March 5, 2014      3:06 PM
SILLS: WENDY DAVIS’S PRIMARY RESULT STRONGER THAN SOME REALIZE
Parsing out the Davis numbers
The
Democratic Primary of 2014 was an inauspicious beginning to what is going to be
a white-hot November election. The former has little to do with the latter.
I’m
not going to do the election post mortems here, but will instead attack a
couple of memes that have developed around Wendy
Davis’s performance. (Full disclosure: I’m Texas AFL-CIO
communications director and a Democrat, with the bruises on my forehead from
banging my head against the wall to prove it. The Texas AFL-CIO COPE
endorsed Davis for governor.)
Some
analysts have suggested that Davis’s performance was weak because Reynaldo “Ray” Madrigal got 20.94
percent of the vote. Also, they suggest an “excitement deficit” for Democrats,
as Davis got only 432,000 votes, compared to 517,487 for gubernatorial
candidate Bill White in the 2010
Democratic primary.
Turnout
was light, in part because of bad weather, a lost day of early voting on Presidents
Day and voter procrastination. But in larger part, turnout was light because
the statewide Democratic matchups were so low on the marquee that they had to be
squeezed in with tweezers. Republicans were on TV, it seemed,
more than erectile dysfunction ads. Even Democrats’ attention was distracted in
the fashion of spectators witnessing a car wreck.
The rest of Ed Sills column can be found in today's R&D Department.
By Ed Sills
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