An impressive conversation with Wendy Davis
By Tod Robberson / Editorial Writer
The editorial board and members of the newsroom just finished our candidate interview with the two Democrats running in the gubernatorial primary: State Sen. Wendy Davis and Reynaldo Madrigal, a judge in the Corpus Christi area.
I have to say, the collection of Democratic Party candidates gets weirder by the day. Davis goes way beyond the party’s platform in advocating open-carry handgun rules for all licensed gun owners in Texas, kind of like she wants to relive the days of Gunsmoke. Madrigal parts ways with his party in declaring himself unabashedly anti-abortion. Together, they make Greg Abbott look downright liberal.
But that’s the nature of Texas politics today. If you want to get elected as a Democrat, you’ve got to aim at the center, and that’s absolutely what Davis is doing. Whether she’s got a chance is an open question. As she says, Texas is misportrayed as a “red” state. It’s actually a non-voting state. She says she can win by waking up all those sleeping non-voters out there. That’s how she won her Senate seat in a district that was drawn to favor a Republican win.
I found Davis thoughtful and extremely well informed. She knows the nitty-gritty details of the debate between local control versus statewide management of highway/transportation expenditures. She can cite chapter and verse on payday lending and why it needs to be regulated more tightly (which it does). On the question of abortion rights — the issue on which she filibustered in the last session and gained national fame — she’s adamant that women and their doctors are the ones best equipped to determine fetal viability (20 weeks versus 24 as defined by the Supreme Court), not a bunch of state legislators. Okay, on that point, she’s definitely to the left of Greg Abbott.
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