It was a lovely spring morning, as I recall, or at least it seemed like spring that day in 1991. My new boss was giving me a tour of her new Austin digs -- the stately, antebellum governor's mansion across the street from the green and leafy grounds of the Texas State Capitol.
Gleefully, Ann Richards showed me the varnished-over scars in the stairway banister, where legendary Gov. James Stephen Hogg had hammered a line of tacks to discourage his four kids from sliding down the sweeping stair rail. We wandered upstairs to her high-ceilinged living quarters, where, in her bedroom -- where Sam Houston had slept -- she had me lay my head on her pillow and look out the tall windows. I felt a little ridiculous, but I complied.
"That's what I wake up to every morning," the new governor said, as my eyes took in the brilliant blue sky and the hulking, pinkish-hued Capitol. She was delighted, absolutely delighted, to wake up every morning and walk across the street to go to work. As corny as it sounds, she had no doubt she was working for the people of Texas.
Ann Richards had fun in her 73 years on this Earth. Maybe she had a little too much fun in earlier decades, when the alcohol flowed, certain substances were passed around and she was invariably the life of the party. Some of her '60s-era escapades as part of a politico-literary crowd came back to haunt her on the campaign trail, but as a recovering alcoholic, she was not inclined to deny her past.
Always the wild child
After her friends intervened in the fall of 1980 and she reluctantly agreed to get treatment, she still had fun, just more soberly. Fortunately, the more raucous Ann continued to appear occasionally, even after she won election to statewide office in 1982.
It's 1983, she's the new state treasurer and she's imitating a Texas electronics factory owner before an uproarious crowd at the biennial convention of the National Women's Political Caucus. "My girls are happy," she drawls. "My girls are happy, because I know how to treat 'em."
She's wearing a rubber pig's snout.
I remember the slightly more serious Ann -- Ann the governor -- at a gathering of her new appointees to state boards and commissions. Her weathered face beaming, her ice-blue eyes alight, she's mingling with African American men and women from East Texas, Hispanics from the Rio Grande Valley, a sprinkling of Asians. Most have never been asked to serve their state.
This is "the New Texas," she proclaims. It's a far cry from her immediate predecessor, whose appointees were 80 percent Anglo and male. She's having fun.
She wasn't always happy, of course. The flick of her wit could be biting, her temper would flare at times, and you didn't want to get on the wrong side of her.
As a reporter, I had covered Ann over the years, but I didn't know her as well as the gaggle of Texas progressives who had worked alongside her in campaigns on behalf of liberal icon Ralph Yarborough, who twice ran for governor unsuccessfully and eventually was elected to the U.S. Senate, or, more recently, on her own campaigns. Ann's old friends, they made up the inner circle of her administration.
The voice of Waco
Still, when I sat down at the computer to write for her, I could hear the voice, the twangy Texas voice that reminded me of mesquite trees and barbed wire and dusty pastures in summer. We were both from Waco, so in a way I'd been hearing that voice all my life. Imagining a white wig on my head, I could feel the voice flowing through my fingers. It was real.
More than any other politician I've known, Ann knew intuitively how to connect with people. (Only Bill Clinton and maybe John McCain come close.) One-on-one, on the air or before a crowd, it was the same: She was speaking to you and you alone. Once I began writing speeches for other politicians, I realized how gifted she was.
Watching her in recent years during her occasional appearances on "Larry King Live," listening to her talking clearly and sensibly to viewers who called in, I was pleased to see she still had the gift -- and saddened that so many other politicians don't.
Only it wasn't a gift. It was the essential Ann Richards, the "good ol' girl" from Waco who loved people and who never forgot where she came from.
So why did she lose? Why did such a capable politician serve only one term as Texas governor?
The answer is not that elusive. Democrats in the '80s and '90s were disappearing faster than a freak snowstorm in South Texas, and her election in 1990 was something of an anomaly, aided and abetted by a bumbling, inexperienced Republican opponent.
End of an era
Four years later, with an affable, disciplined campaigner in George W. Bush, Republicans -- particularly Republican women -- came home, and the numbers just didn't add up for a liberal Democrat.
There was something else: After four grueling years in office, after decades of public service, the happy warrior had lost some of her zest, and she campaigned as if she wasn't quite sure she wanted another four years.
Texas Democrats -- there are still a few, I hear -- would just as soon forget that race. What they'll never forget is that glorious morning in January 1991, when 20,000 Texans linked arms behind a smiling, white-haired woman and walked up Austin's Congress Avenue on their way to take back the Capitol. It seems such a long time ago.
Staff writer Joe Holley was a deputy press secretary for Ann Richards during her one term as governor.
