[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 114 (Thursday, September 14, 2006)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1721-E1722]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              ON THE DEATH OF TEXAS GOVERNOR ANN RICHARDS

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. SHEILA JACKSON-LEE

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, September 14, 2006

  Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, it is my sad duty to report to 
the House the loss of an American original and the First Lady of Texas 
politics, the great Ann Richards. Governor Richards died yesterday 
after a long battle with throat cancer. She was 73.
  Dorothy Ann Willis Richards began her career in politics in the early 
1970s after having raised four children. A Democrat, she served as 
County Commissioner in Travis County, Texas from 1977 to 1982. Richards 
was elected to the first of two terms as Texas State Treasurer in 1982. 
We who knew and loved her will remember her always as a forcefully 
articulate and amusingly folksy speaker. She first gained national 
prominence with her keynote address at the 1988 Democratic National 
Convention. In 1990 she was elected governor of Texas, the first woman 
chief executive of Texas in more than fifty years.
  Dorothy Ann Willis was born in Lakeview, Texas. She grew up in Waco, 
Texas, and graduated from Waco High School in 1950, participating in 
Girls State. She received a bachelor's degree from Baylor University 
while on a debate scholarship. She married her high school sweetheart, 
David Richards, and moved to Austin, Texas, where she earned a teaching 
certificate from the University of Texas at Austin.
  After graduation, she taught social studies and history at Fulmore 
Junior High School in Austin, Texas from 1955 to 1956. She had also two 
daughters and two sons in the following years, and she campaigned for 
Texas liberals and progressives such as Henry B. Gonzalez, Ralph 
Yarborough, and Sarah Weddington. One of her daughters, Cecile Richards 
became president of Planned Parenthood in 2006. Throughout her life Ann 
Richards was a forceful champion for economic and social justice for 
all Americans, especially women and the disadvantaged.
  In 1976, Richards ran against and defeated a three-term incumbent on 
the Travis County, Texas Commissioner Court, holding the position for 
six years. She then was elected State Treasurer in 1982, becoming the 
first woman elected to statewide office in more than fifty years. In 
winning the Democratic nomination for treasurer, Richards ended the 
career of a Texas politician with the same name as a president (but no 
relation), Warren G. Harding. In 1986, she was re-elected treasurer 
without opposition.
  Ann Richards delivered the keynote address to the 1988 Democratic 
National Convention, a move which put her in the national spotlight 
with the line ``Poor George [H.W. Bush], he can't help it . . . He was 
born with a silver foot in his mouth.'' The speech set the tone for her 
political future; she described herself as a real Texan (in supposed 
contrast to George H.W. Bush), established herself as a feminist, and 
reached out to African-Americans and Hispanics. In 1989, with co-author 
Peter Knobler, she wrote her autobiography, Straight from the Heart.
  In 1990, she sought and won the Democratic gubernatorial nomination 
besting such venerable vote getters as Texas Attorney General James 
``Jim'' Mattox and former governor Mark White. In the general election 
she defeated multi-millionaire rancher Clayton Williams after a brutal 
campaign and was inaugurated the 45th governor of Texas in January 
1991.
  The Texas economy had been in a slump since the mid-1980s, compounded 
by a downturn in the U.S. economy. Governor Richards responded with a 
program of economic revitalization, yielding growth in 1991 of 2% when 
the U.S. economy as a whole shrank. She also streamlined Texas's 
government and regulatory institutions for business and the public. Her 
efforts helped to revitalize and position Texas's corporate 
infrastructure for the explosive economic growth it experienced later 
in the decade. Her audits on the state bureaucracy saved Texas 
taxpayers more than $6 billion.
  Governor Richards reformed the Texas prison system, establishing a 
substance abuse program for inmates, reducing the number of violent 
offenders released, and increasing prison space to deal with a growing 
prison population (from less than 60,000 in 1992 to more than 80,000 in 
1994). She backed proposals to reduce the sale of semi-automatic 
firearms and ``cop- killer'' bullets in the state.
  The Texas Lottery was also instituted during her governorship--
advocated as a means of supplementing school finances; Ann Richards 
purchased the first lotto ticket on May 29, 1992. However, most of the 
income from the lottery went into the state's general fund rather

[[Page E1722]]

than specifically to education, until 1997, when all lottery net 
revenue was redirected to the state's Foundation School Fund, which 
supports public education. School finance remained one of the key 
issues of her governorship and of those succeeding hers; the famous 
Robin Hood plan was launched in the 1992-1993 biennium which attempted 
to make school funding more equitable across school districts. Richards 
also sought to decentralize control over education policy to districts 
and individual campuses; she instituted ``site-based management'' to 
this end.
  In March 2006, Richards announced that she had been diagnosed with 
esophageal cancer and will be seeking treatment at M.D. Anderson Cancer 
Center in Houston, Texas. The disease has a five-year survival rate of 
25 percent. Despite the statistics, Governor Richards vowed to beat her 
illness and battled valiantly until the very last day, when she 
finished her journey on earth and ascended to the heavens.
  None of us who knew and loved Ann Richards will ever forget her or 
the way she brightened the lives of all the people she served. She was 
one in a million and she will be deeply missed. She will never be 
replaced. She was an American original. She was my friend.

                          ____________________