Texas State Senator Wendy Davis (D-Ft. Worth) was lionized by the left after her pro-abortion filibuster on the floor of the Texas legislature last July. But now it appears the down-on-her-luck, up-by-the-boot-straps persona that Davis has made the center of her gubernatorial campaign was a farce.
“Can we just spend a minute on the Wendy Davis story? Wendy Davis is the woman who is running for governor of Texas,” Glenn said. “And she's the woman who the left is putting all the their eggs in the basket for… Now Wendy Davis is really not the sharpest knife in the drawer.”
The Dallas Morning News published a story highlighting some of the factual inaccuracies in Davis’ biography ranging from the age at which she actually became pregnant to the involvement of her children’s father in these cases.
While her state Senate filibuster last year captured national attention, it is her biography — a divorced teenage mother living in a trailer who earned her way to Harvard and political achievement — that her team is using to attract voters and boost fundraising.
The basic elements of the narrative are true, but the full story of Davis’ life is more complicated, as often happens when public figures aim to define themselves. In the shorthand version that has developed, some facts have been blurred.
Davis was 21, not 19, when she was divorced. She lived only a few months in the family mobile home while separated from her husband before moving into an apartment with her daughter.
A single mother working two jobs, she met Jeff Davis, a lawyer 13 years older than her, married him and had a second daughter. He paid for her last two years at Texas Christian University and her time at Harvard Law School, and kept their two daughters while she was in Boston.When they divorced in 2005, he was granted parental custody, and the girls stayed with him. Wendy Davis was directed to pay child support.
In an extensive interview last week, Davis acknowledged some chronological errors and incomplete details in what she and her aides have said about her life.
To add insult to injury, Davis is also under fire for an ill-phrased remark she made about her opponent, Republican gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott. Abbott, who is paraplegic, criticized Davis for fabricating her past. Davis responded by saying the attacks prove Abbott “hasn’t walked a day in my shoes.”
It is safe to say Davis probably didn’t mean any harm by her remark, and Glenn is willing to blame the gaffe on her utter unpreparedness.
“She's so unprepared. She's running against the guy who's a paraplegic, and she's so unprepared for that that she says, you know, ‘This paraplegic has not walked a mile in my shoes,’” Glenn said. “Now, what do we do? Well, we make fun of it.”
Glenn may be willing to give Davis the benefit of the doubt, but many on the right are questioning whether the left would be as forgiving of a slipup.
“But as we always do on this show, which nobody else does on the left would ever do this for us or anybody else, we say that was a stupid mistake,” Glenn said. “Was she making a slam against a paraplegic? Of course not. But they would never give us that benefit of the doubt. If it was Greg Abbott and she was in a wheelchair, they would smear him night and day and that would be a career-ending comment.”
Ultimately, the Texas gubernatorial race is extremely important, and it would be wise to focus on the issues instead of petty gaffes.
“[The Democrats] picked her to do run because they're trying to get all of this money from all over the country. Money is pouring into Texas from the left. They are trying to do a hostile take over of Texas like they did in Colorado,” Glenn concluded. “And if they do it in Texas, we loose the entire country. This is the real play for the border. This is why they're no border fences. This is why they want to make sure they have immigration reform.”
Front page image courtesy of the AP
