The Last Liberal
Few contemporary politicians have garnered more attention than Ann Richards. A cottage industry has grown up around her, with no sign of slowing down. The past year has brought an adoring documentary,...
View ArticleA Q&A With Jan Reid
You were friends with Ann Richards. You worked on her campaign in 1990, and your wife, Dorothy Browne, was a close, old friend who went camping with her in the seventies, and worked for her when she...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Renaissance of Ann
There are a number of moments in the new documentary Ann Richards’ Texas that evoke the famous dictum: The more things change in American politics, the more they stay the same.Early in the film, the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Two New Documentaries Focus on Bush 41 and Ann Richards
June is apparently the month for documentaries on Texas politicians, as films focusing on George H.W. Bush and Ann Richards will hit screens this month.Chances are, you’ve probably been looking for a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Getting Serious
When Ann Richards stepped off the huge made-for-television podium in Atlanta last July, the Texas treasurer had transformed herself in 33 minutes from an obscure state official to the Funny Lady of the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Daughter of the Republic
As the president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and Planned Parenthood Action Fund, Cecile Richards, daughter of the late governor Ann Richards, sits on the front lines of the fierce...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Blue Skies Smiling at Me
In 1994, Ann Richards was ducking out of a seemingly endless campaign strategy meeting, but she wanted to leave us with a joke: “What do a tornado and a redneck divorce have in common?” It is possible...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Ann Richards: Sadder but Wiser
In the April 1994 cover story, Paul Burka wrote about the Democratic governor who had come up through the party’s liberal wing and had gained a national profile after a feisty and funny keynote speech...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Phantom of the Opry House
Three weeks ago, as the Texanist and I prepared to make one of our occasional long walks to the ramen house—there’s no euphemism there; your fair Prairie Sage is a committed devotee of Asian noodle...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Candidate George W. Bush
“I’ve never been a long-term planner about anything,” George W. Bush told this magazine in a May 1994 cover story. “I have lived my life with more of a short-term focus—on the theory that other...
View ArticleClik here to view.
It’s a Good Time for Ann Richards
An ambitious female politician, well-regarded by her constituents but not very well known outside of Texas, delivers a galvanizing speech that thrusts her into the national spotlight. Seizing her...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Seriously, Don’t Mess With Texas Women
Whether they’re firing off six-pound canons or pulling thieves out of stolen cars, Texas women are tough and—just like their home state—should not be messed with. Maybe it’s some leftover spirit from...
View ArticleBusiness Versus the Bible
In 1993 then-Governor Ann Richards thought she had struck a deal to bring Apple Computers to Round Rock. If the Williamson County Commissioners just granted a tax abatement, Apple would build an $80...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Vote For Your Favorite Alamo Drafthouse PSA In Our #DontTalk Challenge Bracket
Most people who’ve spent time in an Alamo Drafthouse Cinema have a personal favorite “don’t talk” PSA, the chain’s now iconic reminder to patrons that if they talk or text in the theater, they’ll get...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Alamo Drafthouse Founder And CEO Tim League On The Story Behind The Top Eight...
Texas Monthly’s Alamo Drafthouse #DontTalk PSA Bracket Challenge continues apace this week, and from our initial field of 32, we’ve culled the list down to the final eight. (So long, Turkish...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Ann Richards Is The President of the Magnited States of America
The results are in for our Alamo Drafthouse #DontTalk PSA bracket, and the winner is clear: Governor Ann Richards is now also the President of the Magnited States of America. She clobbered the angry...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Bathroom Bill Might Have Cost Texas 50,000 Jobs
Despite all the breathless excitement and competing promotion among cities, attracting the Amazon second headquarters—also known as HQ2—to Texas is a long shot thanks to Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Could Lupe Valdez (or Oprah?!) Be The Key to a New Texas?
During her run for Texas governor in 1990, Ann Richards invoked the theme of bringing about a New Texas, where cronyism and good-old-boyism were things of the past and women and minorities could take...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Have Politicians Learned Anything Since Clayton Williams’s Campfire Rape ‘Joke’?
In the predawn darkness of March 24, 1990, three Chevrolet Suburbans filled with journalists bounced along the rough roads of Clayton Williams’s ranch outside of Alpine, heading to a spring roundup of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Texanist: What’s So Special About the Texas Chili Parlor?
Q: In the first line of my favourite Guy Clark song, “Dublin Blues,” he sings about drinking mad dog margaritas at a bar in Austin called the Chili Parlor and I’m curious if the place I find on Google...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Woman Behind the Kamala Harris Presidential Campaign Is Ann Richards’s...
California Senator Kamala Harris had what many consider a boffo kickoff last week for her Democratic presidential campaign—a huge rally in Oakland, the most widely viewed CNN candidate town hall ever,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Midland Oilman Clayton Williams (1931-2020): Winner in Business, Not in Politics
There was never enough for Midland oilman Clayton Williams. Never enough crude and gas to extract. Never enough ranchland to graze. Never enough groundwater to exploit. Never enough wealth. “Money is...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A Broadway Veteran Channels Ann Richards
For the veteran actor Holland Taylor, there’s no one surefire method for successfully embodying a real-life character onstage. But nailing down someone’s manner of speaking—and in the case of Ann...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Why We Need Strong Texas Women
I recently came across a roast of Ann Richards on C-SPAN that took place in Port Arthur in 1992. It seemed like something out of another era—that brief time when George H. W. Bush was president and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Yes, George W. Bush Changed Texas. But Not the Way You Think.
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...
View Article