The Day She Whupped Him

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"The public does not like you to mislead or represent yourself to be something you're not. And the other thing that the public really does like is the self–examination to say, you know, I'm not perfect. I'm just like you. They don't ask their public officials to be perfect. They just ask them to be smart, truthful, honest and show a modicum of good sense."

Ann Richards

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It was 20 years ago tomorrow that Ann Richards won a wildly improbable victory in her campaign to be Texas' governor.

I didn't grow up in Texas, but I was living here during that election.

If I had grown up here, I might have studied Texas history when I was a boy. And I might be acquainted with other gubernatorial races in Texas that were more noteworthy, more memorable, more historic.

In 1990, after all, Texas had been a state for nearly 150 years. There must have been some wild, if not notorious, gubernatorial elections here in all that time.

Nevertheless, I will always remember the 1990 campaign — for many reasons.

First, I had been living in north Texas for a couple of years, residing in Denton and working on my master's degree. I wasn't living in Texas when Richards burst onto the national scene with her keynote address at the 1988 Democratic National Convention. Like most Americans, it was the first I had heard of her.

But, when I had the chance to vote for her for governor, I didn't hesitate.

And while I wasn't always happy with the campaign she ran, I always felt Richards was the best choice for the job.

That brings me to my second point. The campaign for the 1990 Democratic gubernatorial nomination in Texas was, perhaps, the nastiest I have ever witnessed — and I witnessed some pretty nasty campaigns when I was growing up in Arkansas.

Richards' main rival for the Democratic nod that spring was a veteran politician named Jim Mattox, and, in the runoff for the gubernatorial nomination, he accused Richards — who had acknowledged being treated for alcoholism 10 years earlier — of having had problems with other substances in the past as well.

He made the accusations in ads and on Face the Nation.

"[Richards] avoided answering the charges and began to slip in the polls," wrote Michael Barone and Grant Ujifusa in "The Almanac of American Politics 1992."

So she questioned the integrity of her rivals. "I have been sober for 10 years," Richards said. "Have Jim Mattox and (former Gov.) Mark White been honest for 10 years?"

"[H]er feminist base was enough to enable her to lead the first primary," wrote Barone and Ujifusa. "Her support in cities, where liberal women cast far more votes than ever before in Texas, was critical in the runoff against Mattox where she won 57%–43%."

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In hindsight, I guess, Richards' race for her party's nomination was a picnic, a stroll in the park, compared to her general election campaign against the Republican nominee, Clayton Williams, a successful businessman but a political novice who quickly earned a reputation for making offensive comments.

Yep, Williams was really an amateur at politics. Mattox, on the other hand, was a pro. He'd been around the block a few times, and he knew all the tricks, both clean and dirty. But Williams had something in his favor that Mattox didn't have. He was the Republican nominee.

The general election campaign against Williams was quite different, really, from the party primary and runoff campaigns against Mattox.

While Richards was fending off Mattox and White on the Democratic side, Williams cruised to the GOP nomination against several high–profile rivals. He told voters he was running because his son had had a drug problem, and he promised drug offenders that he would "introduce 'em to the joys of bustin' rocks."

Texas voters were extraordinarily tolerant of Williams, though. At one point, for example, he likened bad weather to rape, saying, "If it's inevitable, just relax and enjoy it."

When I think of that general election campaign, I think of my mother, a Democrat throughout her adult life who always intended to vote for Richards, never considered voting for Williams yet she seethed, usually quietly and privately, whenever he opened his mouth.

Always an optimist, I think Mom would have been disheartened if Williams had won — and I think she, like most people in Texas, expected it. I believe she, and many others, thought Williams' election was inevitable — but they couldn't see how they could possibly relax and enjoy it for the next four years.

Yep, Texas voters were very tolerant of Williams — until, shortly before the election, when he and Richards bumped into each other on the campaign trail and Williams refused to shake her hand.

It was a defining moment, and it was memorably captured on film and replayed on newscasts across the state.

You see, even in 1990 — indeed, still, into the 21st century — Texas lived by an old–fashioned code of conduct. In Texas, a gentleman simply does not refuse to shake a lady's hand, no matter what he may think of her. It is rude, uncouth, socially unacceptable.

Richards, who always seemed to have some sure–footed political instincts, even if she didn't always follow them, "responded with just the right mixture of regret and toughness," wrote Barone and Ujifusa.

And it was the last straw for the sensitivities of many centrist Republicans in Texas. On Nov. 6, 1990, some crossed party lines to vote for Richards. Some simply couldn't do that and chose instead to stay home or not vote in the governor's race.

Whatever they did, they did not vote for Williams.

They had been nudged in that direction for weeks. Richards ran some effective commercials that cast doubt on the ethics of Williams' business practices. And Williams didn't help his own cause when he admitted he didn't know what the only constitutional amendment on the ballot was about or when he confessed that he paid no income taxes four years earlier or when he spoke of his sexual experiences as a youth when he was south of the border.

Until that Kodak moment, when Richards offered her hand to Williams and he refused to shake it, Williams was a tolerable mixed bag for many voters. He was regarded, even by his Republican supporters, as unrefined, boorish, rough as a cob; when the chips were down, though, he was considered acceptable, not exactly the picture of a gentleman ... but close enough.

But refusing to shake Richards' hand was ungentlemanly. And that was unacceptable.

I really believe that, if Williams had shaken Richards' hand, he would have won that election, warts and all.

And, as a result, George W. Bush might never have been elected governor of Texas, giving him a springboard for his presidential ambitions. Because I'm sure that Bush wouldn't have challenged a sitting Republican governor in 1994.

But I suppose that is neither here nor there at this point. Williams lost and has never, to my knowledge, run for office in Texas since. Bush, of course, went on to defeat Richards when she sought a second term in 1994. After being re–elected in 1998, Bush was elected president (in the Electoral College) in 2000 and re–elected in 2004.

Richards, of course, was elected governor in 1990. No Democrat has been elected governor of Texas since that time.

It was not completely clear that a shift was occurring within the electorate in the final weeks of the 1990 campaign. But such a shift was, indeed, taking place. That silent snub was more devastating to Williams than all of his ill–advised comments rolled into one.

When the votes were counted, Williams (who had led Richards in polls by up to 20 points) lost by nearly 100,000 votes.

It may have been the most astounding reversal in Texas' political history.

The Dallas Morning News ran a rather blase headline the next day, something along the lines of "Richards Defeats Williams." I never felt that the headline in the Morning News adequately summed up the enormity of what had happened.

But its competitor, the Dallas Times Herald (which ceased publication about a year later), ran a more appropriate headline — "She Whups Him." I always thought it captured the spirit of the race.

To some, Richards always was an enigma, a contradiction. In many ways, I have to admit that Barone and Ujifusa were correct when they wrote of Richards, "Texas has a governor who is nationally familiar but whose position on issues is not widely known in Texas, a candidate who conducted for months a dismal and sometimes scurrilous campaign and once in office has shown a sure instinct for setting the right tone."

Four years later, Richards lost her bid for re–election to Bush — not because voters were displeased with her job performance (in fact, polls at the time indicated she had the approval of a majority of Texans) but because she had the misfortune of running against the son of a former Republican president in a Republican state in a decidedly Republican year nationally.

I wasn't living in Texas at the time, but I knew many people who were, and they told me the general attitude of the voters toward Richards was "She's done a good job, but let's give him a chance. He's the Republican."

In hindsight, it is hard to imagine any Democrat doing any better in Texas than Richards did in 1994. She got 46% of the vote; no Democrat who has been on a statewide general election ballot has performed better in the last 16 years, and most have fared much worse.

She never ran for office again. She campaigned for many Democrats after leaving office in 1995 and died of cancer in 2006.

The Right Name

Tonight, I've been musing about the difference having the right name can make.

Entertainers and writers often take a nom de plume, and it seems to be beyond dispute that having the right name can make all the difference, no matter what one's line of work may be.

And it's funny, sometimes, the names that gravitate to certain professions.

I recall seeing, for example, a sign for a dentist whose name was Dr. Paine. I often wondered how many potential patients were driven to a different dentist simply because of his name.

(Which reminds me of something George Carlin once said. "If 'Janitor in a Drum' made a douche," he said, "no one would buy it.")

I once knew a florist named Rose. No kidding.

A few times I have known of basketball players whose last name was Short. That doesn't sound like the right name for someone who plays a game in which height is looked upon as a decided advantage.

For many years, I worked on copy desks for daily newspapers. On one such job, I worked nights. It was a morning paper. For awhile, I worked with a fellow named Day. I suppose that is considered ironic.

Another irony from those days involved one of our lead editors, the fellow who designed the front page of the paper every night. In those days, color was not as widespread as it is today. The editors could use it on the front pages of their sections if they wanted to — but it was with the understanding that the color process would make production more expensive.

Color gradually became commonplace for newspapers, but, in those days, the decision to use color was often a gut–wrenching experience for the editors, who frequently had to justify their decisions. For those who designed the front page, the most compelling reason to use a color photo was to attract readers. We were in the midst of a newspaper war, and the editors of the main section saw color as the key to boosting circulation.

I worked in sports, which seemed to have been given the green light to use color whenever we wanted to. And color really did bring sports photos to life, whether they were produced by one of our photographers or came across the wire. But the front page of the sports section was not the one on display in convenience stores and news boxes.

Anyway, this fellow on the news side had a reputation for resisting color. I always assumed it had something to do with his frugal nature — and, truth be told, I agreed with him most of the time. In those days, it was hard to justify using color for photos of people's faces — like the photos you see on columns.

The newspaper term for such photos is mugshot, and most of the mugshots that news had were of men wearing dark suits and dark ties standing in front of a dark background (think Blues Brothers without the sunglasses). What could color possibly add to that?

But there were times when I disagreed with the decisions that were made.

The name of the night editor who stoutly resisted using color photos on the front page was ... Ed Gray.

Known as the "aptly named Ed Gray" by some of the copy editors on the news side.

Still with me?

Well, the reason I'm on this tangent this evening has a lot to do with some interesting facts that are connected to tomorrow, November 19:

• Forty years ago tomorrow, Apollo 12 landed on the moon, and Pete Conrad and Alan Bean became the third and fourth men to walk on its surface.
  
  For more than 40 years now, children have studied the Apollo program in school, and they have been told that Neil Armstrong spoke the now iconic words, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," as he took the first steps on the surface of the moon.
  
  I suppose it was the luck of the draw that Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first to step on the moon, but sometimes it seems like it was destiny. What if the crew had come down with something and a backup crew had to go instead? Suppose it had been Conrad or Bean who spoke the first words from the moon. What was said surely would have been different. And neither Conrad nor Bean has the same impact as the name Armstrong.
  
  Maybe that's because it conjures up images (for older Americans) of Jack Armstrong, the All–American Boy, a radio character who was popular when Neil Armstrong was a boy.


• Ten years earlier, in 1959, the Ford Motor Co. discontinued the Edsel. It was named after Edsel Ford, son of Henry Ford, company founder. Edsel the man died of cancer in 1943. His namesake vehicle was introduced to the public in September 1957, but it was discontinued a little more than two years later because it was so unpopular.
  
  No one ever determined an overriding reason for the Edsel's lack of popularity. But I always thought the name had something to do with it. Edsel didn't have much magic.


• Sometimes, I guess, it isn't necessary to do anything at all if you've got the right name. On Nov. 19, 1990, a pop duo that went by the name of Milli Vanilli were stripped of their Grammy Award because they did not perform at all on the album that won the award — studio musicians and singers were used instead. The duo merely lip synched in live performances.


• As I said, some names just seem destined for certain occupations. On Nov. 19, 1862, a boy named William A. Sunday was born in Iowa. As an adult, he was known as Billy Sunday, the most famous evangelist in America in the early part of the 20th century.
  
  Billy Sunday influenced national policy. He was a supporter of Prohibition, and it was widely believed that he played a key role in the passage of the 18th Amendment, which made the transportation and sale (but not the consumption) of alcohol illegal.
  
  If your aspiration is to be a preacher, Sunday is a pretty good surname to have.