To serve as Governor of Texas, a person must be at least thirty years old, a United States citizen, and a resident of Texas for at least five years preceding his or her election. These are the only legal requirements to hold the office. This chapter's feature Making the Cut compares qualifications in Texas to other states and to the qualifications to be president.

Voters loosened one constraint on the governor's powers in 1972 by approving a constitutional amendment to extend the term of office from two to four years. This measure went into effect in 1975, but since then the only governor to be elected to two consecutive four-year terms was George W. Bush. However, his selection as President in the middle of his second term meant that no one has yet been able to fully exploit the potential political advantages of serving two full terms.

Though personal characteristics are, of course, not requirements, there are some patterns in the group of governors elected since the Constitution of 1876. All but two governors, Miriam "Ma" Ferguson (1925-1927, 1933-1935) and Ann Richards (1991-1995), have been men, and all have been white Anglos. More governors have been trained as lawyers than any other occupation, though the previous occupations of the non-lawyer governors have varied. All Texas governors since annexation have been Protestants, mostly Baptists and Methodists. However, the significant and growing predominantly Catholic Mexican-American population of Texas, and the corresponding importance of Latinos both in the electorate and as political leaders, suggest that the pattern of Protestant governors may be broken eventually. The Democratic Party nominated a Latino, businessman (and University of Texas Regent) Tony Sanchez of Laredo, as their gubernatorial candidate in 2002, but Sanchez lost by a wide margin to incumbent Rick Perry. In the 2006 election, Jewish write-in candidate Kinky Friedman earned only a small, but significant, fraction of the vote. Meanwhile, Rick Perry was reelected with a solid plurality in what was essentially a four-way race. Nevertheless, the growing racial and ethnic heterogeneity of Texas is slowly eroding the hold of Protestant candidates on the governorship.

View a table of information and images concerning Texas Governors Since 1874.