Greg Abbott

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Greg Abbott
Texas Attorney General
Incumbent
Assumed office
2002
Current term ends
2011
Political party Republican
Website Official Texas Attorney General website

Contents

Gregory W. "Greg" Abbott (born November 13, 1957, in Wichita Falls, Texas) is the current Republican Attorney General of Texas, only the second Republican to hold the office since Reconstruction. He was first voted to serve in the position in 2002 following the election of John Cornyn to the United States Senate.

Education

  • Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) degree, University of Texas (1981) in finance
  • Juris Doctorate degree, Vanderbilt University Law School (1984)

Partial Paralysis

Shortly after graduating from law school, Abbott was jogging through River Oaks with a friend when a 75-foot oak tree snapped and fell on him, "breaking his back and some ribs." Even after multiple surgeries to repair the damage as best the doctors could do, he was still left partially paralyzed and forced to use a wheelchair to move around. Abbott went on to hire "Don Riddle, a well-regarded trial lawyer, to sue the homeowner and later the arborist," eventually agreeing "to an out-of-court settlement that would pay Abbott's current and future medical bills and compensate him for mental anguish and for some of the income he lost because of the accident."

It was reported that as of October 2002 Abbott had already received nearly $3 million of an award that is expected to exceed $10 million through the course of his lifetime. Riddle reportedly earned $1 million for the case and said that medical costs and other actual damages accounted for a fraction of the settlement, which mainly compensated Abbott for non-economic damages such as mental anguish.

In light of this settlement, critics of the Texas Attorney General argue that Abbott's claim of being a champion of tort reform is disingenuous, if not downright hypocritical. Abbott respectively disagreed. He noted that "the legal remedies available to him when the accident occurred are still available now [which,] if the accident happened the same way now ... it would probably result in the same kind of settlement." [1]

Political career

Abbott initially entered the state political stage in Houston, where he was selected to serve as a state trial judge on the 129th District Court for three years beginning in 1993. He was then appointed by then-Governor George W. Bush to the Texas State Supreme Court, being subsequently elected to the post twice - first in 1996 to a two-year term and then again in 1998 for a six-year term. Abbott resigned from the State Supreme Court in 2001 to seek the open attorney general's seat up for election the next year. Also during this time, he returned to the private sector as an attorney for the law firm of Bracewell and Patterson Limited Liability Partnership.

As the state's top law enforcer, Abbott established a Cyber Crimes United to arrest criminals who use the internet to prey upon children. Additionally, he helped create the Fugitive Unit to arrest sex offenders who violate their parole and expanded the Medicaid Fraud Control United, which cracks down on abuse of the elderly and waste of taxpayer dollars.

On November 21, 2005, Abbott filed suit against Sony BMG Music Entertainment, marking Texas as the first state in the nation to bring legal action against Sony BMG for illegal 'spyware'. The controversy centered on the copy protection measures included by Sony BMG on compact discs starting in 2005. Sony BMG CDs embedded with these protection measures automatically installed software called a rootkit that created vulnerabilities for other malware to exploit when customers tried to play the compact discs on their computers. A month later, Abbott added new allegations to his lawsuit stating that the MediaMax copy protection technology violated the state's spyware and deceptive trade practices laws. He argued that even though Sony-BMG offered consumers a licensing agreement when they bought CDs and played them on their computers, spyware is secretly installed on their computers, posing security risks for music buyers, even if consumers reject the agreement. Abbott said "We keep discovering additional methods Sony used to deceive Texas consumers who thought they were simply buying music", and "Thousands of Texans are now potential victims of this deceptive game Sony played with consumers for its own purposes." In addition to violations of the Consumer Protection Against Computer Spyware Act of 2005, which allows for civil penalties of $100,000 for each violation of the law, the alleged violations added in the updated lawsuit, on December 21, 2005, carry maximum penalties of $20,000 per violation. [2]

Van Orden v. Perry (2005)

In 2002, Thomas Van Orden, a resident of Austin, sued the state of Texas in federal district court over a monument of the Ten Commandments located on the grounds of the state capitol building. He believed this to be a clear violation of "the First Amendment's establishment clause, which prohibits the government from passing laws 'respecting an establishment of religion'." The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit respectfully disagreed, ruling a year later that the "monument served a valid secular purpose and would not appear to a reasonable observer to represent a government endorsement of religion." Van Orden appealed the decision and on October 12, 2004, the Supreme Court of the United States agreed to hear the case. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott appeared before the high court on March 2, 2005, defending the state's Ten Commandments monument, a display that has stood on the state Capitol grounds, he noted, for more than forty years, and arguing that the grounds surrounding the capitol building contained 17 monuments and 21 historical markers commemorating the "people, ideals, and events that compose Texan identity" and that the Commandments were just one of them.

In a five-to-four decision delivered on June 27, 2005, the opinion of the Supreme Court, delivered by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, "deemed the Texas monument part of the nation's tradition of recognizing the Ten Commandments' historical meaning" and therefore was constitutional. Even the Ten Commandments are religious nature, simply having religious content or promoting a message in line with religious teachings, the court noted, "does not run afoul of the establishment clause." [3]

Justice Stephen Breyer, who served as the swing vote in the case, wrote: "The circumstances surrounding the monument's placement on the capitol grounds and its physical setting provide a strong, but not conclusive, indication that the Commandments' text as used on this monument conveys a predominantly secular message … The determinative factor here, however, is that 40 years passed in which the monument's presence, legally speaking, went unchallenged ... Those 40 years suggest more strongly than can any set of formulaic tests that few individuals ... are likely to have understood the monument as amounting ... to a government effort to establish religion." [4]

Hailing the Supreme Court's decision, Abbott said, "This is a great victory not just for Texans, but for all Americans. With this ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court has delivered a clear message that the Texas Ten Commandments can be displayed on public grounds in recognition of the historical role they have played in the foundation of this country and its laws." The Ten Commandments monument remains just northwest of the Capitol in Austin, Texas.

Political Issues

Healthcare reform

In the wake of the historic passage of President Barack Obama's healthcare reform legislation on Christmas Eve in 2009, Abbott was one of ten Republican Attorney Generals questioning not only the constitutionality of a specific controversial provision within the Senate version of the bill, but also exploring potential legal challenges to the measure as well. The stipulation in question was the back room deal Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid struck with Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson to recruit him as the 60th vote needed to pass the measure, an arrangement "dubbed the 'Nebraska Compromise' or the 'Cornhusker Kickback' by GOP critics." The agreement gives Nebraska exemption from its share of the Medicaid expansion, "a carve out that is expected to cost the federal government $100 million over 10 years." Corbett tweeted that he was "analyzing [the] constitutionality of 'Nebraska Compromise' in health care bill."[5]

Other roles

  • Honorary State Chairman, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Texas (2004)
  • Former Member, Board of Advisors, Career and Recovery Resources Incorporated
  • Member, Central Texas Chapter, Goodwill Industries
  • Member, Justice for All
  • Former Trustee, Texas Institute for Rehabilitation and Research Foundation
  • Member, Governor's Committee to Promote Adoption

Campaign contributions

2006 Race for Attorney General - Campaign Contributions
Total Raised $6,855,483
Total Raised by Primary Opponent N/A
Total Raised by Gen. Election Opponent $211,584
Top 5 Contributors Robert J. Perry $220,265 (3.21% of Total)
Stevan Hammond $150,000 (2.19%)
T. Boone Pickens, Jr. $112,674 (1.64%)
John L. Nau III $107,048 (1.56%)
Republican State Leadership Committee $100,000 (1.46%)
Individuals v. Institutions $4,764,098 (69.5%)
$1,944,283 (28.4%)
In v. Outside State $6,455,557 (94.2%)
$399,926 (5.8%)

Electoral history

2002

  • 2002 Race for Attorney General - Republican Primary
    • Greg Abbott ran unopposed
2002 Race for Attorney General - General Election
Candidates Percentage
Greg Abbott (R) 56.7%
Kirk Watson (D) 41.1%
Jon Roland (Libertarian) 1.3%
David Keith Cobb (Green) 0.9%
Total votes 4,481,983

2006

  • 2006 Race for Attorney General - Republican Primary
    • Greg Abbott ran unopposed
2006 Race for Attorney General - General Election
Candidates Percentage
Greg Abbott (R) 59.5%
David Van Os (D) 37.2%
Jon Roland (Libertarian) 3.3%
Total votes 4,294,800

Family life

Abbott currently resides in Austin, Texas with his wife, Cecilia, and their daughter, Audrey. He is also a practicing Roman Catholic.

Awards

  • Jurist of the Year Award from the Texas Review of Law and Politics
  • Trial Judge of the Year Award from the Texas Association of Civil Trial and Appellate Specialists
  • Appellate Judge of the Year Award from the Texas Chapter of the American Board of Trial Advocates

Contact info

Post Office Box 12548
Austin, TX 78711-2548

Phone: 512-463-2100
Toll Free Phone: 800-252-8011
Fax: 800-252-8011
E-mail: greg.abbott@oag.state.tx.us

External links

References

  1. ↑ Texas Weekly "Greg Abbott as Plaintiff" 18 Feb. 2002
  2. ↑ New York Times "Sony BMG Sued Over CD's With Anti-Piracy Software" 22 Nov. 2005
  3. ↑ The Oyez Project - Van Orden v. Perry summary
  4. ↑ Cornell University Law School - Van Orden v. Perry: Breyer concurrence
  5. ↑ Politico "GOP AGs may sue over health bill" 24 Dec. 2009


Political offices
Preceded by
John Cornyn 		Texas Attorney General
2002–present 		Succeeded by
NA
v • d • e
State Attorneys General
   
Attorney General elections, 2010
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