Ruth Ann Minner (born January 17, 1935) is an American politician and the current governor of Delaware. Minner, a Democrat who has served since 2001, is Delaware's first female governor.
Minner was born and grew up on a small farm near Milford. While growing up, she left high school at age 16 to help support her family and marry Frank Ingram, with whom Minner had three children: Frank Jr., Wayne and Gary. When Minner was 32, her husband died suddenly of a heart attack while in the fields, leaving Minner a single mother with three children. Minner earned her GED in 1968, and later attended Delaware Technical and Community College while working two jobs to support the family.
Minner remarried in 1969 to Roger Minner. Together the couple operated a family towing business. After Roger died of cancer in 1991, the business was passed down to one of Minner's sons. In mid-November, 2004, an electrical fire destroyed the business and injured her sons Wayne and Gary.
Minner began her political career as a page in the Delaware House of Representatives. In 1974, Minner was elected as a state representative in the Delaware General Assembly, where she later served in as House Majority Whip and chair of the Bond Bill Committee. In 1982, Minner was elected as a state senator. While in the Senate, Minner was noted for her sponsorship of the Delaware Land and Water Conservation Act, which protected 30,000 acres (120 km²) of land. From 1993 to 2001 Minner served as Delaware's lieutenant governor.
She was elected governor in 2000, receiving 60 percent of the vote to the 40 percent of Republican candidate John Burris . In her first term she worked on a number of issues, perhaps the most heavily debated of these being a ban on smoking in most public places. She was re-elected to a second four-year term in 2004, narrowly defeating Republican retired judge William Swain Lee 51%-46%. The win was one of the slimmest in Delaware history for an incumbent governor. The closeness of the victory was chalked up to a series of events leading up to the election which showed the governor in a less than attractive light. After a female prison worker was raped by an inmate due to insufficient security, Minner responded, "You expect things like that to happen." This led to a media and political uproar and nearly cost Minner the election.
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