chosen to second the presidential nomination of former vice-president Walter F. Mondale. She later became a member of the steering committee of the Democratic Policy Commission. She was keynote speaker at the 1988 convention, where her speech about George Bush made her well-known across the country. She ran for governor in 1990 and succeeded retiring Republican governor William P. Clements Jr. ("Richards, Ann" 470). She lost her bid for reelection in 1994.
In 1982, when Richards ran for State Treasurer, she was elected with more votes than any other statewide candidate on the ballot, becoming the first woman elected to statewide office in Texas in fifty years. She was re elected without opposition in 1986. In that office, Richards overhauled the State Treasury's turn of the century methods and pioneered banking and investment practices, earning taxpayers more non tax revenue than all earlier Texas Treasurers combined, more than two billion dollars ("Ann Richards").
Richards was elected governor in 1990. She was the
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