Consultants for former Texas gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis warned the campaign in January that it was heading for a humiliating defeat on Election Day if it didn’t make changes quick, according to a memo obtained by the Texas Tribune.
The campaign took that advice and made one change in particular — it fired those consultants.
“The campaign is in disarray and is in danger of being embarrassed,” Democratic operatives Peter Cari and Maura Dougherty wrote in the Jan. 6 memo. “The level of dysfunction was understandable in July and August, when we had no infrastructure in place — but it doesn’t seem to be getting better.”
The memo, addressed to then-campaign manager Karin Johanson, said the campaign had “lurched to the left” and wasn’t offering a message that could turn out swing voters.
“There is not a model where a candidate who appears this liberal and culturally out of touch gets elected statewide anywhere in the south — much less in Texas — without some inoculation,” the memo said.
Ouch.
Echoing the criticisms of many conservatives, the consultants wrote that Davis’ campaign was portraying her as a “national Democrat, appealing to liberal donors in the mistaken belief that there is a hidden liberal base in Texas that will turn out to vote if they have a liberal candidate to support.”
Davis attended star-studded fundraisers in Hollywood and New York — about 27 percent of her fundraising in the first quarter came from outside of Texas.
On Feb. 11, the consultants tried again to stage an intervention — after they had been fired — by writing another letter to staffers.
“Running Wendy Davis as a generic national Democrat is not only the quickest path to 38 percent, it’s also a huge disservice to Wendy, her record and the brand she has built,” the consultants wrote.
Their prediction was pretty close — Davis got just under 39 percent.
