After an unsuccessful presidential and senate run, Beto O’Rourke lost the race for Texas governor to Greg Abbott. Despite O’Rourke’s national profile, record-breaking fundraising, Texas’s unpopular abortion decision, and the horrors of the Uvalde shooting, he barely outperformed Democrat Lupe Valdez’s failed 2018 bid for governor. Texas Democrats have been making the argument for years that the state’s changing demographics and a GOP that blatantly governs in the interests of a minority of Texans will inevitably deliver the state to the Democratic Party. But for now, that remains a distant dream.

Abbott will be Texas’s second-longest-serving governor, behind only his predecessor Rick Perry, who was governor for fourteen years. The office he holds is more potent than ever, thanks to decades of GOP dominance and Abbott’s willingness to push the limits of the Texas Constitution. Abbott has forever changed Texas politics. To undo the damage he has caused, we can’t rely on top-down initiatives — we need a working-class alternative.

Abbott’s overreach is nowhere more evident than in his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Abbott fashioned himself as the anti-lockdown governor, but continues to issue a disaster proclamation in response to COVID-19 that grants him emergency powers. Citing the pandemic, Abbott has ordered Texas Department of Public Safety agents to stop vehicles suspected of transporting migrants. His Operation Lone Star, the disastrous and wasteful border mobilization of Texas’s National Guard which now includes the busing of migrants out of Texas, has been subsidized by federal pandemic relief funding. You’d be hard-pressed in Texas to find many remaining traces of the COVID-19 era, save for Abbott’s continued militarization of the border.