Former state senator Wendy Davis has announced she is officially running for Congress. Davis intends to unseat Congressman Chip Roy, a freshman Republican whose district includes parts of Bexar County.
Davis made her announcement with a video that begins with her father, Jerry Rusell, reading a letter of encouragement he wrote about his daughter’s life before he passed away in 2013.
“As a little girl she was always the caregiver, the arbiter, the teacher and always very intelligent and fair minded and I think you will agree those have always been the qualities that have made her a great leader,” Russell said in 2007 video recording.
Davis throughout the video responded to her father's words with her own reflections and clips from her time in public office.
“I’m running for Congress because people’s voices are still being silenced, I’m running for our children and grandchildren so they live and love and fight for change themselves and dad, we’re going to win,” Davis said.
Davis gained national attention in 2013 when she filibustered House Bill 2, a bill aiming to restrict women’s access to abortion. She then mounted an unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign against Greg Abbott in 2014.
Nearly three years after her famed filibuster, Davis went on to form the non-profit, Deeds Not Words, a campus-led initiative aimed at promoting young women pursuing equal representation in every space of society.
During the 2012 presidential election, over 38-percent of voters in congressional district 21 cast a ballot for Barack Obama. The following election, Hilary Clinton claimed over 44-percent of the vote.
If Davis wins the March primary, she will face Republian incumbent Chip Roy, who was elected last November after defeating his Democratic opponent Joseph Kopser by less than 3 percentage points.
Ryan Poppe can be reached at RPoppe@TPR.org and on Twitter at @RyanPoppe1.
