There’s a good case to be made that Texas’s 1994 gubernatorial election is the most consequential event in the state’s modern history. On November 8, George W. Bush defeated Democrat Ann Richards by 7.6 points, launching a genial one-and-a-half-term governorship that set the table for a much less genial presidency. Texas is one of those places that has an unsettling ability to tilt the world on its axis. In 1994 the state gave the globe a little kick; the resulting wobbles jostled pretty much every continent—and then set off earthquakes back at home. This was not clear at the time, of course; Richards’s loss looked less like a reversal of fortune than a confirmation that the state was already trending Republican. It was her 1990 campaign,…The post Yes, George W. Bush Changed Texas. But Not the Way You Think. appeared first on Texas Monthly.