AUSTIN — A month before the midterm elections, Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris arrived in Republican Texas in an effort to prop up a partisan state that hasn’t seen a state victory in a generation and still faces headwinds from economic uncertainty and the rampant exit from controlling migration at its southern border.
However, Harris delivered a positive message that highlighted the national party’s slogan “Democrats Deliver” and suggested Texas Democrats at their “annual JJ reception in Austin” accept the Biden administration’s successes on a variety of legislative issues ranging from a deal to prescription drug pricing, spending on infrastructure renovation projects and COVID relief.
“The Democrats stood up and brought relief to the American people,” Harris told those attending the reception of JJ, named after defeated President Lyndon B. Johnson and Congresswoman Barbara Jordan. ” People are suffering. “
The first woman elected on a national price ticket also used her two Austin rulings to protect efforts to repair reproductive freedoms that were overturned when the June 24 Supreme Court overturned the landmark 1973 case, Roe v. Wade. Wade, who had affirmed the right to abortion.
Prior to the reception, Harris gave the impression at the Lyndon B Presidential Library. Johnson on the campus of the University of Texas, where he affirmed her in favor of abortion rights and compared the effort to repair them to the civil rights struggle of the 1960s that he helped delineate. The administration of the 36th President.
She said the High Court ruling that struck down a woman’s constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy “has profound ramifications. “
“In essence, it’s about freedom, freedom,” Harris said in a question-and-answer session. “And at all levels. ” She reminded the more than two hundred internal visitors to the Atrium Hall on the library’s tenth floor that the midterm elections are a month away and that “what matters” is chosen on every ballot.
He also addressed the abortion factor in generational terms following the Supreme Court ruling that struck down the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade.
“We have a 23-year-old daughter and I have an 83-year-old mother-in-law,” she said. “Our daughters will have fewer rights than my mother-in-law. “
At the reception, Harris denounced as “radical” Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s pro-Texas law that now bans abortion without exception for rape or incest and said Texas will have to “elect Beto O’Rourke as governor. “and the former El Paso congressman did not attend either term in Austin.
A spokesman said O’Rourke was sticking to his long-planned “weekend of walking” crusade schedule.
Abbott’s crusade mocked the vice president’s scale in Texas, saying his program in the state was wrong.
“Instead of coming to Texas to raise money for border crisis denier Beto O’Rourke, the Vice President took the time to make a stop at the border to see firsthand the entire crisis she and the President have created. Abbott spokesman Mark Miner said.
Abbott, who is seeking a third term as governor, has made illegal immigration a central issue of his re-election campaign. From the beginning, Harris was tasked with being the Biden administration’s point of contact on immigration, that is, as the Associated Press reported at the time, “to oversee diplomatic efforts to address the issues driving migration in El Salvador’s Northern Triangle countries. Guatemala and Honduras, as well as urging them to enforce the law on their own borders. “
The task is also a “long-term strategy that addresses the fundamental reasons for migration from those countries. “
Harris made little mention of immigration in his Austin layover. But he reaffirmed the administration’s commitment to building a path to citizenship for the children of immigrants who came to the U. S. illegally “because America is their home. “
Harris in September in Houston, where she chaired the National Space Council and toured a spacecraft mockup facility. And last year, he traveled to El Paso, where he toured Border Patrol facilities in the midst of what was then the beginning of a nascent unauthorized immigration crisis.
Harris applauded the most powerful Democrats when she reminded them of Biden’s recent action to pardon other people convicted of undeniable possession of marijuana in federal cases.
“At the end of the day, no one goes to prison for smoking weed,” he said.
John C. Moritz covers Texas government and politics for USA Today Network in Austin. Contact him on jmoritz@gannett. com and on Twitter @JohnnieMo.