AILSA CHANG, HOST:
OK. We're going to go now to somebody with a long history being in the minority when it comes to Texas politics. Democrat Wendy Davis, a former Texas state senator. Welcome.
WENDY DAVIS: Thank you. I'm so happy to be on with you today.
CHANG: So happy to have you. I want to start 12 years ago because you yourself ran for governor of Texas as a Democrat in 2014. You ran against Greg Abbott, and you lost by 20 points. And then this year, we see Democrat Gina Hinojosa also run against Greg Abbott. And she wins by this pretty comfortable margin, by about seven points. How surprised were you by that result?
DAVIS: Surprised by the degree to which she won. But I've been part of Gina's team from the jump and was privileged to be seeing the data as we were looking at what was coming in on the early vote and testing that against the way the model had been built to determine, you know, whether Gina would be ahead.
CHANG: Yeah.
DAVIS: And we felt really good going into Election Day that she was positioned to win. And unless there had been some huge, unexpected turnout by Republicans that day, we felt like she was going to win. But the fact that she won by the margin that she won by.
CHANG: Yeah.
DAVIS: The fact that every statewide race underneath her was also one that a Democrat won, that we won state Supreme Court races, but also another very near and dear project to my heart, which has been to raise money for and invest in down ballot races. We flipped 21 state House seats last night.
CHANG: And the question I have is, why do you think that was? I mean, we just heard my colleague, Ashley Lopez, talk a little bit about this. But what do you think changed between your run 12 years ago and today...
DAVIS: Yeah.
CHANG: ...To allow for such a different result against the same Republican candidate, at least in the governor's race, Greg Abbott?
DAVIS: Yeah, I mean, if you go back to 2014, it was a year of tremendous complacency by Democrats, a similar complacency to what we saw from Republicans this cycle. And there's no question that this year was an absolute repudiation of Trump and his agenda, and the fact that Greg Abbott and other state leaders had absolutely traded what had been considered their prior more traditional conservative values for MAGA. And they had leaned so hard into that. But for Greg Abbott particularly, he had leaned very hard into the cruelty of the Trump immigration agenda. And he paid a price for that last night.
CHANG: So it sounds like you - it sounds like what you're saying is last night, in Texas at least, it was more of a repudiation against Trump and Abbott and less about Democrats hitting on a different kind of message to Texans this time around?
DAVIS: No. No, I don't want to leave that impression at all. The repudiation piece was part of it. But our Democrats offered something that I think was incredibly unique and pitch perfect. And I'll use Gina as the example of this. Gina knew from the outset what she wanted to deliver for the people of Texas. She gave, consistently throughout, a message of understanding the pain that they were feeling economically, really leaning into, in a very experienced and empathetic way, what was happening to their public schools and the loss of opportunity, the fact that so many people in our state don't have healthcare. And...
CHANG: But if I may.
DAVIS: Yes.
CHANG: If I may, I want to talk about you and just...
DAVIS: Yeah.
CHANG: ...If you would like, to give you your flowers, because your name has been popping up a lot next to the name of Beto O'Rourke. As two Texas Democrats who tried to pave the way, do you feel like you helped build the momentum that we saw crest last night into this blue wave in Texas in about...
DAVIS: I think...
CHANG: ...Twenty seconds or so (laughter).
DAVIS: I think every person that runs and, you know, raises resources and energizes voters helps to build the path for the people that come afterward. Beto did better than I did. And now Gina, of course, has crested that mountain. And I couldn't be more proud to have played a role in helping that along and staying involved. And that's what Beto did, too.
CHANG: All right.
DAVIS: Neither of us have given up on our state and we never will.
CHANG: That is Democrat Wendy Davis, former Texas state Senator. Thank you.
DAVIS: Thank you.
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