I hate tossing a wet blanket over Wendy Davis’s big moment, but I fear she’s spitting into the wind if she’s harboring hopes of becoming Texas’s next governor.
The Fort Worth Democratic state senator is going to a couple of Washington, D.C., fundraisers soon. The guest list includes some big hitters within the national Democratic Party. They want her to run for governor in 2014 and Davis — still fresh off her filibuster of a restrictive anti-abortion bill — is considering it.
The smart money in Texas believes that 2014 isn’t the Democrats’ year. Perhaps that time will come as the state’s demographic balance keeps changing, but it’s not here just yet. Davis is the party’s newest superstar, given all the national attention she pulled in with her marathon filibuster effort in June.
One little problem stands in Davis’s way. It’s that Texas is still a heavily Republican state. The GOP already has at least one monstrously formidable candidate running for governor, Attorney General Greg Abbott, who’s still going to face a spirited challenge within his own party from former Texas GOP chairman Tom Pauken.
Texans have shown over the past two decades that they’re going to vote Republican no matter who the party nominates for high office. The latest best example, by my way of thinking, is Railroad Commissioner David Porter, who beat a much more qualified Democratic candidate for a spot on the three-member commission in 2010.
Sen. Davis is swimming against a huge tide if she seeks the governor’s office in 2014. She’s raising a lot of money so far, nearly a million bucks in the past couple of months.
In Texas these days, however, money doesn’t speak nearly as much as party branding. The Republican brand may be poison in much of the rest of the country. In Texas, it remains a kind of political nectar.