1988 Democratic National Convention : To Ann Richards, This Evening Was Made for Dreams

Ann Richards, the Texas state treasurer who will deliver the keynote address tonight at the Democratic National Convention, is a woman who likes to laugh.

She can tell a joke and bring down the house and she can use her humor to make a point. She can parry and thrust with a punch line and her fiery style has earned her the reputation of one of the finest speakers in Texas, a state that places great value on its oratorical tradition.

“George Bush claims to be from Texas. But someone who lives in Maine and stays in a Houston hotel room is called a tourist in Texas, not a Texan,” she joked on her arrival at the convention site in Atlanta.

It’s a Dream Come True

For any politician, the chance to speak to the nation on television and set the tone for the opening of a political convention is a dream. For Richardson, it’s an opportunity to foster another dream--a run for governor in Texas in 1990.

“It’s sort of like going to Carnegie Hall,” she said in a telephone interview. “You practice. I don’t know how many speeches I’ve made in places like the Madisonville Cattleman’s Assn. and the McAllen Mexican-American Democrats Convention and the Nacogdoches Chamber of Commerce.”

But her speaking has not been limited to the Texas backwaters. At the recent Democratic state convention, it was not lost on the party leadership that the delegates gave her a thunderous ovation as she verbally thrashed the Republicans.

“George Bush and Ronald Reagan have one serious problem in common--bad memory. Reagan can’t remember selling arms to the Ayatollah, and neither can Bush. But Bush has got it worse. He can’t recall a thing he said when he ran against Reagan eight years ago. All that talk about voodoo economics has just sort of faded into the fog. It’s like Sam Rayburn said: ‘If you can tell the truth the first time, you don’t have to remember what you said.’ ”

Makes Her Point

At a recent Democratic fund-raiser in Houston, Richards used her disarming style to pointedly chastise the lack of minorities present.

“Are there any other white men who haven’t spoken yet?” she asked, after taking the podium. “God knows we wouldn’t want to leave any of you out.”

Richards can be blunt, a characteristic that Democratic Party Chairman Paul G. Kirk Jr. described as being able to “tell it like it is.”

At a 1985 meeting of Democrats searching for a new party image, for instance, she told party members that it was time to stop offering old solutions to new problems.

“I think it’s time for a little candor. I think it’s time to start talking turkey instead of extolling Thanksgiving,” she said. “We’re living in a whole new social and economic order with a whole new set of problems and challenges. Old assumptions and old programs don’t work in this new society and the more we try to stretch them to make them fit, the more we will be seen as running away from what is reality.”

Richards, 54, grew up poor and attended Baylor University, a Southern Baptist institution in Waco, Tex., where, in her day, women were not allowed to wear jeans or shorts. The mother of four children, Richards became interested in grass-roots politics early. She continued her involvement when she moved from Dallas to Austin with her husband, David, a civil rights lawyer who had been her high school sweetheart. Her daughter is a union organizer in Southern California.

At every step in Atlanta, she is asked what she will talk about. “That’s like giving you your present early,” she replied with a smile. But then she stopped, and added: “In reality, putting this speech together is sort of like reliving my life, like I’ve been writing this speech for 54 years.”

Hit Some Rough Spots

That, of course, means some rough spots along the way.

The worst so far in preparing her speech occurred when a computer gulped the whole address. Much of it was retrieved but only after moments of panic.

In 1976, Richards won her first bid for office, defeating an incumbent for a county commissioner’s slot. In 1982, she entered the state treasurer’s race. The incumbent withdrew from the Democratic runoff because he was under indictment for official misconduct. Richards won the general election, making her the first woman in Texas to be elected to statewide office in 50 years. She was reelected in 1986.

Liz Carpenter, Lady Bird Johnson’s former press secretary, said that Richards’ first election was a rallying point for the state’s women. She told the story of a group urging Richards to run for office only two days before the filing deadline. But Richards replied she wouldn’t unless $200,000 was raised by sundown. Carpenter said 200 women pledged $1,000 each for the campaign.

“It was the biggest check nearly all of us had ever written for politics,” she said.

Richards also suffered personal setbacks. In 1980, after being confronted by family members, she underwent treatment for alcoholism. And in 1983 her long marriage ended in divorce.

Open to Helping Others

Today, she talks openly about her problems with alcohol and often gives speeches on the subject. She has also quietly given her help to anyone who has asked for it.

“She has opened up her heart. There are no closed doors. No secret rooms. She has made her own frailty a stepping stone for others,” Carpenter said.

In the history of political conventions, keynoters stir very high expectations.

Richards is confronted constantly with knowledge of the comparisons that will occur between her and New York Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, whose brilliant 1984 convention speech vaulted him into the national political arena. If that worries Richards, she isn’t showing it.

“I’ve had lots of good advice,” she said. “Someone called this morning and suggested I begin ‘Four score and seven years ago,” and Bill Hobby (Texas’ lieutenant governor) was in here this afternoon saying ‘Friends, Romans and countrymen’ would be a good way to start.”

Bob Bullock, the state comptroller, said he believed Richards was equal to the task, that he had learned years ago never to follow her to the rostrum.

“There’s fixin’ to be a real stem-winder,” he said. “Mark it down.”

Political writer John Balzar in Atlanta contributed to this story.