Wendy Davis Exaggerates Success Story: "I Need to Focus More on Details"

Cortney O'Brien | January 20, 2014 12:15 PM

Texans are all too familiar with her story. State Senator Wendy Davis overcame hardship as a divorced teenage mother living in a trailer before eventually getting accepted into Harvard Law school and scoring political victories - at least, according to her campaign team. She and her staff have used this narrative to fundraise in the Texas governor’s race and media outlets like the Today show have gushed over her success story. Now, it turns out Davis has not been so “successful” in telling the whole truth about her past.

The Dallas Morning News is clarifying some of the state senator’s blurry details:

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.

But don’t worry, Davis has a good excuse for coloring her past:

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

New York Magazine calls Davis’s fabrication her campaign’s “first bump in the road.” First? Clearly, these editors haven’t been following Lone Star State politics. The Democratic senator’s exposed inaccuracy is just the latest in her “not ready for prime time” gubernatorial campaign. First it was absence on the campaign trail, then her inability to answer questions and recently her team’s “fuzzy math.” Not to mention, she has been avoiding the one issue for which she became famous, since it won’t get her many votes in the deeply conservative state.