Texas Gov. Greg Abbott shrugs off Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s pitch for 4th special legislative session

AUSTIN — Despite pressure from his right flank, Gov. Greg Abbott sees no immediate need for a fourth overtime legislative session, a spokeswoman said Wednesday.

Abbott press secretary Renae Eze said the Legislature accomplished a lot in the year’s third special session, which ended early Tuesday.

“Because of the Texas House and Senate’s efforts to get these priorities across the finish line, there is no need for another special session at this time,” she said in a written statement.

Eze cited progress on property tax cuts, redistricting and distribution of federal COVID-19 relief money.

Lawmakers adjourned after passing bills on six of 10 topics Abbott asked them to legislate on, including newly drawn political maps that could fortify Republicans’ grip on the state for a decade.

But early Wednesday, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick urged Abbott to summon lawmakers back to Austin, saying “more needs to be done” on elections.

Though the Legislature spent much of the year haggling over a far-ranging “election integrity” bill, which they finally passed early last month, Patrick is a close ally of former President Donald Trump. Lately, Trump has been demanding a Texas law requiring an audit of last November’s presidential election, even though he carried the state by nearly 6 percentage points.

“House needs to pass an election forensic audit bill,” Patrick tweeted.

The lieutenant governor, who presides over the Senate, said his chamber “just finished a strong conservative session.” Senators passed both a measure to restore a felony penalty for illegal voting and a bill calling for a 2020 election forensic audit and allowing party officials and others to request investigations by the secretary of state’s office of future “irregularities.”

“I support @GovAbbott calling us back to pass both,” Patrick said in his tweet.

It came a day after former Dallas state Sen. Don Huffines, who is seeking to oust Abbott in the March 1 GOP gubernatorial primary, demanded that the incumbent call a fourth special session.

Huffines called a $176 break on school property taxes for the average homeowner, which lawmakers placed as a constitutional amendment on the May ballot, a “meager” amount of relief.

He said Abbott should veto the lawmakers’ plan for spending $16.3 billion of President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 relief money, and demand that they apply the entire amount to property tax reduction. Federal rules, though, limit how much of the American Rescue Plan Act money can be used to reduce state taxes. Whether what Huffines is proposing would pass muster is unclear. Also, his plan would leave businesses on the hook for $7.2 billion that lawmakers were using to avert an unemployment insurance tax increase.

Huffines also insisted Abbott add to the agenda of a fourth special session passage of “a bill banning all vaccine mandates in Texas.”

Abbott added prohibition of COVID-19 immunization requirements by government entities and private corporations to the third special session’s call. But no bills on those topics advanced to his desk. The other topics not acted on were the restoration of second-degree felony penalties for illegal voting and a constitutional amendment giving judges more leeway to deny bail.

‘Always ... something someone ... wants’

Late Wednesday, state GOP Chairman Matt Rinaldi of Irving echoed Patrick’s and Huffines’ calls for Abbott to quickly bring the lawmakers back. In addition to the election and vaccine topics they proposed, Rinaldi said a fourth item should be a ban on health care providers’ administering puberty blockers or performing gender reassignment surgery on children.

Eze, the Abbott spokeswoman, though, suggested the two-term governor won’t heed such calls.

“Texans tasked the Legislature with delivering on key priorities for the state in this most recent special session, including property tax relief, redistricting, and the nearly $16 billion American Rescue Plan Act funding, and we went above and beyond to deliver on these priorities as well as solve other critical issues for Texas,” she said in a written statement.

Rice University political scientist Mark Jones translated that this way:

“Enough is enough already. We’ve had three special sessions. … We’ve addressed a wide variety of conservative priorities. There always will be something that someone on the rightward edge of the party wants that isn’t delivered. But the reality is, some of those bills would never be delivered, even if you gave the Legislature month after month after month.”

In the regular session, lawmakers refused some social conservatives’ pleas that they ban health care for transgender children, he noted.

“Nor are there the votes for some of the more extreme vaccine mandate [bans],” Jones said. “If there were, Dan Patrick would have got it through the Senate. But he did not.”

Jones said he’ll be surprised if Abbott bows to pressure and changes his mind about calling a fourth special session.

“There could always be an issue that pops up that is of such gravity that you would need to call a special session,” he said. But scheduling it at an acceptable time, amid next year’s busy election season, would be difficult, he said.

“The last thing that Abbott would want in the summer of 2022 is a special legislative session focused on red meat that would enthuse the base, but alienate the voters that Abbott needs to win and win by large margins in November of 2022,” Jones said.