The 1994 election for Texas governor pitted incumbent governor Ann Richards against the son of a former president, George W. Bush. Richards was wildly popular in many parts of the state; her approval rating on the night she lost the election was over fifty percent. Bush was politically unknown (relatively) having held no elected office in his lifetime (Hart, 76). However on that election night, Bush beat Richards and began the transformation of Texas from a Democratic stronghold to a red, Republican state. The two Texas governors served in the position for almost the same amount of time, Richards for four years and Bush for six, but their policies and actions while in office stand in stark contrast to each other. Bush and Richards’ views on crime, the environment and education have continued to shape the political policies of not only Texas but, because of Bush’s ascendency to the presidency in 2000, the policies of the United States.
One of the issues that Richards and Bush differed on was dealing with crime. During her term as governor, Richards focused on rehabilitation of criminals already in the prison system by establishing a substance abuse program and worked to reduce the imprisoned population. She took a tough stance on gun control, which she asserted would reduce violent crimes, by backing legislation that would have prohibited the sale of semi-automatic weapons as well as “cop-killer” bullets inside the state (Butterfield, “On the Record”). Although the number of inmates decreased during Richards’ term, Bush attacked Richards during the 1994 election as soft on crime. He promised to “get tougher with criminals” and this stance is in part what propelled him into the Governor’s Mansion (Butterfield, “On the Record”). Under Bush, the prison system increased with an unprecedented amount of new prisons and the highest number of executions under one Governor. Bush also signed bills that expanded gun carrying rights and opposed any gun-control legislation, asserting that gun control was not a viable solution to reducing crime (Butterfield, “On the Record”). Although the crime rate dropped almost 20% during Bush’s tenor, some studies suggest that the drop was due in part to the legislation that Richards had enacted more so than any of Bush’s actions. While both governors tried to appeal to Texans based on their views on crime prevention, only Bush received the credit from Texans for his stance (Butterfield, “On the Record”).
Bush’s efforts to help the environment correspond to his views on limited government regulation and promotion of business. His main environmental legislation was a result of cooperation between industry business leaders and government officials with no input from environmentalists. The main point of this legislation was to ask industry to voluntarily reduce the amount of pollution they put into the environment. This effort was derided by environmentalists because “it had no teeth” (Yardley, “Bush Approach to Pollution”). At the opposite end of that spectrum was Richards who championed environmental causes even before she became governor. In her speech at the Democratic National Convention in 1988 (a speech where she first became a nationally recognized figure), Richards spoke about the value of protecting the environment for her and everyone else’s grandchildren. As governor, she enacted legislation that reduced the overall pollution, the most significant gains coming in the reduction of air pollution (Yardley, “Bush Approach to Pollution”). However, Richards’ stance on pollution in a state dominated by the oil and gas industry did not gain her any points with big business and her willingness to enforce federal environmental standards is another reason why she lost to Bush in 1994.
On education, both Richards and Bush professed a high priority for the issue. As early as the 1980s, Texas lagged behind the nation in education. With her election as governor in 1990, Richards vowed to reform the education system. She sought to increase funding for education throughout the state and centralize school curriculum at the state level instead of leaving control at the district level. Bush’s education policies are better known, mostly because they soon became the national policy. Bush’s No Child Left Behind program originated in Texas. This program originated during Richards’ administration when the Texas legislature passed an accountability program for Texas schools. While this program did not originate with Richards herself, she did support it. Once Bush was elected, he took the program and formed it into his own version of education reform. In “Texas vs. No Child Left Behind,” Tom Pauken describes the policy as a “pathological obsession with testing” (Pauken, “Texas vs. No Child Left Behind”) that centers around an accountability system of education where the emphasis is on standardized tests to measure the performance of the students, teachers and schools. Pauken describes how the policy has become an abysmal failure in Texas where over-testing and a one-size-fits-all system has almost destroyed the education system. While both Richards and Bush prioritized education, Bush’s policy has had the most lasting effect on Texas. His emphasis on standardized test and over Richards’ ideas for centralization of curriculum and increased funding for schools has produced repercussions will impact both the state and national educational systems for years to come.
As goes Texas, so goes the nation. This sentiment has been uttered in recent years to describe the debate about education and textbook standards. However this trend of Texas leading the nation on political issues first began in the mid-1990s when George W. Bush started forming policies to govern Texas. Many of these state policies would later become national policies that have had lasting effects on the American public. Although many, both in Texas and in the United States, were either not alive or old enough to have voted for Bush in either his elections for Governor or President, his policies regarding crime, the environment and most importantly education still shape public institutions and the daily lives of Americans.
Works Cited
“American President: A Reference Page. George W. Bush: Life Before the Presidency.” The Miller Center—University of Virginia. http://millercenter.org/president/gwbush/essays/biography/2. Accessed October 29, 2014.
Burka, Paul. “George W. Bush and the New Political Landscape: How the Republicans Beat Ann Richards and Took Over Texas.” Texas Monthly. December 1994. http://www.texasmonthly.com/story/george-w-bush-and-new-political-landscape. Accessed October 29, 2014.
Butterfield, Fox. “On the Record: Governor Bush on Crime; Bush’s Law and Order Adds Up to Tough and Popular.” The New York Times. August 18, 1999.
http://www.nytimes.com/1999/08/18/us/record-governor-bush-crime-bush-s-law-order-adds-up-tough-popular.html. Accessed October 29, 2014.
Hart, Patricia Kilday. “Little Did We Know” Texas Monthly. November 1, 2004.
Pauken, Tom. “Texas vs. No Child Left Behind.” The American Conservative. January 23, 2013. http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/texas-vs-no-child-left-behind/. Accessed October 29, 2014.
Yardley, Jim. “Bush Approach to Pollution: Preference for Self-Policing.” The New York Times. November 9, 1999. http://partners.nytimes.com/library/politics/camp/110999wh-gop-bush.html. Accessed October 29, 2014.
