Former Texas Governor Ann Richards Dies
... The witty and flamboyant Democrat, who served one term as governor, losing her re-election bid to George W. Bush, was 73.
Ann W. Richards, the silver-haired Texas activist who galvanized the 1988 Democratic National Convention with her tart keynote speech and was the state’s 45th governor until upset in 1994 by an underestimated challenger named George W. Bush, died Wednesday at her home in Austin. She was 73.
Ms. Richard died, surrounded by her four children, of complications from the esophageal cancer, the Associated Press reported.
Ms. Richards was the most recent and one of the most effective in a long-line of Lone Star State progressives who vied for control of Texas in the days when it was largely a one-party Democratic enclave, a champion of civil rights, gay rights and feminism. Her defeat by the future president was one of the chief markers of the end of generations of Democratic dominance in Texas.
So cemented was her celebrity on the national stage, however, that she appeared in national advertising campaigns, including one for snack chips, and was a lawyer and lobbyist for Public strategies and Verner, Lipfert, Bernhard, McPherson & Hand.
“Poor George, he can’t help it,” Ms. Richards said at the Democratic convention in 1988, speaking about the current president’s father, former President George Bush. “He was born with a silver foot in his mouth.”
“We’re gonna tell how the cow ate the cabbage,” she said, bringing the great tradition of vernacular Southern oratory to the national political stage in a way that transformed the mother of four into an revered icon of feminist activism.
In 1982, she ran for state treasurer, received the most votes of any statewide candidate, became the first woman elected to statewide office in Texas in 50 years and was re-elected in 1986.In 1990, when the incumbent governor, William P. Clements Jr., decided not to run for re-election, she ran against a former Democratic governor, Mark White, and won the primary, then later fought a particularly brutal campaign against Republican candidate Clayton Williams, a wealthy rancher, and won.
Among her achievements were institutional changes in the state penal system, invigorating the state’s economy and instituting the first Texas lottery, going so far as to buy the first lotto ticket herself on May 29, 1992.
On her 60th birthday, she got her first motorcycle license.“I’ve always said that in politics, your enemies can’t hurt you, but your friends can kill you,” Ms. Richard once said.
2 comments:
Oh my, hadn't yet seen the news.
I saw her in an Austin Whole Foods one day, years ago -- she was a tiny woman. But what power and charisma in that small frame.
I saw this on the news this morning and it made me sad. Must be that you'll never get ALL the Texan out of me. :)
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