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Texas Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst crushed in GOP primary runoff
State Senator Dan Patrick ends Dewhurst’s bid for a fourth term
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com editor
HOUSTON (CFP) — Two years after losing a U.S. Senate primary to Tea Party insurgent Ted Cruz, Texas Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst has lost his bid for a fourth term to another Tea Party-backed candidate.
Texas State Senator Dan Patrick
State Senator Dan Patrick of Cypress took 65 percent in the May 27 Republican runoff. Dewhurst trailed with just 35 percent.
Patrick will now face Democratic State Senator Leticia Van de Putte of San Antonio in November’s general election.
Patrick, 64, a conservative radio talk show host who represents a Houston-area district in the Texas Senate, had finished well ahead of Dewhurst in the first round of voting back in March. But Dewhurst poured $5 million from his own personal fortune into the runoff campaign to try to make up the difference.
Texas Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst
Dewhurst, 68, from Houston, was first elected lieutenant governor in 2002, after serving a term as state land commissioner. In 2012, he was the prohibitive favorite in the U.S. Senate primary, with the backing of Governor Rick Perry and the GOP establishment. Then, Cruz came out of nowhere to beat him in a runoff.
Patrick criticized Dewhurst for being part of the Austin establishment and also hit him for supporting in-state college tuition for the children of illegal immigrants. Dewhurst’s campaign went personal, making Patrick’s 1987 bankruptcy and his legal name change issues in the race.
Dewhurst claimed Patrick changed his name to avoid his debts. But Patrick insisted that he changed his given last name — Goeb — to Patrick because he had already been using the new name in his work as a media personality.
Asa Hutchinson and Mike Ross advance to Arkansas governor’s race
U.S. Rep. Tim Griffin wins Republican primary for lieutenant governor
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com
LITTLE ROCK (CFP) — Two former members of the U.S. House — Republican Asa Hutchinson and Democrat Mike Ross — will meet in November in the governor’s race in Arkansas.
Hutchinson, 63, easily won the GOP nomination on May 20, carrying 72 percent of the vote against Little Rock businessman Curtis Coleman. Ross, 52, won a lopsided victory in the Democratic primary over Lynette Bryant, a Little Rock physician, with 85 percent.
Hutchinson served two terms in Congress, representing northwest Arkansas, before being appointed in 2001 as head of the Drug Enforcement Administration. He has lost three previous races for statewide office, including an unsuccessful bid for governor in 2006.
After the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, last year, Hutchinson signed on as the point man for National Rifle Association’s effort to combat school violence without imposing any new restrictions on firearms.
Ross served 12 years in Congress, representing southern and western Arkansas, before retiring in 2012. In the House, he was a member of the conservative Blue Dog Coalition and was one of the few Democrats to vote against Obamacare when it came to the floor of the House.
Former U.S. Rep. Mike Ross
Ross had initially said he would not run for governor, but he jumped into the race when the Democratic front-runner, Attorney General Dustin McDaniel, withdrew after admitting to an extra-marital affair with a woman who was later charged with manslaughter.
In the primary races for lieutenant governor, U.S. Rep. Tim Griffin of Little Rock won the Republican nomination over two challengers. He will face Democrat John Burkhalter, a former member of the state highway commission from Little Rock, in November.
Poll: Greg Abbott increases lead over Wendy Davis in Texas governor’s race
New poll shows Abbott, the presumptive Republican nominee, with an 11-point gap over Davis, the only major Democrat in the race
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com editor
AUSTIN, Texas (CFP) — Republican Attorney General Greg Abbott has opened up a double-digit lead over his Democratic challenger, State Senator Wendy Davis, which is nearly double the lead he held in October.
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott
The University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll put Abbott’s support at 47 percent to 36 percent for Davis in a head-to-head match-up. Seventeen percent were undecided or had no opinion.
The latest poll comes on the heels of two controversies that have ensnared to Davis, who rocketed to national fame last summer after filibustering a bill that would have outlawed abortions in Texase after 20 weeks.
First, the Dallas Morning news raised questions about her rags-to-riches campaign biography. Then, Davis gave an interview in which she said she would have supported the anti-abortion bill if it had been worded differently.
Texas State Senator Wendy Davis
The poll found that the percentage of voters who viewed Davis unfavorably rose from 31 percent in October to 36 percent in February, while the number of voters who viewed her favorably stayed steady at 37 percent.
At the same time, Abbott made strong gains in the number of voters who viewed him favorably, which rose from 36 percent to 45 percent. Just 25 percent of voters viewed him unfavorably.
Abbott also continues to hold a staggering advantage in fundraising over Davis. Reports to the Texas Ethics Commission show he has raised $29.4 million for the race, compared to $3.9 million for Davis.
The University of Texas/Texas Tribune internet survey of 1,200 registered voters was conducted February 7-17 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.83 percentage points.
Arkansas U.S. Rep. Tim Griffin is running for lieutenant governor
Griffin, who announced in October that he was leaving Congress, enters a crowded GOP primary
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com editor
LITTLE ROCK (CFP) — Less than four months after announcing he would leave Congress to spend more time with his family, U.S. Rep. Tim Griffin has entered the lieutenant governor’s race back home in Arkansas.
U.S. Rep. Tim Griffin
In interviews with local Little Rock media February 13, Griffin said serving as lieutenant governor would allow him to remain with his young children in Arkansas rather than living in Washington.
The state’s number two spot would also set up Griffin for a potential run for governor in 2018.
Griffin, a former U.S. Attorney and aide to Karl Rove in the Bush White House, won his seat in the Republican landslide in 2010 and easily won re-election in 2012. His decision not to seek a third term in the House – at a time when he had $500,000 in campaign cash on hand — surprised the Arkansas political establishment.
His entry into the lieutenant governor’s race has already shaken up the GOP prmary, with one of the announced candidates, State Rep. Charlie Collins, exiting the race. Still in the running are State Reps. Andy Mayberry and Debra Hobbs.
Hobbs had been running for governor but announced February 12 that she would run for lieutenant governor instead.
On the Democratic side, John Burkhalter, a state highway commissioner, is the only announced candidate and has been endorsed by the likely Democractic candidate for governor, former U.S. Rep. Mike Ross.
The lieutenant governor’s office is currently vacant after Republican Mark Darr resigned rather than face likely impeachment for ethics violations. The state legislature is currently considering a bill to leave the office vacant until after the November election, rather than calling a special election to replace Darr.
Texas governor’s candidate Wendy Davis says she would back 20-week abortion ban
Davis, who shot to national prominence for filibustering a 20-week abortion ban, now says she objected only to the way the law was written
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com editor
DALLAS (CFP) — Texas State Senator Wendy Davis, the likely Democratic nominee for governor, now says she would support a ban on abortions after 20 weeks as long as the final decision were left up to mothers and their doctors, rather than under circumstances defined by the legislature.
Texas State Senator Wendy Davis
Last June, Davis garnered national attention by leading a more than 11-hour filibuster that delayed efforts by the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature to pass a bill that would have prohibited abortions after 20 weeks.
That national attention helped fuel Davis’s entry into the governor’s race, where she is expected to face Republican Attorney General Greg Abbott.
But in an interview with the editorial board of The Dallas Morning News, published February 11, Davis said she could have supported the bill if it had been written differently.
“My concern, even in the way the 20-week ban was written in this particular bill, was that it didn’t give enough deference between a woman and her doctor making this difficult decision and instead tried to legislatively define what it was,” she told the paper.
She said less than 1 percent of abortions in Texas occur after 20 weeks of pregnancy, and most of those are in cases where the mother’s health was in danger or there were fetal abnormalities.
“I would line up with most people in Texas who would prefer that that’s not something that happens outside of those two arenas,” she said.
The bill that Davis filibustered also required abortion clinics to meet the same requirements as outpatient surgery centers and forced abortion doctors to get admitting privileges at nearby hospitals. Davis also objected to both of those provisions.
Her filibuster ran out the clock on a special legislative session called by Governor Rick Perry. He promptly called another special session – which cost Texas taxpayers $800,000 – and the legislature passed the abortion restrictions, which are now being challenged in court.
After The Dallas Morning News reported Davis’s comments, her campaign insisted that what she said did not amount to a change in her position. But her comments lit up the message board on the newspaper’s Web site, where she was called “flip flop Barbie” and readers questioned the point of her filibuster.
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott
Abbott has made Davis’s filibuster an issue in conservative Texas, telling a crowd of anti-abortion activists in January that Davis is “partnering with Planned Parenthood to return Texas to late term abortion on demand.”
Abbott has been defending the new abortion restrictions in court.
Davis’s latest comments on abortion come as her campaign was fighting back against questions about the details of her life story she has told during the campaign.
Davis has highlighted her past as a divorced teenage mother who lived in a trailer before working her way through Texas Christian University and Harvard Law School. But in a January 18 story, The Morning News challenged some of those details:
- Davis divorced at 21, not 19 as she has previously said, and lived in a trailer for only a few months after the divorce with her daughter, Amber, before moving into an apartment.
- Three years later, she married for the second time, and her husband helped pay for the remainder of her education at TCU and law school at Harvard. Together, they had a second daughter, Dru.
- She left her second husband, Jeff Davis, the day after the last payment was made on her student loans at Harvard, according to Jeff Davis.
- When they divorced, Jeff Davis was granted custody of both daughters, and Wendy Davis was ordered to pay $1,200 in monthly child support.
After the story ran, Davis issued a statement clarifying some of the details of her life story. However, she defended overall impression left by her previous characterizations.
“The truth is that at age 19, I was a teenage mother living alone with my daughter in a trailer and struggling to keep us afloat on my way to a divorce,” she said. “And I knew then that I was going to have to work my way up and out of that life if I was going to give my daughter a better life and a better future, and that’s what I’ve done.”
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