Los Angeles Times Wednesday December 18, 1996
Home Edition
Part A, Page 20
JACKSON, Miss.--It's been six weeks now since Mississippians last eyeballed their
governor, and that was of him laid out on a stretcher after almost dying
in a fiery, single-vehicle crash.
Gov. Kirk Fordice, 62, was driving home alone on election night from
Memphis where he had been spied dining--and supposedly holding
hands--with a woman who was not his wife. His car left a highway, struck
several trees, soared 40 feet through the air and landed on its roof
before catching fire. He suffered a broken back, a collapsed lung, a
broken shoulder bone, broken ribs, a badly bruised heart and a nearly
severed ear.
The blustery Fordice, a pro-family-values Republican who has often
attacked Bill Clinton on moral issues, left the hospital over two weeks
ago but has yet to return to work. When he does return, he'll have a lot
of explaining to do.
Questions surrounding his trip, the accident and the Mystery Woman
have gripped this state like a TV soap opera. Fordice has not spoken
publicly about the accident. The public hasn't even seen a recent
photograph of him. Because few details are known, rumor and innuendo have
rushed in to fill the gap.
There are even suspicions of an initial attempt at a cover-up.
Immediately after the crash, Fordice's aides said the governor's security
detail was nearby when the accident occurred. It turned out they were
three miles away, keeping their distance because Fordice had requested
privacy.
The widely held view is that he was, as a local columnist put it, "up
to some hanky-panky while his wife was away in France."
The early press coverage "approached the limits of decency," groused
Mark Garriga, the governor's press secretary. "There was a lot of
sensationalizing." He found it especially distasteful, he said, because
the governor was fighting for his life when these accounts were
published.
"I think people would have preferred it if the news media had provided
us with factual information instead of innuendo," griped Bobby Roberts,
manager of a Jackson barbecue restaurant the governor frequented. Roberts
acknowledged, though, that the public ate up the rumors as greedily as
they scarf down his sauce-slathered ribs.
So far, concern for his health and the public backlash against the
perceived excessiveness of early press coverage seems to have muted the
governor's opponents.
"I don't think for a minute that people want to know the minute
details of Kirk Fordice's life, but they do want to know why he was out
of the state, who he was with and why," said Alice Skelton, executive
director of the state Democratic Party.
Almost everyone assumes the governor has been having an affair,
especially since, in an unguarded moment, he told a reporter in 1993 that
he was in love with his high school sweetheart and planned to leave his
wife. Fordice went to high school in Memphis.
His wife of 40 years, Pat Fordice, who is universally described as a
"gracious" and "classy" Southern lady, issued a press release saying she
knew nothing of marital difficulties and had no intention of leaving the
governor's mansion.
Fordice's personal life briefly became an issue during the 1995
reelection campaign. But voters, ignoring it, reelected him
overwhelmingly.
Roberts credits Fordice's reelection more to the racial calculus of
Mississippi politics than anything else. In the perception of whites, he
said, black people have taken over the Democratic Party. "Everything is
racial," said Roberts, who is white. "It's not like, 'I don't like you,
and you don't like me.' It's just that people feel more comfortable with
people who are like them, who share their views and background."
Fordice won reelection, he said, because "there are more white people
in Mississippi than black people."
Sid Salter, publisher of the Scott County Times and a syndicated
columnist who wrote the 1993 story that briefly turned the state on its
head, said he questioned Fordice about alleged infidelity because rumors
were circulating around the capital even then.
The backlash to his column and to his raising the question of
Fordice's marital problems during a 1995 debate--followed by Fordice's
reelection--caused him to consider the issue a moot point. Until the car
crash, he said, the issue was dead.
Now everyone, it seems, wants to know who was the mysterious
"middle-aged woman" who waiters at a Memphis restaurant say drank two
glasses of California wine and nibbled a salad Nov. 5 while the governor
feasted on catfish and sipped one glass of wine.
The few brief statements Fordice has issued through his press
secretary said nothing about why, on the day of the accident, he'd sent
away state troopers assigned to his security detail. Nothing about what
caused his 1996 Jeep Grand Cherokee to suddenly veer off the road as he
traveled south on Interstate 55 south of Memphis. Nothing about why he
left the state, apparently without notifying his staff of his
whereabouts.
His office will say only that he went away on "private business."
Passersby who witnessed the crash pried him out of his Jeep before
flames engulfed it. They had no idea the bloody man they rescued was the
governor. The state troopers, who by policy must remain in his general
vicinity even when Fordice excuses them, were three miles away, oblivious
to his plight.
They heard about the crash on their radio but did not know it involved
Fordice. They briefly considered whether to go render assistance. But
when they learned that emergency vehicles were en route they proceeded on
to Jackson. Only later did they learn that it was the governor's vehicle
that crashed.
Officials say no alcohol was found in Fordice's system and the weather
was clear.
Pat Fordice, who was in France when the accident occurred, cut her
vacation short. Among the governor's first words when he regained
consciousness, she told reporters, was, "Was I alone?"
Fordice said he did not remember the crash. When he is feeling well
enough to return to work, probably sometime in January, his staff says he
will meet the press to address their questions. But Garriga, Fordice's
chief of staff, said it is possible that no one will ever know why the
accident occurred.
Copyright, The Times Mirror Company; Los Angeles Times, 1996.
