Nothing like a 6 PM on a Friday debate that people don’t know how to find on their cable service.
Sen. Wendy Davis
Democrat Wendy Davis went on the offensive against Republican Greg Abbott on issue after issue Friday in their first debate in the race for governor. Abbott, the state attorney general and frontrunner in the gubernatorial race, calmly fended off the attacks during the one-hour face off.
As the candidates faced off at the Edinburg Conference Center at Renaissance in the Rio Grande Valley, Davis took aim at Abbott’s comparison of South Texas corruption to that which occurs in third-world countries.
She targeted his defense of a voter ID law that a judicial panel has found to be discriminatory. She slammed him for defending the public education finance system in court, which he is doing by virtue of being the state’s top lawyer.
She said his defense of a system whose funding was pared back in 2011 is “just dumb,” and she pointed out that she fought those cuts through a brief filibuster that year. Davis later was among lawmakers who worked to restore the money that was cut.
You can see a video of the debate here if you missed it, and there’s more coverage from the Trib and the Observer. I’m not the debate-watching type, so my impression of how it went comes from what I’ve been seeing on social media, where most of the Davis supporters I’ve seen seem to be happy with her performance. Of course, while Davis was on the attack, Abbott was playing the equivalent of the four corners offense, which has been the Republican strategy all along and the reason why he refused to debate under any other conditions. What was your impression of the debate?
I watched, even though Kathie Glass, the Libertarian candidate, was not invited. It seems useless to have a debate without inviting all the candidates. But then, it’s so much easier to just have the Pubs and Dems agree to shut out the competition. I’d call that crony politics.