Growing up poor amid the marshes of Kent and Sussex counties, Ruth Ann Minner developed a deeply personal attachment to the land that would influence her service to Delaware as a state representative, state senator, lieutenant governor and governor. She loved the “Neck,” as she called her roots in Slaughter Neck, as well as her hometown of Milford and the state she came to govern.
She spent most of her political life underestimated by those in power, both in politics and business. After the death of her second husband, Roger Minner, in 1991, she decided to run for lieutenant governor as Tom Carper’s running mate. Many scoffed at the notion of a Downstate high school dropout taking on the Ivy League president of New Castle County Council.
As a journalist, I had watched her glide confidently around Legislative Hall, being trailed by lobbyists and other supplicants who sought her vote or her signature as a bill sponsor or some other kind of favor. I saw her maneuver landmark environmental legislation out of her Senate Natural Resources Committee. I saw her go toe-to-toe with Gov. Mike Castle and watched him blink during a standoff over a judgeship.
So when she plucked me off the unemployment line and asked me to run her campaign for lieutenant governor in 1992, I hesitated briefly then walked away from a freelance job at The News Journal and my so-called career. It was a split decision that changed the course of my life in the biggest possible way.
For her 57th birthday the week we started the campaign, I gave her a street map of New Castle County. No one anticipated how hard she would work or how determined she was. Days that started at 4:15 a.m. at the Chrysler gate in Newark and ended with a candidates’ night in Little Italy. Fundraisers and campaign meetings in places she never expected to find herself: the University and Whist Club, the Rodney Square Club, Rizzo’s Wine Cellar in New Castle, EMILY’s List headquarters in D.C., Chateau Country estates.
She won 61% of the vote. On Election Day four years later, when she coasted to an even bigger reelection victory, we took a drive to Slaughter Neck and turned down the unmapped dirt road at Davis Landing, where her childhood home once stood. She never let go of her roots. She hated asparagus because she ate so much of it as a child. She never touched liquor because she couldn’t forget the meanness it spawned in her daddy.
When she ran for governor, Delaware’s banking and corporate elite put up one of their own to run against her. Elitism does not sit well with Delawareans. Just before her inauguration, a reporter for People magazine called and asked me if she could interview Ruth Ann at her favorite hangout, the Milford Diner. But the diner owner was reluctant to reserve a table and possibly inconvenience his other customers. So we all showed up and stood in line like everyone else. That happened a lot.
As a politician, she could never be classified as a policy wonk. It was all personal. She embraced agricultural and open-space preservation because farms, forests and marshes were embedded in her spirit. The Livable Delaware land-use agenda was born of that same spirit — a desire to grow thoughtfully and leave behind a Delaware that children and grandchildren could still recognize and enjoy as much as she did.
She fought smoking and won major funding for cancer treatment because her husband, Roger, had died of lung cancer. She sought free tuition for community college because Delaware Technical Community College had guided her out of poverty as a single mother of three. The smoking bill, which essentially banned indoor smoking everywhere in Delaware, triggered vehement opposition and those “Ban Ruth Ann” bumper stickers; the erosion of her popularity began. She won reelection as governor with only 51% of the vote.
She was a mentor and an inspiration. She was a friend. She was also stubborn and held a grudge. Because she placed such a high value on loyalty, she veered toward cronyism. She banished me to the woodshed a few times over the years, and it was hurtful.
Ruth Ann’s superpower was tapping into her tough and humbling past to truly connect with all kinds of people. She would meet and talk with someone at a huge festival and recognize them a year later in an elevator. There was not a whiff of fakery or political calculus.
Those of us who served with her are heartbroken but proud to have called her “governor.”
Lee Ann Walling, a former Delaware State News reporter and editor, worked for Ruth Ann Minner for 15 years.
