Gina Hinojosa Won't Inherit Greg Abbott's Power With His Office: the Appointments Are Staggered, the Senate Is Not Hers, and Eight Disaster Proclamations Expire Every 30 Days

Greg Abbott spent 12 years turning the historically weak Texas governorship into arguably the most powerful in the state's history, and the question his defeat leaves behind is how much of that power was the office and how much was the man. The Texas Observer, in a Wednesday analysis, breaks the Abbott accumulation into three parts: longevity, which let him appoint nearly every commissioner, regent and board member in state government across staggered terms; one-party hegemony, a Legislature and statewide bench of his own party; and an aggressive, unprecedented use of disaster proclamations that granted him unilateral executive authority - through COVID and through the border proclamation that built Operation Lone Star.

Gov.-elect Gina Hinojosa arrives having run against exactly that. "This is a corrupted use of the governor's emergency powers," she told the Observer during the campaign. "Texas has become a pay-to-play [state] if you want these big government contracts... Abbott acts as if he's king, and he's rewarding his patrons." Randall Erben, the UT Austin governmental-law professor who once served as Abbott's legislative director, gives the expert version of the same point: "Not only is this the most extensive [use of executive authority], it's also the most unchecked."

What she can do on day one is narrower than the precedent suggests and wider than her critics may like. Eight of Abbott's disaster proclamations are still active - border security, two for floods, one each for fire, severe storms, drought, diesel fuel prices and the Screwworm outbreak - and the border proclamation alone has been renewed 69 times. They must be renewed every 30 days, so Hinojosa can let any of them expire or terminate them outright; she has also pledged her own day-one disaster proclamation on high costs, with executive orders suspending the state gas and diesel tax and freezing electricity rates. On personnel, she can move immediately where terms expire - she has promised to fire Education Commissioner Mike Morath, whose term ends in January - but the Public Safety Commission's earliest expiration is 2028, only three of seven pardons-and-parole seats turn over next year, and every appointment needs confirmation from a Senate that stays in Republican hands.

The endgame is already visible on the other side: Republican Rep. Brian Harrison is pushing Abbott to call a special session so the outgoing GOP Legislature can curb the governor's executive powers before Hinojosa takes office - an effort the Observer calls almost surely doomed, and one that would have to explain why the powers were fine for a dozen years. SMU constitutional-law professor Dale Carpenter states the precedent plainly: a future governor who believes a problem is going unaddressed can "declare a disaster and set up a different set of policies and direct spending to accomplish those policy objectives." Erben's prediction for the Hinojosa version is persuasion over fiat: "There's going to be a lot of persuasion... She's also going to have to pick her fights."