Sarah M. Pavitt, an Army veteran and cousin of former SOCOM commander William H. McRaven, ran as a write-in candidate.
Declined
Debra Medina, activist and Republican candidate for governor in 2010
Primary analysis
In the primary election, Greg Abbott polled 787,766 more votes than Wendy Davis though both were considered certain winners of their party nominations. The Republican turnout overall exceeded the Democrat strength by 786,487, nearly the same gap as that between Abbott and Davis. Both parties saw their turnout decline from 2010. The GOP had 151,101 fewer primary voters in 2014 than in 2010; the Democrats declined by 133,354. Republicans had a total turnout of 9.8 percent in 2014; the Democrats, 3.7 percent. Political scientist Mark P. Jones of Rice University in Houston, declared that the primary returns "looks bad for Democrats. There also wasn't very much going on in 2010, yet more people voted in 2010 than voted in 2014.... Instead of moving toward turning Texas blue, they are moving back towards Texas as an even redder state." Davis' intraparty rival and political unknown Ray Madrigal of Corpus Christi finished with nearly 21 percent of the vote, but he still outpolled the nominee in two high-profile South Texas counties with large numbers of Hispanic voters, Webb and Hidalgo. In the smaller Willacy and LaSalle counties, Madrigal finished ahead of Davis with nearly 61 and 58 percent, respectively. In the 1994 Democratic gubernatorial primary, a candidate similar to Madrigal, Gary Espinosa, polled 22.2 percent of the vote against incumbent Ann Richards, who was thereafter unseated by George W. Bush. Richards remains thus far the last Democrat to have served as governor of Texas. Despite the similarity with 1994, Davis told a candidate forum after the primary that she expected no difficulty in attracting large Hispanic support in South Texas in her campaign against Abbott. Davis advisor Matt Angle said that he believed the Republicans performed poorly in the primary and would be damaged in the general election by rhetoric against illegal immigration in the heated primary race for lieutenant governor, which continued to a runoff between the incumbent David Dewhurst and the frontrunner, State Senator Dan Patrick, both of Houston. Conversely, Republican consultant Matt Mackowiak said that the Democrats missed an opportunity to bring voters to the polls in a show of strength: "If they think they can skip the primary and have a stunning victory , that's extremely naïve."
General election
Debates
The first of two confirmed gubernatorial debates between Wendy Davis and Greg Abbott took place at the Edinburg Conference Center at Renaissance at 18:00 on Friday, September 19, co-hosted by KGBT-TV, The Monitor and KTLM-TV. KGBT-TV posted the complete video online and can be viewed . The debate took place in Edinburg, Texas, and it gave both candidates an opportunity to appeal to the Hispanic community, a grouping seen by Reuters as an "increasingly important voting bloc in Texas." The second debate took place on September 30 and was also posted .
