The gloves are really coming off now:
http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com/...
The Wendy Davis campaign is focusing on opponent Greg Abbott’s role as an overseer of the scandal-marred Texas cancer-research agency in a new, strongly worded line of attack. Millions of dollars earmarked for cancer research went to Abbott’s political donors. Abbott was named in the law creating the agency as a member of the oversight board, but he didn’t attend any of the meetings, sending an aide instead who had a checkered attendance record.
In a new online campaign video, the Davis camp accuses Abbott of being a political insider more concerned about his donors than regular Texans. The video mixes TV and newspaper accounts of the scandal at the Cancer Prevention Research Institute of Texas in which one person has been indicted, the board replaced and new rules imposed to avoid future questionable grants made without proper medical review. A grand jury in Austin is looking into a complaint that Republican Gov. Rick Perry, whose contributors also received money from the agency, sought to replace the Travis County district attorney by withholding state funds while the district attorney’s office was investigating cancer institute.
Abbott has defended his decision not to attend board meetings. He says that as attorney general, he wanted to avoid any potential conflict of interest in event his office ever had to investigate wrongdoing by the agency. After newspaper reports of questionable grants to well-connected political donors of Perry and Abbott, the attorney general announced he would investigate.
The commercial is the most hard-hitting attack on Abbott to date by the Davis campaign on the cancer issue. A Davis ally, being interviewed by a television station, appears in the spot calling it ”an unprecedented scandal” touching most Texas families. The spot concludes with this tag line: “He’s another insider just not working for you.” - Dallas Morning News, 5/13/14
Davis won't let Abbott off the hook on this issue and has been hitting him on this. But this issue really does deserve a lot of attention. The Dallas Morning News raised questions about Abbott's role last year:
http://www.dallasnews.com/...
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has a seat on the committee, which is the governing board of the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas. But he didn’t show up for this critical meeting.
It’s not that Abbott was unavailable. That same day, he gave an interview to Fox News on the presidential election.
Abbott’s absence from CPRIT’s crucial deliberations was hardly unusual. Though state law grants a seat to the attorney general or one of his staff members, Abbott never has attended any of CPRIT’s 23 meetings. Even as the agency was barreling toward near-death, he sent an aide to fill the chair.
A succession of problems has beset CPRIT: conflicts of interest, allegations of favoritism, widespread resignations, and an $11 million grant made to a Dallas company without the required scientific or business review.
But the attorney general, the state’s chief legal officer, demonstrated little apparent interest, based on his correspondence. Over the past five years, Abbott exchanged only nine emails with key state officials concerning CPRIT, an examination of records by The Dallas Morning News found.
Abbott said his behavior arose from his anticipation of possible future conflicts. Picking a high-ranking assistant to take his place “allowed me to retain the independence to take action to respond to any broader challenges posed by CPRIT,” Abbott said in a written statement. “Hindsight proved foresight correct.”
Despite his proclamations of independence, the attorney general — a possible candidate for governor — now has entered a political and bureaucratic maze at CPRIT.
Last December, Abbott’s office announced that it would investigate CPRIT. Abbott is therefore in the position of investigating an agency over which his office already had oversight. As part of this inquiry, the attorney general potentially is looking into the behavior of board members from whom he has accepted campaign contributions.
To complicate matters further, Abbott is investigating the agency’s granting of money to a company that had an Abbott campaign donor as an investor. A law firm representing that company also has served as legal counsel for Abbott’s campaign organization. That same law firm has contributed $160,000 to Abbott’s campaigns since 2001.
In addition, Abbott’s office is representing CPRIT, as legal counsel, in its dispute with a foundation created to raise private funds for the public agency. Among the foundation’s donors are people who also have given money to Abbott’s campaigns. - Dallas Morning News, 5/11/13
And Davis isn't the only one hitting Abbott on this issue:
http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com/...
A political group allied with Wendy Davis opened an attack Monday using cancer survivors to highlight allegations Republicans Greg Abbott and Rick Perry benefitted from money designed for cancer research. The Progress Texas political committee began airing an on-lined video accusing the state leaders of complicity in the scandal. One cancer-agency official has been indicted, the agency board has been replaced and a grand jury is investigating. Perry, who is considering another race for president, was instrumental in creation of the state cancer-research agency. Agency grants have gone to political donors. As attorney general, Abbott was on the oversight board that failed to take action to avoid questionable grants, including at least one to an Abbott campaign donor.
After The Dallas Morning News first broke stories raising questions about funding problems, Abbott’s office announced it would investigate what went wrong at the Cancer Prevention and Research Fund. That announcement put Abbott in the position of investigating an agency over which his office already had oversight. That means the attorney general potentially is looking into the behavior of board members who are his campaign donors. Abbott says he sees no problems with these arrangements.
A grand jury investigation of Rick Perry is now underway for his threatening to withhold state funding for the Travis County District Attorney – while she was investigating activities at the cancer research fund. Perry has denied any wrongdoing.
The Davis camp is expected to use the issue to raise questions about Abbott’s ethics in office and to combat Dallas Morning News stories about Davis, who faces Abbott in the November race for governor. Abbott has accused his Democratic rival of ethical breaches after Dallas Morning News stories that reported that Davis voted as a state senator on bills that aided a private client. - Dallas Morning News, 5/5/14
Hopefully this issue will gain traction. In other related news, Davis' campaign keeps on growing:
http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/...
The Democratic candidate for governor opened her first office in the Rio Grande Valley on Monday night with harsh words for her Republican opponent, complimentary ones for the region and a few ideas for the future of Texas.
It took state Sen. Wendy Davis one minute and 39 seconds of her speech commemorating the opening of a campaign headquarters in a storefront on North Ware Road to first mention Texas Attorney General and Republican gubernatorial nominee Greg Abbott. She continued a line of attack her campaign has used in recent days that Abbott let his supporters “pilfer” millions of dollars from a state cancer research agency.
Then she pivoted to attacks on Abbott’s positions on equal pay for women, voting rights for minorities, education funding and his comments earlier this year that the political corruption in the Valley was similar to “third-world country practices.”
“You know what? I’m fed up with people not telling the whole story about the Valley,” she said. “I’m sick of them ignoring the fact that our border cities are among the safest in this state.”
She delivered a roughly 15-minute speech to dozens of supporters who stood in a back room in the new office, fanning themselves with red, white and blue campaign placards. They chanted her name as she arrived and many waited in the sweltering room after she spoke to talk to her individually. - The Brownsville Herald, 5/13/14
And she keeps on raising big money from big names:
http://abcnews.go.com/...
Some of Hollywood’s biggest power players are about to open up their wallets for Democrat Wendy Davis’s gubernatorial campaign in Texas.
J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Steven Spielberg are hosting a celebration and fundraiser for Wendy Davis on May 22 in Santa Monica, Calif., the Davis campaign confirmed. The soiree will be hosted on the rooftop of Bad Robot, the production company owned by Abrams.
A donation of $1,000 will get you in the door, but to be a co-host, you must raise or contribute $10,000, while hosts will fork over $25,000. Contributions will be evenly split between Davis’ gubernatorial campaign and Battleground Texas, a Democratic political action committee aimed at making Texas a swing state. - ABC News, 5/14/14
And while the DGA may not be ready to get in this race, she still has one huge group backing her:
http://onpolitics.usatoday.com/...
“Until we are 50% of the governors and 50% of the Senate and 50% of the House, we can take some risks,” EMILY’s List President Stephanie Schriock told USA TODAY and Gannett reporters Monday. “We see a path to victory for Wendy Davis. We’re not saying it’s easy, but there is a path.”
EMILY’s List, which supports Democratic women who favor abortion rights, has been with Davis from the beginning and helped her as she gained national prominence. Schriock vowed EMILY’s List will be with Davis “all the way.”
“And we’ll do everything we can to change the minds of our friends, so by the time summer rolls around or maybe early fall, Gov. Shumlin and others are thinking, ‘Wow. Maybe we should get involved in Texas,’ and then we have done our job,” she said.
Schriock said EMILY’s List is on pace to exceed the $52 million it spent in the 2012 presidential election. - USA Today, 5/12/14
Now I may not always agree with the candidates EMILY's List backs (Colleen Hanabusa) but I am happy that they aren't giving up on Davis. I won't give up either and I hope you won't as well. If you want to get involved and donate to Davis' campaign, you can do so here:
http://www.wendydavistexas.com/