Mary Beth Rogers has a perspective on the Texas Capitol that few others in history can claim. As campaign manager and chief of staff for Governor Ann Richards, she remembers that the reaction to Richards’s female support staff moving into the Capitol, in 1991, was puzzlement. “All of a sudden, here comes this ragtag group of women,” she said. “It was both exciting and extremely challenging.” Though women are no longer the curiosities they once were in Texas politics, the Richards years marked a high-water point for women in Texas’s most prominent public offices. “Prince Philip said he thought women were running Texas,” Rogers said. “Every major city had a female mayor. Dallas had Mayor Annette Strauss, Lila Cockrell was mayor of San Antonio, Kathy Whitmire was mayor of Houston, Ann was the governor. We haven’t really reached that level since that time.” In her newest book, a memoir titled Hope and Hard Truth (University of Texas Press), out September 1, Rogers reflects on her life in politics and her adventures that followed.
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