Davis prepares for new role in Texas Legislature
For newly elected State Sen. Wendy Davis, a tough background and concerns about issues in her community led her to a career in public service.
Davis on Nov. 4 won the District 10 election against incumbent Kim Brimer, who has a 20-year state legislative tenure, by about 7,000 votes of the about 300,000 votes cast.
Prior to running for the District 10 seat, Davis served as a Fort Worth City Council member representing District 9 from 1999 through 2008.
She credits the circumstances surrounding her upbringing to her passion for public service.
Davis and her three siblings were raised in Richland Hills, and she graduated from Richland High School in 1981.
“I was raised by a single mom, my mom has a sixth-grade education, she raised four kids working an hourly wage job,” Davis said. “And, of course, no one in our family history had ever been to college before, and my family, like so many families I represented on the City Council and will represent on the state level have the same story. They have those desires for their family for the future, but don’t know how to connect into that system.”
After Davis graduated from high school, she got married at 18 and was divorced a year later, having become a single parent herself and struggling to pay her way.
“I lived in a mobile home community in southeast Fort Worth for a few years and worked two jobs, a full-time job working for a doctor during the day and I waited tables at night at my Dad’s dinner theater. When my daughter was about 2-years old, a nurse came in with a brochure on Tarrant County Junior College for a paralegal program.”
Davis took paralegal night classes at the Junior College for about a year, then decided she wanted to be a lawyer instead.
Eventually, she transferred out of the paralegal program and started taking general studies classes, got a scholarship to Texas Christian University and graduated No. 1 in her class from TCU in 1990.
After TCU, Davis went to Harvard Law School and graduated with honors.
“While I was in law school I did an internship with a legal services center for two years, and it was meaningful to me,” Davis said. “The people I worked with were sure that’s what I was going to go forward and do, stay in the public service arena. Frankly, I wanted to make money for the first time in my life.”
Davis spent five years working at a law firm, but found the work unfulfilling.
“That’s when I ran for City Council, which I lost the first time,” she said. “I ran again three years later, and when I won that seat, I found that it really brought everything together that had been part of my background and gave me an opportunity to feel like I was giving back. It made me feel like I was making a difference in the world, which is important to me. I was using my own personal struggles which was helping others who were struggling. My background had given me a really big heart for caring about what people were going through, and my education had given me the ability to be an analytical thinker and a good representative, and that came together in a way that was really my calling.”
Kathleen Hicks, City Council member representing District 8, said she learned a lot from working with Davis about the importance of tenaciously supporting projects in her district.
“From the work that she did along the West Lancaster corridor, which is transforming before our very eyes, a new public art piece will be up by the end of the year, and really pushing for the revitalization of the southern end of Downtown, I can’t say enough about how engaged she was and how involved she really was,” Hicks said.
Transportation and economic development and were among the issues Davis pushed for during her time on the City Council, said Frank Moss, council member representing District 5.
“She is very passionate about a lot of things, quite a few things, but really passionate about economic development, also human issues as they relate to city employees and making sure they received appropriate benefits,” Moss said. “Also, she was pretty tough on controlling the budget and operating within the budget.”
Some of the tough issues Davis took on during her years on the Council included a vote against a senior citizen property tax freeze and opposition to changes at the Fort Worth Zoo.
Davis also took a lead role in bringing the Omni Hotel to Fort Worth and supporting development along West Seventh Street, Moss said.
Davis will be sworn in to the State Legislature in January and plans to take on issues including transportation — specifically supporting the Rail North Texas inititive — air quality, the state franchise tax, creating jobs and the re-regulation of higher education, housing insurance and energy utility companies, she said.
For now, she doesnÂ’t have any specific plans for her career in the future, she said.
“I’m trying to learn to be a state senator. I’m really proud to have that role and I certainly didn’t do it with the idea that I would advance politically,” Davis said. “When you start doing that, you tend to compromise what you need to be doing for your district because you’re worried about your own political future. I’ve always tried to be brave and disregard my own personal interests on behalf of the people I represent, and that’s what I want to do on the state senate, and that’s what I’m concentrating on.”
