Negative ads are common in political races, but the tone of the ads in this campaign has surprised even some veteran observers. Abbott started his ad campaign sweetly –– his first commercials featured his mother-in-law, a Hispanic woman with an accent, talking about how wonderful her son-in-law is. Nothing negative, no bombs thrown at his opponent, just Abbott being presented as a family man with a good heart and a connection to the Hispanic community.
Davis, perhaps because her bankroll was much smaller, eschewed any warm, fuzzy ads to introduce herself to the public. Instead she went for the kill. Her first ad accused Abbott of siding with a corporation over a rape victim. The hits kept coming, with her most recent ad creating the most controversy.
Two weeks ago, Davis began running an ad that blasts Abbott for receiving $10 million in a wrongful-injury settlement after being paralyzed in an accident, but later supporting a $250,000 cap on payouts for certain medical malpractice cases. The ads opened with a shot of an empty wheelchair. Viewers and news media pounced on Davis for being insensitive. Pundits and news media expressed shock. “Firestorm” seemed to be the favorite adjective for headline writers.
Republican political consultant Matt Mackowiak said the empty-wheelchair ad was “so far beyond the pale,” and that it showed Davis was desperate.
“Wendy has run the harshest and most negative campaign for governor in my lifetime,” he said. “You do that because you’re behind.”
Mother Jones blogger Ben Dreyfuss called the ad “offensive and nasty” and accused Davis of “basically calling Abbott a cripple.”
Abbott told Sean Hannity and a San Antonio newspaper that if Davis wanted to “attack a guy in a wheelchair, that’s her prerogative.”
Davis, given numerous opportunities to retract her ads over the next few days, stood firm. She called Abbott a hypocrite. Soon the tide shifted. Dreyfuss updated his original article, saying it had “touched a nerve” and that readers had insisted the ad exposed how Abbott had won a large judgment but then made it difficult for others to do the same.
“That is a good and decent point to make,” Dreyfuss wrote, although he restated his opinion that the ad insinuated that Abbott is “unfit to serve because he is handicapped.”
Bloomberg Businessweek wrote that the ad “raises important issues about the big business of liability law.” The back-and-forth continued for days, earning Davis attention late in the race.
Thorburn, the Republican strategist, believes Davis went negative too quickly and that she should have run ads early in the campaign, as Abbott did, that portrayed a family image.
Glenn Smith, Democratic strategist and president of the left-leaning Progress Texas PAC, which aims to expose how Republicans have been pulled far to the right by Tea Party lobbyists and corporations, isn’t convinced. He figures Davis needed to move on from touting her backstory and has to choose her ads judiciously.
“She needed to move on to other issues, characterizing her opponent, and talking about the things she wanted to do,” he said. “I don’t think that decision was [affected] by what turned out to be pretty exaggerated stories about her biography.”
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Smith said that he thinks the Davis campaign has been on target recently.
“I’m hard-pressed to think of a misstep she’s made about the message since summer,” he said. “If Wendy hadn’t become such an instant celebrity and Abbott’s campaign had been scrutinized more, I think he’d do no better than a D-plus or C-minus. He’s misspoken several times; he’s not good on the stump. He’s very slow to respond to events and charges that rise up during the campaign. He’s not charismatic.”
Which doesn’t mean Davis has become a show-stopper.
“Molly Ivins used to say, ‘A good candidate has got to have some Elvis in them,’ ” McNeely said. “That’s just not [Davis].”
Thorburn, the Republican strategist, predicted that, regardless of voter registration efforts, Davis’ improvement in the polls, and her recent fundraising success, the senator won’t have done enough to win by Nov. 4.
“The state continues to be as Republican as it has been in the past, and add to that the unpopularity of the president –– he’s had his problems, and he wasn’t popular in Texas to begin with,” he said.
“She never had a shot.”
Smith, who was a political reporter for the Houston Chronicle and the Houston Post before becoming a Democratic strategist, wouldn’t make a prediction. He said that if Davis keeps attacking Abbott’s record, she still has a chance to pull off an upset.
“I wish that everyone in Texas knew the truth about her opponent and about the overwhelming culture of corruption that has dominated Texas government for the last 12 or 15 years,” he said.
“I think if Texans knew that, Republicans wouldn’t stand a chance,” he said.
Excellent article but with one exception. I would disagree with Glenn Smith’s statement that if the electorate knew the truth about the corruption of the last 12 years the Republicans wouldn’t stand a chance. The Texas electorate has become so complacent and so gullible during that time that they would believe anything the Repub’s told them. All they’ve been running on for the last 6 years is Obama and abortions and they continue to clean up across the state. Also remember that this is the party that has Dan Patrick running for the most powerful office in the state and thinks Konni Burton is fit for office.
i was further inspired by wendy on “daybreak” (wfaa, local channel 8 news) in an interview with alexa conomos. i believe wendy was correct in her prediction that “if all our supporters vote, we will win this race”. more is more so donate & vote because this girl is a much better poster child for texas than the last two gubernatorial goobers. long live dixie chicks.
re: corruption.
Evidently the voters are not the only gullible parties. Buddy Barfield, a longtime Dewhurst aid and crony has recently been indicted for stealing $2 million dollars from Dewhurst’s failed senate campaign which he allegedly spent on his mortgage and kids tuition, according to today’s Dallas Observer Unfair Park. Makes you kind of wonder,doesn’t it?
Baggers are going to be baggers, repugs are going to be repugs, hammer-heads are going to be hammer-heads—what else can they be? Just for spite, with a basis grounded in stone stupidity, these selfish half-wits shut the United States of America down—we couldn’t pay our bills, our promises, nor our obligations. A bigoted & hateful rancher in Arizona sent the U.S. government home with it’s tail between it’s legs, when it demanded payment for grazing his cattle on U.S.Government property. The U.S. had a choice to either retreat or kill hundreds of snot-slinging, jerk-off, Tea-Bagging peckerwoods. These two examples are only a tiny hint of both who and what we are dealing with. If we are so indifferent, or so wealthy, or so lazy that we allow this demented madness to continue, well, what goes around comes around. This nation was based on stealing the continent from the natives, hanging the witches, enslaving the Negros, poisoning and defecating on the natural resources, subjugating the female Anglos, while pretending to love Jesus. What’s new here? The problem here is not who Wendy is nor who Abbott is but who Texas voters are— and our problem is as big as Dallas.
Holland, you should see a therapist. All your comments begin with your “a=a; b=b; c=c” argument — which is true but meaningless — and abound with references to baggers, hammerheads, repugs, peckerwoods, ad nauseum. In your above rant, only the last sentence references Davis and Abbot, the subjects of the article.
Stouty, you need to kiss my foot. What do you eat? You need to get a decent job and amount to something. Who assigned a flake like you to suggest to any good Democrat what they need to do? Are you one of those Startle-Gram nit-wits? You, Stouty, are precisely who I was addressing, why don’t you grow up and amount to something? Have you no shame? Are you any kin to Gregg Abbott, you put me in mind of him. For many, many years the Weekly wasn’t bothered by jerks such as yourself. Have you no shame? You one of those stinking Baggers? Grow up, get a life.
Benny, your heroine, Wendy Davis’s campaign just pulled another dumb-blonde blooper, tweeting a photo of young people “who just voted for Wendy”. They turned out to be College Republicans — in Virginia! And she wants to run the state? Lord help us.
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2014/10/22/confirmed-wendy-davis-literally-has-the-worst-n1908828
Stoutstinker, you continue to outdo yourself . Is your Startle-Gram office still inside the Men’s Room at the Greyhound Station? Is it still printed over in Dallas and bussed back over here? Let me up, Dude. The very first & best thinking of your piece-of-snot hero, Mr.Abbott, was to select the worse criminogenic, douch-bag child molester in the Western Hemisphere to rally the low-achieving knuckle-heads to his cause…Mr. Ted Nugent, Esq. Nothing more needs to be said. God forgive them for they are fools. Puh-lease!
“He later recanted the story and said he received a student deferment.”
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Ted Nugent received his student deferment in 1967, 2 years prior to the pants defecating incident at the induction center. And he got his deferment when he was touring with his band and not attending college so his deferment was fraudulently obtained. That’s a crime.
Nugent and all other eligible young men were then subject to the Draft Lottery in 1969 which got rid of all deferments. His lottery number was 163 which means he should have been drafted. Lottery numbers 1 to 185 got notices that first year of the lottery and that’s when he probably did what he originally claimed.
May I ask if anyone in chat considers this article biased? May I ask why do you support democrats? Texas is Texas for a reason, here you still have a better chance at becoming successful, here you can afford things. There is an overwhelmingly, overwhelmingly, overwhelmingly, emphasis on overwhelmingly amount of evidence that shows the struggle democratic states like Cali, Illinois, NY, RI, NH, etc. are facing. If you don’t like Texas then why don’t you move? The states I just mentioned will eventually be the same as Texas when it becomes democratic due to the heavy out of state influence. Just remember that your children will move out of this state when it is expensive and they’ll continue the cycle of moving into cheap republican states, they’ll complain, and that state will become democratic with more strict laws, higher cost of living, more government spending, etc. Even states that spend a crap load of money on education like Cali have literally the same education as Texas, Texas is ranked in the top 20 states for education (search it up) and both TX and CL have C- as average, in some ranking TX surpasses Cali (for instance math scores) Just remember when your family leaves this state because of what it is to become, remember who’s fault it will be, do not blame the republicans, independents, hillbillies, rednecks, whatever you want to say, remember it will be your fault, eventually the cycle will start over until the whole U.S.A. is consumed in this delusional mental state
I am not saying the republican platform is perfect or even close to it, but statistically it is the best option when it comes to assisting the economy. No not 99% of all republicans believe in religion, are anti-environmental, etc. you’d be surprised by how many people are lied to about this. The republican party has plenty of environmentalist, atheist, etc. its just that everyone (especially young people) are caught up in the whole lie about all republicans being white (that’s racist), anti-women, anti-gay, anti-globalwarming, etc. I have had plenty of discussions with democratic supporters (a lot of my friends) and I’ve showed them what the party is about I understand how you can “prove” that republicans are “evil” but these are the extremist, maybe if you’d actually do some research on your party’s opponent you would be more informed on which side is better for the country as a whole, you’d know that 90% of republicans aren’t anti-globalwarming- anti-atheist, anti-gay, racist, etc. I myself am a Hispanic republican, I used to support the democratic side due to me being lied to about the opposing side being evil. The reason why I switched was due to economics, literature (research opposing sides), economics, environmental science, etc. I am also an environmentalist, I recycle as much as possible, my home has green appliances, and my family has been “trying” to consume more plants (lets just say I am usually the one who eats all the fruit, vegetables, etc.) Basically don’t buy into propaganda do your own research.
Whose economy? The misguided Bible-thumping Peckerwoods or the rich, precious, little baby greed-heads at school? The reason why you switched, I expect, is because you’re in college (probably TCU) and all your associates are baby Repugs. You’re not old enough to have the personal experience, luckily, to be that selfish or black-hearted. Clearly there was an attempt to raise you right. It is obvious that you came out of good stock, but you’re getting to big for your britches. Read up on Thomas Jefferson’s religious beliefs, he was, I expect, even smarter than the authors of your religious research. You’re headed for grief with the Hotty-Totty hot-dogs. Don’t fall for it, you’re a good guy. I’m praying for you.
I agree with most of what you say, but all parties are subject to a certain amount of influence and corruption even.