IncumbentAssumed <Greg Abbott a href=”https://www.blingdot.com” target=”_blank”>Greg Abbott Greg Abbott office
January 20, 2015LieutenantDan PatrickPreceded byRick PerryIn office
November Greg Abbott 21, 2019 – December 9, 2020Preceded byPete RickettsSucceeded byDoug DuceyIn office
December 2, 2002 – January 5, 2015GovernorRick PerryPreceded byJohn CornynSucceeded byKen PaxtonIn office
January 2, 1996 – June 6, 2001[1]Appointed byGeorge W. BushPreceded byJack Greg Abbott HightowerSucceeded byXavier Greg Abbott RodriguezBorn
Gregory Wayne Abbott
November 13, 1957 (age 65)
Wichita Falls, Texas, U.S.Political partyRepublicanSpouse
(m. 1981)Children1ResidenceGovernor’s MansionEducationUniversity of Texas at Austin (BBA)
Vanderbilt University (JD)SignatureWebsiteGovernment website
Gregory Wayne Abbott (born November thirteen, 1957) is an American politician, lawyer, and previous jurist serving because Greg Abbott the forty eighth governor of Texas for the reason that 2015. A member of the Republican Party, he served as the fiftieth lawyer popular of Texas from 2002 to 2015 and as a member of the Texas Supreme Court from 1996 to 2001.
Abbott turned into the 1/3 Republican to serve as attorney wellknown of Texas because the Reconstruction generation. He changed into elected to that workplace with 57% of the vote in 2002 and reelected with 60% in 2006 and sixty four% in 2010, turning into the longest-serving Texas lawyer wellknown in state records, with 12 years of provider. Before turning into lawyer preferred, Abbott changed into a justice of the Texas Supreme Court, a function to which he changed into appointed in 1995 by using then-governor George W. Bush. Abbott won a full time period in 1998 with 60% of the vote. As attorney wellknown, he efficaciously recommended for the Texas State Capitol to show the Ten Commandments within the 2005 U.S. Supreme Court case Van Orden v. Perry, and unsuccessfully defended the nation’s ban on equal-intercourse marriage. He become worried in severa lawsuits in opposition to the Barack Obama administration, looking for to invalidate the Greg Abbott Affordable Care Act and the management’s environmental guidelines.
Elected in 2014, Abbott is the primary Texas governor and 0.33 governor of a U.S. nation to apply a wheelchair. As governor, Abbott supported the Donald Trump administration and has promoted a conservative agenda, inclusive of measures against abortion along with the Texas Heartbeat Act, lenient gun laws, competition to unlawful immigration, assist for law enforcement funding, and election reform. In response to the energy disaster following a February 2021 iciness Greg Abbott hurricane, Abbott called for reforms to Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) and Greg Abbott signed a invoice requiring electricity plant weatherization. During the COVID-19 pandemic in Texas, Abbott opposed implementing face mask and vaccine mandates, whilst blockading nearby governments, groups, and different agencies from enforcing their own.Early existence, education, and legal career
Abbott changed into born on November 13, 1957, in Wichita Falls, Texas, of English descent.[citation wished] His mother, Doris Lechristia Jacks Abbott, turned into a housewife and his father, Calvin Rodger Abbott, became a stockbroker and coverage agent.[2][3] When he turned into six years old, they moved to Longview; the own family lived there for 6 years.[2] When he became 12, Abbott’s family moved to Duncanville. In his sophomore year in high faculty, his father died of a heart attack; his mother went to paintings in a real property office.[2] Abbott graduated from Duncanville High School,[four] wherein he turned into on the music group,[five] inside the National Honor Society, and turned into voted “Most Likely to Succeed”.[five]
In 1981, Abbott earned a Bachelor of Business Administration in finance from the University of Texas at Austin, where he changed into a member of the Delta Tau Delta fraternity and the Young Republicans Club. He met his spouse, Cecilia Phalen, at the same time as attending UT Austin.[2] In 1984, he earned his Juris Doctor degree from the Vanderbilt University Law School.[2]
Abbott went into personal exercise, running for Butler and Binion, LLP among 1984 and 1992.[6]Judicial career
Abbott’s judicial profession started out in Houston, where he served as a country trial judge within the 129th District Court for three years.[6]Then-Governor George W. Bush appointed Abbott to the Texas Supreme Court; he became then two times elected to the country’s highest civil courtroom—in 1996 (two-year term) and in 1998 (six-yr term). In 1996, Abbott had no Democratic opponent Greg Abbott however became challenged via Libertarian John B. Hawley of Dallas. Abbott defeated Hawley, eighty four% to 16%.[7] In 1998, Abbott defeated Democrat David Van Os, 60% to 40%.[eight]
In 2001, after resigning from the Supreme Court, Abbott returned to personal practice and worked for Bracewell & Giuliani LLC.[9] He was additionally an adjunct professor at University of Texas School of Law.[10]Attorney General of Texas
Abbott resigned from the Texas Supreme Court in 2001 to run for lieutenant governor of Texas.[2] He have been campaigning for numerous months when the previous lawyer general, John Cornyn, vacated the put up to run for the U.S. Senate.[2] Abbott then switched his campaign to the open attorney popular’s role in 2002. He defeated the Democratic nominee, former Austin mayor and previous state senator[11] Kirk Watson, fifty seven% to 41%.[12] Abbott turned into sworn in on December 2, 2002, following Cornyn’s election to the Senate.Tenure
Abbott extended the legal professional standard’s office’s regulation enforcement division from approximately 30 people to more than 100.[2] He also created a new department, the Fugitive Unit, to track down convicted sex offenders in violation of their paroles or probations.[2]
In 2003, Abbott supported the Texas Legislature’s pass to cap non-financial damages for clinical malpractice cases at $250,000, with out a integrated will increase for growing fee of residing.[thirteen]
In a 2013 speech to fellow Republicans, when asked what his activity entails, Abbott stated: “I cross into the workplace in the morning, I sue Barack Obama, and then I cross home.”[14] Abbott filed 31 proceedings towards the Obama management,[15] together with fits in opposition to the Environmental Protection Agency; the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, inclusive of demanding situations to the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”); and the U.S. Department of Education, amongst many others.[2] According to The Greg Abbott Wall Street Journal, from Abbott’s tenure as lawyer popular via his first term as governor, Texas sued the Obama management at the least forty four times, extra than every other country over the equal length; court docket demanding situations covered carbon-emission standards, health-care reform, transgender rights, and Greg Abbott others.[sixteen] The Dallas Morning News as compared Abbott to Scott Pruitt, noting that both lawyers wellknown had repeatedly sued the federal government over its environmental regulations.[17] The Houston Chronicle noted that Abbott “led the rate against Obama-generation weather guidelines”.[18]
Abbott has stated that the country must no longer release Tier II Chemical Inventory Reports for security motives, however that Texans Greg Abbott “can ask every facility whether or not they’ve chemical compounds or not”.[19] Koch Industries has denied that its contributions to Abbott’s campaign had anything to do along with his ruling towards releasing the protection information.[20]
In March 2014, Abbott filed a movement to intervene on behalf of Baylor Scott & White Medical Center – Plano in 3 federal complaints towards the medical institution, added by means of sufferers who alleged that the health center allowed Christopher Duntsch to perform neurosurgery no matter knowing that he turned into a dangerous medical doctor.[21] Abbott cited the Texas legislature’s cap on malpractice instances and the statute’s removal of the term “gross negligence” from the definition of legal malice as reasons for defending Baylor.[22]
In the overdue 2000s, Abbott installed a unit inside the lawyer general’s office to pursue voter-fraud prosecutions, the use of a $1.four million federal furnish; the unit prosecuted some dozen instances, ensuing “in small fines and very little prison time”.[23] The office observed no big-scale fraud that would exchange the final results of any election.[23]Lawsuit towards Sony BMG