Don Huffines Blames Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick as Texas Republicans Argue Over the Sweep
The outgoing comptroller told supporters on election night that Republican leadership had failed to deliver and left the party little to campaign on. Trump, Cruz and Cornyn have each offered their own verdicts on a night that ended decades of GOP statewide control.
Texas Republicans are arguing in public over who lost them the state. Comptroller Don Huffines, speaking to supporters on election night in remarks captured in a social media post, pointed directly at Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. "It's gonna almost be impossible to win this state back," Huffines said. "I blame this on Greg Abbott. I blame this on Dan Patrick. I blame it on all of our leadership."
Huffines questioned Abbott's and Patrick's decisions to run for a fourth term, said Republicans had failed to deliver on promises and left themselves little to campaign on, and told the crowd, to cheers, that "people are tired of Republicans being in office." He went further on the party's own voters: "They never cared about you — I served with them," Huffines said. "They laugh and make fun of you and the grassroots. They never cared about our party platform." Huffines, a former state senator whom Abbott appointed comptroller in July, lost his own race on Tuesday to Democratic state Sen. Sarah Eckhardt.
The criticism is arriving from several directions at once. President Donald Trump weighed in on Abbott's loss to Democrat Gina Hinojosa on social media, calling the governor a RINO — a Republican In Name Only — and writing, "He went back to his original formula, and it wasn't pretty!" U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, speaking on his podcast on Nov. 4, called the Republican losses in Texas and around the nation a "Watergate-level repudiation," pointed to tariffs and the war with Iran as part of the reason, and added: "But hear me now: we will bring Texas back. I am filled with hope and optimism."
Former Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson had warned fellow Republicans before the election that a "spanking" was coming, the Texas Tribune reported; it came, as Democrats won every major statewide office on the ballot and flipped the Texas House. U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, who lost the May primary runoff to Attorney General Ken Paxton, offered his own diagnosis in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, pinning the devastation on self-inflicted wounds — including the nomination of candidates who forced voters "to choose between policy and personal character," which he called a "suicidal" proposition for the GOP.
