From the Heart : Texas’ Gutsy Treasurer Mixes Feminist Wit With Politics

It was July, 1988, and the Democratic National Convention had given birth to a new star. But it was not Michael Dukakis, Lloyd Bentsen or any other good old boy beaming into the television lights.

For millions of Americans the hit of the party was Ann Richards, a wisecracking grandma from Lakeview, Tex., who gave the keynote speech and took George Herbert Walker Bush down a notch--at least for one memorable night.

“After listening to George Bush all these years, I figured you needed to know what a real Texas accent sounds like,” she said in a wicked drawl. “Poor George. He can’t help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth.”

Richards’ speech got the Atlanta convention off to a rousing start and overnight the funny lady with the stiff white bouffant became a media sensation. But viewers also saw a shrewd politician at work. A born-again feminist who was elected state Treasurer seven years ago, Richards, 54, used her good-old-gal charms to show that women are tired of being patronized.

“Twelve years ago, Barbara Jordan, another Texas woman, made the keynote address to this convention, and two women in 160 years is about par for the course,” she said, as laughter filled the convention hall.

“But if you give us a chance, we can perform. After all, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels.”

Now, 15 months later, Richards’ name recognition has soared in state polls and she has begun a spirited run for governor in 1990. Heck, the rest of the nation has discovered what Texans have known for years--that Ann Richards can hold her own with any man when it comes to scorching one-liners and tough campaigns.

But her climb to the top has not been easy. Over the last two decades, the pressures of rearing four children and launching a political career led Richards into a battle with alcohol. She became sober only after checking into a detoxification clinic in 1980, and her marriage of 22 years fell apart soon thereafter.

“I’ve had my ups and downs, same as anyone, so there’s no reason to hide,” says Richards, who has just told her life story in “Straight From the Heart” (Simon & Schuster), a brash autobiography written with author Peter Knobler.

“People ask me what it’s like to write your life story,” she says in her publisher’s office, on a recent publicity trip to New York. “Well, I feel like Lady Godiva riding buck naked down the street. You’re all out there, for everyone to see.”

Born in 1935, Richards never dreamed that she would enter politics. After all, good girls from small towns near Waco, Tex., were expected to snare a man, raise a family and settle down. If you went to college, it was because Mr. Right hadn’t come along and you needed to support yourself until he did.

First Taste of Politics

A gifted student, Richards excelled in high school debate and got her first taste of politics as a teen-ager when she attended a “Girl’s State” mock government convention. Suddenly, she was surrounded by bright young women who seemed as capable as any man of running the state government.

“I loved hearing office holders talk, I loved the whole thing,” she says. “But my folks never thought I’d wind up doing anything but getting married. To this day, my mama is astounded at what’s happened to me.”

Richards, who says that as a girl she was “always kind of weeny, wimpy and skinny,” grew up in a modest home as an only child. Her father drove a delivery truck and never had much money, while her mother took care of the family. It was only when she married her high school sweetheart, David Richards, in 1953 that Richards’ world began to expand.

The newlyweds both attended Baylor University and later moved to Austin, where David Richards got a law degree and Ann began teaching government in junior high school. During the next 10 years, both plunged into the world of progressive Democratic politics and the burgeoning civil rights movement.

Back to Texas

After a brief stint in Washington, with the Justice Department, Richards’ family moved back to Texas and got involved in several Democratic election campaigns. She impressed friends with her grass-roots political skills, although the idea of getting involved in campaigning full-time still seemed out of the question.

The turning point came in 1971, when Richards helped run a successful state legislative campaign for Sarah Weddington, the attorney who had argued the Roe vs. Wade abortion decision before the U. S. Supreme Court. For her, the campaign was a tough introduction to what women candidates could expect--not just in a Texas campaign, but in any race where gender became an issue.

In the race, Weddington’s opponent attacked the fact that she was a woman, charging that she tried to confuse voters because “one day she would wear her hair up, the next day she would wear her hair down. That caused a certain amount of laughter,” says Richards.

Still, Weddington won, and Richards next got involved in campaigns for black and Latino candidates. By that time, political life seemed irresistible. When her husband turned down a 1976 request by local Democrats to run for Travis County commissioner, she accepted their offer instead.

“I knew it was a major step, because by that time we were raising children, and it would be a major impact on my time,” Richards says. “But my husband said, ‘Ann, if you don’t do this you’ll wonder the rest of your life whether you could have done it.’ ”

Richards campaigned with enthusiasm, but her efforts to crack the all-male club of county commissioners in and around Austin created problems. To many voters, the sight of Ann Richards pumping hands at a campaign stop or knocking on doors in rough, blue-collar neighborhoods seemed ludicrous.

“It was going to be hard to convince people outside the city limits that I was their boy,” she recalls. When an amazed newspaper editor asked what would happen if he endorsed her bid, Richards let him have it:

“I don’t know,” she said. “The whole building just might collapse. But why don’t you try it and see?”

Working tirelessly, Richards stunned her critics and won. But she had a tough time convincing county employees that she meant business. On one occasion, she visited a road-building project and asked workers the name of an unusually ugly dog that was hanging around the site.

Refused to Answer

At first, the men refused to answer. But when Richards persisted, one of the workers finally said, “Well, you’re gonna find out sooner or later. Her name is Ann Richards.”

To the men’s amazement, Richards burst into laughter and they joined in. She recalls that “a little guy in the front row who was a lot younger and a lot smarter than most said in a wonderfully hopeful tenor, “But we call her Miss Ann!”

In time, Richards impressed voters with her efforts to streamline public works projects and expand human services, such as medical services and child care programs for the poor. But as her life became a whirl of meetings, speeches and politicking, her marriage began to suffer.

At first, it was simply a matter of time. Richards was spending fewer and fewer hours with her family, and her husband was obliged to pick up the load. Soon, the damage became more insidious. The Richardses enjoyed social drinking, but Ann began to fear that she had lost control of the habit, and was becoming a full-blown alcoholic.

“I reached a point where I was truly worried about my drinking. In my case, I liked the sedative effect. It made everything easier and (I) didn’t have any conscious notion that it was taking more and more alcohol to have the effect that I used to get from three beers.”

Finally, in a 1980 confrontation, Richards’ family and friends demanded that she seek treatment. After a monthlong stay in a Minneapolis clinic, she emerged sober and determined to forgo alcohol for the rest of her life. But her troubles were just beginning.

“It’s very difficult to live with someone who is alcoholic and then have them suddenly be sober,” she says, closing her eyes and rubbing the deep lines on her forehead. “It’s not that you are a different person, but it’s that the dynamic is so different.

“We used to sit and talk and drink with people a lot, and I didn’t want to do that anymore. I was a lot stronger sober, I wasn’t this person that needed care anymore. Can you understand the threat of that? That’s tough.”

Richards and her husband separated shortly after her return from the clinic and were divorced amicably in 1984. Looking back, the woman who never dreamed she’d enter politics says her marriage buckled under the pressures of her changing life and ambitions.

‘Everything Changed’

“We’d been married some 22, 23 years, and suddenly everything changed for me. Not for him. Suddenly, I was in the public eye, I was an elected official. And so this nice, comfortable simple relationship became very complex.”

Despite her personal pain, and the shock of having her past problems turned into campaign issues, Richards’ political career began to accelerate. In 1982, she won a whirlwind campaign for Texas state Treasurer, entering the race days before the filing deadline when it was learned that the incumbent was about to be indicted for official misconduct.

Winning over skeptics with her easygoing manner, Richards carried out sweeping fiscal reforms in the Treasurer’s office. She also immersed herself in feminist causes, both in Texas and on the national level. Once content to let her husband make all the major decisions, the aspiring gubernatorial candidate now believes that women who juggle the responsibilities of running a home are better equipped to handle high-pressure executive jobs than many men.

“It’s the truth,” she says. “I kind of laugh now when I hear big corporations talking about their business as a family . . . that we’re all one big family here. Well, that being the case, then it would probably be a good idea to run one first, before you try to do it on the mega scale.”

As her visibility increased, it was inevitable that Richards would attract the attention of national Democratic party officials. When they decided that the 1988 convention keynote speech should combine an appeal to Southern voters with a humorous attack on Bush, she seemed the natural choice.

While many people, including comedian Lily Tomlin, contributed lines and ideas to the speech, Richards was firmly in control of the final product. To her, it was an opportunity to “Talk Texas” to the American people.

“The tone was all-important because at first I thought I should be, you know, a little loftier? But then I thought, honey, I’ll never get to do this again. It was now or never.

“I figured I might as well do it my way,” she says. “That’s how I’ve always made these decisions in life. Just going with my gut, and having a good laugh or two along the way. And I’m glad I did.”