Miriam A. Ferguson
Miriam Amanda "Ma" Ferguson (née Wallace; June 13, 1875 – June 25, 1961) was an American politician who served two non-consecutive terms as the governor of Texas: from 1925 to 1927, and from 1933 to 1935. She was the first female governor of Texas, and the second woman to be governor of any U.S. state, after Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming.[1]
Miriam Amanda Wallace Ferguson
Early political career[edit]
Her husband served as Governor of Texas from 1915 to 1917. During his second term, he was investigated by State Attorney General Dan Moody (who would, incidentally, succeed her as Governor in 1927 after her first term) for actions that had been taken against the University of Texas.[4] The Texas State Senate impeached him, convicted him on ten charges, and prohibited him from holding state office in Texas again.
1924 election and first term[edit]
After her husband's impeachment and conviction, Ma Ferguson ran in the primary for the Democratic nomination for governor and was successful, openly supported by her husband, whom she said she would consult for advice. She ran for office in the 1924 general election.[5]
During her campaign, she said that voters would get "two governors for the price of one".[6] Her speeches at rallies consisted of introducing him and letting him take the platform.[7] A common campaign slogan was, "Me for Ma, and I Ain't Got a Durned Thing Against Pa."[8] Patricia Bernstein of the Houston Chronicle stated "There was never a question in anyone’s mind as to who was really running things when Ma was governor."[9]
After her victory in the Democratic primary, Ferguson defeated George C. Butte, a prominent lawyer and University of Texas dean who emerged as the strongest Republican gubernatorial nominee in Texas since Reconstruction. Due to the widespread corruption of her husband's term, resulting in his impeachment, thousands of voters crossed party lines in the general election to vote for the Republican candidate. Republicans usually took between 11,000 and 30,000 votes for governor, but Butte won nearly 300,000 votes, many of them from women and suffragists.[7] It was still primarily a Democratic state, and Ferguson received 422,563 votes (58.9 percent) to Butte's 294,920 (41.1 percent). Butte had been supported in the general election by former governor William P. Hobby, who had succeeded James Ferguson in 1917 and won a full term in 1918.
In 1924, Ma Ferguson became the first elected female chief executive of Texas.[8] She was the second female state governor in the United States, and the first to be elected in a general election. Nellie Tayloe Ross had been sworn in as governor of Wyoming to finish the unexpired term of her late husband two weeks before Ferguson's inauguration, though Ross and Ferguson won their respective elections on the same day. Ferguson's campaign manager was Homer T. Brannon of Fort Worth, Texas.
In 1926, state attorney general Dan Moody, who had investigated her husband for embezzlement and recovered $1 million for Texas citizens, ran against her in a run-off election. He defeated her to become the next and then-youngest governor of Texas.[10] Suffragist activism provided a major contribution to her defeat, as these women rallied behind Moody and campaigned for him.[7]