Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to Skip Trump's San Antonio Rally as Midterm Polls Tighten
Key Takeaways
- •Texas Gov. Greg Abbott will not attend President Trump's Oct. 7 campaign rally in San Antonio, citing other campaign events already on his schedule.
- •Trump's San Antonio appearance will be his third visit to Texas in under a month as Republicans work to shore up support ahead of midterm elections that will determine control of.
- •Abbott, despite skipping the rally, reportedly said Trump excites the Republican base and is effective at organizing and turning out supporters.
- •Polling in the Texas governor's race between Abbott and Democrat Gina Hinojosa is divided, with a New York Times/Siena survey showing Hinojosa leading and a RealClearPolling survey giving Abbott a slim two-point advantage.
- •Rick Wilson, co-founder of The Lincoln Project and a longtime Trump critic, reacted to the possibility of a rift with a one-sentence post on X reading "I sense doom."
With the 2026 midterm elections fast approaching and the latest pre-election surveys pointing to potential trouble for Republicans on Election Day, Trump's campaign schedule is set to intensify in the coming weeks, with control of Congress at stake. Falling halfway through a president's term, the midterms put every U.S. House seat and roughly one-third of the Senate on the ballot, alongside governors' races across the country — including Texas. Yet one of his most loyal political allies will be notably absent when he travels to Texas.
According to Newsweek, when Trump arrives in San Antonio on Wednesday, Oct. 7, for a campaign rally, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott will not be there to join him.
Details of the governor's absence emerged on X, where Ben Wermund of The Houston Chronicle laid out the scheduling conflict.
"@GregAbbott_TX says he will not be at Trump event in San Antonio this week because he has other campaign events already planned," Wermund wrote.
Wermund also passed along a comment from Abbott about the president's visit to the state.
"Whenever he does show up, it leads to excitement with the base. He does a good job with getting the base organized and turning out," Abbott reportedly said.
The revelation was quickly read by many observers as a snub — and an episode that would have been unlikely before the current political turbulence surrounding Trump and the Republican Party.
Rick Wilson, a longtime critic of the MAGA movement, weighed in on the possibility of a rift or looming drama with a one-sentence post on X.
"I sense doom," Wilson wrote.
Wilson is the co-founder of The Lincoln Project, an organization formed in 2019 to oppose Trump's 2020 reelection, and has been a fierce and sustained critic of Trump since switching his registration from Republican to Independent.
Per Newsweek, Wednesday's appearance will mark Trump's third visit to Texas in less than a month as he works to drum up support for Republican midterm candidates — whose pre-election polling numbers offer little comfort. The state's pull is structural: with 38 House seats, Texas holds the second-largest congressional delegation in the country.
In the governor's race between Abbott, a Republican who has held the office since 2015, and Democratic candidate and Texas state Representative Gina Hinojosa, a recent New York Times/Siena poll put Hinojosa in the lead. A separate survey from RealClearPolling shows Abbott barely ahead, holding only a slim two-percentage-point advantage. Divergent results like these are common in tight contests, as pollsters differ on methodology and on how they model the likely electorate. With weeks still to go before Election Day, and with Trump's Texas schedule set to intensify, whether his remaining stops in the state and Abbott's separate campaign itinerary ever cross paths is one detail to watch.
This article was first published by Alternet.
