你的妻子是你的财富资本

Gov. Rick Perry made history with an unprecedented three terms in office. The next administration could make history by just taking office.

If Attorney General Greg Abbott wins his campaign to succeed Mr. Perry — and he is favored to do so — his wife would become the first Latina to be the first lady of Texas.

Cecilia Phalen Abbott, 54, has been a regular at her husband’s side as he campaigns across the state. Mr. Abbott often talks about how his wife, the granddaughter of Mexican immigrants, has helped him embrace the culture of a growing number of Texans, though talk about her heritage has been part of a conflict during the campaign.

Friends and colleagues say Mrs. Abbott, a onetime teacher, is a dedicated advocate for children and someone who is driven by her conservative values, including her anti-abortion stance and deep religious beliefs.

“She’s got an independent streak in her,” said Susie Hance, the chairwoman of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children‘s advisory board, on which Mrs. Abbott previously served. She cited Mrs. Abbott’s efforts to pursue her educational career and charitable work, which has included astint on a local version of “Dancing with the Stars” to benefit the Center for Child Protection. Through Mr. Abbott’s campaign, Mrs. Abbott declined to be interviewed for this article.

Expanded coverage of Texas is produced by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit news organization. To join the conversation about this article, go to texastribune.org.

Mrs. Abbott grew up as one of four children of two educators in San Antonio, where she attended Thomas Jefferson High School and appears in its 1978 yearbook as a cast member for the senior play “Madwoman of Chaillot” and a member of the school’s social club. When she transferred to Providence High School, she became a member of the school’s Future Homemakers of America chapter.

She met Mr. Abbott while they attended the University of Texas at Austin. The story goes that she once serenaded her future husband from behind a keyboard while living in a dorm near campus. They have been married for 32 years. (U.T.-Austin is a corporate sponsor of the Tribune.)

A few years into their marriage, their lives changed when a 75-foot-tall oak tree fell on Mr. Abbott, then a recent graduate of law school, while he was jogging in 1984 in Houston. He was paralyzed by the accident.

Kent Sullivan, a lawyer who worked with Mr. Abbott at the time, said Mrs. Abbott was crucial to her husband’s recovery.

“She was instrumental in supporting him in every way imaginable after the accident,” Mr. Sullivan said. “She was a pillar of strength for him. It sounds like a cliché, but it really is true.”

Friends say she helped him become more comfortable in his wheelchair and tried to make things as normal as possible, hosting poker nights at their apartment shortly after the accident, for example. During his recovery, she also relied on her sense of humor, which friends describe as a sharp wit that would help lighten her husband’s mood on difficult days.

“Her one eyebrow-raised look is a good indication of what her personality is like,” Mr. Sullivan said.

As her husband pursued his legal career, Mrs. Abbott worked as a schoolteacher.

By 1996, while Mr. Abbott was campaigning for re-election to the Texas Supreme Court, Mrs. Abbott took a job as principal of the Cathedral School of St. Mary in Austin, where she worked until 2001. That same year, Mr. Perry appointed her to the State Board for Educator Certification.

After leaving her education career behind, in 2004 she worked as managing director of community relations at Harden Healthcare, a health care provider that primarily serves senior citizens.

Nearly a decade later, Mrs. Abbott returned to San Antonio and joined her husband as he announced his bid for governor.

She recently left her job at Harden to take a more prominent role in the campaign, accompanying her husband more frequently and making her own appearances, largely at events focused on Republican women. (Harden Healthcare had been a corporate sponsor of The Texas Tribune.)

But her presence has not gone unfazed. Since starting his campaign, Mr. Abbott has regularly made reference to his wife’s Hispanic heritage, suggesting that it gives him an understanding of Hispanic voters, who are largely considered essential to future electoral success in the state.

Mrs. Abbott was thrust into the spotlight after a back-and-forth in which Mr. Abbott contended through social media that Democrats were turning his wife’s heritage against him because they were worried about the “growing connection” between Hispanics and Republicans.

His remarks came after Mrs. Abbott accompanied the attorney general to a campaign event in Lubbock last month. After the event, local Democrats were said to criticize Mr. Abbott for hosting it at a Mexican restaurant. Mr. Abbott said that a Lubbock City Council member had referred to his wife as a “prop;” an accusation refuted by Democrats.

Pat Mizell, a longtime friend of the Abbotts, brushed aside skepticism about the attorney general’s remarks about Mrs. Abbott’s Hispanic background.

“I’m sure she would be supportive if the campaign wants to raise an issue,” Mr. Mizell said. “But the idea that they would emphasize something that isn’t sincere, she wouldn’t let it happen.”

Mrs. Abbott has been silent on the issue. Little is known about her political views beyond her anti-abortion stance.

In an interview with The San Antonio Express-News, Mrs. Abbott interjected into her husband’s responses to lay out their opposition to exceptions allowing abortion in cases of rape or incest. “We just don’t discriminate against a child because of their beginnings,” Mrs. Abbott told the newspaper.

Mr. Mizell said the couple’s beliefs are largely rooted in the adoption of their daughter, Audrey, now 17, adding that the event was the impetus for the couple’s active involvement with an Austin adoption home.

Mrs. Abbott’s Catholic faith has also influenced her husband, who converted to Catholicism after his accident and often speaks of his faith.

“That’s a dominant force in her life,” Mr. Sullivan said.

But citing her time as an educator and her duties as a board member for several educational institutions, friends say that it is Mrs. Abbott’s longtime involvement in education that she will carry into the first lady post if her husband is elected.

“While she has been completely supportive of him and what he’s done, she’s had very much an independent course that she has pursued,” Mr. Sullivan said, adding that he expected her to do the same from the governor’s mansion.

陇山陇西郡