Note: It has been over one month since the Dallas Morning News revealed that contrary to her official State Senate bio, Wendy Davis was never a single teenage mother.
As if to underline the fact that Wendy Davis is comfortable in the knowledge that she has little to fear from a national media that (with few exceptions) has downplayed and only grudgingly reported on her litany of biography fabrications and omissions, the Democrat Texas gubernatorial candidate has yet to correct her State Senate bio. In the second paragraph, as of this writing, the false claim of her being a teenage single mother remains.
As the Dallas Morning News reported, “Davis was 21, not 19, when she was divorced. She lived only a few months in the family mobile home while separated from her husband before moving into an apartment with her daughter.”
Davis might have separated from her first husband at age 19, but she was not “single” until she was 21. But “teenage single mother” is obviously a much better hardscrabble political talking point than the truth.
Davis’s self-made single mother story also took a hit after the Dallas Morning News discovered that her second husband took care of her kids while she attended Harvard Law. He also cashed in his 401K to help pay for her schooling and claims that she walked out on him the day after he made the final payment on her student loan. In the divorce papers, Davis was accused of adultery.
Davis has spent almost all of her time in the national spotlight making the claim that her story of life as a teenage single mother is one many women can relate to. As she spun the story, that is correct. But how many women dumped their kids on their second husband to attend Harvard Law on his dime?
Davis’s self-mythmaking might have extended to perjury over a statement the rising Democrat star made while under oath in a federal court, “I got divorced by the time I was 19 years old.”
Facts matter. Just ask the hoards of Republicans who have been pecked to death or near-death over anything our national media chooses to define as a misstatement or gaffe.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC