DOVER, Del. — Ruth Ann Minner, a sharecropper’s daughter who became the only woman to serve as Delaware’s governor, has died. She was 86.

Minner, who served as governor from 2001 to 2009, passed away Thursday morning, according to Agriculture Secretary Michael Scuse, a friend who once served as her chief of staff.

“She was a true leader, a great role model for women and those that have had it not so easy in life, to show that if you work hard, are honest, you can make it to the top,” Scuse said.

A high school dropout who was twice widowed, Minner got her first taste of politics as a legislative bill clerk and rose through the Democratic Party ranks to become the state’s most powerful politician.

As governor-elect in 2000, Minner didn’t dwell on breaking the gender barrier, but instead noted that she was the first governor in almost 50 years to be elected from downstate Delaware.

“You know, I don’t think it really matters to me that I’m a woman,” she told The Associated Press at the time. “I’ve found out since the election, though, that it does matter to a lot of women. It matters to a lot of young girls.”

Her humble beginnings and matronly appearance led one political columnist to dub Minner the “Aunt Bea” of state government, a reference to the family matriarch in television’s “Andy Griffith” show.

“She was a leader who had a real common touch,” said Gov. John Carney, who served as Minner’s lieutenant governor.

But Minner’s appearance belied her reputation as a hard-nosed politician who didn’t shy from battles with Republican lawmakers or other opponents.

“After my first husband died, I became a very independent woman,” she explained after the 2000 election. That was decades after she ran for a state House seat in the 1970s intent on changing a banking law that required her husband to co-sign any loan application.

Amid cries of “Ban Ruth Ann!” from outraged business owners and libertarians, Minner in 2002 signed one of the nation’s toughest prohibitions on smoking in public places.

Other landmark legislation included a 2007 measure prompted by the child sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church. The bill abolished Delaware’s two-year time limit for filing personal injury lawsuits and established a two-year period during which lawsuits previously barred by the passage of time could be brought anew. The bill resulted in more than 100 lawsuits, prompting the Catholic Diocese of Wilmington to seek bankruptcy protection and to settle with victims of priest sex abuse for $77 million.

Former U.S. congresswoman Collins dies at 82

DETROIT — Barbara-Rose Collins, who represented Detroit in Congress and served on its City Council, has died after contracting COVID-19. She was 82.

Collins’ family confirmed her death Thursday to The Detroit News, the newspaper reported.

Christopher Collins, 51, said his mother died around 2 a.m. Thursday. She had been vaccinated against the coronavirus, but still fell ill and was hospitalized before her death, he said.

“She lived her whole life in the same neighborhood, same house she was born in, on the lower east side,” he added. “That says a lot about a person.”

Barbara-Rose Collins, a Democrat, was elected to the U.S. House in 1990 after eight years on the City Council. She was defeated for reelection to Congress in 1996 by Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick.

She was elected again to the council in 2001 and served until 2009 when she did not seek reelection.

In 1974, Collins was elected to the Michigan House of Representatives where she served three terms.

“You could get into a floor fight with her but she would then invite you to her house a few days later,” former Detroit Mayor and City Council President Ken Cockrel Jr. told The Detroit News. “She always understood that it was business and never personal.”

Collins was born in Detroit and graduated in 1957 from Cass Technical High School, according to her U.S. House biography.

She attended Wayne State University in Detroit, majoring in political science and anthropology.

By Associated Press