Saw Texas Candidate Richards Use Cocaine in ‘77, Man Asserts

A tour operator has told an investigator that he witnessed Texas Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ann Richards using cocaine 13 years ago, it was reported today.

The Richards campaign denied the allegation.

The Albuquerque Journal said tour operator J. D. Arnold of Santa Fe, N.M., told a Bexar County, Tex., sheriff’s investigator that he saw Richards use cocaine in a foyer outside a restroom at the Stoneleigh P. bar in Dallas.

He said the incident occurred during the early morning hours of Dec. 7, 1977, after a fund-raising banquet for then-congressman Jim Mattox.

Richards’ staff said Arnold is a former aide to Mattox, whom Richards defeated in a bitter Democratic primary runoff this spring. After Richards refused to say yes or no when asked during a debate whether she had ever abused illegal drugs, Mattox sought to make that question a campaign issue.

The Richards campaign said Arnold is an unreliable source because of his past run-ins with the law and that Arnold’s charge is a tactic by Richards’ opponent, Republican Clayton Williams.

Judy Powers of Los Alamos, N.M., said she was at the gathering that night and said Richards never was there.

“Don’t you think that on the surface it stinks?” Monte Williams, a spokesman for Richards, told the newspaper. He called it “laughable” that the Bexar County sheriff would spend tax money to research an allegation of an incident from 1977.

Reggie Bashur, a spokesman for Clayton Williams, said today that the GOP campaign had nothing to do with Arnold or his charges.