In the past few days, Wendy Davis pew-jumped through black churches and sat with comedian Jon Stewart, while Greg Abbott greeted NASCAR fans in Fort Worth and had tough-man actor Chuck Norris as a sidekick at an El Paso gun shop.
After a year of fundraising and strategizing, the contenders have hit the final run, traveling thousands of miles to the far-flung corners of the vast state. While the air war rages on TV, it’s the ground game that gets voters to the polls.
The Republican nominee is spending $1 million a day as Tuesday’s checkered flag waves within sight. Davis has a frenzied nonstop schedule, frequently dropping into four cities a day.
Polls show Abbott comfortably ahead, but that has not stopped him from opening a 24-hour campaign office in Austin, with volunteers to talk with late-shift supporters and insomniacs.
“It’s essential to understand these polls don’t matter,” Abbott said. “The reason we are here is to get people to go vote. It’s essential to get people excited, enthused and turned out to vote.”
To win, Davis needs the reliable Democratic constituency of blacks and Hispanics, and she needs them in unprecedented numbers. She is spending Sunday touring predominantly black churches in Dallas and Fort Worth — a political ritual, especially for Democratic candidates.
“I am you,” she said recently at a Houston church, promising to be a governor for those “who haven’t had a voice in the Texas Capitol for a very long time.”
Their battle began in the national spotlight. Rick Perry’s decision to step down created a race with no incumbent governor for the first time in Texas since 1990.
Davis’ filibuster to stop an abortion law made her a star, and Abbott entered the scene with huge expectations as the heir to Texas Republicans’ dominance. Both offered poignant personal stories. Their campaigns have sometimes been distracted by the trivial but have also offered a clear choice on issues from education and the economy to abortion and border security.
And now, voters are deciding: More than 2 million cast early ballots. An additional 3 million are expected to turn out Tuesday. Abbott and Davis will spend one last weekend trying to win over as many as possible.
Last week, Davis shuttled among six churches in the Houston area. At every one, the message was a mix of the political and the divine.
When she arrived at Silverlake Church in Pearland, the congregation already was engaged in the Rev. Reginald De Vaughn’s sermon on the Gospel story of the disciples who, after failed attempts, were instructed to keep throwing out their nets in search of fish.
“You know you’ve been discouraged,” De Vaughn shouted. “But don’t stop in the shallow end. Dare to dream, dare to hope, dare to cast your net one more time.”
When Davis took the stage, she appropriated the message.
“This morning,” she said, “the sermon was speaking right to me: that wide net that has been cast and all the people who say it can’t be done.”
At St. John’s United Methodist Church in downtown Houston, where singer Beyoncé grew up, the sanctuary was dark and bathed in a purple light. Lasers made a sea of white crosses on the walls. A booming musical introduction brought the congregation to its feet.
Pastor Rudy Rasmus, who wears a beaded goatee and was the minister who married Beyoncé and Jay Z, welcomed Davis to the stage.
At each church, Davis offered a shorthand version of her years as a teenage mother in poverty and then recited talking points on her agenda, including more money for education, a higher minimum wage, Medicaid expansion and equal pay for women.
The congregation applauded.
At the Alamo Café in San Antonio, a few miles from where Abbott launched his gubernatorial campaign, he struck most of the same themes he had raised 16 months earlier in his first speech of the campaign.
Then as now, the name Davis was nowhere in his speech, but another Democrat drew several mentions.
“I’ve worked every single day to defend you, your liberty and your freedom from an overreaching federal government. That is why I have sued Barack Obama 30 times and I am not through yet,” Abbott said to loud cheers.
The parking lot was filled with cars, at least one with a “Secede” bumper sticker. The walls of the large private room were decorated with hand-drawn signs reading “Right to Bexar Arms” and “Come and Take It.”
At a sign-in table were Abbott stickers, pamphlets and red Koozies urging Republicans to “Keep It Red.”
Abbott touted his legal fights against the Affordable Care Act, for the Ten Commandments monument on the Capitol grounds and for the voter ID law.
Those in the crowd saw him as a fighter for their causes: stopping abortion, preserving gun rights and securing the border.
Ione McGinty is a mother of six home-schooled children, including a 12-year-old special needs son.
Coming to the Abbott rally was her form of a short break on the way to the grocery store. “I was so glad to say to my husband, ‘They’re yours,’” McGinty said.
She is ardently opposed to abortion, but what attracted her to Abbott was that he exudes a joy, despite his need for a wheelchair.
“He’s a great role model for everyone,” she said.
Terry Rogers, a retired teacher, saw Abbott the day he announced and was there to see him in the final days of the campaign.
“I appreciate his personal story and his stances,” she said. “I hope he will defend our borders. That’s my biggest issue.”
Like other Republicans, she was calmly confident that all the statewide Republicans will win, as they have for 18 years.
Abbott himself has a good track record. In six campaigns, including five statewide, he has never lost.
“We will cross the finish line together in first place,” Abbott tells the crowd. “I have run in a bunch of races, but what has happened every single time I ran, I rolled to victory and we’re going to do it again this time.”
Houston’s political tradition has Democratic candidates stumping with influential local black politicians in the final weekends of a campaign. Last week, U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee flew in from an NAACP conference in Arkansas.
At almost every stop, there was a disclaimer that the churches were not officially endorsing candidates, because endorsements could jeopardize their tax-exempt status.
Still, in a passionate evocation of the civil-rights movement, Lee reminded congregants that early voting was underway.
“This is Freedom Sunday,” the congresswoman declared. “I want you to go out there and vote the straight Democratic ticket.”
While Davis vaulted to national attention with an 11-hour filibuster against tough new abortion regulations, it has proved to be an issue that alienates some of the voters she needs. Abbott opposes abortion, including in cases of rape and incest.
At New Life Tabernacle Church, Davis stood next to the Rev. Paul Davis as he said, “You know that I don’t believe in abortion.”
But he then praised her support for spending more on education.
“I don’t agree with her on every issue, but I will stand with her,” the pastor said.
Later, Wendy Davis was outside an early voting site at a center for community groups in a working-class neighborhood in northwest Houston.
The gates were festooned with campaign signs, and Davis stood in the bright October sun greeting drivers as they arrived.
Across the street from the early voting site, Our Lady of Guadalupe church was holding a festival with conjunto music booming from a stage and rows of booths selling tacos, funnel cakes and chances to win a prize at a roulette wheel.
Davis made an impromptu visit, walking among the booths, shaking hands.
A few days later, she spent a full day in South Texas, reminding voters that Abbott had likened the area to a “third-world” country because of drug cartels and corrupt law enforcement.
Abbott has made a strong play for the staunchly Democratic region. Davis was asked, win or lose, whether her campaign has made inroads in the effort to turn Texas blue.
“I am focused right now on winning this race and that’s what I’m going to think about and that’s what I’m going to do all the way to Nov. 4,” she said. “If by chance I don’t win, I’ll entertain questions like that.”
Back in San Antonio, Abbott wouldn’t address what has been on some Republicans’ minds: ringing up a large margin of victory to discourage those Democratic long-term efforts in Texas.
“The most important thing is that I win by at least one vote,” he said, like a true front-runner. “And that’s my goal.”
choppe@dallasnews.com;
wslater@dallasnews.com
Follow Christy Hoppe and Wayne Slater on Twitter at @christyhoppe and @wayneslater.
