Gov. Greg Abbott is wasting no time using his campaign war chest to try to overwhelm Democratic challenger Gina Hinojosa.
After Hinojosa put about $900,000 into a pair of ads that are mostly appearing on cable and digital platforms, Abbott responded with $7 million of ads promoting his campaign during hundreds of commercial breaks in all the biggest markets. That includes spots on local news programs, primetime TV and time during Dallas Cowboys and Houston Texans preseason games.
Abbott’s ad focuses on his plan to slash property taxes and a law that bans transgender athletes from playing on girls sports teams in Texas.
The early spending is not a surprise given Abbott was sitting on $67 million in his campaign account at the start of July, according to state campaign finance records. Hinojosa had just $3 million.
Hinojosa knows a deluge of ads are coming.
“Abbott is about to flood the airwaves, and we can’t afford to get drowned out,” she told her supporters in a fundraising email last week.
Surely, Hinojosa’s campaign can’t match the Republican governor dollar-for-dollar. Instead, she is having to be very strategic in how she buys time. On Tuesday, she launched a new ad blasting Abbott for taking $20 million in campaign contributions from data center companies at a time there’s strong backlash from rural Texas.
The 30-second ads are mostly airing in smaller markets like Abilene and San Angelo. Those markets are cheaper, but also where major data center projects have stirred up local communities.
“Greg Abbott is selling you out,” the ads flash on the screen.
Within 30 minutes of those first ads airing, Abbott’s governor’s office staff had put out a press release highlighting his efforts to audit data center projects to assure they aren’t straining the electric grid and water resources. Then his office sent similar emails to the media announcing three different companies had agreed to audits of their projects.
The last five big public polls show Abbott with a narrow lead over Hinojosa. A Fox News poll and one from Texas A&M/Siena both had Abbott leading by one point. But a Texas Southern University poll had Abbott up by as much as 6 percentage points.