What a difference a year makes, especially in politics.
It was just over a year ago, Texas Monthly featured “rising Democrat star” Wendy Davis on its cover, standing with the Castro brothers and holding her “MSNBC-famous” running shoes she wore for her unsuccessful pro-abortion filibuster. That filibuster catapulted Davis, an unknown Texas state senator, to superstardom on the progressive talk show circuit, and rumors circulated that she could parlay that celebrity into the Texas Governor’s mansion.
It didn’t work out that way. Davis won her party’s nomination…and lost the general election embarrassingly.
Now, just a year later, Texas Monthly has named Davis and her supporters their “Bum Steer of the Year.”
In their 2013 piece, the magazine profile concluded this way:
And now people are saying it again: there is no way, not in 2014. But maybe that’s beside the point. Maybe the more important question is, If Davis runs and loses, will she wind up hurting either her brand or her party’s resurgence? Or is the opposite more likely? After all, less than 24 hours after her heroics during the filibuster Perry called a second special session, and the Republicans simply reintroduced the abortion-restrictions legislation. But Wendy Davis had, to borrow her phrase, stepped up—and enhanced her party’s prospects (and her own) by doing so. Perhaps what Democrats in Texas need most desperately is not a winner but simply a fighter. Winning comes later.
Later didn’t come.
After losing to Governor-Elect Greg Abbott by more than 20 points, Texas Monthly has a less-than-kind assessment of the failed candidate’s skills:
It’s not that the Democrats underperformed. It’s that the party that hasn’t won a statewide race since 1994 actually dug itself an even deeper hole!
For Davis, her campaign started poorly—this magazine compared her rollout to the debut of the Bag o’ Glass from Mainway Toys—and things seemed to only go downhill from there. Infighting! Staff shake-ups! Tension with the press! Missteps over her own biography! And to add insult to injury, after the dust had settled, the state Senate seat she gave up to run against Abbott was claimed by a Republican. Davis may be out of politics for now, but she didn’t walk away empty-handed: she is our Bum Steer of the Year.
Congratulations?
[h/t Washington Examiner]
