Texas State Senator and MSNBC heroine Wendy Davis is not doing that hot in the fundraising race as she pursues her shot for governor of the Lone Star state, the Daily Beast reported today.
"As if things weren’t going badly enough for Wendy Davis, the Texas gubernatorial candidate got caught inflating her campaign’s finances this week by counting a Willie Nelson concert as a contribution," reporter Ben Jacobs noted in the lead paragraph of his July 17 story, "Wendy Davis's Fundraising Fiasco." You can read the full story here, but here's an excerpt to give you a taste (emphasis mine):
Davis, the Texas Democrat best known for her 2013 filibuster against an anti-abortion bill, is facing an uphill battle to beat state attorney general Greg Abbott to lead the Lone Star State in November. Polls have Davis consistently trailing by 10-15% and the erstwhile Democratic rock star, who is already on her second campaign manager, seems to be on course for an early election night and a big MSNBC contract.
Briefly though, Davis had a bit of a bright spot this week when she announced that she had outraised Abbott in the most recent fundraising period. Then, the Texas Tribune revealed her campaign had “juked the numbers.” The $11.2 million that Davis had reported raising included $500,000 in in-kind donations, where a donor offers services instead of money, including $250,000 that was the cash value of a concert that country music legend Willie Nelson performed at a campaign fundraiser.
For example, the pro-choice advocacy group Planned Parenthood gave just over $100,000 in in-kind polling and web development to the Davis campaign this period. However, a concert is a far more unusual gift that is rarely considered a donation. While it is perfectly legal for Davis to count Nelson’s concert as an in-kind contribution, it is a bit out of the ordinary. After all, when music artists like Katy Perry or Stevie Wonder have campaigned on behalf of Barack Obama, their performances are not tallied as an in-kind donation.
Once that, along with several other quirks including a $300,000 discrepancy in one of the four different accounts that Davis uses in her fundraising tally are accounted for, the Democrat ended the period behind Abbott yet again.
Of course, none of this should be a surprise, but the MSNBC crowd on the far-left really, truly, honestly seemed to believe Wendy Davis was a strong contender to mobilize Lone Star women and set about the process turning Texas blue.
We don't expect the Lean Forward network to have any interest in alerting their viewers to Wendy's latest woes.
