Some of President Donald Trump’s most loyal supporters are turning on a powerful Republican governor, with one flipping a common Trump attack against him.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is bleeding support from MAGA voters furious over his school voucher crusade and his embrace of massive data centers, New York Times opinion columnist Michelle Goldberg reported Friday.
Lynn Davenport, a lifelong conservative who attended Trump’s rally in Washington on January 6, 2021, though she left before the Capitol riot, told Goldberg that Abbott is a “globalist, which to me is scarier than a communist, a socialist or a Marxist.”
Davenport, a Republican precinct chair as recently as 2024, went further than grumbling. In May, she filmed an ad for Democratic state Rep. Gina Hinojosa, who is running a surprisingly tight race to unseat Abbott.
“Gina is someone that I can work with, whereas Abbott doesn’t care what I think,” Davenport said.
She isn’t alone. Mary Lowe, an education activist who has backed Republicans in nearly every election since 1979, called Abbott “a globalist. He’s a tyrant. He’s a great deceiver.” Lowe said she plans to vote for Hinojosa in November, describing her as “one of us.”
Steve Clugston, a school superintendent who voted for Trump in 2024, told Goldberg at a Hinojosa rally in Longview that his anger began with Abbott’s voucher push, which included backing primary challenges against Republican lawmakers who blocked it.
“Our governor took billionaire money and then used it to beat Republicans that us Republicans elected,” Clugston said. His disillusionment has since spread to Trump. “When you’ve lied to me enough, and sold us out for billionaires, I get to the point I’m done.”
Rural anger over data centers has fueled the shift. Abbott recently paused new development pending an audit of energy and water use, but Goldberg noted the review is due to wrap up right after Election Day.
Hinojosa told Goldberg the conventional wisdom about which Republicans might cross over is wrong. “I think it’s always been MAGA,” she said.
Three recent polls, including a Times/Siena survey, show Hinojosa ahead, though others still have her trailing narrowly. Cook Political Report recently moved the race from “likely” to “lean” Republican. Abbott still holds a massive cash advantage, outspending Hinojosa roughly 6 to 1.
Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin, still sees Abbott as the favorite but said something is shifting. “People are feeling the ground shaking,” he said. “It’s just a matter of how big it is going to be.”
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