Texas Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis, who is considered a hero of the pro-abortion crowd yet declared herself "pro-life" in November as her people attempted to bully the local media into twisting stories her way, is blaming her opponent for a Sunday Dallas Morning News story which pointed to significant discrepancies between her campaign biography and the truth.
It's pretty bad when I have to say that the Politico's Katie Glueck did a far better job with this story than Will Weissert at the Associated Press, but that's the case. Glueck at least challenged Davis's contention of an Abbott connection – getting a mushy, meaningless answer – and carried the unconditional denial of any contact from the Abbott campaign by DMN reporter Wayne Slater. Weissert delivered neither. Both missed something important Steve Ertelt at Life News noticed in a series of pathetic Davis tweets.
Let's start with Glueck at Politico, because there's at least some substance there (links are in original; bolds are mine throughout this post):
Wendy Davis hits back at questions about bio
Wendy Davis, the Democratic state senator running for governor of Texas, swung back Monday at swirling questions about her personal life after a newspaper report suggested there were inconsistencies in the biography she’s shared on the stump.
In a statement, Davis sought to explain the discrepancies, while also signaling that her Republican opponent, Greg Abbott, was behind the growing scrutiny.
The Dallas Morning News piece over the weekend noted that Davis had been 21, not 19, by the time she got a divorce — despite statements to the contrary — and highlighted tension with an ex-husband, among other family drama.
“We’re not surprised by Greg Abbott’s campaign attacks on the personal story of my life as a single mother who worked hard to get ahead,” Davis said in her statement. “But they won’t work, because my story is the story of millions of Texas women who know the strength it takes when you’re young, alone and a mother.”
Asked by POLITICO to point to specific attacks from Abbott, the current Texas attorney general, a Davis spokeswoman responded, “We’ve had reporters independently verify these attacks are coming from Greg Abbott’s campaign.”
Abbott spokesman Matt Hirsch charged in a statement on Monday that “Sen. Wendy Davis systematically, intentionally and repeatedly deceived Texans for years about her background, yet she expects voters to indulge her fanciful narrative.”
On Sunday, the author of the piece said, as part of a Twitter thread, that “in researching, I talked to no — zero — Abbott people.”
Let's add a graphic of Slater's tweet for emphasis:
The AP's Weissert, by contrast, was absolutely awful on the facts (with one exception seen in the last two excerpted paragraphs) ridiculously overindulgent, and served up with an overgenerous side order of fawning:
WENDY DAVIS' STORY MAY HAVE MISSTATED DETAILS (MAY?!)
Democratic state Sen. Wendy Davis' rise from a teenage single mother living in a trailer park to Harvard Law School is a centerpiece of her campaign for Texas governor, but some of the details of her personal story may be fuzzier than first thought.
Davis' critics said Monday that the small discrepancies suggest her past is not quite as inspirational as she has lead Texans to believe. Davis dismissed the issue as a baseless personal attack.
Texas hasn't elected a Democrat to statewide office since 1994, but Davis became an overnight political star with her filibuster of abortion limits last summer and so far has raised enough money that she could keep the race for governor close.
... Davis blamed Abbott, who Texas' current attorney general, for raising questions about her past.
"We're not surprised by Greg Abbott's campaign attacks on the personal story of my life as a single mother who worked hard to get ahead," she said. "But they won't work, because my story is the story of millions of Texas women who know the strength it takes when you're young, alone and a mother."
Abbott campaign spokesman Matt Hirsch countered in his own statement Monday that Davis had "systematically, intentionally and repeatedly deceived Texans for years about her background, yet she expects voters to indulge her fanciful narrative."
Meanwhile, another potential question about Davis' past comes from the Facebook page of her mother, Ginger Cornstubble, which references attending Muleshoe High School in West Texas. That contradicts a 2012 suggestion by Davis that her mother had just a sixth grade education.
But in her statement, Davis said her mother "had attended school only into the ninth grade."
Well, ninth grade isn't sixth grade, ma'am.
Both Glueck and Weissert could fairly be accused of classless behavior relating to a professional colleague. Neither had the decency to name DMN's Slater. Are they upset that he found negative info about their darling?
Life News's Ertelt caught the double standard in the following tweet from Little Ms. Pity Party:
Ertelt noted:
Davis might want to try again if she thinks Abbott has never faced any struggles.
At age 26, Abbott was struck by a falling oak tree that injured his back as he jogged by. He has used a wheelchair ever since and has become an eloquent pro-life advocate — speaking up for both the disabled and the unborn. The accident serves as a reminder that regardless of someone’s circumstances, he or she deserves a chance at life, Abbott has said.
“As I laid there motionless on the ground, gripped with pain, as helpless as a child in the womb, I knew my life had changed forever,” he said at the National Right to Life convention in June. “Some people think it’s easy to write off the lives of the disabled or the different. But every day, God reminds us that all life has value, no matter the form.”
Davis is going to have to do much better than these shallow attacks if she wants any chance of becoming the next governor Texas.
Sadly, Davis's apparent indifference to the struggles of others who might not agree with her is consistent with the behavior of her joined-at-the-hip supporters at Battleground Texas, who have openly mocked Abbott's disability. Add that to the list of "things which should be news but never will be."
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
