longview and the family lived there for six years.
At the beginning of junior high school, Abbott’s family moved to Duncanville. In his sophomore year in high school, his father died of a heart attack, and his mother went to work in a real estate office. He graduated from Duncanville High School, where he was a member of the track team.
In 1981, Abbott earned a Bachelor of Business Administration in finance from the University of Texas at Austin, where he was a member of the Delta Tau Delta fraternity and the Young Republicans Club. He met his wife, Cecilia Phelan, while attending UT Austin.
In 1984, he earned his law degree from Vanderbilt University Law School in Nashville, Tennessee. During his final year of law school, he secured a job at a law firm in downtown Houston, Butler & Binion. After graduating from Vanderbilt, Abbott and his wife Cecilia moved to Houston where he began working at the firm.
On July 14, 1984, at age 26, Abbott was paralyzed below waist-level when an oak tree fell on him while he was jogging following a storm.
In his autobiography, Abbott described the accident and the aftermath as excruciatingly painful. He had two steel rods implanted in his spine, underwent extensive rehabilitation at Memorial Hermann Hospital in Houston, and has used a wheelchair ever since. He sued the homeowner and a tree service company, resulting in an insurance settlement. This provides him with regular payments for life.
After the accident, Abbott continued working at Butler & Binion until 1992.
He later highlighted his recovery in a 2014 campaign ad, citing it as an example of perseverance. He said, “After my accident I had to rebuild my strength. I would roll up an eight-story parking garage, spending hours going up the ramps. It got harder and harder, but I wouldn’t quit.”
Personal Life
Abbott, a Roman Catholic, is married to Cecilia Phelan Abbott, a former school teacher and principal. Cecilia is the first Hispanic First Lady of Texas. She and Greg Abbott were married in San Antonio in 1981 and the couple have one daughter, Audrey, whom they adopted at birth. The Abbotts have two dogs, Pancake and Peaches.
Autobiographical Materials
2017 Autobiography
Abbott’s 2017 book Broken But Unbowed is a reflection on his personal story and views on politics. In it, Abbott promoted the idea of a Convention of States to amend the U.S. Constitution, a method of amendment that’s never been tried.
According to a review by Christopher Hooks of the left-leaning Texas Observer, the book relates in detail Abbott’s accident but then “quickly transitions to constitutional issues, with a few bits of biographical material, mostly about Abbott’s wife and daughters, thrown in to lighten the mood. We learn almost nothing about Abbott’s early childhood in Wichita Falls, his parents, his time in college or law school, or, for that matter, his time in public office.”
“Abbott’s rise from Houston lawyer to trial court judge to Texas Supreme Court justice to his election as attorney general, which spans 11 years of his life, takes up exactly two pages.”
Patrick Svitek, a reporter for the Texas Tribune, wrote, “The book is a largely noncontroversial outing, recalling the accident that paralyzed Abbott for life, his battles with Washington as attorney general and later as governor and his recent push for a convention of states to amend the Constitution.”
