Ann Richards

American politician

• Born: September 1, 1933
• Birthplace: Lakeview, Texas
• Died: September 13, 2006
• Place of death: Austin, Texas

A longtime activist in Democratic politics, Richards became the second woman governor of Texas in 1990 and was the first woman in Texas to be elected to that office based on her own merits. She was instrumental in hiring women and ethnic minorities to state government positions, and she was a lifelong advocate for civil rights at all levels of government.

Early Life

Ann Richards was born Dorothy Ann Willis in the rural Texas town of Lakeview, near Waco. Her parents, Cecil Willis and Iona Warren Willis, were children of farmers who had been part of a wave of emigration to Texas during the late nineteenth century. Cecil’s family settled on a farm in the Waco area, but Iona moved to Waco from Hico a town just south of Fort Worth to work in a dry goods store. The move was not typical for rural Texas women, but Iona was ambitious and independent qualities that she later instilled in her daughter and only child. Iona met Cecil in Hico on a blind date.

Cecil’s salary as delivery truck driver was meager, but both he and Iona valued hard work. Like many people who lived through the Depression, they were also frugal. The couple vowed to give their daughter all they could, and the young Richards did not experience great hardship or poverty. Nevertheless, she had a rather strict upbringing and was responsible for doing considerable work around the house, where she was frequently given special household projects. Her parents strictly limited the time she was allowed to spend socializing. Cecil and Iona were active in the community. They emphasized commonsense notions of decency and fairness in community affairs, sowing the seeds for Richards’s later progressive political philosophy.

Richards attended Waco High School, where she was an outgoing student and excelled in debate. She was selected as a delegate to the Girls’ State mock government in Austin during her junior year, and then as one of two Texas delegates to attend Girls’ Nation in Washington, D.C., where she shook hands with President Harry S. Truman. This experience was her first real introduction to both politics and the world outside Waco. While in high school, Richards met her future husband, David Richards.

After her graduation from high school in 1950, Richards attended Baylor University on a debate scholarship. David transferred from the University of Texas to Baylor University in 1953, and married Richards the same year. They both graduated from college in 1954, and then moved to Austin, where David enrolled in the University of Texas Law School. Richards took graduate courses in education to earn her teaching certificate. In 1955, she took a job teaching social studies and history at a junior high school in Austin and remained in this job until 1956.

Life’s Work

Richards first became involved in Texas politics as a graduate student at the University of Texas, Austin. She and her husband became active in the university’s chapter of the Young Democrats. They regularly associated with Democrats, liberal like themselves, in supporting Lyndon B. Johnson, who was then engaged in a power struggle with conservative Allen Shivers for control of the Texas Democratic party. In Austin, Richards made many of the political contacts on which she would later depend during her campaigns for state office.

Following his graduation from law school, David Richards began work in a Dallas labor law firm. After going to Waco for the birth of the couple’s first child, Cecile Richards, Richards and Cecile joined David in Austin. While the two remained active in the Austin Young Democrats during this period, Ann also spent considerable time volunteering in political campaigns, such as civil rights supporter Henry Gonzalez’s 1958 gubernatorial race, progressive Ralph Yarborough’s 1952, 1954, and 1956 gubernatorial campaigns, and Yarborough’s successful senatorial race in 1957.

While Richards was working on the 1960 John F. Kennedy presidential campaign in Dallas, David announced they needed to move to Washington, D.C., so that he could begin work as a staff attorney on the national Civil Rights Commission. In the nation’s capital, they associated regularly with many transplanted Texas Democrats and they had the opportunity to meet Johnson during his term as vice president. They soon tired of life in Washington, however, and returned to Dallas in 1962.

While in Dallas, Richards helped form the North Dallas Democratic Women’s group. She served as its president for a time. She also helped organize the Dallas Committee for Peaceful Integration to fight for the integration of public schools, a radical view to support in Texas at the time. Richards also continued to spend considerable time with her family, and she had two more children, sons Clark and Dan.

Though their lives in Dallas were rewarding, by 1969 the pull of Austin was too great, and the family moved back to the capital. Richards served on the local zoning and planning commission, and, in 1971, she was asked to advise Sarah Weddington about her run for the Texas legislature. Richards devised a way to create a targeted mass mailing for the campaign, and Weddington, in part because of Richards’s efforts, won the election in 1972. Following Weddington’s election, Richards went to work as her administrative assistant. She also continued to work on other Democratic campaigns during this period, including Wilhemina Delco’s successful attempt in 1974 to become the first black woman to be elected to the Texas state legislature.

In 1975, David was asked to run against Johnny Voudouris in the Democratic primary for county commissioner. When David rejected the offer, Richards was asked to become the candidate. The request was surprising because the county commissioner was responsible for overseeing all county road crews, and the position had always been occupied by men. After a shrewd and targeted campaign, Richards beat three-term incumbent Voudouris in the primary and went on to win the general election in the fall.

As county commissioner, despite the initial prejudice against her, Richards managed to cultivate good relationships with her largely conservative male employees and was able to improve the county road system markedly. She also provided increased funding for support services through her oversight of the county human services division.

As a result of Richards’s innovations in this department, Lieutenant Governor Bill Hobby appointed her to a special committee to overhaul the delivery of human services statewide. While serving as county commissioner, Richards was asked to serve on U.S. president Jimmy Carter’s Advisory Committee for Women, where she met many of the most influential women of the time, including congressional representative Bella Abzug, while they lobbied the president for his support of the Equal Rights Amendment.

Although these years were professionally advantageous for Richards, her marriage came under increasing stress. As the couple increasingly grew apart, Richards’s drinking also increased, until it became such a problem that in 1980, at the behest of David and their closest friends, she sought treatment. Although the treatment for alcoholism was successful, the marriage did not survive. The two separated and were divorced in 1984.

In 1982, during her separation from David, Richards was asked to run in the Democratic primary for state treasurer against Warren Harding. The campaign turned ugly, and Richards’s alcoholism became a central issue. She remained forthright and honest about the subject, and the smear tactics backfired. Harding eventually withdrew, and Richards went on in November to beat Republican Allen Clark by a wide margin. She was the first woman to hold a Texas state office in fifty years.

Richards’s reforms in the state’s revenue system while treasurer the implementation of updated technology to assist depositing and processing of state money as well as reductions in paperwork eventually earned more than $2 billion in nontax revenue for the state. She was reelected in 1986.

Richards’s performance as treasurer again brought her to the attention of national Democratic leaders and led to her being invited to second the nomination of Walter Mondale as the Democratic candidate for president in 1984. She was invited to give the keynote address at the 1988 Democratic National Convention. Her speech was an outright, plainspoken assault on Republican nominee George H. W. Bush and was a smashing success. She will long be remembered for her witty comment during her speech at that convention that Bush was born with a silver foot in his mouth, a remark that caused Barbara Bush thereafter to refer to Richards as “that woman.”

In 1990, Richards mounted a gubernatorial campaign to replace retiring Republican governor William Clements. During the primary, her alcoholism again became an issue, and her reluctance to respond to questions about drug abuse hurt her popularity considerably. However, as before, the political mudslinging backfired when it was revealed that her opponent had himself possibly used illegal drugs. Richards won the Democratic nomination.

The marked insensitivity to women’s issues of Richards’s Republican opponent Clayton Williams, coupled with the strong pro-choice stance of Richards, led large numbers of Republican women to vote for her, and on November 6, 1990, she was elected governor of Texas. Richards was the first woman to become governor of Texas in more than fifty years and was the first ever to do so based on her own merit. Miriam “Ma” Ferguson had served two terms in the 1920’s as a surrogate for her husband, Jim “Pa” Ferguson, who, in 1917, was forced to resign the governorship to avoid impeachment and was barred from ever running again.

As governor, Richards set a progressive agenda for the conservative state and appointed unprecedented numbers of women, Latinos, and African Americans to state offices. She also contributed to the state’s economic recovery after several years of recession. In recognition of her achievements both in Texas and on the national political scene, Richards was asked to chair the Democratic National Convention in 1992. In 1994, Richards campaigned for reelection but lost to a Republican candidate whose political connections, wealth, and family name constituted a serious challenge to her bid for another four-year term. Her opponent was George W. Bush , the forty-eight-year-old son of former President George H. W. Bush, who would later become president of the United States (in 2001).

After serving as governor, Richards remained politically involved and active. She was a popular guest on talk shows such as Larry King Live, where her witty responses delighted audiences. She also worked as senior adviser to the Washington law firm of Verner, Liipfert, Bernard, McPherson, and Hand. She retained her Texas ties, living in Austin in retirement and working as a consultant for Public Strategies, Inc., a public relations and marketing firm.

In March, 2006, Richards was diagnosed with esophageal cancer, perhaps a result of heavy drinking in her earlier life. Her health declined steadily, and she died within six months, on September 13. She was seventy-three years old.

Significance

Richards thrived in the masculine political environment of Texas, a state famous for its conservatism and male-dominated government. While rewriting the rules of gender and power in Texas, she also managed to implement a decidedly reformist and progressive agenda in a state government woefully bogged down in cronyism.

A tireless supporter of women’s and civil rights, she appointed unprecedented numbers of women and ethnic minorities to positions of power. A consummate politician, Richards managed both to pierce the glass ceiling for women in Texas politics and to develop a power network of women, people of color, and liberals that rivaled that of the oil-industry-backed old boys’ network that had long been in control in Texas.

Richards also had a significant impact on national politics. Her plain speaking and quick wit launched her into prominence on the national political scene, and, along with several other women Democrats newly elected to major offices, she helped keep the national Democratic Party focused on the concerns of women while proving that women could succeed in politics. Richards’s forthrightness about her alcoholism and her past marital troubles was exemplary as well.

Richards had a remarkable ability to defuse tense situations. During her term as governor, for example, representatives of the American Civil Liberties Union objected to the presence of a crèche, or Nativity scene, on the grounds of the state capitol during the Christmas holiday season. Richards quickly reminded them that this was probably as close as “three wise men” would ever get to the Texas state house, so that it was probably best to leave the crèche undisturbed. Her argument was pervasive and she prevailed.

Bibliography

Alter, Judy. Extraordinary Women of the American West. New York: Children’s Press, 1999. In this collection of brief biographical sketches for younger readers about notable Western women from all walks of life, Alter devotes a brief biographical section to Richards.

Dow, Bonnie J., and Mari Boor Tonn. “’Feminine Style’ and Political Judgment in the Rhetoric of Ann Richards.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 79 (August, 1993): 286-302. An in-depth, scholarly treatment of Richards’s rhetoric and political oratory, including content analysis and a consideration of the issues of feminism and psychology.

Marshall, Brenda DeVore, and Molly A. Mayhead, eds. Navigating Boundaries: The Rhetoric of Women Governors. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2000. Chapter 5 is devoted to Richards and to an analysis of her abilities as a speaker. Discusses her political stands and her means of achieving the ends for which she was campaigning.

Morris, Celia. Storming the State House: Running for Governor with Ann Richards and Dianne Feinstein. New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1992. A detailed narrative account of the campaigns mounted by two women for the governorships of their respective states. The Richards section succeeds in capturing the flavor of Texas politics. The work argues that the pursuit of higher office by Richards as well as Feinstein constitutes a cultural revolution.

Richards, Ann. Straight from the Heart. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989. An autobiography written in an informal style that reflects Richards’s personality. Also provides much information about life as a liberal in Texas politics.

Witt, Linda, Karen M. Paget, and Glenna Matthews. Running as a Woman: Gender and Power in American Politics. New York: Free Press, 1993. A journalist, a political scientist, and a historian collaborated on this narrative overview of the experiences of women candidates in American politics. Although this work focuses primarily on candidates at the national level, the authors include Richards’s comments on her early campaign work on behalf of Sarah Weddington.