Wendy Davis’ Hollywood ending will require a Texas-size comeback

Her story was ripe for Hollywood: A single mother from a trailer park who in one day during the hot summer of 2013 became the heroine of the abortion-rights movement — who then graced the pages of Vogue before announcing her candidacy for governor of Texas, a state that hasn’t seen a Democrat in that position for 20 years.

If Hollywood ever decided to put the story of Wendy Davis on celluloid, it would need a Hollywood ending. But judging from recent opinion polls, it will be an uphill climb to the governor’s mansion and the result Democrats so badly want, and that climb has been made even more difficult after some early miscues by her campaign.

In June last year, Davis, 50, a state senator since 2008, stood speaking for 11 hours in the hallowed chambers of the Texas state Capitol in a pair of pink sneakers (and at one stage a back brace) in an attempt to block restrictive abortion regulation. The filibuster worked, and the bill died in the chamber that night, but the next day Gov. Rick Perry called a special session, and it passed both houses.

Davis became the darling of the Democratic Party, and a little more than three months later, she announced her intention to run for governor in 2014. In March she won the Democratic nomination but not before The Dallas Morning News ran a story questioning her biography. Davis, the newspaper reported, lived in her family’s trailer home for only a few months after divorcing her first husband, and her second husband supported her financially while she was at Harvard Law School. For good measure, there was also an allegation that she left her kids back in Texas, painting her as an ambitious, bad mother.

The same month, Dave Mann, editor of The Texas Observer, the state’s leading progressive news magazine, wrote a story saying the campaign’s mismanagement of the press was damaging her candidacy. Her operation was, he wrote, “about the worst at media relations that I’ve ever seen.”

Mann attributed the “foul-ups” to her hiring what he termed a “relatively inexperienced communications team that had spent little to no time working as reporters.” Misdirecting reporters to events, treating the press with suspicion, refusing to confirm basic scheduling details and putting the kibosh on interviews with major outlets were just some of the faux pas that Mann listed.

At a campaign stop in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, Mann wrote, when a reporter “asked the candidate about her statement, at an earlier event in the valley, that Davis was ‘pro-life’ … a predictable question given the campaign’s reluctance to even say the word ‘abortion,’” her press aide Rebecca Acuña jumped in and said the comment had been taken out of context.

“You almost never see a flack jump in front of their boss like that,” he wrote. “Makes the politician look weak.”

Mann told Al Jazeera that instead of responding immediately to the Morning News story — specifically about her ex-husband’s helping her go to Harvard and her dedication as a mother — her campaign staff “let this story hang out there for 10 days. Then her daughters came out responding forcefully to it, but her campaign had ignored it for too long. It was almost like John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election campaign with the Swift Boat Veterans. Kerry ignored it for a while, and this was a serious mistake. By the time he responded, it was too late, and people had already developed an impression of him.”

The Davis campaign rebooted and brought in the big guns — most notably, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s former communications chief Zac Petkanas.

In addition, it could rely on Battleground Texas — a grass-roots organization founded in 2013 by Jeremy Bird, who had been the national field director for President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign — to organize at the local level, knock on doors and canvass to boost voter turnout. Battleground also used digital technology, so skillfully employed in the Obama campaign, to reach out to would-be voters.

It’s worth pointing out here that despite its having seemingly taken stock of itself, the Davis campaign took a month to respond to requests by Al Jazeera to talk to someone for this story, despite numerous calls and emails.

If its media-relations strategy is still shaky, its prospects are shakier still, according to the latest polls. They show that Davis’ opponent Greg Abbott, attorney general of Texas, is ahead with a steady double-digit lead. (The left-leaning Public Policy Polling survey in mid-April showed Abbott leading Davis 51 to 37 percent.)

“Most troubling for the Davis campaign,” wrote The Austin-American Statesman, “is that nearly half the electorate has an unfavorable view of [her].”

“Right after her Senate filibuster of abortion legislation in June, a Public Policy Polling survey found Davis had a 39 percent favorable rating, compared to 29 percent who viewed her unfavorably,” The Statesman wrote. “That has now flipped, and only 33 percent view her in a positive light, while 47 percent hold a negative view of her.”

Jim Henson, director of the Texas politics project at the University of Texas, told Al Jazeera that it’s early but those numbers are unsurprising.

“Republicans have pretty substantial financial advantages and party identification,” he said. “And for gubernatorial elections in Texas, there is usually a low Democratic turnout compared to presidential [election] years.”

But Henson said some Democratic voters may be hidden in plain sight: Hispanic Democrats have not shown up to vote in large numbers in gubernatorial and even presidential elections.

“But there are potential voters out there,” he said.

The question, he said, is whether mobilization efforts can engage, register and remain in contact with enough of those voters between now and November to reverse a decade-long trend.

“It’s a pretty tall order,” he said, adding that if Davis loses by less than double digits in November, those efforts should be judged a success.

Mann said despite the rocky start to the campaign, things have gotten a lot better in the last couple of months.

“The filibuster, Vogue spread and other media appearances happened before she had gotten in the race,” he said. “But after that, she had to do the hard work — hire staff, raise money, formulate a campaign strategy — and because Texas is so big, you really need a large operation.

“A level of disorganization is not uncommon when big campaign operations are just getting off the ground, and there are not a lot of Democrats around who have experience doing it well — not many who have success running successful statewide campaigns here in Texas.”

Despite the filibuster, there was even confusion over Davis’ stance on abortion, which Mann said stems from the fact that it is a rather complicated policy issue.

“It takes explanation,” he said. “But in a campaign, communicating nuanced policy positions is difficult and can come across as muddled. Davis is pro-choice. What she said — and this has been her position all along — is that of all the abortion restrictions, the one she could probably support in some form is a 20-week abortion ban. So few women get an abortion after 20 weeks, and those that do, do so largely because of medical reasons. So Davis said she could support that if there was an exemption for severe abnormalities, in cases of rape or the health of the mother was in jeopardy.”

She came out in support of open-carry legislation, which would allow Texans to openly carry handguns. Her position is the same as her pro–Second Amendment opponent Abbott. Mann said it just showed that Davis is a centrist politician.

“She is not a raging liberal,” he said. “She has a close relationship with the Fort Worth business community. She became famous for the abortion filibuster, but she’s trying to get away from the image of ‘Abortion Barbie’ [the pejorative moniker given to her by Fox News pundit Erick Erickson], showing that she’s not just a one-issue candidate.”

Mann said the Davis campaign has been pushing her position on education hard — and in the process slamming Abbott.

Jeff Rotkoff, who runs Pinpoint Public Affairs, a consulting firm specializing in political campaigns — and who acts as adviser to liberal donors Steven and Amber Mostyn, who have so far pumped $1 million into Davis’ gubernatorial bid — agrees that the campaign has not been flawless but noted that a flawless campaign is an unrealistic expectation.

“For people who manage campaigns for a living, every campaign is an exercise in crisis management,” he said. “The Davis campaign may have received criticism, but those issues are months in the past.”

The challenge for her campaign now, Rotkoff said, is to increase voter turnout and stem apathy.

“To steal a line … elections are like the Powerball,” he said. “At the $500 million jackpot, everyone goes for it. That’s like a presidential election. But with the governor’s race, some voters tend not to think the stakes are as high. Our task is to convince voters that they are.”

Rotkoff describes Texas as ground zero for issues the electorate cares about.

“Education, women’s health, stopping gun deaths and violence? Come to Texas,” he said. “And so this race is important nationally. Certainly there’s greater interest nationally than there ever has been.”

Petkanas, Davis’ new communications director, told Al Jazeera that the election has always been about making sure there’s a clear choice between the two candidates. Over the last few weeks, that strategy seems to be largely about attacking Abbott.

Ellis Brachman, a spokesman for Battleground Texas, insists there’s still time for the Davis campaign’s strategy to bear fruit. Texas, he insists, is not deep red.

“It’s just that those turning out to vote are Republicans,” he said. “It’s a very large state, so national campaigns have a hard time making the kind of investment necessary to change that.”

Regardless, he said Battleground Texas is in it for the long haul.

“There is no question that Democrats are the underdogs in Texas, but we’re putting up a really good fight, and we’re engaging,” Brachman said. “And there’s a long time between now and November. Texas has not seen the kind of effort you’re going to see here this year. We’re going to rewrite the book on how you engage in Texas. It’s too early to trust in the polling.”

Battleground and the Davis campaign aim to reach the people who have not historically turned out in large numbers to vote.

“Not just the Hispanic vote but the African-American vote, suburban women, Asian-Americans, young voters, college students,” Brachman said. “Texas isn’t a red state. It’s a nonvoting state. And we’re going to change that.”