Texas Senate Democratic Leader Leticia Van de Putte of San Antonio, shown in 2009, told fellow Texas Democrats Tuesday they need to spread the word back home about what she dubbed the GOP "war on women." (Ralph Barrera / Austin American-Statesman)
Texas delegates were awakened by a fire alarm at their Concord, N.C., hotel at 3 a.m. Tuesday – and state Senate Democratic Leader Leticia Van de Putte suddenly had speech material for her remarks at the group’s breakfast briefing four hours later.
Van de Putte recalled fumbling around in the dark, trying to discern the source of the screeching sound.
“I didn’t smell anything, so I go to the door, see [if] the door is hot; slowly open it and I look and there are lots of heads out there,” she said.
The San Antonio Democrat then drew chuckles from her sleepy audience with this line:
“I want to say thank you to the one gentleman who came out in your underwear last night. … I was just worried that the door would shut and then he’d be there standing in his underwear in the hall.”
Van de Putte said delegates need to be ready for alarms in the night as they go home to spread a message about what Republicans in the Legislature and the U.S. House are doing.
She zeroed in on Missouri GOP Senate nominee Todd Akin, who recently suggested that women’s bodies could shut down a pregnancy in a situation of “legitimate rape.”
