First Wendy Davis claimed her wheelchair-bound opponent Greg Abbott doesn’t like the disabled. Then she claimed that Abbott, whose wife is Mexican-American, would support a state ban on interracial marriage.
Now she’s claiming he doesn’t want African-Americans to vote.
In a new radio ad paid for by the Davis campaign, a man calls Abbott “bad news” and accuses the Republican attorney general of trying to “overturn the Voting Rights Act.”
“Take a guess about who Abbott doesn’t want to vote,” the man adds.
Ooh, ooh, I know! It’s anyone that’s not a white man, right?
Abbott challenged one part of the 1965 law — the part that deemed Texas a racist state and gave the federal government the power to preemptively review and strike down any change to the state’s redistricting maps and election laws.
The provision singled out Texas and eight other states that were considered racist decades ago, allowing the federal government to overturn any changes to the state’s election laws — like Texas’ voter ID law. Texas is now treated like all other states, whose election law changes can be challenged in court after they are made.
Opponents of that provision insisted it violated state sovereignty, whereas proponents claimed it was the only thing keeping these states from going back to the days of segregation and Jim Crow.
“Today represents the first chapter of the new book that’s going to be written with regard to the Voting Rights Act,” Abbott said in 2012 after arguing his case before the U.S. Supreme Court.
This the latest in a string of late Hail-Mary-type ads from the Davis campaign, which trails in the polls by double digits and is running short on cash and time. With five days left until the election, what else can she come up with?
