jQuery Modal within a Plugin

The following code works great outside of wordpress, but within wordpress plugin it seems to be reading the “target” as an expression; “unrecognized expression”).

jQuery(document).ready(function($) {
$("a[data-target=#myModal]").click(function(ev) {
    ev.preventDefault();
    var target = $(this).attr("href");
    // load the url and show modal on success
    $("#myModal").load(target, function() {
    window.alert(target);
         $("#myModal").modal({show:true});
    });
});
});