Milford has produced eight state governors. In the last of the series, Milford Times delved into the men and women who led our state who called Milford home. The eighth and final governor from Milford was Ruth Ann Minner who was elected over 100 years after the last Milfordian took the office.
Ruth Ann Minner made history in more ways than one when she was elected governor in 1999. Minner ran against another Milfordian, John Burris for the governor’s office and, once elected, she was the first woman to hold the office in the state.
Ruth Ann Coverdale Ingram Minner was born in Milford Neck on January 17, 1935. She was the daughter of Samuel, a sharecropper and Mary Ann Lewis Coverdale, a homemaker. In order to help her family on the farm, Minner left school at the age of 16 and married Frank Ingram a year later. The couple had three boys who were very young when Ingram died of a heart attack at the age of 34 in 1967.
Minner knew she had to do something to feed her small family. She earned her GED in 1968 and later attended Delaware Technical and Community College while working two jobs to support her boys. One of her jobs was as a statistician for the Maryland-Delaware Crop Reporting Service and Minner once talked about bringing her boys along with her as she counted crops.
As a young widow, Minner was disheartened when she needed a new car for work and was denied loans because she did not have a man’s signature. This deeply impacted her and was her motivation for entering politics. Her first job was as a legislative aide in the General Assembly. She also worked as a receptionist for then Governor Sherman Tribbitt. It was there that she began to carve out her own political career.
She married Roger Minner in 1969, and they built a family towing business together, but politics remained in Minner’s blood. Her second husband died of cancer in 1991.
In 1974, Minner was elected as a state representative where she served for eight years before moving to the state senate. In 1993, Minner was elected lieutenant governor, serving with Senator Tom Carper. When Carper was elected to the United States Senate in 1999, Minner took his seat as governor fulfilling his unexpired term. She was inaugurated on January 16, 2000.
There are many stories about Minner that indicate her no-nonsense, practical approach to life. In 2001, during an interview with Charlie Gibson on “Good Morning America” about her historic gubernatorial win, he called her “Ruthie” during a question.
“Well, first of all, no one calls me Ruthie,” was the immediate reply from Minner to the seasoned journalist who immediately apologized.
Minner was often asked for advice for young women just starting out. In one interview she was blunt and to the point.
“There is only one person who can hold you back and that’s you,” Minner said. “If you’re willing to work and put in the time and the energy, you can accomplish anything you want and there’s’ nobody out there to stop you. Just imagine if I had said “woe is me. I’m a widow with three kids and nowhere to go, no job and no education.” I could still be back there saying “woe is me.”
Minner had many accomplishments while serving as governor. The passage of the Clean Indoor Air Act in 2002 was a landmark achievement as it banned smoking in restaurants and bars. Despite the fact that the act was controversial, it did not have an impact on her re-election. Minner also signed a 2005 bill establishing the state’s Student Excellence Equals Degree scholarship, making Delaware the first to offer up to two years of free college tuition to recent high school graduates. Known today as the SEED program, it is now offered to all Delawareans.
In 2007, Minner signed a law abolishing the two-year statute of limitations on lawsuits filed by victims of child sexual abuse. However, not all of Minner’s actions were well-received by the public. There are reports that Christopher Tigani, a friend of Minner’s and the owner of N.K.S. Distributors obtained a 66-year lease on public land at the per-acre rate of $146 a month, significantly lower than the appraised value. Tigani was later sentenced to prison for campaign finance irregularities.
The land was along Route 1 and developer Dennis Silicato owned commercial property next to the land where NKS was supposed to be located. According to records, Silicato purchased the two-acres of land for just $1. There was an included deed restriction requiring the land to be kept “in its forested state,” yet the land was almost immediately cleared. DelDOT agreed to add an entrance to the property despite the fact that Route 1 was a limited access highway. Eventually, Silicato used land he owned prior to the two-acre purchase for an access road for the property which is where Grotto Pizza now stands.
Minner vetoed a bill in 2008 that would have tightened restrictions on the use of eminent domain, and, in 2007, she faced controversy for pressuring David Legates, the state climatologist, to align his statements with her administration’s views on climate change. During her second term, there were allegations fo abuse and neglect at the Delaware Correctional Center and Delaware Psychiatric Center. One comment she made was used against her during her campaign for a second term.
“In prisons, you almost expect these things to happen,” she allegedly said after a July 2004 abduction and rape of a counselor at what is now the James T. Vaughn Correctional Center near Smyrna. The incident led to a United States Department of Justice investigation which found “substantial civil rights violations.”
Minner was a strong supporter of education and, in 2003, surprised many when she called for campaign reform that would ensure political ads were independent and not used to circumvent finance laws.
Minner died under hospice care in Milford on November 4, 2021, at the age of 86 after complications from a fall. Because she served for two weeks as governor before starting her own term, she is the longest serving governor in Delaware history. She is buried in Slaughter Neck Cemetery in Argo’s Corner, Milford.
