Ann Richards

You know, there are so many wonderful scenes in this book that you paint.

There's one where Ann Richards and Nancy Pelosi basically hold your golf game hostage.

Could you share what happened there?

Yes, there was a group of my very good friends, lifetime friends that I played golf with every Saturday, Larry Temple, Howard Rose, and John Mobley, all dear friends.

And anybody that knew Ann Richard knows how persuasive that the, Governor Richards could be.

But anyway, they stayed and they stayed and they stayed.

And finally, out of wanting to play golf so bad and wanting to get out of that hot box that Nancy Pelosi and Ann Richards had me in, I finally agreed to help her.

And Ann said, okay, you can go play golf, but I want you to get on the phone and call Martin Frost immediately.

And you kind of think about that.

That reminds me of this old, they had a thing back when Ann Richards was running against Clayton Williams.

It's like, yeah, he was a, my grandfather actually went to school with him back in the, I think the 40s, 50s.

Okay.

Texas A&M.

And he was running against Ann Richards and Republicans always said shit stupid.

And they said something like, they were asking him about rape.

And he said, well, rape's kind of like the rain.

And that's kind of where we are right now in this country.

And you kind of think about that, that reminds me of this old, they had a thing back when Ann Richards was running against Clayton Williams.

It's like, yeah, he was a, my grandfather actually went to school with him back in the, I think the 40s, 50s.

Okay.

At Texas A&M.

And he was running against Ann Richards and Republicans always had shit stupid.

And they said something like, they were asking him about rape.

And he said, well, rape's kind of like the rain.

He's rhetorically ungifted, and Tallarico is rhetorically, extraordinarily rhetorically gifted.

Perhaps the most gifted Democrat Texas has seen since Ann Richards.

He can turn a phrase and...

in a gentle and disarming way, he can win an audience over.

Oddly enough, I had... wrote a paper about him when I was in college about his first campaign for governor of Texas.

So I was in college during his 1994 cycle where he upset Ann Richards.

And I'll tell a brief story here about how I got involved with the campaign because I think it says something about him that I always appreciated.

I...

First, you know, they're, it's, they're the anti-brisket, uh, party or group there.

And we have brisket, lots of it, football, we have oil wells, and a guy [laughs] running for the United States Senate who's managed to turn his interpretation of Christianity into one of the biggest political talking points in, I d- d- I remember in the state, and I remember Ann Richards.

Look, Talarico's entitled to his twisted, stupid, and borderline retarded ideas.

He's entitled to his misguided and disastrous political opinions.