Storming the Statehouse: Running for Governor with Ann Richards and Dianne Feinstein

New York: Scribner's Sons, c1992. First Printing. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. 25 cm. viii, [2], 325, [1] pages. Illustrations. Sources. Index. Inscribed by the author. An insider's look at the two womens' political campaigns for the governorships of Texas and California. Derived from a Kirkus review: Weighted report on the 1990 Democratic campaigns of Ann Richards, who won the statehouse in Texas, and Dianne Feinstein, who lost it in California. Morris utilizes the two races to forge feminist lessons from the stories of two very different 58-year-old women in contests that broke records for cost. To the author, Ann Richards's ``triumph''--winning in the state ``that set the American standard for macho''--``was not only a tribute to her courage, shrewdness, tenacity, and luck, but a cultural phenomenon tantamount to revolution.'' In the author's view, Dianne Feinstein, who'd become San Francisco mayor when George Moscone was assassinated, won the nomination because "the television camera loved her.'' Throughout, Morris explores what campaign advisers thought and what newspapers covered. Feinstein lost a close race, in Morris's view, because she couldn't distinguish herself from Republican Pete Wilson. Dianne Goldman Berman Feinstein (born Dianne Emiel Goldman; June 22, 1933) is the senior United States Senator from California. A member of the Democratic Party, she has served in the Senate since 1992. She also served as the 38th Mayor of San Francisco from 1978 to 1988. Born in San Francisco, Feinstein graduated from Stanford University in 1955 with a B.A. in history. In the 1960s she worked in city government, and in 1970 she was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. She served as the board's first female president in 1978, during which time the assassinations of Mayor George Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk drew national attention to the city. Feinstein succeeded Moscone as mayor. During her tenure as San Francisco's first female mayor she led renovation of the city's cable car system and oversaw the 1984 Democratic National Convention. After a failed gubernatorial campaign in 1990, she won a 1992 special election to the U.S. Senate. Feinstein was first elected on the same ballot as her peer Barbara Boxer, and the two became California's first female U.S. Senators. Feinstein has been re-elected four times since then and in the 2012 election, she claimed the record for the most popular votes in any U.S. Senate election in history, having received 7.75 million votes. Feinstein was the author of the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban which expired in 2004. In 2013 she introduced a new assault weapons bill, which failed to pass. Feinstein is the first and only woman to have chaired the Senate Rules Committee (2007-09) and the Select Committee on Intelligence from 2009 to 2015, when the Democrats lost control of the Senate. She is the only woman to have presided over a U.S. presidential inauguration. At the age of 84, Feinstein is the oldest currently serving United States Senator.Dorothy Ann Willis Richards (September 1, 1933 - September 13, 2006) was an American politician and the 45th Governor of Texas from 1991 to 1995. A Democrat, she first came to national attention as the state treasurer of Texas, when she delivered the keynote address at the 1988 Democratic National Convention. Richards served as the 45th Governor of Texas from 1991 to 1995 and was defeated for re-election in 1994 by George W. Bush. Richards was the second female governor of Texas, and was frequently noted in the media for her outspoken feminism and her one-liners. Despite outspending the Bush campaign by 23%, she was defeated in 1994 by George W. Bush, with 45.88% of the vote to Bush's 53.48% while Libertarian Keary Ehlers received 0.64%. The Richards campaign had hoped for a misstep from the relatively inexperienced Republican candidate, but none appeared, while Richards created many of her own, including calling Bush "some jerk", "shrub" and "that young Bush boy"