AP Photo / Eric Gay
Standing in front of a portrait of President Lyndon B. Johnson, Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, begins a filibuster in an effort to kill an abortion bill, Tuesday, June 25, 2013, in Austin, Texas.
By Matthew DeLuca, Staff Writer, NBC News
The Texas legislator who stood for 11 hours in pink sneakers on Tuesday night to filibuster a bill that would have set strict new abortion limits for the state is a single mother and Harvard law grad who’s shown her grit before.
The Fort Worth Democrat’s one-woman effort to talk down the measure placing stringent restrictions on abortion clinics was ended after state senators ruled that Davis had made three rules infractions, allowing them to break the filibuster. Abortion rights activists had said that Senate Bill 5 would have effectively put an end to the practice in the state of Texas.
After Davis’ filibuster was ended late Tuesday night, legislators voted on the bill -- despite calls of protesters who tried to scream down the final 15 minutes of the special legislative session. Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst later acknowledged that the GOP-backed bill had missed its deadline.
It remained unclear when the bill might go up for a vote again, if at all. Gov. Rick Perry could immediately call the legislators back into a special session.
“Our community is thankful for Wendy Davis’ tenacity to fight for women’s health – her courage is recognized by women of Texas and her leadership reverberates across the country,” Stephanie Schriock, president of EMILY’s List, said in a statement on Tuesday.
“Today was democracy in action,” Davis told a crowd of supporters after the failed attempt at a vote, the Austin American-Statesman reported. “You all are the voices we were speaking for from the floor.”
Nothing was certain for Democrats who wanted to squash the bill on Tuesday, but then, little about Davis' political career has been predictable.
At age 19, Davis was divorced and a single mother, raising her daughter in a trailer park in Tarrant County. She took two years of community college courses before transferring to Texas Christian University, according to her state legislature profile. She became the first person in her family to graduate from college, and went on to Harvard Law School.
Davis, now 50, served nine years on the Fort Worth City Council while practicing as an attorney, then resigned in 2008 to take on a Republican incumbent in the state’s tenth district. She won a hard-fought race against Kim Brimer, securing 49.9 percent of the vote.
Texas Monthly Magazine named her “Rookie of the Year” after the 2009 legislative session.
Democratic Texas state senator Wendy Davis took over the statehouse floor for a successful marathon filibuster of an abortion-related bill that began Tuesday morning and ended 13 hours later, causing the vote on the bill to miss the deadline. NBC's Kelly O'Donnell reports.
She fended off a threat to her seat in 2012 by challenger Mark Shelton – a doctor and married father of four – by about 6,500 votes after what the Fort Worth Star-Telegram called “the state’s nastiest and most expensive legislative race this year.”
The race came after an effort by the state GOP to redraw the district and turn it redder, the Star-Tribune reported, requiring federal courts to step in.
“Hopefully, this shows that when you take care of your constituents, they will reward you by returning you to office,” Davis said at an election watch party after successfully defending her seat, according to the Star-Telegram.
Davis’ district of about 825,000 people is 47.4 percent black and Hispanic, and the number of single-parent families edges slightly above the state average, according to the most recent estimates from the Texas Legislative Council.
Tuesday night’s fireworks were not Davis’ first time making a solo stand. Two years ago she drew national attention after mounting a filibuster against a proposal to make cuts to public education funds.
That filibuster was dismissed by Gov. Rick Perry at the time, who said at a news conference, “We come here to work. We don’t come here to be show horses.”
Perhaps the former contender for the GOP presidential nod is just envious. The Texas Tribune reported that the joke among legislators and staffers under the dome of Texas’ Capitol building is that Davis is the only politician in the Lone Star state with a hairdo that outdoes that of the governor himself.
Davis describes herself as a cyclist and runner on the website of the Fort Worth-based law firm where she is a partner.
Related:
This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: 'You Say What You Like, Because They Like What You Say' - http://www.medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/alerts-2013/731-you-say-what-you-like-because-they-like-what-you-say.html
http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&usg=AFQjCNHKdDjg60HjZzzAkp-zNDrTR0iD8w&url=http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/26/19152673-lone-star-texas-lawmaker-once-a-teen-mom-leads-abortion-filibuster?lite
0 comments:
Post a Comment