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Wade Davis kept his secret from teammates until nine years after his NFL playing days were over. "I never even thought about telling anyone I was gay," he says, speaking to PEOPLE as part of an exclusive portfolio of gay athletes in professional sports. "I never saw someone who was gay who looked like me, acted like me, who was accepted. It wasn't unimaginable that I wouldn't be accepted."

Some of Hollywood’s biggest power players are about to open up their wallets for Democrat Wendy Davis’s gubernatorial campaign in Texas. J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Steven Spielberg are hosting a celebration and fundraiser for Wendy Davis on May 22 in Santa Monica, Calif., the Davis campaign confirmed. The soiree will be hosted on the rooftop of Bad Robot, the production company owned by Abrams. A donation of $1,000 will get you in the door, but to be a co-host, you must raise or contribute $10,000, while hosts will fork over $25,000. Contributions will be evenly split between Davis’ gubernatorial...

Regardless of what the judicial system does with Texas’s antiabortion law, its on-the-ground effects are unlikely to be reversed.

**SNIP** But the lack of confidence from her own party set Davis’ team off. "The uninformed opinions of a Washington, D.C., desk jockey who's never stepped foot in Texas couldn't be less relevant to what's actually happening on the ground," Karin Johanson, Davis campaign manager, said in a surprising statement after Shumlin’s slight. Johanson later clarified that the “uninformed Washington, D.C., desk jockey” was meant to describe whoever scripted the party’s talking points on the DGA’s priority campaigns.

The FBI is probing past legal work done by Texas gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis, according to a report her Republican opponent’s campaign calls a “bombshell.” The Dallas Morning News reported Friday that documents “related to Sen. Wendy Davis’ work as a lawyer for the North Texas Tollway Authority are part of an FBI inquiry of the agency.” The news outlet said it’s unclear how much this investigation revolves around Davis, the Democratic nominee for governor.

the cowardice and hypocrisy of Brandeis University's decision to revoke its commencement invitation to Ayaan Hirsi Ali. ... Brandeis’ relationship with terrorism isn’t just theoretical: "… around 1970 ... Brandeis saw three of its women students posted to the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List (Angela Davis, Susan Saxe and Katherine Power), no small feat since only seven women were ever put on that FBI list in all of its history.” ... Katherine Ann Power ... started at the Brandeis University SDS chapter, then migrated to Weather Underground terror and murder. She killed a local Waltham cop, then went into hiding...

former chief of staff for the Illinois state public health department pleaded guilty Thursday to stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer money through a kickback scheme that began when Dr. Eric E. Whitaker, a close friend of President Barack Obama, headed the agency. Whitaker brought in Quinshaunta R. Golden, a niece of U.S. Rep. Danny Davis, D-Ill., as his top aide in 2003 after then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich hired him as public health chief. Their spouses — Dr. Cheryl S. Rucker-Whitaker and Victor Golden, who is now a $111,432-a-year administrator with the Illinois Lottery — went into business together...

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott leads Democrat Wendy Davis by 11 points, according to a new poll Monday. Forty-seven percent of voters said they back Abbott, while 36 percent would vote for Davis, a University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll found. Seventeen percent of registered voters said they had no opinion. The new poll represents a widening gap between Abbott and Davis. In October, the survey found Abbott leading Davis by just 6 percent. Meanwhile, the poll also found that Rep. Steve Stockman poses a minor threat to Sen. John Cornyn in the Senate race. Sixty-two percent of likely Republican voters...

A Republican hopeful for Texas governor drew harsh criticism for hitting the campaign trail Tuesday with Ted Nugent, the controversial rocker who recently described President Barack Obama as a "subhuman mongrel." Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott appeared at two campaign stops with the outspoken gun-loving musician-turned-commentator on the first day of early primary voting in the traditionally Republican state where he faces a surprisingly tough challenge by a rising-star Democrat.

FORT WORTH — Wendy Davis is ready for a rough road to November. The Fort Worth Democrat said she knows her bid to become Texas’ first female governor since Ann Richards won’t be easy. “Politics is war,” she said Friday during an interview with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram Editorial Board, when asked how her gender comes into play. “I feel like I have a very legitimate candidacy. “For the first time, I think, in a long time, people in Texas believe we have the opportunity perhaps to elect someone with a D next to their name as our executive officer...

Attorney General Greg Abbott is the undisputed money king in the race against Wendy Davis – collecting three times more cash last month than his Democratic foe. Abbott has amassed a sizeable war chest of nearly $30 million for the governor’s race, far ahead of Davis’ $10 million on hand with nearly a full year ahead of them before the November general election. Davis stunned the Abbott team in January by reporting she raised more money in the second half of 2013. But the Republican attorney general stormed back in January, collecting $3.1 million compared to Davis’ $913,000......

**SNIP** One conclusion from the peanut gallery: Anyone trying to dissect marriages gone bad, decent people going off in different directions and the vicious spin applied to even basic marital facts is going to find many accounts don’t neatly add up. It would take a book the size of “War and Peace” to do justice to all parties in some failed marriages. That seems possibly the case with Sen. Davis’ early life, impressive as it is. For instance, debate has ensued about whether she was really a single teenage mom or not. Some accounts suggest she got divorced from her...

Democrat nominee for the Governor's Mansion in the Lone Star State is finding herself at the receiving end of a new ethics violation complaint filed with the Texas government, as reported by Fox News on Jan. 30, 2014 via Watchdog.org on Jan. 29, 2014 State Senator and darling of the left since her recent pro-abortion filibuster in the Texas State Legislature, Wendy Davis has just been figuratively slapped with accusations that she failed to disclose income as well as ties to lobbyists as required by state law for those seeking elected office. The editor of the citizens rights/journalism activists group...

Wendy Davis, a Democratic state senator running to replace Rick Perry as governor of Texas, owes her political stardom to two things: a pair of pink sneakers and her unstinting support for a woman's right to terminate a late-term pregnancy in a substandard clinic. Yay Feminism! Last year, Davis led an 11-hour filibuster -- that's where the sneakers came in handy -- to block legislation that would ban abortion after 20 weeks and require abortion clinics to meet the same standards that hospital-style surgical centers do. This was all going on against the backdrop of the sensational Kermit Gosnell case...

AUSTIN, Texas — A Texas citizen filed a complaint before the Texas Ethics Commission Monday afternoon, alleging that State Senator and gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis (D-Fort Worth) knowingly misrepresented her assets on her annual Personal Financial Statements. The complainant, Lou Ann Anderson of Temple, alleges that Davis failed to disclose her ownership of stocks and mutual funds, capital gains made on the sale of those mutual funds, interest earned on several bank accounts, and professional ties to registered lobbyists associated with a law firm at which she is employed. Davis allegedly failed to make these financial disclosures on three of...

The Wendy Davis campaign sent Greta Van Susteren a response tonight to a segment she did with Texas gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott. During the segment Greg Abbott told Greta he was upset to be mocked by the Davis campaign for his disability. Davis campaign workers were caught on tape mocking Greg Abbott for his disability in a Project Veritas video by James O’Keefe last week. The Davis camp responded by apologizing to Abbott and then pointing out that James O’Keefe was once arrested for a misdemeanor in Louisiana.

**SNIP** Most of the attacks against Davis are sexist. As a columnist for Breibart.com tweeted: "Wendy Davis: My story of attending Harvard Law on my husband's dime while he took care of the kids is a story every woman can relate to." Talking Points Memo has a plethora of examples of the full-force sexist attacks. And Twitter exploded earlier this week with the #MoreFakeThanWendyDavis hashtag, making fun of Davis for being a liar. The problem is that the Dallas Morning News article that caused this backlash is questionable at best, and is undeniably sexist in its telling of Davis' story....

All is fair in politics, and no one gets a pass. There is a growing attempt to paint Wendy Davis as the victim of a double standard, in which a woman is treated more harshly than conservative men as to family failings and career ambition. Kirsten Powers articulated that view in her post at The Daily Beast, The Right Subjects Wendy Davis to Litmus Tests No Male Would Ever Face (interestingly, the title shows up in search engines as “Wendy Davis the Piñata Parent,” not sure if that was the original title): It seems that Wendy Davis needs to learn...

Want to know why Wendy Davis will have trouble winning higher office in Texas or anywhere else in America? It’s not because she stretched the truth in her “from mobile-home-living single mom to Harvard Law grad” campaign biography, nor because her husband paid for her education, nor even because she placed a lot of value on her career. Nope: It’s because Davis, the Lone Star State senator who became famous for her filibuster of an abortion-limiting bill in Texas, lost custody of her children to her ex-husband. +++++ A few years ago, one of my guy friends was dating a...

It's one of the most striking details in Texas State Senator Wendy Davis's life uncovered by Dallas Morning News reporter Wayne Slater: in 2005, Davis, apparently eager to advance her career, relinquished custody of not just her child with her second husband, Jeffry Davis, but also her first child from another marriage. "It's not a good time for me right now” Davis said at the time, explaining her decision, according to Jeffry Davis. Wendy Davis's first daughter Amber, born during her first marriage to Frank Underwood, was 23 at the time – an adult. Her daughter with Jeffry, Dru, was...