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Political Note #257 Wendy Davis TX CD 21
2020 General Election
Wendy’s back. Wendy Davis https://www.wendydavisforcongress.com/ ran for governor of Texas in 2014. She made a national splash, but got walloped in Texas – 59-39. She retreated, founded a non-profit – Deeds Not Words. Texas oriented, the organization trains school and college officials and police and supports legislation. The organization’s issues include ending campus assault, ensuring that women have access to menstrual products, ensuring that all rape kits are examined in a timely way, and supporting abortion and other reproductive rights.
Wendy’s back. She is back in electoral politics. Wendy Davis is running for Congress. Deeds Not Words will be part of her baggage for some Texans in Congressional District 21. For other Texans in the District, Deed Not Words will be an achievement in her lifelong struggle for women’s equality. Texas 21 is one of four or five Congressional districts that include a little piece of Austin, Texas.
Austin is the state capital and home to the University of Texas. We were there not long ago. In a museum, we chatted with docent-like figure. Like a story, but it actually happened: When we answered a question and said this was our first time in Texas, but had only been in Austin, he said we have never been in Texas. More liberal and more unconventional than the rest of the state, those several gerrymandered districts are intended to dilute Austin’s influence. Texas 21 includes southern and southwestern Austin neighborhoods, runs along Interstate 35 (the western side), continues to the northern neighborhoods of San Antonio, and extends into the hill towns west of San Antonio. That’s gerrymandering.
This district could be won. There is only so much gerrymandering can do when communities change. 2014 was the last year the Democrats did not field a candidate. By 2018, Democrats were fielding a candidate who came close.
- 2014 72% R 15% Green
- 2016 57% R 36% D
- 2018 50% R 48% D
Can Wendy Davis win? Her entire life is baggage for some Texans, an extraordinary achievement for others. She was definitely not born with a silver spoon. Her success mixed personal academic achievement with confronting gender and sexual expectations. She went to Harvard Law School, clerked for a US District Judge, joined a Fort Worth law firm, owned a Title firm with her husband, joined another firm after the divorce, and then opened her own firm with a partner. While practicing law, she was a Republican member of the Fort Worth City Council for nine years and a Democratic state Senator for six. This recitation does not capture the drama or the complications.
Born in West Warwick, Rhode Island, Wendy Davis’s parents moved to Texas when she was ten. In Texas, her parents divorced. Her dad left the corporate job he moved across the country for to do community theater. There wasn’t much money in that.
Her dad had trouble coming up with child support. Her mother, without a high school education, worked menial jobs. While her mother worked at an ice cream stand, Wendy worked at an Orange Julius. Still in high school, she moved in with her boyfriend. An honor student, she stuck with it and graduated, but had a baby a year after that. At 19, she was divorced with a baby and ambitious for a different kind of life. She enrolled in a community college paralegal program and found a wealthy second husband. She went on to TCU, initially with financial support, subsequently with her new husband paying for college. She had a second baby. Her husband adopted her first baby.
Wendy Davis went from TCU to Harvard Law School bringing her two children with her. That didn’t work. She brought her children back to live with their father and to be cared for by her mother. Critics ask: What’s wrong with the University of Texas Law School or other Texas Law Schools? Why leave your children? Critics are even more critical of her two subsequent abortions.
Critics don’t believe her when she explains one abortion was for an ectopic tubal pregnancy, the other because the fetus had a serious birth defect. Critics aren’t pleased with her post law school divorce either. It seemed odd — Wendy Davis paying child support. To critics, she did not have gender roles right. She did not behave like their idea of a mother. She did not appear to have the feelings a mother should have.
What Wendy Davis had was a commitment to women’s issues. She earned national fame for her filibuster that prevented a vote on an abortion bill in the Texas State Senate. Texas’ new abortion law was delayed by her action, not stopped. As a result of the filibuster, Wendy became enough of a national figure to run for the Senate.
Her run was premature. Texas was not ready for Wendy Davis. But Texas has changed. Beto O’Rourke came close to defeating US Senator Ted Cruz in 2018. The 2020 Democratic nominee for the US Senate will have a decent chance to defeat Senator John Cornyn. Wendy Davis, now 56, will focus on ousting Ted Cruz’ protégé Chip Roy from Congress.
Chip Roy is a contrast to Wendy Davis. He is a fanatic about immigration issues. He made himself a nuisance about immigration to his fellow Republicans – who are pretty anti-immigration themselves. He wrongly suspected that a 2019 spending package contained, in effect, an amnesty for anyone sponsoring an unaccompanied minor. Roy blocked unanimous consent and prevented the spending package from going forward. Even Fox news criticized him. The Department of Homeland Security explained that what Roy saw in the package were technical terms that did not offer amnesty to sponsors.
This was not Chip Roy’s only 2019 adventure. He proposed that the Border Patrol be authorized to accept donations. Critics complained the bill provided no oversight over how those funds would be spent. Later in 2019, Roy attempted to scuttle a hearing the Democrats had titled: “Kids in Cages: Inhumane treatment at the border. Roy was offended by the title.
Roy also took a swipe at disaster aid. He refused unanimous consent to block an emergency bill that supported hurricane relief for farmers in the southeast, hurricane victims in Puerto Rico and infrastructure repair there, and, astonishingly, relief for flooded industry and residents of Central Texas.
Wendy Davis and Chip Roy are at the opposite ends of more than one political spectrum. Can she make up the two points that the last Democrat lost by? Will Chip Roy get his constituents out to vote? Will Wendy Davis https://www.wendydavisforcongress.com/ get her constituents out to vote? She needs help to do that. She’ll need a big turnout to win and she’ll need resources to get that big turnout. Provide some of those resources for her.
Expand the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives. In 2018, Democrats flipped 40 seats. Flip fifteen or twenty more in 2020.
Below are Congressional seats Democrats are trying to flip from incumbent Republicans. The ones with asterisks ran in 2018*
Congress
California 50 Ammar Campa-Hajjar* to win this now open Rep seat
Florida 16 Margaret Good to beat incumbent Vern Buchanan
Illinois 13 Betsy D Londrigen* to beat incumbent Rodney Davis
Indiana 05 Christina Hale to win this open Republican seat
Iowa 04 JD Scholten* to beat incumbent Steve King
Kansas 02 Michelle De La Isla to beat incumbent Steve Watkins
Michigan 06 Jon Hoadley to beat incumbent Fred Upton
Minnesota 01 Dan Feehan* to beat incumbent Jim Hagedorn
New York 02 Jackie Gordon to win this open Republican seat
New York 21 Tedra Cobb* to beat incumbent Elise Stefanic
Ohio 04 Mike Larsen to beat incumbent Jim Jordan
Pennsylvania 10 Eugene DePasquale to beat incumbent Scott Perry
Texas 21 Wendy Davis to beat incumbent Chip Roy
Texas 23 Gina Ortiz Jones* to win this open Republican seat
Washington 03 Carolyn Long* to beat incumbent Jaime Herrera Beutler
VOTE
If you are eligible, you can vote in an entirely different election. You can vote a slate of candidates for the World Zionist Convention.
To be eligible.
- You have to be 18 years old before January 21, 2020.
- You have to be Jewish. That is, you have to self-identify as Jewish.
- You have to feel a connection to Israel, be opposed to anti-Semitism, and support the idea of Israel as a democratic state and as a haven for Jews.
- You have to pay $7.50 to vote. The money supports an independent agency that operates and oversees the election.
You can give Zionism a progressive voice. Vote for the slate supported by ARZA (Reform and Progressive Zionists). ARZA organized in 2015 and won nearly 40% of the voting delegates. It was the largest bloc at the World Zionist Congress.
Voting began on January 21 and continues until Purim in March. Go to https://arza.org/. ARZA will help you vote for its slate
