Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Davis et.al. finally pushes back, and more Texas roundup

A little bit, and hey, it only took a week.

State Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, delivered a ferocious defense Tuesday night of her life story and her parenting of her two daughters, declaring that Attorney General Greg Abbott has “picked a fight with the wrong Texas gal.”

“I won’t let anyone take my family’s truth away from me,” said Davis, speaking even as President Obama was delivering his State of the Union speech. It was the most passionate and powerful defense of the now-contested personal narrative that has been central to her message as a candidate for governor.

“Greg Abbott can sink as low as he wants, but I won’t let him drag me down with him. He can run a campaign about my past; I’m going to run one that’s about your future,” Davis told the Travis County Democratic Party’s Johnson-Bentsen-Richards dinner at the Four Seasons Hotel. “But there’s one thing I have to say before I leave Greg Abbott and his allies to play in the gutter once and for all. And I want to say it right here, right now, with Texas listening – because I want to make sure our opponents can hear it loud and clear. You can attack my record. You can challenge my ideas. You can play holier-than-thou with my life story. But I draw the line when it comes to lying about my family.”

First there was the assist from Greta Van Susteren of Fox, which was prolly the best thing of all.  Then there was the letter from Wendy's two daughters, and the gift of the shotgun that belonged to Ann Richards.  There was also a populist fundraising appeal.  But that was sandwiched around the non-endorsement from the HGLBT Caucus, which had to stress that was no big deal.  (Those folks made a couple of other weird choices. Gonna have a post on that at a later date.)

The takeaway for me is that if the Davis campaign is going to take 7-10 days to do rapid response...

Update:  As remains the case over the past two weeks, there's just not much local blog coverage about the Davis campaign developments beyond the LGBT-specific postings of Lone Star Q linked above, Socratic Gadfly, The Inanity of Sanity, and Burnt Orange Report.

-- It was US Rep. Randy Weber's turn to take the dumbass pills, and right before the SOTU last night, he swallowed the whole bottle.

This is troll bait, of course. He's seen how much attention Steve Stockman can command with this soapbox, and since Louie Gohmert can't figure out Twitter, Weber has come to the realization that there's a void to be filled.

-- John Culberson wants you to know that it was he who killed light rail on Richmond Avenue.

"I'm very proud to have been able to protect Richmond and Post Oak from being destroyed as Fannin and Main Street were destroyed," Culberson told CultureMap following a fundraising luncheon at Tony's, which not so coincidentally is located on Richmond.

Culberson trumped METRO in his long-running feud with the local transportation agency. He has been threatening and attempting to get his law passed for several years. "It's a permanent federal statutory law. So it's a felony if any governmental entities attempt to spend any federal money to push rail on those routes," he said.

[...]

"This is the end of all federal funding on Richmond," he said.

The Democratic primary in CD-7, for the right to challenge this numbskull, is taking a sad but familiar path.  More on that also in short order.

Update: Charles digs deeper.

-- Congratulations to Celia Israel, who won the special election yesterday to replace the retiring Mark Strama in Austin.  She gives the Texas Legislature its second LGBT elected representative, which is the first time that has ever been the case in the long history of the state.  The times they are a-changin'.

1 comment:

Gadfly said...

Given that, per my link you have, Davis DID completely fill out the Snooze's endorsement questionnaire, an eyebrow of mine again raises over her not completing the Caucus/Stonewall forms.