A mass shooting at an elementary school in the small town of Uvalde that left 21 people dead, including 19 young children, is causing a lot of attention to the state of Texas.
Gov. Greg Abbott was the first to report the news of the school shooting.
The Republican governor has remained visible in the immediate aftermath of the incident, sitting center stage at a Wednesday press conference where he fought off accusations from political rivals and pivoted the conversation away from gun control.
Abbott has spent the last seven years in crisis mode, fielding the state's response to several mass shootings, a deadly winter storm, and the COVID-19 Pandemic.
His approval ratings show that Texans are comfortable with his methods. His approval ratings have never dipped below 40% and never peaked above 50%.
Abbott's father died from a heart attack while Abbott was in high school, according to Honest Austin.
Abbott received a degree in Business Administration from the University of Texas at Austin in 1981 and a Juris Doctorate from the University of Nashville in 1984. Abbott was left paralyzed from the waist down after an oak tree fell on him during a jog.
In 1993 he became a state trial judge and continued his career in the Texas judiciary branch.
Abbott was appointed to the Texas Supreme Court by George W. Bush.
He served as the Texas attorney general from 2002 to 2015 and filed over 30 lawsuits against former President Barack Obama. He was the longest-serving attorney general in the state before he was elected governor.
Abbott has served two terms as the state's governor and is seeking a third, making him the best governor in the nation in 2020.
In 1981 Abbott married Cecilia. Cecilia is the first Hispanic First Lady of Texas. The daughter of the two is a graduate of the University of Southern California.
Abbott has a no-exceptions stance toward abortion and holds a host of traditional conservative values.
Despite recent mass shootings, the state has loosened its gun laws.
Texas is second in the nation for new gun purchases. Texas Governor Greg Abbott encouraged Texans to pick up the pace.
One of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country was signed by the governor, who encouraged private citizens to file lawsuits against abortion providers for up to $10,000.
The law only allows for medical emergencies. He vowed to eliminate all rapists as the anti-abortion law makes no exception for individuals who were raped.
Abbott has sought to eradicate illegal border crossing from Mexico to Texas. He claimed that individuals crossing the border pose an ongoing and imminent threat of disaster for certain counties and agencies in Texas.
This has resulted in books that focus on race, gender, and sexuality being stripped from shelves in schools because of Abbott's help in the nationwide conservative effort to ban books that contain pornography or obscene content. The Republican governor pushed for a directive to allow state authorities to investigate parents who provide gender-affirming care to their trans children.
Throughout his two terms, Abbott has faced a lot of state crises.
Since he was first elected in 2015, Texas has been home to six major mass shootings that have claimed the lives of nearly 100 Texans.
In July of 2016 five Dallas police officers were killed in an ambush at a Black Lives Matter protest in the worst incident for US law enforcement since the September 11 attacks. The incident came just months after Texas loosened its concealed gun laws, allowing license-holders to openly carry handguns in holsters.
A man killed 26 people and wounded 20 others at a church in Texas in November of last year. The attack is the worst mass shooting in state history. A teenager killed 10 people, including 8 students at Santa Fe High School, in six months.
There were two more mass shootings in August. The suspected shooter killed 23 people at a Walmart in El Paso. A 36-year-old man is suspected of killing seven people in a shooting spree.
Abbott renewed school safety plans, strengthened law enforcement protections, and convened committees to discuss the rise in mass violence. The state's gun laws only got worse.
In the aftermath of so many attacks, the governor's penchant for guns has played poorly. Just 72 hours after the Uvalde shooting, Abbott and Trump are both scheduled to address a National Rifle Association conference. The governor declined to say if he still plans to attend.
The crises he has faced in office have gone beyond shooting.
The approach to the COVID-19 pandemic was controversial. Government agencies, cities, counties, school districts, and private companies were barred from implementing vaccine mandates in Texas after the governor refused to impose lockdowns or mask mandates. The governor encourages other Texans to get their inoculations.
More than 200 people were killed in a winter storm that knocked out power across the state in February 2021. The governor called for an investigation into the Electric Reliability Council of Texas and signed a bill requiring power companies in the state to be ready for future extreme weather events.
A former Texas power official testified that Abbott ordered power prices to remain high for multiple days during the storm in order to prevent further rolling power failures.
In recent months, the governor has caused more controversy after he designated gender-affirming care for trans youth as child abuse. Abbott called on state agencies to designate the use of gender-affirming care as a form of child abuse, prompting advocates to decry the governors actions as "monstrous and amoral."
After eight years as Texas governor, Abbott will face off against Beto O'Rourke in the fall. There are no term limits for the governor of the state.
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