Republican Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas and Democratic gubernatorial nominee Beto O’Rourke go head-to-head on Friday evening, in the first and likely only in-person debate in the Lone Star State's showdown for governor.
The debate — which is being hosted by the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley in Edinburg, along the U.S.-Mexico border — comes with three and a half weeks to go until early voting in Texas begins, and an average of the latest public opinion polls indicate the GOP incumbent holding a healthy upper single digit lead over his Democratic challenger.
Abbott clearly has the most to lose and O’Rourke the most to gain from the debate.
"Without question, if the status quo continues, Abbott is on a clear course to victory," Texas based political scientist Mark Jones told Fox News. "Beto has everything to gain."
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Abbott, the conservative former longtime state attorney general who is seeking a third four-year term steering Texas, is expected to tout the state’s economy, his tough stance on the issues of border security and illegal immigration, and target O’Rourke for his pivots on issues such as gun control.
O’Rourke, the former congressman from El Paso who grabbed national attention for nearly upsetting conservative Sen. Ted Cruz in the state’s 2018 Senate showdown before launching an unsuccessful bid for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, is aiming to become the first Democrat to win a gubernatorial election in Texas in over three decades. He is expected to showcase his proposals promoting public education and reducing gun violence, in the wake of the horrific Uvalde, Texas, shooting where 19 elementary school students and two teachers were fatally shot. O’Rourke is also likely to criticize the governor for last year’s electricity grid failure across the state and for signing an extremely strict abortion law.
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"My goal is to make sure that people — voters in Texas — see the contrast between the two of us," O’Rourke told reporters in Texas recently.
According to a Quinnipiac University poll release this week, the border (38%) remains the number one issue on the minds of Texas voters, followed by abortion (17%) and inflation (11%).
Abbott has garnered national headlines over the past year for his tough steps on border security with Operation Lone Star, policy changes made at the border that the governor has said were in response to the surge in illegal border crossings since the start of President Biden’s administration. Among the changes are Abbott’s state-funded border wall project and the deployment of thousands of state troopers and National Guard troops along the U.S.-Mexico border.
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"When Biden abandoned his responsibility to secure our border, Texas stepped up," the governor touted on Twitter on Thursday.
Additionally, Abbott’s transporting of undocumented migrants by bus from Texas to large progressive cities, such as New York and Washington, D.C., grabbed headlines and sparked controversy.
The debate’s geography appears to favor the governor.
"He very astutely located this debate down in the Rio Grande Valley, meaning it will be impossible not to have considerable amount of coverage of immigration and border security, which are winning issues for Abbott," Jones, political science fellow at Rice University in Houston, told Fox News.
The debate is being held on a Friday night, when many Texans are attending high school football games.
"It’s on a Friday night in Texas, meaning not a lot of people are going to be home watching TV," Jones noted. "Abbott has effectively structured the debate to be favorable as possible, for instance no audience and debate rules that favor him. Abbott has made it as safe for himself as possible absent not doing the debate."
With an expected low television audience, Jones said O’Rourke "needs to somehow create an incident or an error by Abbott that will garner additional media coverage from Saturday through next week…. the big impact will be on the media coverage after the debate."
