Is Wendy Davis Aiming for a Spot in Hillary’s White House?

People hold up signs during a women's pro-choice rally on Capitol Hill, July 11, 2013
AP Photo/Eric Gay
Lana Shadwick

Democrat Wendy Davis is traveling to New Hampshire on Monday to campaign for Hillary Clinton. Davis also stumped for Clinton in Iowa in December.

Is Wendy Davis aiming for a seat at the table in a Hillary White House?

The Dallas Morning News reported in late September that while speaking at a coffee for Clinton attended by 40 people, Davis endorsed Clinton and said, “Hillary has demonstrated for many years her exemplary ability to lead in the face of real challenges.”

Urging the gender issue Davis added, Clinton would “hopefully knit this Congress back together” and promote an agenda of “things that really matter to American families.” She attacked Ted Cruz and congressional Republicans who would prefer a government shutdown over funding Planned Parenthood.

The local CBS affiliate in Dallas reported that Davis is headed to New Hampshire today. The state will hold its primary on February 9. The outlet also reported that Davis stumped for Hillary in Iowa in December.

Davis, a former Texas state senator from Fort Worth, is best known for her 11-hour filibuster to fight for late-term abortions (at five months). The Texas Capitol was flooded with activists on both sides of the issue. Pro-lifers sang “Amazing Grace” while pro-abortion supporters yelled “Hail Satan!” YouTube videos of the frenzied mayhem went viral on the Internet.

Life-sized “Abortion Barbie” posters greeted the Democratic gubernatorial candidate when she went to California for a high-dollar fundraising event attended by liberal Hollywood A-listers such as Steven Spielberg, as reported by Breitbart Texas. Davis’ campaign used the California poster incident as an opportunity to attempt to paint her Republican gubernatorial opponent, then attorney general Greg Abbott, as being anti-woman.

The Davis campaign issued a statement that said, “Greg Abbott’s refusal to denounce these nasty campaign posters is offensive but not surprising. This is just another in a long line of offensive actions and comments by Greg Abbott in an attempt to demean Wendy Davis and women across Texas.” The posters were by the same artist who created a tattooed Senator Ted Cruz smoking a cigarette. The Cruz posters had been plastered throughout Beverly Hills just months before. A woman in Midland, Texas, hired the artist to make the posters of Davis.

In October, Davis criticized Carly Fiorina over her remarks during a GOP presidential debate, as reported by Breitbart Texas. Davis claimed during an interview with an Austin NBC affiliate that Fiorina “alleged there were activities that took place in those [Planned Parenthood] videos that absolutely were not true.” As reported by Breitbart News, Fiorina truthfully said during the debate that there was an undercover Planned Parenthood video of an aborted fetus whose “its heart beating, its legs kicking” was alive before being dissected to sell its organs.

After her gubernatorial loss, Davis retweeted a Planned Parenthood tweet in mid-September 2015 saying, a “Gynotician” is “A politician who feels more qualified than women and their doctors to make women’s health care decisions.”

In her biography Forgetting to be Afraid, Davis said she terminated two pregnancies for medical reasons during the 1990s, as reported by Breitbart News. She said one of the babies had developed a severe brain abnormality. The other abortion involved an ectopic pregnancy. Davis was the mother of two girls at the time of the abortions.

Davis made her personal story of family struggle and financial and personal success a central part of her campaign for governor. When called on the carpet, Davis later admitted there were discrepancies in the chronological details of her personal history that were touted by herself and her political aides on the campaign trail and in her biography.

Rush Limbaugh called Davis a “fraud” and a “fake” during his radio show. Davis accused her Republican opponent Greg Abbott of being involved and said these were “dirty tricks we’re all tired of,” as reported by Breitbart News. Davis and her campaign team also accused those who called her a fraud of being sexist.

In a Dallas Morning News interview, Davis “acknowledged some chronological errors and incomplete details in what she and her aides have said about her life.” The Harvard Law graduate was reported to have explained the discrepancies by saying, “My language should be tighter. I’m learning about using broader, looser language. I need to be more focused on the detail.” After the interview, she doubled-down on her account writing in a blog post, “You’re damn right it’s a true story,” as reported by Breitbart News.

Without going into all of the numerous tales Davis and her staff told, Davis maintained that she was a struggling teenager and a single parent living in a mobile home at the age of 19. She was a divorced 21-year-old at the time, as reported by Breitbart News. Her mother, someone she said she helped support when she was just 14-years-old, did not have a sixth-grade education. Davis also told the story of being a mother while going to Harvard Law School. Her then-husband took care of their young daughters while Davis was in Boston. He also contributed significantly to her law degree, cashing out a 401(k) and paying off the end of her loans before they divorced. When they divorced in 2005, he was granted parental custody and Davis paid child support.

During the middle of the scandal for the falsehoods told by her and her campaign, Davis also flip-flopped on gun rights. As reported by Breitbart, she told the Associated Press in January 2014 that she expected to “expand where people may carry handguns.”

As late as October of 2015 after her failed gubernatorial bid, Davis retweeted this Moms Demand Action tweet:

Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America is an anti-gun group funded by Michael Bloomberg.

Lana Shadwick is a writer and legal analyst for Breitbart Texas. She has served as an associate judge and prosecutor. Follow her on Twitter @LanaShadwick2

This article has been updated.

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