Wendy Davis, Democratic candidate for Governor of Texas, got beat on Tuesday. This was
no surprise, but what was surprising was just how badly she lost. Despite a state-of-the-art grassroots organization like Battleground Texas (a group I volunteered for from March-November), 34,000 volunteers, and millions of voters contacted over and over again, Davis lost the Governor's race by the largest margin
since 1998--George W. Bush's reelection.
Battleground Texas’ major goal was to increase voter turnout—especially amongst demographic groups favorable to their candidate: women, Latinos, and young voters. In almost all aspects, they failed. Turnout dove from 38% in 2010 to 33% in 2014. A large majority of women—55%--voted for Greg Abbott, as did a huge chunk of Latinos—44%. Based on the evidence, objectively speaking Battleground Texas failed. Or did it?
The results in the Texas gubernatorial race demonstrate that a good ground game can only accomplish so much. Ground game can help shore up a couple of percentage points at the margins in an otherwise close election. Fundamentally, elections come down to the candidate and the electoral environment. Whether supporters of Wendy Davis want to admit it or not, she was an uninspiring candidate and/or disliked by the vast majority of the electorate.
Davis was rocketed to national stardom in the wake of her 11-hour filibuster against new abortion restrictions. Thankfully, those restrictions have been overturned, but in a state in which 46% of the public believe abortion should never be allowed, or only in cases of rape or incest, it was the wrong issue to bring attention to herself if Davis wanted to be Governor of Texas. It allowed Tea Party groups to unfairly label her as the “Abortion Barbie.” Couple that with her rags-to-riches narrative drawing criticism and of course the infamous wheel chair ad, and one is able to begin to piece together how this un-charismatic candidate with no clear message did not inspire much enthusiasm and was disliked by a large portion of the Texas electorate. The bottom line is that Wendy Davis was just not a good candidate for Texas in 2014.
This is not Battleground Texas’ fault, and this group did about as much as it could in a state with some of the most restrictive voter registration laws and lowest voter turnout in the country.
At the risk of this being misconstrued as insulting, the "lipstick on a pig" rhetorical expression seems appropriate here. Battleground Texas used state of the art strategies and new technologies to target and mobilize voter turnout during a campaign, and this lipstick was being rubbed on the pig that was the Wendy Davis campaign that had an unlikeable and uninspiring candidate and no clear message. But that does sound a bit harsh, and it makes it seems as though I’m calling Wendy Davis a pig. Here’s a more apt Texas-oriented metaphor: you can put BBQ sauce on mutton, but at the end of the day…it’s still mutton.
As I mentioned, I volunteered for Battleground Texas from March through Election Day, and I don’t regret it one bit. While the fruits of our labors did not manifest themselves on Tuesday, we did important work that needed to be done if we expect Texas to ever be in play. For the first time, we’ve built a network of people all over the state who started as volunteers and became friends. Neighbors helping neighbors. And in 2016 and 2018, these volunteers will be called on again to continue laying the infrastructure that we started in 2014. Each election cycle, Battleground Texas will grow stronger and more innovative. Wendy Davis may not have been a good candidate for the maiden campaign of Battleground Texas, but what about Julian Castro running for Governor in 2018? Or his brother Joaquin running for Ted Cruz’s senate seat that same year? Talk about your good candidates…