Robert W. Hart for The Texas Tribune
State Senator Wendy Davis of Texas, was flanked by her father, left, and her two daughters while giving her victory speech on Nov. 6. Senator Davis, a Democrat, was first elected in 2008.
AUSTIN, Tex. — She was a state senator Tuesday morning. By Wednesday, she was a political celebrity known across the nation. But also hoarse, hungry and thirsty.
The leg-numbing filibuster by Wendy Davis, a Fort Worth Democrat — in which she stood and talked for more than 11 hours at the Capitol here, never sitting, eating, drinking or even using the bathroom to help block passage of an anti-abortion bill supported by the state's top Republicans — was not the longest such marathon, by Texas standards.
But it didn't matter.
Her feat of stamina and conviction gained thousands of Twitter followers in a matter of hours. Pictures of the sneakers she wore beneath her dress zoomed across computer and television screens. The press corps demanded to know her shoe brand. (Mizuno, it turned out.) Hundreds of men, women and children waited for hours at the Capitol to sit in an upstairs gallery and watch her in action, standing in lines that snaked around the rotunda. Even President Obama noticed, posting a Twitter message on Tuesday that read, "Something special is happening in Austin tonight."
Ms. Davis, 50, has known long odds and, for Democrats, was the perfect symbol in a fight over what a woman can do. She was a teenager when her first child was born, but managed as a single mother to pull herself from a trailer park to Harvard Law School to a hard-fought seat in the Texas Senate, a rare liberal representing conservative Tarrant County. According to Mark P. Jones, a political science professor at Rice University in Houston, she had the second-most liberal voting record in the Senate in 2011.
"We have a State Capitol that is made up of people, for the most part, who are elected by Anglo communities, suburban and rural, and they are the majority voice in the Capitol, although they aren't reflective of the majority of the state of Texas," she said in a previous interview.
On Tuesday night, as she stood in her salmon-colored running shoes on the green carpeted floor of the Senate chamber and spoke about the bill from 11:18 a.m. to about 10 p.m., Republicans monitored virtually her every move and word, waiting to catch her violating Texas' obscure filibuster rules, which prohibited her from leaning on her desk or straying off topic. At one point they objected when a fellow Democrat tried to help put a back brace around Ms. Davis, who at that point had been standing for about seven hours straight.
"I'm tired, but really happy," Ms. Davis told reporters in the Senate chamber at 3:20 a.m. Wednesday as she finally made her way out of the building. "I'm pleased to know that a spotlight is shining on Texas, a spotlight is shining on the failure of our current leadership." She was congratulated by lawmakers and women's rights advocates. But the celebration was short-lived. Hours later, Gov. Rick Perry announced that a second special session would begin Monday so lawmakers could take up the abortion bill once more. Analysts said the bill would probably pass this time because Democrats in the Republican-controlled Senate would be unable to delay for an entire 30-day session.
As a lawmaker elected to the Senate in 2008, Ms. Davis has shown charisma and guts, and her life story has moved voters. At the age of 14, she worked after-school jobs to help support her mother and three siblings.
"My mother only had a sixth-grade education, and it was really a struggle for us," she said in a 2011 video for Generation TX. She said she fell through the cracks in high school, and shortly after she graduated, she got married and divorced, and was a single mother by age 19.
"I was living in a mobile home in southeast Fort Worth, and I was destined to live the life that I watched my mother live," she said in the video. A co-worker showed her a brochure for Tarrant County College, and she took classes to become a paralegal, working two jobs at the same time. From there she received a scholarship to attend Texas Christian University in Fort Worth — becoming the first person in her family to earn a bachelor's degree — and then went on to Harvard. "When I was accepted into Harvard Law School, I remember thinking about who I am, and where I came from, and where I had been only a few years before," she said.
Brian Stelter contributed reporting from New York.
Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang
In Texas, a Senator’s Stand Catches the Spotlight
Dengan url
https://dunialuasekali.blogspot.com/2013/06/in-texas-senatoras-stand-catches.html
Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya
In Texas, a Senator’s Stand Catches the Spotlight
namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link
In Texas, a Senator’s Stand Catches the Spotlight
sebagai sumbernya
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar