State Rep. Liz Campos (D-San Antonio) told a gathering of the Tejano Democrats on Saturday that Gov. Greg Abbott sought to use her vetoed dangerous dog bill as leverage to court her support for his school voucher program.
Lawmakers from both parties had shut down school voucher plans in the Texas House for decades, but Abbott went to extreme lengths to push one through for the first time in the state’s history last year.
He used an unheard of $6 million campaign contribution from a Pennsylvania billionaire to help root out detractors of the idea in Republican primaries, including one of his old allies, state Rep. Steve Allison (R-Alamo Heights), who was so disillusioned by the attacks that he said he no longer recognized the Republican Party.
According to Campos, the governor put tremendous pressure on Democratic members too — though none wound up coming over to his side.
“I had a very important bill, the dog bill here in San Antonio, that went all the way to the governor’s office. Unfortunately, it got vetoed,” Campos in a speech at the Tejano Democrats’ candidate forum at Luby’s.
“I personally had a meeting here with [Abbott] in San Antonio and asked him why he vetoed my dog bill that is so needed,” she continued. “He told me that he needed my voucher vote, and if I gave him that vote, he could un-veto my bill.”
The voucher plan was approved during the 89th Legislative Session with the support of all but two House Republicans. Every Democrat voted against it.
“I told him, ‘With all due respect, that is not fair,’” Campos recalled of her conversation with the governor. “‘It’s a good bill, and I’m not going to give you your voucher vote. That’s not going to happen.’”
The Ramon Najera Act — named after the 81-year-old veteran who was killed in a dog attack in 2022 — seeks to allow anonymous reporting of dangerous dogs and to empower local animal care service departments to investigate aggressive dogs without affidavits or a sworn statement. The bill would also have increased penalties for repeat offenders.
Lawmakers from other counties wanted no part of those changes, but it was approved by both the Texas House and Senate in the 2023 legislative session after lawmakers bracketed it to apply only to Bexar County.
Abbott said in 2023 that the bill’s changes to the penalties amounted to overcriminalization, and the state’s existing laws already penalize attacks by dangerous dogs so much that felony arrests have already been made following Najera’s death.
At the time, Campos said Abbott’s office had “agreed to work with me on it,” so she reintroduced it during a special session that year, which was aimed at school vouchers.
She brought it back again in the 89th Legislative Session, with GOP Reps. Marc LaHood (R-San Antonio) and John Lujan (R-San Antonio) as co-sponsors, but it wasn’t taken up for a vote in the Public Health Committee.