(Bloomberg) -- Texas Governor Greg Abbott faced Republican voters Tuesday in a primary election that could set the stage for a race against former Democratic congressman Beto O’Rourke in November.

Most polls were to close at 8 p.m. New York time after the governor tried to fend off challenges from two opponents on the right -- in part by staking out an increasingly conservative agenda on abortion, voting rights and transgender rights that often put him at odds with the state’s burgeoning corporate community. 

O’Rourke, who narrowly lost a bid for Ted Cruz’s U.S. Senate seat in 2018, faced four opponents in his race, which he was heavily favored to win.

Texans are deciding several other high-profile primary races. State Attorney General Ken Paxton is facing challenger George P. Bush, the state’s land commissioner and the nephew and grandson of presidents. A seat on the powerful Texas Railroad Commission, the state’s energy regulator, is up for grabs and there are key U.S. House contests in the Dallas and Houston areas, and in South Texas. 

The primaries were the first time Texans cast ballots under rules that Abbott signed after former President Donald Trump’s false assertions that widespread fraud cost him his 2020 re-election. The law restricts how counties can handle election and voting procedures, including a ban on 24-hour and drive-thru voting, and requires extra identification for mail-in ballots. A significant number of mail-in ballot voters have forgotten to include the identification number on the form, resulting in a large uptick in rejections.

The gubernatorial results will likely set up a tighter race than expected even a few months ago, between two candidates with national profiles. Abbott, 64, and O’Rourke, 49, have essentially ignored their primary opponents, attacking each other for months. The primary vote gave each a chance to test-run the get-out-the-vote efforts that may make the difference in November.

Tight Contest

The latest poll, taken in mid-February by the Dallas Morning News and University of Texas at Tyler, showed Abbott ahead of O’Rourke by 7 percentage points in a hypothetical November general election match-up. That’s the tightest margin in a governor’s race since Republican George W. Bush beat Democrat Ann Richards by 6 percentage points in 1990. No Democrat has won a statewide office since 1994.

For the past year, Abbott has championed an agenda that includes a law that effectively bans abortions beyond six weeks into a pregnancy, restricts teaching race in schools and directs that the state investigate families for abuse if they are suspected of seeking surgeries and puberty-blocking drugs for transgender children. 

Read More: Texas Sued for Criminalizing Care for Transgender Children

“I don’t think anybody would confuse Greg Abbott from the beginning of his career as anything other than a fairly doctrinaire conservative,” said James Henson, a professor at University of Texas at Austin and director of the Texas Politics Project. “He moved even further to the right in a way that tested a lot of boundaries of even conventional conservative politics in the state.”

The governor has been running on his stewardship of the economy, but the story told by the numbers is mixed. While Texas has bounced back from the pandemic and some cities -- led by Austin -- are booming, the recovery has been uneven. 

In December, the latest data available, Texas’s unemployment stood at 5%, compared with 3.9% nationwide. That may partly be explained by the inflow of people who flocked to Texas in the past two years. 

Texas’s economy was among the fastest-growing of the nation in the third quarter (the latest data available), but at 3.7%, it was topped by Massachusetts, New Jersey, Delaware, Hawaii, Florida and the District of Columbia.

Huge companies, such as Oracle Corp., Tesla Inc. and Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., have moved to Texas during Abbott’s time in office. But some businesses have opposed Abbott’s more conservative policies. One group, Texas Competes, collected endorsements from 1,400 companies last year asking the state to ensure that workplaces and communities “are diverse and welcoming for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people.” 

International Business Machines Corp., American Airlines Group Inc. and Southwest Airlines Co. last year said they would follow the federal government mandate requiring that employees be vaccinated against Covid-19, defying Abbott’s orders.

Abbott’s Hoard

None of that has stopped a flood of donations. Abbott has $50 million to bankroll a massive campaign, dwarfing O’Rourke’s $6.8 million war chest, according to disclosure reports.

“The governor has all the money he needs. Beto doesn’t,” said Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University in Houston. “Beto will have enough money to run a good campaign, but it will be very difficult for him to raise serious money because the Democrats are trying to maintain control of the U.S. House and Senate. There’s only so much money to go around.”

For months, O’Rourke and Abbott have campaigned as if they were already running against each other. Most of the Abbott campaign’s statements have targeted O’Rourke, rather than his GOP opponents, for everything from immigration to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. On Monday, Abbott told a crowd in Victoria that the race was about stopping his Democratic opponent from plans to “redesign Texas,” and urged people to vote in November.

“We are not going to let them win in this election,” Abbott said, referring to O’Rourke and other Democrats. “We’re going to do everything we can to make sure we win in 2022 and we keep Texas the best state in the nation.”

O’Rourke, who briefly vied for president in 2019, has focused his campaign on slamming Abbott. He staged a 12-day “Keeping the Lights On” tour across Texas in February dedicated to criticizing Abbott for last year’s wave of winter blackouts that killed hundreds of people. 

“He’s got a lot to answer for and a lot of people to answer to -- every single one of us in Texas who are paying higher utility bills,” O’Rourke said about the governor at campaign rally in Houston on Feb. 15.

Looking Ahead

Voters will likely see the war of words intensify in the months ahead as Abbott contrasts his policies with O’Rourke’s, said Dennis Bonnen, the former Republican speaker of the Texas House of Representatives. Abbott’s goal will be to tie O’Rourke to President Joe Biden, who, according to the latest polls, has low approval ratings in Texas.

“Governor Abbott is going to define Beto O’Rourke for who he is early on, and I don’t think Beto will ever be able to get off the mat,” said Bonnen, an Abbott supporter. 

O’Rourke’s supporters see it differently. Abbott’s pivot to the right may open the way for O’Rourke to pick up moderate Texan voters, said Matt Angle, founder and director of the Lone Star Project, a Democratic group in Texas. And many Texans disapprove of how Abbott responded to the devastating blackouts of February 2021. The most recent University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll, from October, showed that 60% of Texans disapprove of how state leaders have handled the reliability of the grid.

“There’s a lot of people in Texas who are on the line,” said Angle. “They don’t get up in the morning and think of themselves as Democrats or Republicans, but for years, they defaulted to Republicans in the general election. I think Beto’s got a chance for them to take a strong look at him and get some of their votes.”

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