The Daily Texan is the University of Texas’ newspaper. It is openly hard left, as many campus newspapers are.
Yet Democrat Wendy Davis’ first TV ad of her campaign for governor has managed to lose the patience of the DT.
The Davis ad, which leaves very little to the imagination, references an instance in which a woman was sexually assaulted by a Kirby vacuum salesman whom she had let into her home for a demonstration. She sued Kirby Vacuums because there was no background check conducted on the salesman, who was on probation for a sex crime. At the time, current Attorney General Greg Abbott, who is also Davis’ opponent, was an associate justice on the Texas Supreme Court. When the case reached the high court, Abbott wrote a dissenting opinion because, according to him, the manufacturer was not responsible for the local distributor’s hiring process; the local distributor employed the vacuum salesman. The highly dramatized ad along with torrential winds, shows the salesman entering the home, the woman’s children sleeping, a door shutting and the salesman leaving the house.
In an effort to portray Abbott as someone who will relentlessly side with corporations even in the horrific case of sexual assault, the incompetency of the Davis campaign has yet again come to light by exploiting what I am sure is a painful memory for the victim. Additionally, it’s hard to believe that Abbott, who has spoken out against human trafficking and obscene photography, has the same nonchalant attitude toward rape as Clayton Williams. The ad does not show a candidate who fights for women and against sexual assault; all I see is a desperate campaign that would rather go deep down in the gutter than accept a likely defeat.
Competent campaigns tend to use their first broadcast ads to introduce and define their candidate positively to the voters. Davis’ campaign has been anything but competent though. It has been rife with hires, fires and shuffles, and thanks to its hiring of Zac Petkanas from the Harry Reid delusion factory, has been on one setting for months — attack!
That’s all it does.
That won’t win, but it may be that they’re not trying to win anymore. The Davis campaign may be just trying to tear everything down.
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