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 News from Around the Americas | September 2006 
Former Texas Governor Ann Richards Dies
 Wayne Slater - Dallas Morning News
| | Former Governor Ann Richards, who opened the doors of state government to women and minorities and won national celebrity with her lively humor and Texas twang, died Wednesday night at her home. She was 73.
(Fort Worth Star-Telegram) |
Her wit made headlines, but progressive agenda reshaped state.
Austin - Former Gov. Ann Richards, who opened the doors of state government to women and minorities and won national celebrity with her lively humor and Texas twang, died Wednesday night at her home. She was 73.
She had battled esophageal cancer, which was diagnosed in March. Her four adult children spent the day with her, said Cathy Bonner, a longtime family friend and family spokeswoman.
The second woman to serve as governor of Texas, Ms. Richards broke tradition by pressing for more diversity within state agencies and pursued a progressive agenda that emphasized ethics, the environment and insurance reform.
"Ann Richards was the epitome of Texas politics: a figure larger than life who had a gift for captivating the public with her great wit," Gov. Rick Perry said Wednesday night. "She was an endearing and enduring figure in Texas politics. She paved the way as a leader and a role model for women who aspire to the highest levels of leadership. Anita and I are saddened by a loss that will be felt by many. Ann Richards left Texas a better place."
Ms. Richards was elected governor in 1990 and served for four years before losing to George W. Bush.
During a public appearance several years after leaving office, she was asked about her legacy.
"In looking back on my life, I could of course say the predictable thing: that the greatest thing I've ever done is bear my children and have grandchildren, and all that kind of stuff," she said.
"But the reality is that the greatest part of my life was the opportunity to be in public service. To make a difference for the community I live in, for the state that I love, to be able to try to make things better, whether they turned out in the fashion I expected them to or not."
"Sometimes it's serendipitous. Good things happen accidentally," she said. "But they're not going to happen unless well-meaning people give of their time and their lives to do that."
The "New Texas"
Ms. Richards moved into the state's top elected post after a brutal 1990 campaign, defeating West Texas millionaire cowboy Clayton Williams.
Ms. Richards moved into the state's top elected post after a brutal 1990 campaign, defeating West Texas millionaire cowboy Clayton Williams.
Touting a "New Texas" in which women and minorities would share in the power of government, Ms. Richards fulfilled a campaign pledge to make appointments of blacks, Hispanics and women in proportion to their population.
She put her own stamp on the governor's office, both in terms of progressive policies and the physical accoutrements of her second-floor office at the Texas Capitol.
As the state's chief executive, Ms. Richards ignored past protocol and testified personally before House and Senate committees.
She signed one of the nation's toughest oil-spill cleanup laws and shook up several state agencies, gaining control of the board regulating insurance and attacking lavish spending and questionable practices by the Department of Commerce.
She faced resistance from a more conservative Legislature on several fronts and lost a high-profile battle to overhaul the state's beleaguered school finance system, largely leaving the problem to future administrations.
Sporting a wicked sense of humor, Ms. Richards burst onto the national political stage in 1988, while state treasurer.
Selected to give the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention, she delivered one of her most famous lines in a drawling put-down of then-Vice President George Bush.
"Poor George," she said. "He can't help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth."
Barriers to Politics
An only child, Ann Richards was born Dorothy Ann Willis on Sept. 1, 1933, near Waco. She graduated in 1954 from Baylor University, which she attended on a debate scholarship.
In her autobiography, Straight From the Heart, she recalled growing up in modest means and encountering sexism and racism as she encountered the largely male bastion of Texas politics.
"Even though no one told me," she wrote, "there were certain things that you know, and the world knew, that women and girls couldn't do. Running government was one of them. That didn't mean you didn't study or learn about it, it just meant that it didn't apply to you. Any group - blacks, Hispanics, Asians, females - knows that. You know what you're allowed to do and what you're not."
She married high school sweetheart David Richards, a local labor lawyer, and the couple moved to Washington, D.C., and later to Dallas and then Austin. They had four children.
Active in Democratic politics, the couple became involved in civil rights and in the campaigns of several liberal candidates.
In 1972, at age 39, Ms. Richards managed her first political campaign - a victorious one - for Sarah Weddington, a candidate for state representative who had successfully argued the Roe vs. Wade abortion rights case before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Seeking elected office herself, Ms. Richards won a place in 1976 to the Travis County Commission. In 1982, she ran successfully for state treasurer.
Personal Struggles
Public disclosure of her alcoholism, for which she sought treatment in 1980, and her subsequent divorce were publicized, but they did not cause significant political damage.
"Confronting my alcoholism was probably the hardest thing that anyone could deal with," she once said.
During the 1990 Democratic primary, a challenger charged, without proof, that Ms. Richards had used illegal drugs. Her refusal to answer the question - saying it would hurt the recovery efforts of alcohol and drug dependents - became a campaign issue but did not scuttle her nomination and subsequent election as governor.
Ms. Richards' gubernatorial victory was the first by a woman in Texas since Miriam "Ma" Ferguson in 1932.
As governor, Ms. Richards could be a tough taskmaster, aides said.
At the same time, she made an effort several times each week to chat with students touring the Capitol, inevitably urging them to stay in school and get a good education.
"Someday you're going to look in the mirror and your hair is going to be as white as mine," she once told a group of elementary school students outside her office. "And people are not going to hire you because of your good looks. They're going to hire you because of what you have in your brain."
She made the cover of Texas Monthly magazine in 1992, wearing white-fringed leathers and sitting on a white Harley-Davidson motorcycle. The photo had been doctored, but the image underscored a persona the magazine described as the "modern incarnation of the tough prairie earth mother."
In facing George W. Bush in 1994, Ms. Richards found herself challenged by the son of the man she had so publicly skewered six years earlier.
Ms. Richards questioned his lack of political experience, and Mr. Bush labeled her as a career politician and challenged her stewardship as governor, criticizing the size of the state budget and her administration's performance fighting crime.
By avoiding sharp attacks, Mr. Bush succeeded in winning back to the GOP side many suburban Republican women who had abandoned the party and voted for Ms. Richards four years earlier.
Life After Office
After leaving office, Ms. Richards was hired as a lobbyist with a high-profile Washington law firm and later took a job with the Austin-based consulting firm Public Strategies, opening its New York office.
A widely recognized figure, she was a highly sought-after speaker and became a regular on CNN's Larry King Live.
"This whole business of public recognition is a mystery to me," she once told an interviewer. "If I have any talent, it's that I work very hard."
In her autobiography, Ms. Richards expressed amazement by what she had achieved.
"In my mind's eye," she wrote, "I'm probably still that skinny kid trying to make that basket" in the schoolgirls' basketball game back in her hometown of Lacy Lakeview.
Ms. Richards is survived by her four children, Cecile Richards, Daniel Richards, Clark Richards and Ellen Richards; their spouses; and eight grandchildren. Funeral arrangements are pending.
The family requests that memorial gifts be made to the Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders through the Austin Community Foundation, P.O. Box 5159, Austin, Texas 78763, 512-472-4483, or at www.austincommunityfoundation.org. |
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