Texas Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis doubles down on her risky, at best, and shameless, at worst, campaign strategy. (Photo: Wendy Davis YouTube video)
After releasing what even liberal media outlets have excoriated as one of the lowest political ads ever, Wendy Davis is doubling down on her hail mary. At one of the lowest press conferences ever covered, Davis said state Attorney General Greg Abbott, who is in a wheelchair, opposes the American with Disabilities Act and the disabled community.
The news conference follows her ad “Justice” — viewable below — in which the narrator accuses her Republican wheelchair-bound opponent of being a hypocrite.
“A tree fell on Greg Abbott,” the narrator says in a voice that downplays how he got paralyzed from the waste down. “He sued and got millions. Since then, he’s spent his career working against other victims.”
This ad, at best, was risky. It is the kind of risky ad only only released by a losing campaign. In American politics, they have a habit of backfiring on what is clearly the sore-losing candidate. And that’s exactly what happened.
Over the weekend, the far-left media website Mother Jones, ran a blurb titled If Wendy Davis Thinks She Can Win an Election by Pointing Out Her Opponent’s Disability, She’s Wrong, in which Ben Dreyfuss takes Davis to task. Prior, Aaron Blake of the not-so mainstream Washington Post called the ad one of “the nastiest ads ever” made.
The Davis campaign said Abbott’s handicap is fair game because he previously ran an ad jokingly stating that “a guy in a wheelchair can move faster than traffic on some roads in Texas.” They also say that the ad was poll-tested and, unbelievably, made the claim that the attack gives her the edge.
“Absolutely shameless,” wrote Katie Pavlich. “I for one am looking forward to watching Davis lose on election day.”
According to PPD’s 2014 Governor Map Predictions model, Davis’ defeat is a near certainty.
State Senator Wendy Davis, who became a hero to the left when she filibustered a majority-supported ban on late-term abortion. However, even though that made her an instant star in liberal circles, it placed her on the far left of the political spectrum, particularly the more-conservative spectrum in Texas. She was plagued by questions surrounding her past, including a restraining order that surfaced.
A previous PPD report also discovered that Davis’ life story, or at least the one pushed by the adoring media, was largely a creation of Battleground Texas and the Castro brothers, who used Davis in the hope she would begin to reconnect the Texas Democratic Party with white, suburban women.
But as PPD’s past analysis of the Texas Governor race suggested, the Democratic Party has bigger problems than Wendy Davis. She just appears to be climbing to the top of that list, as well.
