Tipsheet

Is Wendy Davis Now Avoiding Abortion at All Costs?

Texas State Senator Wendy Davis’s first ad in her bid for governor covers a lot of topics. Entitled, “A Texas Story,” the promo touches on Davis’s reforms in education, jobs and crime. Curiously, it makes no mention of abortion -- the issue that placed her in the national spotlight.

MSNBC provided some analysis of Davis’s gubernatorial announcement:

Her challenge now: convince voters in Texas that her candidacy for governor–which she made official Thursday–is about more than abortion. And that she can win. But Davis did not mention abortion at all in remarks announcing her candidacy Thursday, focusing instead on her first filibuster earlier in her career — on education issues.

Hm, suspicious.

Another case in point: San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro endorsed Davis by praising her education filibuster, yet once again there is no mention of her championing abortion.

Using Battleground Texas, a Democratic grassroots organization created with the hope of eventually turning the Lone Star State blue, as a platform, Castro pledged his support for Davis soon after she announced her gubernatorial bid.

Wendy is fearless.

She overcame a background of poverty to put herself through Harvard law school.

She once stood for hours to filibuster a bill that would have resulted in billions of dollars in cuts to public education for our kids.

She's a proven winner who brings Texans together -- elected twice in a swing district that's considered a microcosm of Texas, where Mitt Romney won easily last November. And she knows that

bread-and-butter issues like public education and transportation infrastructure are essential to keep our vibrant economy going strong.

Again, no mention of the filibuster that made the state senator famous overnight. Why is Davis and her endorsers avoiding it? Well, considering 46 percent of Texans believe abortion should never be permitted or permitted only in cases involving incest, rape or when the woman's life is in danger, and 62 percent of citizens support the same bill Davis was trying to kill, it was perhaps a good campaign strategy to ignore the fact she spoke on the floor of Congress for 12 hours defending what some term as “infanticide.”

Sorry Wendy, you can choose to omit that little tidbit from your campaign, but Texans aren’t going to soon forget.