A crowd gathers to hear Governor Greg Abbott speak during a campaign stop, on Wednesday October 26, 2022, at Texas Music City Grill & Smokehouse in Tyler. (Michael Cavazos/News-Journal Photo)

Gov. Greg Abbott said during a campaign stop Wednesday in Tyler that he plans to ensure Texas has a secure southern border.

Abbott spoke at Texas Music City Grill & Smokehouse as part of his Get Out the Vote tour. About 500 people were in attendance.

Along with border security, the Republican governor talked about lowering taxes, giving parents a say in their children’s education, boosting oil and gas production and support for law enforcement.

Abbott faces Democrat Beto O’Rourke in the November general election.

“We’re gonna win because we’re going to show the contrast between the success that conservative policies have achieved versus the radical ideology that Beto O’Rourke is preaching and how it would destroy our state,” he said. “The contrast between the two is extraordinary.”

The border

“The most dangerous thing that President (Joe) Biden has done is his radical, leftist, wacky open border policies,” Abbott said. “They are destroying our country.”

Two years ago, the southern border was the most secure in decades under the leadership of former President Donald Trump, he said. That changed because of Biden, he added.

Abbott said more than 2.2 million people came across the border this past year, which is almost twice the population of Dallas.

Along with other measure, the National Guard and Texas Department of Public Safety are working to keep people from crossing the border illegally.

Many people cross the border with the help of the drug cartels, who will take those trying to cross to areas not controlled by Texas but by the federal government, Abbott said. The cartels knows if they try to cross at Texas-controlled land, “they’re going to be arrested,” he added.

“Because Biden is not doing his job, Texas is stepping up and doing the federal government’s job,” he said.

With the federal government allowing people illegally into Texas and putting them in small towns near the border, Abbott said many immigrants have been bussed to Washington, D.C., which claimed to be a sanctuary city. Texas also has sent buses to New York City and Chicago.

“They made the promise. They made the commitment that they will take care of anybody coming into our country illegally until they actually had to do it,” he said. “They couldn’t take it — they had a couple of 100 people, like we get that many people in an hour, and they could not handle it.”

Abbott added that he also bused people out-of-state to show Biden the issues that open borders cause.

“If he’s not going to go to the border, Texas is going to take the border to Joe Biden,” he said.

Along with illegal immigration, deadly drugs such as fentanyl are being smuggled across the border, leading to the deaths of Americans, Abbott said.

“The leading cause of death in the United States right now between the ages between 18 and 45 is fentanyl,” he said. “Texas law enforcement alone over the past year have seized enough fentanyl that it would have killed every man, woman and child in the entire United States of America.”

Taxes

Abbott said O’Rourke has talked about raising taxes and imposing more regulations in Texas, which would lead to businesses being “destroyed.”

Since he was re-elected, Abbott said Texas has added more new jobs than any other state. Under conservative principles and his leadership, it has the fastest growing economy in the nation, he added.

Abbott said he wants to see a majority of the state’s $27 billion budget surplus, or at least half, go to “the largest property tax cut ever.”

“There’s a gaping divide between myself and Beto because Beto, when he was on (El Paso) city council, he raised property taxes three different times,” he said. “We don’t need anybody in the governor’s office that’s ever raised property taxes. I am running for re-election to cut your property taxes.”

Law enforcement

“Something far more dangerous, far more insidious, about Beto’s radical leftist ideology and policies … is what he’s doing that compromises your safety in our cities, and that is his support of defunding the police,” Abbott said.

Every city that has defunded the police has seen an increase in crime, not less, he said, including Austin.

“(Austin) defended their police by more than $100 million, and what it led to was a record number of murders In Austin, Texas,” Abbott said. “Defunding the police is deadly.”

Law enforcement personnel should be supported, so to combat the issue of police defunding, Abbott said he teamed with Sen. Cole Hefner, R-Mount Pleasant, and Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, to pass legislation in the 2021 session that ensured that any city in Texas that defunds its police department will be defunded, as well.

Oil and gas

Oil and gas is vital in Texas and have helped the state have such a strong economy, Abbott said.

He said O’Rourke is against oil and gas production and supports the “Green New Deal,” which “would destroy all the gas production,” Abbott said. That would lead to hundreds of thousands of jobs lost and raise gas prices even higher.

“I am running for re-election to keep Texas the number one oil and gas producer in the United states of America,” he said.

Education

“We see Beto’s radical, leftist ideology even infiltrating our schools,” Abbott said, emphasizing that parents must have a say in the education of their children.

He added that O’Rourke is a supporter of critical race theory, which allows educators to “teach whichever version of history they want to teach — that is wrong,” Abbott said.

He said there is “a lot on the line” in this election, such as jobs, taxes, safety, freedoms and values.

“The winner or loser of this election, it’s not gonna be me,” he said. “The winner or loser of this election is going to be you all. This is your election.”

Early voting began continues through Nov. 4, and Election Day is Nov. 8.