I was not very fond of Ann Richards, mostly because she seemed so beholden to the PC crowd. I was especially irked by her comment that “Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels.” But true dance aficionados knew that Astaire was a far superior dancer to Rogers, feminine self-righteousness notwithstanding. Even so, I voted for her—the incumbent—instead of George Bush in the 1994 Texas gubernatorial election. As I so often did, I held my nose and chose the Democrat as the lesser of two evils.
What, after all, did Bush bring to the table? The fact that his father had been ambassador to the United Nations, director of the CIA and president (1988-1992) did not sway me in either direction, but he was an obvious lightweight. He was a sort-of, half-way Texan since he was born in Connecticut and attended high school at a preppy institution in Massachusetts. In between were years in Midland and Houston. He had gotten through Yale (class of ’68) with “gentleman C’s,” but he seldom read a book and had scarcely been outside the United States. Bush seemed to lack curiosity about the larger world. No, I did not vote for him in 1994, when he was up for re-election in 1998 or his two successful runs for the White House. I do not mean to be harsh, but Bush was not competent to be governor of Texas, much less president of the USA.
Nevertheless, he beat Richards. Before moving into the Governor’s Mansion, he revealed that he was planning to run in the Capital 10,000 the following March. This got my attention. I had run that race on the streets of downtown Austin every year since 1982, and it meant a lot to me. I was immersed in the local running scene, taking part in an average of 25 races per year, and I served as the American-Statesman’s bi-weekly running columnist in the late 1980s. I got a big thumbs-up from the editor of Inside Texas Running, a magazine for which I had done some stories, and tried to make contact with Bush or his representatives. After nearly a dozen phone calls and follow-ups, it was agreed that I could conduct a telephone interview with the governor. He was quite congenial in describing the importance of exercise—especially running—in his life. Bush said I could join him in doing the Capital 10K, which was somewhat of a sacrifice for me since I usually ran that distance in around 38 minutes, whereas he was in the mid-40s.
Bush, Agriculture Commissioner Rick Perry (who succeeded him as governor in 2000), some other politicos, and security guys and I ran it. Fifteen years have passed, so the memories are not entirely clear, but I recall a slightly rainy day. Bush was not lolly-gagging those 6.2 miles, not at all. He was running it as a competitive race, and I was impressed with his ability. There was some bantering between him and the surrounding runners, and naturally some people on the course recognized him and hollered out things like “Hey, governor!” I was prepared to see some kind of protests, if only because Austin is such an intensely political city. There was just one: a woman who held a sign and made a loud and repeated reference to “concealed handguns.” Whether she was pro-concealed handguns or anti-concealed handguns, I don’t know, but Bush paid her little mind.
We came across the finish line in just over 43 minutes, and Robert Evilsizer, the jovial voice for most big races in Austin, was prepared with a comment or two. A photographer from the governor’s office snapped a photo of us shaking hands and grinning with the Cap 10K banner in the background. I think it was used in the ITR article, but again I am not completely sure. Later that morning, I told a friend that I had run the race with Bush and she looked at me as if I had leprosy. She assumed that I supported him philosophically and politically, which was not at all the case.
By the way, I later did a similar thing with Rick Perry, who was re-elected in 2002, 2006 and 2010. We had an interview in his office in the Texas Capitol and later went out for a four-mile run on the Hike & Bike Trail. We had a photo taken, and I wrote it up in the same publication. I never voted for Perry, either.
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