She wanted to be governor

You may not remember Ruby Hooper, but a generation ago the Burke County Republican aimed to become the first woman to be governor of North Caorlina.
Democrat Bev Perdue, the state’s first woman to be lieutenant governor, is hoping to finally do in 2008 what Hooper hoped to do in the 1984 election.
Hooper picked a hard year to run – in the '84 GOP primary against then-U.S. Rep. Jim Martin, the former Mecklenburg commissioner who would win the election and go on to serve two terms (1985-1993). She didn’t have a chance, but that didn’t seem to discourage her.
Ruby Hooper died recently at age 83 and the N&O had a good article on her place in North Carolina politics. Here’s a link.
Hooper’s campaigns for governor in 1984 and again in 1992 didn’t work out, but Martin hired her as a deputy secretary of administration during his two terms. I remember her days in office. She always had a positive thought, which may be one reason why after her final political campaign, she was chosen as “North Carolina State Mother” by a group called American Mothers, according to a 1993 report by my colleague Jim Morrill.
And Greg Trevor, a former Observer reporter, wrote about Hooper during her 1992 campaign against Jim Gardner for the Republican nomination that year.
She was running pretty much a one-woman campaign, but she would have agreed with Gov. Mike Easley on the lottery. “From what I`ve heard, the people want the right to vote on that. And if they decided a lottery`s what they want, I would propose that the funds that are generated be designated for education.``
She also told Trevor that after 16 years of Gov. Jim Hunt and Gov. Jim Martin, the state needed a change: “Some people say we`ve had too many Jims as governor. We need a gem - a Ruby.”`