No, not her. It was Miriam Amanda Wallace Ferguson, known as “Ma,” the first woman elected governor of Texas, back in 1924.

So you’ll pardon the women of Texas (and Ma Ferguson was known for her generous pardons) if they don’t go all wobbly over the idea of the first female president.

Texas is no stranger to powerful women, which is why it was scarcely accidental that in Thursday night’s debate, both Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama bowed to such trailblazers as former Representative Barbara Jordan and former Gov. Ann Richards.

“While all those redneck bubba cowboys were driving the cattle, the women were running the ranches,” said Terri Burke, a longtime Abilene newspaper editor who was recently named executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas.

As Texas prepares to deliver a giant and perhaps decisive verdict on March 4 on the two closely matched Democratic presidential contenders, women — who traditionally outnumber men at the polls in this state and around the nation — may well hold the key to victory. And while many women champion Mrs. Clinton’s bid for the White House as the obvious next leap across the gender gap, others say her historic candidacy no longer carries the same urgency as it would have, say, for their mothers’ generation.

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