Who is Greg Abbott?
The current Texas Attorney General is a successful politician who has won statewide office four times, serving first as a State Supreme Court Justice and now State Attorney General. Success as a politician and success as a public official, however, are not the same. Greg Abbott’s official actions reveal a partisan, mean-spirited and often hypocritical man who has done considerably more harm than good while in office.
Personal injury lawsuits OK for Abbott, just not other Texans
According to the El Paso Times, “Abbott’s injury happened during a jog through a Houston neighborhood… when a tree limb fell on him. It was one of those freakish accidents. Abbott couldn’t sue God, so he took on the homeowners and their insurance company. He won a tax-free settlement exceeding more than $10 million, not including his lawyer’s legal fees that were paid separately. (Source: El Paso Times, November 2, 2002) After being paid his enormous settlement, Abbott ran for Attorney General on a platform of tort reform supporting a law that eventually limited noneconomic damages against doctors to $250,000. (Source: Corpus Christi Caller-Times, November 6, 2002)
Intimidate minority voters while ignoring Republican voter fraud
The Austin American-Statesman reported, “After a two-year investigation of voter fraud, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has only 26 minor cases of voting irregularities to show for his expenditure from a $1.4 million grant.” (Source: Austin American-Statesman, Texas AG’s wild goose chase, Thursday, May 22, 2008) Abbott used extensive resources to intimidate minority voters, including sending AG investigators to an elderly woman’s house. The investigators peeped into the woman’s bathroom window as she exited the shower. (The Houston Chronicle, September 19, 2006) Meanwhile, Abbott ignored a clear case of voter fraud in a wealthy suburb of Dallas, near George W. Bush’s new home. The Dallas County Criminal District Attorney wrote a memo detailing the illegal behavior including passing out ballots to a line of voters and having more than 100 more ballots than signatures on the voting roster. (Source: Dallas Morning News, May 18, 2008)
Ignored institutional child abuse and child sexual assault
Abbott often uses prosecutions of child molesters as campaign props. But when the children housed in the Texas Youth Commission facilities were being sexually molested by state employees, Abbott didn’t care. When a whistleblower at the West Texas TYC school notified Abbott’s office, instead of investigating, Abbott’s office “responded two days later saying his office does not have jurisdiction over the case and would have to receive a request from the local district attorney to get involved.” (Source: Associated Press, March 10, 2007) Indictments were not secured until the press broke the story a year later, and Abbott was publicly embarrassed. Abbott’s office has still failed to win any prosecutions in the case.
Launched effort to strike down the Americans With Disabilities Act
In 2004, Abbott argued in court that the section of the ADA that requires, “public entities to provide equal access to buildings and services, is unconstitutional.” (Source: Austin American-Statesman, January 10, 2004) He argued this despite the fact that Abbott, like hundreds of thousands of Texans, benefit from that provision of the ADA every day. Other disabled Texans, however, are not millionaires and public office holders with 24 hour assistance. Once again, Abbott was motivated by partisanship and right-wing ideology rather than public service.
