HOUSTON: Texas Governor Greg Abbott speaks during the Houston Region Business Coalition's monthly meeting in Houston, Texas. - AFP

TEXAS: Building on his state's passage of the most restrictive abortion law in the US, Governor Greg Abbott has made Texas a test lab for deeply conservative ideas in a divided America still manifestly marked by the presidency of Donald Trump. A challenge to the law, which bans abortions after six weeks, is to be taken up by the US Supreme Court today, and some observers fear the conservative-leaning court might overturn long-established abortion rights.

But the Texas abortion law is just the latest politically provocative step taken by Abbott, a Catholic who turns 64 in November. In only a few months, he has shepherded into existence a wide-ranging set of laws that seem linked only by an intent to appeal to the far right. One of them requires transgender students to play only on sports teams that align with their birth gender.

Yet Texas's 29 million inhabitants - 40 percent of them Latino - are far from a solidly Republican bloc. Trump won the state in both 2016 and 2020 by just over 52 percent of the vote. Elections to the US Senate are usually close, and Democratic mayors preside in several large cities, including capital Austin and the state's largest city, Houston. So some observers see Abbott's conservative zeal as the clear sign of someone with ambitions reaching far beyond the borders of his big southern state.

Lofty aspirations

"Based on the actions I've seen him take, I would not be surprised if he seeks a presidential nomination" in the Republican primaries of 2024, said Juan Carlos Huerta, a political science professor at Texas A&M University's Corpus Christi campus. For now, Trump would be a "shoo-in" for the nomination if he wants it, Huerta said, while adding, "but politics change." Among other things, the former Republican president faces a slew of legal challenges on several fronts.

Trump has yet to formally declare his intentions for 2024, but his words and actions point clearly toward a new run for the nation's top office. Still, given the many uncertainties, several Republicans have been quietly positioning themselves to step up should he bow out. Given the large field of potential Republican candidates, "Abbott might be positioning himself for a role in a second Trump administration-perhaps in the cabinet, perhaps in the courts, perhaps even as vice president," said Erica Grieder, a Houston Chronicle columnist.

In Texas, as across the country, the Republican party leans clearly to the right, still under the influence and control of the former president. So politically ambitious Republicans must prove their conservative bona fides. Abbott's Texas is a prime example. Laws passed just since September 1 allow anyone 21 or older to carry a handgun without a license or special training; permit the state to penalize any city that reduces its police budget; require sports teams receiving state financing to play the national anthem before their games; criminalize homeless encampments, and more.

In August, the state allocated $25 million to build two miles of wall along the border with Mexico, where on June 30 Abbott appeared alongside Trump. The governor, who has been confined to a wheelchair since being struck by a falling tree while jogging in 1984, faces strong challenges from Texas's far right. Abbott will have to win the Texas Republican primary in March if he wants to stay on as governor.

One of his rivals, Allen West, rejects COVID vaccines as "dangerous." West himself contracted the virus and was hospitalized early in October, despite having used unproven alternative treatments. Although Abbott is vaccinated, he published a controversial decree barring employers from imposing vaccine mandates on their workers. "I wanted to... set the counterbalance against the Biden administration to say that no one can be compelled to take a vaccine," he said in a video posted on October 20.

"What Abbott has to do in order to protect himself from an attack to the right is to go to the right of these candidates," said Jeronimo Cortina, a political science professor at the University of Houston. "For the primary election, regardless of the race, you want to win it by a lot, so that you are the candidate of unity," he said. But, as Huerta of Texas A&M explained, "The individuals who vote in the Republican primary are more conservative than the overall population, or even most Republicans." - AFP