Wendy Davis became a rock star among liberals from the moment she strapped on her pink tennis shoes and stood for 11 hours to filibuster a bill that would ban abortions beyond 20 weeks of pregnancy.
But to the surprise of no one except her most optimistic supporters and several liberal journalists, Davis was soundly drubbed in her bid for Texas governor.
The Associated Press called the race for Attorney General Greg Abbott immediately after polls closed.
Propped up by MSNBC, Hollywood celebrities and even Cosmopolitan magazine, Davis received national attention — and national funding — in her bid for Texas governor, but even that couldn’t help a weak campaign.
Davis excelled at fundraising, but other than that her campaign stumbled almost right out of the gate. Her carefully crafted biography was not entirely accurate, and she never led in the polls.
The failure of her campaign culminated in recent weeks with desperate attacks against Abbott — claiming that he didn’t care about disabled people (Abbott is wheelchair-bound) and wanted to “kick” the ladder down for other victims of tragedy. She also hinted that Abbott, whose wife is Mexican-American, might support a ban on interracial marriage.
Before this election began, Democrats were expressing high hopes about Texas’ changing demographics. An increasingly Hispanic state, they reasoned, should translate to an increasingly Democratic one. Talk of “turning Texas blue” became part of the conventional political wisdom. But it was not to be.
Davis can look forward to a career raising money for other candidates that support extreme abortion positions shared by few others in America.
