By Jonathan Tilove, Austin American-Statesman (MCT)

AUSTIN, Texas — Republican Greg Abbott has defeated Democrat Wendy Davis in the race for governor. Shortly after 8 p.m., when the polls closed in El Paso, The Associated Press called the race for Abbott.

With about 40 percent of the vote counted, almost entirely early ballots, Attorney General Abbott held a commanding lead over state Sen. Davis.

With more than 2 million votes tallied, Abbott was leading Davis 58 percent to 41 percent, according to figures posted by the Texas Secretary of State’s office. Rice University political scientist Mark Jones said that the total turnout will probably end up between 5 million and 5.5 million voters. Republicans tend to do better with early voters, but Jones said Davis still appears headed to a double-digit defeat.

Victory would be the culmination of Abbott’s personal climb following a 1984 accident that left him a paraplegic to what has been an unbroken run of political success, from his appointment by Gov. George W. Bush and ultimate election and re-election to the State Supreme Court to three terms as attorney general, where he methodically laid the groundwork to succeed Gov. Rick Perry and extend Republican control of the governor’s office into its third decade.

From Day One of the campaign, it was Abbott’s to lose, and he didn’t lose it.

“She never stood a chance,” said Jones. “The fundamental of Texas identity is that it’s a red state and that absent Greg Abbott making a monumental error or serial gaffes, Wendy Davis was never going to win.”

In the most practiced parlance of the Davis campaign, Abbott was an Austin “insider” protecting the interests of his rich and powerful friends at the expense of “hard-working Texans.”

But, what virtually any Texan with a television set learned as a consequence of Abbott’s saturation television advertising was that Abbott had persevered despite being in a wheelchair, that his mother-in-law was a Mexican-American who thought very highly of him, and that Wendy Davis was politically a Barack Obama clone, in a state where the president is as unpopular as anywhere in the country.

Battleground Texas, the creation of veterans of the Obama presidential campaigns, planted its flag in Texas in February 2013 with what they said was a long and patient time horizon for laying the groundwork for Democrats to become competitive in Texas. But that timetable was dramatically accelerated when Davis entered the race as a candidate who, thanks to the Texas Senate filibuster seen round the world, generated an all-bets-are-off excitement that had the political world atwitter.

But, said political scientist Joshua Blank, who manages both the University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll and the Texas Lyceum poll, that very excitement also loosed many Democrats, in Texas and around the country, from a more sober appreciation of the enormity of the task at hand.

“Wendy Davis and Battleground Texas created a set of expectations that were wildly unrealistic and probably helped the Republicans re-energize their coalition in ways they might have had trouble with after a grueling primary and runoff and fissures within the party over just how conservative to be,” Blank said.

Abbott did not appear at all hindered by a statewide ticket that bore the imprint of Tea Party voters who held sway in the party’s contentious primary and runoffs, particularly in the contest for lieutenant governor and attorney general, where Tea Party favorites state Sens. Dan Patrick and Ken Paxton prevailed over more establishment candidates, incumbent Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and state Rep. Dan Branch

“Davis showed some promise early but that promise was somewhat illusory,” Blank said.

In the immediate aftermath of her abortion filibuster, Davis was actually better known to voters than Abbott and, the particulars of the abortion issue aside, her introduction to the broader public had a heroic aspect to it. But, over time, the electorate settled back into its partisan corners, which in Texas is a huge advantage for a Republican, and Abbott came into the race with a $21 million advantage over Davis that he more than maintained amid strong fundraising by both campaigns, enabling him to control the airwaves right up until Tuesday.

Over time, polls found, voters came to hold a generally favorable view of Abbott and an unfavorable view of Davis.

Abbott was hoping to run up the score Tuesday, both as the source of a personal mandate, but also to dispirit efforts, both homegrown and imported, to turn Texas into a battleground state in state and national elections.

Obama appeared to be all downside for Davis. The border and immigration are top issues in Texas, especially among conservatives, and Obama’s failure to visit the border during his stop in Texas earlier this year effectively ceded the issue to Texas Republicans, even as his decision to postpone any action on immigration reform disappointed some in the Latino community whose enthusiasm Davis was depending on to make a race of it.

In other states where Latinos have propelled Democratic fortunes — such as California, Nevada and Colorado — Democrats win 70 percent to 80 percent or more of the Latino vote. Not so in Texas, where the entire electorate is more conservative, and Democratic margins with Latinos are less overwhelming.

The Abbott campaign sought to inoculate itself against the insider charge by attacking Davis in ads and billboards as ethically suspect, even corrupt, trading her influence in the Texas Senate and before that on the Fort Worth City Council for title work and legal clients.

Abbott sought to defend himself against the accusation that — on issues from border security to voter ID — he and his party are hostile to the interests of Latino Texans by playing to the hilt the fact that his wife, Cecilia, would be the first Latino first lady in Texas history, and spending more time and money than previous Republican candidates in the heavily Latino Rio Grande Valley.

Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr

By Mark Z. Barabak, Los Angeles Times (MCT)

AUSTIN, Texas — In a corner near the bar at a popular taco restaurant, Wendy Davis was holding the floor.

One by one, a series of television reporters took turns asking the Democratic gubernatorial hopeful the same questions about her controversial TV ad featuring an empty wheelchair and portraying her handicapped opponent as a hypocrite.

One by one, Davis repeated the same response: how the spot was about the right to sue for big-money damages — as her rival did after being hit by a falling tree — and not about Republican Greg Abbott’s disability.

That unswerving verbal discipline and Davis’ marathoner stamina captivated onlookers around the world on a June night in 2013, when she seized the floor of the Texas Senate and talked nonstop for 11 hours to block tough anti-abortion legislation from passing. She became an instant celebrity.

Magazine covers. A book contract. A national speaking tour.

Capitalizing on her fame, Davis leaped into the governor’s race and raised tens of millions of dollars from supporters across the country.

There was talk — mostly outside Texas, it should be said — of a Davis-led ticket helping change the state’s political pigmentation from red to blue, all in one heady campaign.

That, however, seems improbable now, as Davis faces a steeply uphill race she seems likely to lose, along with the rest of the statewide Democratic slate. The only question, many say, is how badly Davis goes down and whether the margin will help or harm efforts to make Texas at least somewhat competitive for Democrats within the next decade or so.

Davis asserts she not only can but will win the governor’s race Nov. 4, noting she twice defied pundits and opinion polls in being elected to the state Senate from a Republican-leaning Fort Worth district. “I have overcome those kinds of odds before,” she said via cellphone between campaign stops in Houston.

But hers is a distinctly minority view. A Davis victory would be one of the great political upsets of this young century.

It was never going to be easy, notwithstanding Davis’ devout national following; winning hearts and minds on the liberal Westside of Los Angeles yields precisely zero votes in conservative West Texas.

But in many ways her celebrity outran her skills as a campaigner and the abilities of those surrounding her, leading to several early mistakes that compounded Davis’ difficulties.

Inaccuracies surfaced in her biography, stealing some of the glow from the teen-mom-goes-from-trailer-park-to-Harvard-Law-School narrative prominently featured in coverage of her filibuster. (It turned out Davis didn’t spend all that much time in a trailer park, was 21 at the time she divorced her first husband and received more financial and parenting support from her second husband than the narrative let on.)

Her message to Texas voters was a muddle, and the ineptitude of her press operation both angered reporters and kept them from covering campaign events, hampering Davis’ efforts to become known in this culturally conservative state for something beyond the abortion issue.

Many of those problems have been remedied and by most accounts Davis has improved as a campaigner. Still, she will never be mistaken for one of the characters — think of the swaggering Rick Perry, or rapier-tongued Ann Richards, to cite two colorful governors — that inhabit Texas political lore.

“She’s not animated in a way that gets larger with the stage,” said Bill Miller, a longtime lobbyist in Austin. “Put her in a hall with 500 people and that wow kind of goes away.”

But Davis is smart and substantive — even many critics grant her that, save those who demean the petite blonde with the label “Abortion Barbie.”

There are plenty of issues in the campaign and no end of disagreements between Davis and Abbott, the state attorney general — starting with abortion, which Abbott opposes in all instances, except when the life of a mother is in danger. (The abortion bill Davis temporarily blocked was eventually passed and signed into law by Perry, though portions have been held up in court.)

The two candidates differ over same-sex marriage, raising the minimum wage and whether Texas should issue driver’s permits to people in the state illegally — Davis favors all three, Abbott is opposed. They also clash over whether the state should accept federal money to expand Medicaid under the new health care law: Davis favors doing so, and Abbott backs Perry’s decision to decline the funds.

But those differences pale beside the brute reality of Texas politics. “Given the numbers, having an ‘R’ next to your name is tantamount to victory,” said Mark Jones, who teaches political science at Houston’s Rice University.

Pushing back, Davis has sought to disqualify Abbott with a harsh and relentlessly negative campaign, tying him to the cronyism that has taken root in Austin after years of one-party rule. (No Democrat has won statewide office since 1994.)

One attention-grabbing ad accused Abbott of “siding with a corporation over a rape victim,” citing his ruling as a state Supreme Court justice in a case involving damages awarded to a woman sexually assaulted by a door-to-door vacuum salesman.

That charge and others resurfaced in the wheelchair ad, which accused Abbott of denying victims of grievous bodily harm the same right to sue for damages he exercised after being left paralyzed while jogging through a Houston neighborhood in 1984.

Abbott’s campaign was quick to condemn the ad as desperate and “disgusting” and even some Democrats cringed, which led to Davis’ recent stop at Guero’s Taco Bar, where she was seated among a dozen supporters — seven in wheelchairs.

After a bit of stilted small talk for the cameras, Davis did her roundelay of media interviews. “I stand by the ad,” she told reporters. “The ad serves a single purpose and it is to call Greg Abbott out for his hypocrisy.”

The candidate’s struggles inside Texas — to defend her judgment, to spur Democrats to the polls, to convince people the governor’s race is not yet over — has dampened expectations the state will be turning blue anytime soon. But Davis continues to attract a large and adoring audience.

Cosmopolitan magazine this month offered a ringing endorsement, describing Davis as “an American icon” and “a role model for the many who work to build a big life from a difficult place.” In less than two weeks, the editorial was shared on social media 1.6 million times.

Photo: The Texas Tribune via Flickr

By Anna M. Tinsley, Fort Worth Star-Telegram (MCT)

FORT WORTH, Texas — She has defied long odds before.

But most analysts say her winning streak is about to end.

With early voting underway for the Nov. 4 election, state Sen. Wendy Davis of Fort Worth is in the home stretch of her all-but-impossible task: Persuading Texans to put a Democrat in the Governor’s Mansion after nearly two decades of Republican leadership.

To become the state’s 48th governor, she must best the well-known, heavily financed GOP nominee, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott.

And while she has seen unlikely wins before in Tarrant County — knocking off established state Sen. Kim Brimer (R-Arlington) in her first bid for Texas Senate and winning an unlikely re-election bid over then-state Rep. Mark Shelton (R-Fort Worth) — experts and operatives in both parties agree pulling off a statewide surprise isn’t in the cards this time.

“Texas continues to be a very red state,” said Mark P. Jones, a political science professor at Rice University in Houston. “Today, every Democratic statewide candidate starts off at around a 15-point disadvantage, a gap which is virtually impossible to overcome barring significant and visible unforced errors by their GOP rival.

“Wendy Davis’ odds of victory right now are at best 1-in-100, with only an almost unprecedented October surprise standing between Greg Abbott and victory,” he said. “The Davis campaign was a long shot the day she launched her candidacy and continues to be one today.”

That’s what pundits have predicted in past races Davis has run — and won, said state Rep. Chris Turner (D-Grand Prairie), who is Davis’ campaign manager.

“That’s exactly what people said in 2008 and 2012, in Wendy’s two state Senate races,” he said. “She proved them wrong both times.

“People thought she couldn’t win, and she did it on the strength of having broad support.”

And he said she will do it again this time.

Republicans have long claimed Abbott is the heir apparent to Gov. Rick Perry. He has led in the polls and in fundraising, with the most recent reports showing he has $30 million to her $5.7 million in cash on hand.

When Davis entered the race, even Democrats said she faced an uphill battle in Texas, where their party last won statewide office in 1994 and hasn’t given their gubernatorial candidate more than 45 percent of the vote since Ann Richards won with 49 percent in 1990.

No matter what happens on Election Day, some local Democrats say they still believe in Davis.

“We knew that any Democrat — whether it was Wendy Davis or somebody else — who ran for governor would have an uphill battle,” said Steve Maxwell, a former Tarrant County Democratic Party chairman. “Heck, George Washington himself could come back to life, move to Texas, run as a Democrat and lose.

“I still think that it’s an uphill battle, but I’m not going to be one bit surprised that she pulls it off.”

Others have the utmost confidence in Abbott.

“He will be much better for Texas than Wendy Davis can be,” Shelton said. “I think he’s going to be a great governor.”

Other candidates on the ballot for governor are Libertarian Kathie Glass and Green Party candidate Brandon Parmer.
___

Davis has prevailed in races she wasn’t expected to win.

She beat a sitting Republican senator, Brimer, in 2008, in a district that had morphed into a “swing district,” meaning it could sway to either party depending on turnout.

That year, Brimer and others filed lawsuits claiming Davis wasn’t eligible to run for the Senate seat because she was still a City Council member when she filed to run. A state district court ruled she was an eligible candidate.

She won with 49.91 percent of the vote to Brimer’s 47.52 percent and Libertarian Richard A. Cross’ 2.56 percent of the vote.

“Kim Brimer did not run a strong campaign against Wendy Davis,” said Allan Saxe, an associate political science professor at the University of Texas at Arlington. “(And) a third-party candidate may have taken away some conservative votes that may have gone to Brimer.”

In 2012, she bested Shelton, a local pediatrician who was backed by Republicans across the state who wanted to reclaim Senate District 10 for their party.

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst was among those who campaigned for Shelton. “I would love to see a conservative that understands what we need to do” elected to that seat, Dewhurst said at the time. “I’ve got my fingers crossed that the next senator (for District 10 is) Mark Shelton.”

Davis claimed 51.12 percent of the vote to Shelton’s 48.87 percent.

Meanwhile, Abbott has won all of his statewide elections handily — first as a justice on the Texas Supreme Court and then as Texas’ attorney general.

His lowest margin of victory came in 2002, when he first ran for attorney general, and he bested Democrat Kirk Watson by claiming 56.72 percent of the vote.

His highest margin of victory came in 1996, when he was first on the ballot for the Texas Supreme Court, and he drew 84.10 percent of the vote. He was first appointed to the court by then-Gov. George W. Bush in 1995.
___

Some say Davis was helped in 2008 and 2012 because Barack Obama was at the top of the ticket and voters in Texas and nationwide flocked to the polls to weigh in on the historic elections.

Both years, more than 8 million Texans voted in the presidential elections, compared with the less than 5 million who generally cast ballots in the gubernatorial elections, state election records show.

“Wendy has never been on a ballot for state office when Obama was not at the top of the ballot,” Shelton said. “In 2012, I was running against Wendy. But I was also running against Obama. He was bringing out the votes.”

Turner noted that Obama did not win Senate District 10 either of those years.

“And she won anyway,” he said. “This is an election about who is going to lead Texas into the future. As much as Greg Abbott and others would like to make it about national politics, it’s about who is going to fight for our schoolchildren (and) equal pay for women, and who is going to clean up the culture of corruption in Austin.”

Obama isn’t on the ballot this year, but his wife, first lady Michelle Obama, has already recorded a radio ad encouraging voters to support Davis.

And former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — a Democrat and potential 2016 presidential contender — has sent out an email asking Democrats to support Davis and donate to her campaign.

___

Davis gained national attention last year from her more than 11-hour filibuster against a comprehensive abortion bill, helping propel her into the gubernatorial race.

But political observers say the massive number of people who focused on the Texas Capitol for the debate over that bill the night it died, and the night a few weeks later when it passed, may not be tuned in to politics right now.

Some say abortion — a controversial, divisive, highly emotional issue — could be the very issue that prevents some Texans from supporting her.

“Her filibuster hurt her more than she understands,” Shelton said.

For so long, Davis focused on other campaign issues — education, veterans, budget, transportation. Then, in September, she released a campaign memoir, Forgetting to Be Afraid, that noted she ended two pregnancies for medical reasons in the 1990s, bringing the issue full circle.

One was an ectopic pregnancy, where an embryo is outside the uterus, and in the other, the fetus had a severe brain abnormality.
___

Historically, more voters turn out for presidential than midterm elections.

Recent presidential elections drew 59 percent (2012), 63 percent (2008), 61 percent (2004) and 55 percent (2000) turnout nationwide, according to the Center for Voting and Democracy.

That’s compared with midterm elections that drew 42 percent (2010), 41 percent (2006), 41 percent (2002) and 39 percent (1998) nationwide.

Part of Davis’ strategy has long been to try to draw some of those presidential-election-only-voters out to the polls this year, Turner said.

“Turnout drops off across the board in every state in a non-presidential year,” he said. “A key part of our strategy in this campaign has been to reach out and engage Democratic voters who don’t typically vote in a non-presidential year.

“We know there are enough voters out there.”

The “margin of defeat” is always a big factor to both political parties, no matter who the victor is.

In 2010, Perry bested Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill White, 55 percent to 42 percent. In 2006, he claimed 39 percent to win over Democrat Chris Bell (30 percent), independent Carole Keeton Strayhorn (18 percent) and independent Kinky Friedman (12 percent), state election records show.

And in 2002, Perry earned 58 percent over Democrat Tony Sanchez, who had 40 percent.

“The interesting aspect of this race is not whether or not Wendy Davis is going to lose,” Jones said. “There is no real doubt that she is going to lose, and really there never has been.

“If she loses by more than Bill White (12.7 percentage points) in 2010, then that will represent a serious political setback for both Davis and Texas Democrats.”

But if she reduces that margin, “then that would generate a virtuous circle of optimism, enthusiasm, expanding resources and higher candidate quality within the Texas Democratic Party, as well as place Davis (in) position for any future statewide political candidacy.”

Photo: The Texas Tribune via Flickr