In new attack, Wendy Davis links Greg Abbott to CPRIT imbroglio (with video)

From the Austin-American Statesman:

Opening a new line of attack in her campaign for governor, Democrat Wendy Davis is seeking to implicate Republican rival Greg Abbott in the scandal that two years ago engulfed the state’s cancer-fighting agency.

On Monday, a liberal political action committee released a video in which four women who survived cancer suggested that Abbott, as attorney general, was more interested in enriching his campaign donors than curing cancer. On Tuesday, Davis is scheduled to appear before a rally at the East Austin eatery Juan in a Million, to drive the point home.

“When I found out the money had been misspent, at first I was angry, extremely angry. I mean, these are people’s lives. You go through anger, disbelief, shock, then you want to get even,” Becky Arreaga, an Austin business owner, says in the ad, in which she is joined by Austinites Kerry Tate, a homebuilder, and Berry Crowley, an attorney, and Pat Pangburn, a Dallas homemaker.

The Abbott campaign responded that the charges were untrue and the video, produced by Progress Texas PAC, unseemly.

More at http://www.statesman.com/news/news/in-new-attack-wendy-davis-links-greg-abbott-to-cpr/nfp3H/ .

From the Dallas Morning News:

A political group allied with Wendy Davis opened an attack Monday using cancer survivors to highlight allegations Republicans Greg Abbott and Rick Perry benefitted from money designed for cancer research. The Progress Texas political committee began airing an on-lined video accusing the state leaders of complicity in the scandal. One cancer-agency official has been indicted, the agency board has been replaced and a grand jury is investigating. Perry, who is considering another race for president, was instrumental in creation of the state cancer-research agency. Agency grants have gone to political donors. As attorney general, Abbott was on the oversight board that failed to take action to avoid questionable grants, including at least one to an Abbott campaign donor.

After The Dallas Morning News first broke stories raising questions about funding problems, Abbott’s office announced it would investigate what went wrong at the Cancer Prevention and Research Fund. That announcement put Abbott in the position of investigating an agency over which his office already had oversight. That means the attorney general potentially is looking into the behavior of board members who are his campaign donors. Abbott says he sees no problems with these arrangements.

A grand jury investigation of Rick Perry is now underway for his threatening to withhold state funding for the Travis County District Attorney – while she was investigating activities at the cancer research fund. Perry has denied any wrongdoing.

The Davis camp is expected to use the issue to raise questions about Abbott’s ethics in office and to combat Dallas Morning News stories about Davis, who faces Abbott in the November race for governor. Abbott has accused his Democratic rival of ethical breaches after Dallas Morning News stories that reported that Davis voted as a state senator on bills that aided a private client.

More at http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com/2014/05/wendy-davis-allies-target-greg-abbott-rick-perry-in-funding-scandal-at-state-cancer-fighting-agency.html/ .