Jackson Jambalaya

When Daniel Kirkwood Fordice was elected as the first Republican governor of Mississippi since Reconstruction in an upset of Democrat incumbent Ray Mabus in 1991, it signaled a sea change in Mississippi politics that has grown in scope for the last four decades.

As a couple, the Fordices were as different as night and day. Kirk Fordice, the barrel-chested, square-jawed brawler who built a prominent construction company in Vicksburg, was intimidating, extremely confident, and left no challenge or insult unmet or unaddressed. Pat Fordice was gracious but uncomfortable in the spotlight and possessed empathy for the poor and for civic and charitable work, which grew over her husband’s two terms as governor.

Along with four others who covered the Fordice campaigns and eight-year tenure in the Governor’s Mansion, I was invited to take part in a journalist roundtable last week as part of the Fordice History Project under the umbrella of the Mississippi Humanities Council at St. Andrew’s Episcopal School’s Chapel of St. Andrew the Apostle in Ridgeland.

The panel, moderated by former WJTV anchor and current St. Andrew’s official Stephanie Garriga, included former WJTV reporter and current Gateway Rescue Mission Executive Director Rex Baker, former Commercial Appeal political reporter and current government relations professional Reed Branson, former Rhodes Scholar and journalist Sarah Campbell, now director of Programs and Communications at the Miss. Department of Archives and History, and former Northeast Mississippi. Daily Journal Capitol reporter Mark Leggett, now president of the Miss. Poultry Association.

All of us were in Fordice’s orbit either during the campaign, during his tenure as governor, or both. Remembering those days, it is interesting to note that the panel of journalists is now all older than Fordice was when he was elected governor in 1991. Adding to the evening’s atmosphere was the fact that Fordice’s son, Dan Fordice, was in the front row of the crowd, some 10 feet from us. Like his father, Dan is a burly, imposing physical presence. Like his mom, Dan is gracious and circumspect.

Retrospectives can fail when they tilt toward nostalgia or grievance. They succeed when they place lives in context—political, cultural, moral—and allow audiences to see how leadership intersected with the realities of its time. The panel was not assembled to canonize or litigate the Fordices. It was assembled to explain them.

Our presence mattered because journalism is where policy meets perception. We could explain why Kirk Fordice’s bluntness energized supporters and unnerved critics, and how Pat Fordice’s warmth and advocacy softened and expanded the administration’s public face. We understood how message, media, and leadership interacted in a state undergoing rapid political realignment.

Kirk Fordice’s first political race was his 1991 campaign for governor against Mabus, who had made several successful runs for statewide office and enjoyed a 3-to-1 advantage in campaign finance, with Mabus spending over $3 million and Fordice about $900,000. Most journalists and professional politicos across the country predicted Mabus would win re-election handily – including the assembled panelists. Wrong.

Fordice ran as an outsider distrustful of “career politicians” and pilloried Mabus as, like Michael Dukakis, a liberal Harvard elite and a national Democrat. Mabus made a lot of rural white voters around the state angry while he was state auditor and won his first term, promising “Mississippi will never be last again.”

After upsetting presumptive GOP primary winner Pete Johnson, Fordice would hang that slogan around his opponent’s neck, and turnout among Black voters was low in the general election. Fordice won the race with 50.8% of the vote. Fordice’s election saw the fulfillment of a period of growth for the Republican Party in the state that began with President Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign.

Before Fordice, Democrats controlled the Mississippi Legislature and most statewide offices. By the end of his second term, the GOP was more than competitive statewide. The subsequent election of Haley Barbour as governor saw the GOP dominate state government and the Legislature, a status that continues today.

The Fordice legacy is an immutable chapter in Mississippi’s political history. So are the chapter’s pages that focus on Fordice’s personal frailties. Pat Fordice is remembered as one of the state’s most successful and formidable first ladies. Mississippians admired her grace under pressure.

Sid Salter is a syndicated columnist. Contact him at sidsalter@sidsalter.com.