That's the race Ann Richards won. She won partly because she was a seriously smart candidate, but she was a female Democrat in what had already become a Republican bastion, so it didn't hurt that her opponent was Clayton Williams.
I don't think Williams had much political experience before he ran for governor. He was a businessman. And he was a woefully inappropriate candidate for any office, much less governor.
The thing is, he kept saying and doing things that should have completely torpedoed his campaign, but didn't. He had the press join him with some friends on his ranch. It started to rain, and Williams cracked the old (and grotesquely disgusting) comparison with rape - if it's going to happen, just lay back and enjoy it. It got a lot of press, and he issued a quasi-apology that demonstrated he really didn't think he'd done anything foolish, but his poll numbers didn't sink as much as they should have. (It didn't help that some of the press tried to argue, in all seriousness, that it really was an old saying in West Texas, and that those saying it would probably call for the execution of rapists, hence proving that it really wasn't mysogynistic after all. The old "that's just how he was raised" explanation.)
Someone found out he'd visited prostitutes when he was in college. Most politicians, in this situation, do one of two things - they either deny it, or explain that they were young and stupid (and possibly under the influence of something) and would never do such a thing now. But not Williams - he actually bragged about it. All part of growing up in that part of Texas, he explained.
So many people were so opposed to a Democratic woman in the Governor's mansion - even one as intelligent, witty, and serious about policy as Ann Richards - that Williams' campaign didn't suffer so much from these. I was in grad school at the time; most of us were Democrats, but there were a few Republicans in our midst. They were mostly older professors, and they were the very serious type - and they were all horrified that Clayton Williams was their candidate. Nevertheless, Williams' campaign remained afloat.
The turning point came when a reporter asked Williams how he voted on a particular ballot measure. "Oh, I don't know," he said, "but I did vote on it." I think everyone expected him to then say "Just kidding - I voted yes," or something like that. Instead, he walked away. For most voters still considering voting for him, that one moment encapsulated his lack of seriousness and fitness for the job. He never recovered from it. It was as though they'd just discovered all of his horrifically mysogynistic statements for the very first time, and he suddenly went from serious to unqualified.
I think the same thing is happening here. That Trump is unqualified is as plain as the sun on a clear day, but so many people are opposed to Hillary Clinton (or, more accurately, to a caricature of Hillary Clinton spun by right-wing pundits) that they overlooked statements and actions that would have destroyed a campaign in any other election. But once the tipping point was reached, there was no going back.
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