Is Texas gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis the ex from hell or what?

According to a report in the Dallas Morning News, she split with former husband Jeff Davis, a lawyer thirteen years her senior, the day after he made the final payment on her student loan to attend Harvard Law School.

Mr. Davis previously had paid for Ms. Davis’ last two years at Texas Christian University, according to the story. He reportedly cashed in his 401 K to help Ms. Davis get a Harvard degree. “It was ironic,” Jeff Davis told the newspaper. “I made the last payment, and it was the next day she left.”

Jonathan Tobin on Commentary’s blog gave a succinct summary of the discrepancies in Ms. Davis campaign bio and her life, which came to the public’s attention after Ms. Davis’s filibuster in the Texas legislature:

It is true she was a single, divorced mother who went on to be the first in her family to graduate college. But not only did she fudge some dates (she was divorced at 21, not 19), the true story is that her second husband paid her college tuition and then, to enable her to attend Harvard Law School, he emptied his 401(k) account and took out a loan. He also took full care of her child by her first husband and the one they had together, while she was in Cambridge, Massachusetts for three years alone. She left her husband to divorce him immediately after he’d paid off her law school debts. He sought and was granted custody of both his stepdaughter and daughter after the divorce.

Ms. Davis has responded to the Dallas Morning News story by saying that her language must be “tighter” and blaming her opponent Greg Abbot for the report. 

 

 

Tobin notes that the “unvarnished truths’ about Davis’ life likely would have posed no problem in her political life but that the “blurring” of the truth (the term the Dallas Morning News used) might. Davis trailed Abbott by six points in a November poll before the revelations.    

If a conservative woman in politics had played fast and loose with the facts of her biography, as Davis appears to have done, she would be the laughing stock of the media elite. She would be toast. In the world of political double standards, however, that may well not be Ms. Davis’ fate. While she may lose in the red state of Texas, she may go on to become a media darling. Do I see her being lionized by Washington’s feminist establishment, which would shred a Republican woman who had made similar false claims?

“The wagons are being circled around her with claims of a War on Women and sexism,” writes Legal Insurrection.

We now know a lot about Ms. Davis, but we don’t yet know how the media/feminist elite will react to the revelations.

Mr. Davis has said that the campaign asked him not to speak to the press but that he figured it was going to come out anyway. (And maybe wanted to talk anyway?)

“Only the progressive movement and the big money donors didn’t have a clue as to what they were buying into,” adds Legal Insurrection. My question: Will they even care?