Title: Ann Richards dies at 73
earthmother - September 14, 2006 02:17 PM (GMT)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/obit_richards
Former Texas Gov. Ann Richards dies
By KELLEY SHANNON, Associated Press Writer
Former Gov. Ann Richards, the witty and flamboyant Democrat who went from homemaker to national political celebrity, died Wednesday night after a battle with cancer, a family spokeswoman said. She was 73.
She died at home surrounded by her family, the spokeswoman said. Richards was found to have esophageal cancer in March and underwent chemotherapy treatments.
The silver-haired, silver-tongued Richards said she entered politics to help others — especially women and minorities who were often ignored by Texas' male-dominated establishment.
"I did not want my tombstone to read, 'She kept a really clean house.' I think I'd like them to remember me by saying, 'She opened government to everyone,'" Richards said shortly before leaving office in January 1995.
Whether or not she succeeded at that, there was no question she cracked open the door.
Her single term as governor had ended in a 1994 defeat to George W. Bush, who went from besting his father's silver-haired critic to the governor's office to the presidency.
"Texas has lost one of its great daughters," President Bush said in statement after learning of Richards' death.
Two years before she was elected governor of Texas, Ann Richards electrified the 1988 Democratic National Convention with a keynote speech in which she joked that the Republican presidential nominee, George H.W. Bush, had been "born with a silver foot in his mouth."
A longtime champion of women and minorities in government who was serving at the time as Texas state treasurer, she won cheers when she reminded delegates that Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, "only backwards and in high heels."
As governor, Richards appointed the first black University of Texas regent, the first crime victim on the state Criminal Justice Board, the first disabled person on the human services board and the first teacher to lead the State Board of Education. Under Richards, the fabled Texas Rangers pinned stars on their first black and female officers.
Ron Kirk, the black former mayor of Dallas, said Richards helped him get his first political internship during a state constitutional convention in 1974 and later, as governor, made him secretary of state.
"She set the table so somebody like me could become mayor of Dallas," Kirk said.
She also polished Texas' image, courted movie producers, campaigned for the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico, oversaw a doubling of the state prison system and presided over rising student achievement scores and plunging dropout rates.
Throughout her years in office, her popularity remained high. One poll put it at over 60 percent the year she lost her re-election bid to Bush.
Republican Texas Gov. Rick Perry described Richards as "the epitome of Texas politics: a figure larger than life who had a gift for captivating the public with her great wit."
"Ann loved Texas, and Texans loved her," President Bush said. "As a public servant, she earned respect and admiration. Ann became a national role model, and her charm, wit and candor brought a refreshing vitality to public life."
U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (news, bio, voting record), R-Texas, said Richards never lost her zest for life.
"I wrote her a note when I heard about her cancer and she wrote me back a wonderful letter. She was upbeat and positive and I think she was going to go out with guns blazing," Hutchison said Wednesday night.
Richards was diagnosed with cancer in March and underwent chemotherapy treatments.
Her four adult children spent the day with her before she died Wednesday night at her home in Austin, said Cathy Bonner, a longtime family friend and family spokeswoman.
Born in Lakeview, Texas, in 1933, Richards grew up near Waco, married civil rights lawyer David Richards and spent her early adulthood volunteering in campaigns and raising four children. She often said the hardest job she ever had was as a public school teacher at Fulmore Junior High School in Austin.
In the early 1960s, she helped form the North Dallas Democratic Women, "basically to allow us to have something substantive to do; the regular Democratic Party and its organization was run by men who looked on women as little more than machine parts."
Richards served on the Travis County Commissioners Court in Austin for six years before jumping to a bigger arena in 1982 when her election as state treasurer made her the first woman elected statewide in nearly 50 years.
But politics took a toll. It cost her a marriage and forced her in 1980 to seek treatment for alcoholism.
"I had seen the very bottom of life," she once recalled. "I was so afraid I wouldn't be funny anymore. I just knew that I would lose my zaniness and my sense of humor. But I didn't. Recovery turned out to be a wonderful thing."
After her re-election defeat, Richards went on to give speeches, work as a commentator for Cable News Network and serve as a senior adviser in the New York office of Public Strategies.
In her last 10 years, Richards worked for many social causes and helped develop the Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders, scheduled to open in Austin in 2007.
Richards said she never missed being in public office. She grinned when asked what she might have done differently had she known she would be a one-term governor.
"Oh," she said, "I would probably have raised more hell."
Former Texas Gov. Ann Richards dies
By KELLEY SHANNON, Associated Press Writer
Former Gov. Ann Richards, the witty and flamboyant Democrat who went from homemaker to national political celebrity, died Wednesday night after a battle with cancer, a family spokeswoman said. She was 73.
She died at home surrounded by her family, the spokeswoman said. Richards was found to have esophageal cancer in March and underwent chemotherapy treatments.
The silver-haired, silver-tongued Richards said she entered politics to help others — especially women and minorities who were often ignored by Texas' male-dominated establishment.
"I did not want my tombstone to read, 'She kept a really clean house.' I think I'd like them to remember me by saying, 'She opened government to everyone,'" Richards said shortly before leaving office in January 1995.
Whether or not she succeeded at that, there was no question she cracked open the door.
Her single term as governor had ended in a 1994 defeat to George W. Bush, who went from besting his father's silver-haired critic to the governor's office to the presidency.
"Texas has lost one of its great daughters," President Bush said in statement after learning of Richards' death.
Two years before she was elected governor of Texas, Ann Richards electrified the 1988 Democratic National Convention with a keynote speech in which she joked that the Republican presidential nominee, George H.W. Bush, had been "born with a silver foot in his mouth."
A longtime champion of women and minorities in government who was serving at the time as Texas state treasurer, she won cheers when she reminded delegates that Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, "only backwards and in high heels."
As governor, Richards appointed the first black University of Texas regent, the first crime victim on the state Criminal Justice Board, the first disabled person on the human services board and the first teacher to lead the State Board of Education. Under Richards, the fabled Texas Rangers pinned stars on their first black and female officers.
Ron Kirk, the black former mayor of Dallas, said Richards helped him get his first political internship during a state constitutional convention in 1974 and later, as governor, made him secretary of state.
"She set the table so somebody like me could become mayor of Dallas," Kirk said.
She also polished Texas' image, courted movie producers, campaigned for the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico, oversaw a doubling of the state prison system and presided over rising student achievement scores and plunging dropout rates.
Throughout her years in office, her popularity remained high. One poll put it at over 60 percent the year she lost her re-election bid to Bush.
Republican Texas Gov. Rick Perry described Richards as "the epitome of Texas politics: a figure larger than life who had a gift for captivating the public with her great wit."
"Ann loved Texas, and Texans loved her," President Bush said. "As a public servant, she earned respect and admiration. Ann became a national role model, and her charm, wit and candor brought a refreshing vitality to public life."
U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (news, bio, voting record), R-Texas, said Richards never lost her zest for life.
"I wrote her a note when I heard about her cancer and she wrote me back a wonderful letter. She was upbeat and positive and I think she was going to go out with guns blazing," Hutchison said Wednesday night.
Richards was diagnosed with cancer in March and underwent chemotherapy treatments.
Her four adult children spent the day with her before she died Wednesday night at her home in Austin, said Cathy Bonner, a longtime family friend and family spokeswoman.
Born in Lakeview, Texas, in 1933, Richards grew up near Waco, married civil rights lawyer David Richards and spent her early adulthood volunteering in campaigns and raising four children. She often said the hardest job she ever had was as a public school teacher at Fulmore Junior High School in Austin.
In the early 1960s, she helped form the North Dallas Democratic Women, "basically to allow us to have something substantive to do; the regular Democratic Party and its organization was run by men who looked on women as little more than machine parts."
Richards served on the Travis County Commissioners Court in Austin for six years before jumping to a bigger arena in 1982 when her election as state treasurer made her the first woman elected statewide in nearly 50 years.
But politics took a toll. It cost her a marriage and forced her in 1980 to seek treatment for alcoholism.
"I had seen the very bottom of life," she once recalled. "I was so afraid I wouldn't be funny anymore. I just knew that I would lose my zaniness and my sense of humor. But I didn't. Recovery turned out to be a wonderful thing."
After her re-election defeat, Richards went on to give speeches, work as a commentator for Cable News Network and serve as a senior adviser in the New York office of Public Strategies.
In her last 10 years, Richards worked for many social causes and helped develop the Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders, scheduled to open in Austin in 2007.
Richards said she never missed being in public office. She grinned when asked what she might have done differently had she known she would be a one-term governor.
"Oh," she said, "I would probably have raised more hell."
earthmother - September 14, 2006 02:22 PM (GMT)
She was a class act. I always liked her.
Odd to me that they don't mention in this article that she was unseated as governor by little Georgie Bush.
I found this from an article in the NY Times on the subject:
Odd to me that they don't mention in this article that she was unseated as governor by little Georgie Bush.
I found this from an article in the NY Times on the subject:
| QUOTE |
| Two years later, she underestimated her young Republican challenger from West Texas, going so far as to refer to George W. Bush as “some jerk,” a comment that drew considerable criticism. Later, she acknowledged that the younger candidate has been much more effective at “staying on message” and made none of the mistakes that her campaign strategists had expected. She was beaten, 53 percent to 46 percent. (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/14/us/14richards.html?ref=us) |
Some jerk. She should only have known . . . :rolleyes:
ap215 - September 14, 2006 02:59 PM (GMT)
And was one of the last true governors Texas ever had. What a great lady. RIP Ann.
ALGOREismylife - September 14, 2006 09:54 PM (GMT)
It's hard to believe that a horrible man like George W. Bush was able to defeat this great and caring woman. :(
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,...1535050,00.html
Thursday, Sep. 14, 2006
Much More than a Good Ole Girl
Appreciation: The former Texas governor knew how to play politics with the good ole boys, but she opened doors for women and minorities
By HILARY HYLTON/AUSTIN
Back in the 1970s, when Texas politicians still drank, smoked and sparred in dark smoky bars, The Quorum Club was Austin's premier political watering hole. There at the big corner table, you'd find a cast of political characters drawn in bold Texas strokes-men with firm handshakes and loud laughs, men who had been nurtured by LBJ and knew politics, by and large, for that matter, mostly men. Most women in the room then were decorative. Except Ann Richards, the onetime Texas governor with the sharp tongue and quick wit, who died Wednesday at the age of 73 after a battle with cancer.
If you didn't hear the throaty laugh first, you'd pick up on the shock of white hair at the corner table when Austin was in high politics season. Richards, then nearly 50 after years of teaching school and raising a family of four, had carved her way into Texas politics via a seat on the Travis County Commission, not a high station but a strategically placed one in the capital city. Her political roots lay with the progressive wing of the Democratic Party; she had supported the campaigns of US Senator Ralph Yarbrough and Sarah Weddington, the Austin lawyer of Roe v Wade fame. But late at night, she sat with — and learned from — the good ole boys.
Democrats ruled Texas at the time, so much so that Republicans, the joke went, met in a phone booth. Texas Comptroller Bob Bullock was the king of the corner table, the master of legislative budget matters. One night Bullock went on a roach-shooting rampage in the Quorum Club basement. By the next night, everyone had holstered their sidearms and recovered from their hangovers. And so it went night after night — until 1980 when Richards's family confronted her with her alcoholism and she went into rehab. One year later, Bullock went off, as he put it, to "drunk school" at the Betty Ford clinic in California and when he returned by private plane a few weeks later, the lone person to meet him was Ann Richards.
The round table days were over. But when the fog of booze cleared, Richards discovered that her wit was not fueled by whiskey. The twinkle in her eyes was there to stay. In 1982, she ran for state treasurer. As one Texas newspaper coyly described it this week, she had "discovered" the old-style Democratic incumbent was under investigation by the Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle (yes, the same Ronnie Earle that's going after Tom DeLay these days). "Discovery" was no doubt one of those skills she mastered at that round table. Her opponent imploded; she won handily.
Richards, a keen student of the new media age, turned the state treasurer's slot into a statewide platform and built a loyal following among the agency's bureaucracy. She did such a good job at broadening the position's reach that it later became a path to power for other female Texas politcians including US Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison. In 1988, half way through Richards' second term, she took that confidence and her persona to the Democratic National Convention, wowing everyone with her silver hair and stiletto tongue. Her famous poke at then Vice President George H.W. Bush — "Poor George. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth." — prompted talk of a national role someday and a gift from Bush in the form of a silver charm, shaped like a foot.
But politics is not about prime time and gentlemanly gestures, as Richards would find out when she took the next step on the big stage and announced a bid for governor. The Democratic primary pitted Richards against the man sometimes called the Freddie Krueger of Texas politics, then Attorney General Jim Mattox. In public Richards smiled, hugged photographers' necks and asked, "Howya doin' darlin?" But she was tough as nails in the trenches. Mattox accused her of failing to come clean on rumors that she had used cocaine. It was nasty, but she beat Mattox and went on to win over the Republican candidate sent from a Democratic consultant's heaven, rancher-oilman Clayton Williams.
Looking at old photos from Richards' campaigns, it is clear Texans of all stripes loved her. My 11-year-old niece insisted on being taken to her final campaign rally after hearing at school about a former teacher who was running for governor. Richards talked about opening doors for all Texans and she did that as governor, appointing minorities and women in unprecedented numbers to executive positions throughout state government and, in the process, laying down a marker for her successors. Her personal popularity rating went as high as 60 percent though her job approval hovered around 45 as she tackled thorny issues such as school funding with a staff short on good ole boys. When she ran for re-election 1994, her national presence boosted her coffers, allowing her to spend $2.6 million — more than Republican George W. Bush — but he beat her anyway 53 to 46 percent.
In many ways, Richards embodied both the old and the new Texas. She had changed the state, but the political ground had also shifted under her as conservative Democrats fled to the fast-growing Republican Party. Her defeat was a shock to the national media. After all, she was a Texan loved beyond the Red River (though to some back home, her accent always seemed suspiciously thicker on Larry King). Most of the men around the Quorum Club table are gone, and now she is too. But the image of her there remains, as a wily woman who played the game with the best of them.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,...1535050,00.html
Thursday, Sep. 14, 2006
Much More than a Good Ole Girl
Appreciation: The former Texas governor knew how to play politics with the good ole boys, but she opened doors for women and minorities
By HILARY HYLTON/AUSTIN
Back in the 1970s, when Texas politicians still drank, smoked and sparred in dark smoky bars, The Quorum Club was Austin's premier political watering hole. There at the big corner table, you'd find a cast of political characters drawn in bold Texas strokes-men with firm handshakes and loud laughs, men who had been nurtured by LBJ and knew politics, by and large, for that matter, mostly men. Most women in the room then were decorative. Except Ann Richards, the onetime Texas governor with the sharp tongue and quick wit, who died Wednesday at the age of 73 after a battle with cancer.
If you didn't hear the throaty laugh first, you'd pick up on the shock of white hair at the corner table when Austin was in high politics season. Richards, then nearly 50 after years of teaching school and raising a family of four, had carved her way into Texas politics via a seat on the Travis County Commission, not a high station but a strategically placed one in the capital city. Her political roots lay with the progressive wing of the Democratic Party; she had supported the campaigns of US Senator Ralph Yarbrough and Sarah Weddington, the Austin lawyer of Roe v Wade fame. But late at night, she sat with — and learned from — the good ole boys.
Democrats ruled Texas at the time, so much so that Republicans, the joke went, met in a phone booth. Texas Comptroller Bob Bullock was the king of the corner table, the master of legislative budget matters. One night Bullock went on a roach-shooting rampage in the Quorum Club basement. By the next night, everyone had holstered their sidearms and recovered from their hangovers. And so it went night after night — until 1980 when Richards's family confronted her with her alcoholism and she went into rehab. One year later, Bullock went off, as he put it, to "drunk school" at the Betty Ford clinic in California and when he returned by private plane a few weeks later, the lone person to meet him was Ann Richards.
The round table days were over. But when the fog of booze cleared, Richards discovered that her wit was not fueled by whiskey. The twinkle in her eyes was there to stay. In 1982, she ran for state treasurer. As one Texas newspaper coyly described it this week, she had "discovered" the old-style Democratic incumbent was under investigation by the Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle (yes, the same Ronnie Earle that's going after Tom DeLay these days). "Discovery" was no doubt one of those skills she mastered at that round table. Her opponent imploded; she won handily.
Richards, a keen student of the new media age, turned the state treasurer's slot into a statewide platform and built a loyal following among the agency's bureaucracy. She did such a good job at broadening the position's reach that it later became a path to power for other female Texas politcians including US Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison. In 1988, half way through Richards' second term, she took that confidence and her persona to the Democratic National Convention, wowing everyone with her silver hair and stiletto tongue. Her famous poke at then Vice President George H.W. Bush — "Poor George. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth." — prompted talk of a national role someday and a gift from Bush in the form of a silver charm, shaped like a foot.
But politics is not about prime time and gentlemanly gestures, as Richards would find out when she took the next step on the big stage and announced a bid for governor. The Democratic primary pitted Richards against the man sometimes called the Freddie Krueger of Texas politics, then Attorney General Jim Mattox. In public Richards smiled, hugged photographers' necks and asked, "Howya doin' darlin?" But she was tough as nails in the trenches. Mattox accused her of failing to come clean on rumors that she had used cocaine. It was nasty, but she beat Mattox and went on to win over the Republican candidate sent from a Democratic consultant's heaven, rancher-oilman Clayton Williams.
Looking at old photos from Richards' campaigns, it is clear Texans of all stripes loved her. My 11-year-old niece insisted on being taken to her final campaign rally after hearing at school about a former teacher who was running for governor. Richards talked about opening doors for all Texans and she did that as governor, appointing minorities and women in unprecedented numbers to executive positions throughout state government and, in the process, laying down a marker for her successors. Her personal popularity rating went as high as 60 percent though her job approval hovered around 45 as she tackled thorny issues such as school funding with a staff short on good ole boys. When she ran for re-election 1994, her national presence boosted her coffers, allowing her to spend $2.6 million — more than Republican George W. Bush — but he beat her anyway 53 to 46 percent.
In many ways, Richards embodied both the old and the new Texas. She had changed the state, but the political ground had also shifted under her as conservative Democrats fled to the fast-growing Republican Party. Her defeat was a shock to the national media. After all, she was a Texan loved beyond the Red River (though to some back home, her accent always seemed suspiciously thicker on Larry King). Most of the men around the Quorum Club table are gone, and now she is too. But the image of her there remains, as a wily woman who played the game with the best of them.