When I worked at the TODAY SHOW as political producer I had a deal with both parties that they would call and give me a heads up when they named their keynote speakers.\u00a0 That way I could call and book them to be on the show the morning of their speech — and get them before the other shows.\u00a0 In 1988 I got a call on a Saturday morning to let me know that the Democrats had chosen Texas Governor Ann Richards.\u00a0 I was frantic.\u00a0 It was a weekend.\u00a0 How would I find her?\u00a0 How would I get her phone number?\u00a0 I called the NBC affiliate in Austin.\u00a0 They had no home number.\u00a0 I called the AP.\u00a0 Ditto.\u00a0 I called a couple of political friends – no luck.\u00a0 So then, on a lark (you can guess the end of this story I bet) I called information.\u00a0 Yup.\u00a0 She was listed in the phone book!\u00a0 I called, she answered, and we got her first.\u00a0 She was a riot on the phone, too.\u00a0 I asked her about listing her number and she seemed genuinely amused- why shouldn’t she list her number like everyone else?\u00a0 Governor Richards died yesterday, September 13, 2006 at 73.<\/p>\n
Probably that speech<\/a> was one of the high points of her career.\u00a0 Funny and a bit mischievous, it pushed class angles to differentiate between the parties, and it’s remembered far beyond Michael Dukakis, the candidate who eventually lost to the first President Bush. Bush himself often seemed awkward.\u00a0 Said Richards, “Poor George, he can’t help it \u2014 he was born with a silver foot in his mouth.”\u00a0 She brought down the house.<\/p>\n But President Bush’s opponent, Michael Dukakis, lost resoundingly. Richards was elected governor in 1991 (12th of the only 28 women<\/a> ever to serve at governors) and served one term – losing her bid for re-election, ironically – to the son of the man she had so mocked –\u00a0 George W. Bush.\u00a0 \u00a0 In her later years she worked for a lobbying firm that included several tobacco accounts, to the dismay of many of her fans.<\/p>\n But this self-made country girl, recovering alcoholic ( and biker – see this photo<\/a>) led her state with imagination and humor, wrote a wonderful autobiography <\/a>that made the Depression come alive and set a great example for the emerging crew of women politicians.\u00a0 Those who followed her gained much from her pioneering leadership – and we’ll miss her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I worked at the TODAY SHOW as political producer I had a deal with both parties that they would call and give me a heads up when they named their keynote speakers.\u00a0 That way I could call and book them to be on the show the morning of their speech — and get them … Continue reading SO LONG GOVERNOR RICHARDS<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[27,2764],"tags":[2539,1300,546,557,2540,1405,44,165],"class_list":["post-1766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-affairs","category-i-seem-to-write-a-lot-of-obits","tag-ann-richards","tag-democratic-convention","tag-governor","tag-obituary","tag-silver-spoon","tag-texas","tag-women-2","tag-women-in-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4gBq8-su","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1766"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1766\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2471,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1766\/revisions\/2471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}