Ann Richards

Ann Richards, known for her sharp tongue and shock of white hair, was the forty-fifth governor of Texas. She was born Dorothy Ann Willis in Waco in 1933, the only child of Cecil and Iona Willis. At age nineteen, while attending Baylor, she married David Richards. The couple moved to Austin where Richards worked as a schoolteacher while David attended law school. The family moved to Dallas, where David worked as a civil rights lawyer as Richards raised their four children and held court with other progressives.

“Wherever the couple lived, they formed the center of a charmed circle. . . . Their Dallas home became a haven for the disenfranchised, everyone from carpenters to poets to politicians,” executive editor Mimi Swartz wrote in 1990 during Richards’s first gubernatorial campaign. “Ann, pretty and sharp-tongued, became their star. She could cuss and laugh as loud as any man, and she could argue civil rights as well as she could make tamales.” The family moved back to Austin in the early seventies, and she quickly found her niche among Austin’s liberal Democrats. “Everybody wanted to be with her, around her,” one old friend told Swartz. “You didn’t dare sleep late or take naps because you’d miss something fun.” But while Richard had a charming exterior, she also had her demons. In 1980, after a family intervention, she entered treatment for alcoholism and joined Alcoholics Anonymous. But the demands of politics and her alcoholism placed a strain on her marriage, which unraveled. The couple divorced in 1984.

Richards’s political career began in 1975, when she ran for county commissioner and ousted a three-term incumbent. She quickly took to the office, and would “out-bubba the bubbas by picking her teeth with an ivory toothpick and cleaning her fingernails with a Swiss army knife during commissioners’ meetings,” Swartz wrote. At the urging of former land commissioner Bob Armstrong, Richards ran for state treasurer in 1982, again beating the incumbent. Her political star rose in 1988, when she delivered a winning keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta and became the darling of the Democratic Party overnight. Her speech was peppered with zingers, including her famous line, “Poor George. He can’t help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth.”

In 1990 she ran for governor. After giving Jim Mattox a drubbing in the Democratic primary, she faced a tough fight against Clayton Williams, who fell off in the polls after making a rape joke and refusing to shake Richards’s hand at an event in Dallas. Richards had a high approval rating two years into her term, and she enjoyed legislative successes, including the creation of the state lottery and new environmental protections. But her popularity was rooted not in her legislative accomplishments as governor but in “her style and the specifics of who she is: a 58-year-old woman, a mother, a former schoolteacher, a former county commissioner, and a survivor of divorce and alcoholism,” contributing editor Jan Jarboe Russell wrote in 1992.

But by the 1993 session, Richards seemed to have lost her zest. When senior executive editor Paul Burka saw her in the hallways of the Capitol during that session and remarked that she didn’t seem to be enjoying her time there as much as in 1991, she replied “If you mean, ‘Am I sadder but wiser?’ The answer is yes.” Her 1994 reelection campaign against George W. Bush was characterized by that apathy and resignation, and she ended up losing by 500,000 votes.

Richards died of esophageal cancer in 2006. Her daughter Cecile Richards is the president of Planned Parenthood.

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The Last Liberal

As Jan Reid's new biography makes clear, Ann Richards was one of the most magnetic politicians of the past thirty years. So why didn’t she leave much of a legacy?

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Thirty years after he took his first photograph for us—of charming kook Stanley Marsh 3—contributing photographer Wyatt McSpadden looks back on his extraordinary career and tells the stories behind some of our favorite images.

Recipes|
January 20, 2013

Ann Richards’ Wonton Ravioli with Lemon Cream Sauce

1/2 pound ground chicken 2 green onions, minced 1/2 teaspoon minced ginger root 1 teaspoon minced garlic 1 tablespoon sesame oil 1 tablespoon soy sauce 1 tablespoon cornstarch 40 wonton wrappers 1 tablespoon minced shallot 2 tablespoon clarified butter 3 tablespoon flour 1 1/2 cups chicken stock 1/2 cup heavy

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Jim Mattox, RIP

In 1982, Ronald Reagan's first mid-term election, a Democratic wave swept the state. Republicans had mounted a major challenge to the D's control of most statewide offices (governor excepted), and U.S. senator Lloyd Bentsen and lieutenant governor Bill Hobby used their muscle to build the best Democratic organization Texas had

Politics & Policy|
November 1, 2006

Ann

She was our governor, but she was my friend.

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How W. Can Lose

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Politics & Policy|
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Surprised Parties

Here’s what Republicans and Democrats were talking about after the November 3 election.George W. Bush’s coattails. They were frayed at best, even though the GOP swept every statewide race. The governor got 68 percent of the vote, but the victorious Republican candidates for lieutenant governor and comptroller, Rick Perry and

Politics & Policy|
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President Bush?

He’s the front-runner even before he has officially entered the race, but sky-high expectations are the least of the obstacles George W. Bush faces in his quest for the White House.

Texas History|
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Is Waco Wacko?

After the latest standoff there�by an armed UFO cultist�you might think so. But on the fifth anniversary of the Branch Davidian siege, the Central Texas community is doing just fine, thank you.

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The Pitch

To be a truly major player in the ad game, GSD&M needed a car account. When Mazda’s came up for review, the brash Austinites sprang into action.

Politics & Policy|
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Who killed the Texas Democratic party?

AT LEAST DAN MORALES knew that the mere proclamation he was going to have a press conference was not likely to stop the world in its tracks. The night before and all that morning, some supporters, as well as the attorney general himself, were busy calling around to say that

Music|
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Lucken Back

Twenty years later, Jerry Jeff Walker returns to the town his music put on the map.

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