DALLAS, Jan. 29 (UPI) -- Wendy Davis' daughters released open letters Tuesday, defending the Texas gubernatorial candidate from suggestions she left them to pursue her career.
The Dallas Morning News, in a story last week, said Davis' story of early marriage, divorce and single parenthood was somewhat exaggerated. The News also said her second husband, Jeff Davis, helped put her through college and Harvard Law School, and that her daughters remained with him in Fort Worth while she was in Massachusetts and got custody of her younger daughter, Dru, when they divorced.
Davis' older daughter, Amber Davis, was born during her first marriage, and was in college when her second marriage ended.
Dru Davis said any suggestion her mother was uncaring was false, the Washington Post reported.
"And sadly I feel the need to be crystal clear on the malicious and false charge of abandonment as nothing could be further from the truth," she wrote. "My mom has always shared equally in the care and custody of my sister and me."
"I can tell you that my mom was a remarkable mother and continues to be so to this day. She was there on my first day of school and my last, and so many days in between," Dru Davis, now 25, said. "She never missed a school performance or a parent-teacher conference. Even if that meant she had to miss something else important. My sister and I were always her first priority. She was there when I needed her and even when I thought I didn't."
Amber Davis said in her letter that she remembers living in a trailer with her mother as well as in apartments.
The daughters said they lived briefly with their mother while she was at Harvard but the family then decided they should return to Texas to attend school there and be closer to their extended family.
Davis, a Democrat, became nationally known last year when she filibustered in the Texas Senate against a bill to restrict abortions.
