Fresh off the shellacking Democrat Wendy Davis took in her defeat by Republican Greg Abbott for Texas governor on Tuesday, lots of finger pointing and excuses are filling the air, but the latest official explanation from the campaign itself takes the cake.
According to campaign spokesman Zac Petkanas, Davis’s leftist agenda — including radical support for abortion-on-demand — had nothing to do with her poor showing at the polls. Instead, Petkanas blamed the loss on immigration and Ebola.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Petkanas detailed:
“The losses that you are seeing in very blue states are simply amplified in states like Texas where there is already a structural advantage for Republicans. Another challenge was that Texas was at the center of two issues — immigration and the Ebola scare — that helped drive Republican voters to the polls.”
Despite Davis’s national media profile after her filibuster of the Texas abortion regulation bill in the State Senate, she earned far fewer votes than the previous Democrat candidate who ran against Rick Perry in 2010’s Republican wave. Davis also failed to win a majority of Texas women. According to CNN Exit Polls, she received 45% of women’s votes while Abbott received 54%: a 9 point difference.
To add insult to injury, Davis’s Senate district flipped to Republican when it elected a Tea Party-aligned candidate on Tuesday.
The defeat comes as a sober repudiation of the Democrat Party in the face of public pronouncements about the party’s goal to turn Texas blue. From the looks of the electoral map in the aftermath of the elections, Texas actually became more red.
Perhaps a sign of things to come was the overwhelming election of George P. Bush, son of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, to statewide office in Texas.
