Kirk Fordice, 70, was Governor of Mississippi
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Former Governor Kirk Fordice, a hard-nosed, no-nonsense businessman who became Mississippi’s first Republican governor in more than 100 years, died Tuesday of leukemia in Jackson, Miss. He was 70, and had battled prostate cancer even while in office.
A self-made millionaire through his Fordice Construction Co., Fordice upset incumbent Democrat Ray Mabus in 1991 to become Mississippi’s first Republican governor since Reconstruction. Fordice served as governor from 1992-2000, becoming the first Mississippi chief executive to succeed himself.
Despite controversies over his comments on race and other issues and his private life, the silver-haired grandfather only seemed to grow more popular with conservative Mississippians even though his agenda of tax cuts, school choice and term limits stalled in the Democrat-controlled Legislature.
He was successful in pushing for spending restraints, tougher sentencing laws, and more prisons. His most raucous debates were over racial issues.
He argued racial issues were overshadowed by economic ones. “Mississippi doesn’t do race anymore,” he said in his 1996 inaugural speech after winning a second term.
“The 1960s are over. … We will acknowledge our history, but we will not let it determine our future. The only race that we’re concerned with is the race for more jobs, for better schools, for safer neighborhoods and the race for lower taxes,” he said.
His private life made headlines several times. In 1993, he revealed that he was having “irreconcilable differences” with his wife of 40 years, Pat. The first lady, through a terse press release, said she had no intention of getting a divorce.
Three years later, Fordice was seriously injured while driving back from his native Memphis, Tenn., where restaurant employees had seen him eating lunch and drinking wine with a woman believed to be Ann G. Creson, his high school sweetheart from Memphis.
In 1999, he was caught on television returning home from a vacation to France with Ms. Creson and cursed a television reporter. Days later, he announced that he and his wife were divorcing. He married Creson shortly after leaving office in January 2000, barred by term limits from seeking a third term. They later divorced.
