Gubernatorial candidate Abbott makes campaign stop in boyhood home Longview
By Glenn Evans
Marshall News Messenger
July 17, 2013
LONGVIEW—Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott returned to his boyhood home Tuesday, making Longview an early stop on his bid to win the governor’s mansion in 2014.
“The first thing I want to do is remind everybody in Northeast Texas that this is where I’m from,” he said. “I understand both the people and the challenges in Northeast Texas.”
Abbott, who lived in Longview from first through sixth grades, brought his conservative Republican credentials to an appreciative crowd of about 200 people at Horaney’s farm and home supply store.
Abbott’s campaign had sent people to the 73-year-old Longview business weeks ago, scoping out a venue for the hometown announcement.
“Please take your time and look around,” hostess and store owner Betty Horaney told the crowd, before quipping about a one-day, 10-percent discount in the candidate’s honor.
“I think it’s really cool, actually, that we might have the governor of Texas from our troop,” said Boy Scout Troop 201 member Allan Long Jr., 11, who with his sister, Sarah, are growing up in the same outfit that nurtured young Abbott.
Abbott covered political and personal topics in a brief address, which was followed by a much longer meet-and-greet as old friends and allies waited for a moment with the attorney general.
“When it comes to fighting for freedom and your future, I will never stop fighting for Texas,” Abbott told the group.
He said he will rein in debt as the state’s administrative leader and work to reduce state borrowing.
“And as your next governor, I’m going to do what the federal government has failed to do,” Abbott added. “I’m going to secure the border.”
The candidate, who kicked off his campaign Sunday in San Antonio, later recalled boyhood walks with his dog through Longview blackberry patches and playing Little League baseball on the city’s diamonds.
“We moved here in 1963,” Abbott said, recalling Roger and Doris Abbott enrolling their son in the first grade at the now-gone Pinewood Park Elementary. “This is where I grew up.”
He would go to Judson Elementary School and Judson Middle School before his stockbroker father moved the family to the Dallas/Fort Worth area.
The Abbotts attended First Christian Church in Longview, where the father narrated each year’s living Nativity scene at Christmas.
“He’s always been a very humble person and the type of person anyone would want to have as a next-door neighbor,” childhood friend Jeb Blount said later. “Upon meeting him, renewing our friendship in the last seven or eight years, I was not surprised. He was, in the last seven or eight years, the way I remember when they moved to Longview — just good people, just a good person and wanting to do the right thing.”
Abbott also remembered Boy Scouts Troop 201 and had a hug Tuesday for his former Scoutmaster, V.G. Rollins. The Scoutmaster attended Tuesday’s announcement, standing among a huddle of Troop 201 members.
“Whatever training I gave him must have worn on good,” Rollins said later.
A former district judge and Texas Supreme Court justice, Abbott has sued the federal government 27 times since becoming the state’s top lawyer.
The candidate drew his loudest applause after checking off victories his office won for Texas in the U.S. Supreme Court — defending a depiction of the Ten Commandments on the Capitol grounds among them.
Wearing a powder blue shirt and khaki pants with cowboy boots, Abbott recalled the freak accident that put him in a wheelchair for life. A lifelong athlete, he was fresh out of law school when an oak tree fell across his back while jogging in Houston.
Facing his own challenges equipped him to understand those of others, he said. Single parents need paychecks, small businesses need less government regulation.
“All of us share a common bond,” he said. “All of us understand we must meet all these challenges we face and rise above them.”