Pol gritty in pink
Tex. abort-law star
WASHINGTON — An obscure Democratic state senator in pink running shoes became an overnight political sensation — and energized both sides of the abortion debate — with a marathon onewoman filibuster in Texas.
Wendy Davis stood for 11 hours Tuesday on the state Senate floor in Austin to derail a bill that critics said would close most of the abortion clinics in Texas.
With her talkathon, Davis prevented a vote on the legislation by midnight, when a special session of the Legisture expired.
But abortion opponents were undeterred. Gov. Rick Perry announced Wednesday that he’s calling lawmakers back next week to try again.
Whatever the outcome of the abortion battle in Texas, it was undeniable that Davis had become a sudden Democratic Party star.
Davis, who became a single mom at 19, enrolled in community college and went on to graduate with honors from Harvard Law School, started Tuesday with 1,200 followers on Twitter — and had 87,000 by late Wednesday. Nearly 200,000 watched online.
Photos of her running shoes, which she wore for comfort, turned up everywhere on social media, along with the hashtag #StandWithWendy.
Even President Obama took notice of her filibuster, with a message from his official Twitter account Tuesday evening: “Something special is happening in Austin tonight.”
EMILY’s List, a political action commit- tee that supports female, prochoice candidates, saw online donations surge to roughly 10 times normal through Davis’ filibuster and into Wednesday.
PAC spokeswoman Jess McIntosh said Wednesday that staff were still tallying the donations, but called the spike “like nothing we’ve seen before.”
A former Fort Worth councilwoman, Davis, 50, won her seat in 2007 with EMILY’s List support.
“We’ve known for a long time she was a rock star, and we’re really glad the rest of the country is finding that out,” McIntosh said.
Like other abortion opponents, Jim Sedlak of the American Life League was aghast to see a constitutional process thwarted by what he called “mob action” — his description of the deafening protests from hundreds of abortion-rights activists in the gallery that prevented the Senate from voting before the midnight deadline.
“People I’ve spoken to are saying that they already want to take away the rights of the prebirth child, now they’re trying to take away all of our rights,” Sedlak
said.