Wendy Davis Life Story Unravels on Campaign Trail

You know Wendy Davis, candidate for Texas Governor, has messed up when even the Texas Monthly comes out with a big pop to burst her bubble.  While the Davis campaign was presenting some fuzzy math as they boasted about her campaign fundraising success, a funny thing happened.  Reality struck.

Wendy Davis is a female Democrat, which means she counts on a good victim's story to get her elected.  She has painted herself as a survivor of her earlier life of a young, divorced, single mom raising her daughters as she just barely scrapped by.  Come to find out, her second husband (father of daughter number 2) spoke with a reporter from the Dallas News and blew it all out of the water. To make it a little more interesting, the article was written by Wayne Slater, not exactly known as a friend to conservatives in Texas.

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.

Oops.

So, she embellished, you are thinking.  Don't all politicians try to run as just regular people with real world life experiences?  Sure.  But in this case, as a woman, it smacks of manipulation and emotional exploitation.  She was hoping she'd be receiving the votes of women who are, in fact, single women struggling to raise children as they work two jobs.  Wendy Davis is an attractive, well educated politician who dresses well.  She is someone women can relate to as she tells her story.  It's just not an accurate story.

Husband number two cashed in his 401(k) and also took out a loan to pay for that Harvard law school education. He already paid for her last 2 years of her undergrad college. Wendy Davis left her husband and children behind and led the life of a law school student.  Then, as the last student loan was paid off, she left her husband.  And he kept the girls.

So, she was single from age 21, not 19, and began dating her second husband some time before marrying him at age 24.  He paid for her college after she put herself through community college with scholarships and pell grants.  Later, her husband even opened doors for her after she expressed a desire to run for office, as he had served on the Fort Worth city council.  She voted Republican and supported Tx Congressional candidate Kay Granger in the U.S. House.

After she graduated from Harvard in 1993, Wendy Davis started her own law practice and worked with her husband at the title company he founded. They enrolled their younger daughter, Dru, at Fort Worth Country Day School, a prestigious private school.Jeff Davis had once served on the Fort Worth City Council, and Wendy Davis expressed interest in running for a seat in 1996.“I opened some doors for her with people, knew how bright she was and knew she’d do a good job,” he said.She lost in 1996 but ran again two years later and won. The council seats were nonpartisan but in terms of voting, she was a Republican. Davis said she voted in GOP primaries because she supported mayor and congressional candidate Kay Granger, a Republican, and as a lawyer, she wanted to have a say in selecting judicial nominees in a county where the judges were often Republicans.

I must have missed that whole "I used to vote Republican" in her campaign stump speeches.

The response of Wendy Davis was this:

“My language should be tighter,” she said. “I’m learning about using broader, looser language. I need to be more focused on the detail.”

You know what would make her language "tighter"?  The truth.  Skip the bogus embellishment.