Wendell H. Ford, a Kentucky Democrat who served as governor before being elected to the U.S. Senate, where he vigorously defended his state’s tobacco interests and served as party whip during four terms in office, died Thursday at his home in Owensboro, Kentucky. He was 90.
Ford announced last summer that he had lung cancer. His brother, Reyburn Ford, confirmed his death.
A self-described “dumb country boy with dirt between his toes,” Ford was for decades one of the most prominent Democrats in Kentucky. He was elected governor in 1971 and served in that office until winning a Senate seat in 1974. He was elected party whip in 1990 and served in that post until his retirement in 1998.
Among Washington insiders, he earned a reputation as a deal-maker more at home in back-room conferences than on the chamber floor. “In Kentucky we are known for our horses,” he once remarked to The New York Times. “I plan on being a workhorse and not a show horse.”
Ford was most outspoken on matters related to his state’s economic interests. He said that he “fought tooth and nail for the tobacco farmer,” and The Washington Post once described him as the tobacco lobby’s “chief Democratic benefactor in the Senate.”
In the early 1990s, Ford mounted an opposition to the tobacco tax that was proposed to underwrite the Clinton administration’s ill-fated health care plan. He said that although he supported efforts to reduce smoking among young people, he opposed regulation of tobacco by the Food and Drug Administration. The issue, he argued, was more complex than many of the industry’s critics acknowledged.
“You have a health side to this debate, but we also have an economic side to this debate,” he told the Times. “A lot of kids in our state can go to college because they have an acre of tobacco.” Similarly, he added, the spirits industry provided many jobs in Kentucky.
Politically, Ford was regarded as a moderate. He said that he spent a “good part” of his time in public office “working to nudge, and occasionally shove, our party back toward the center of the political road.”
He was a key proponent of legislation that allowed motorists to register to vote when they applied for a driver’s license, a measure that was signed by President Bill Clinton in 1993 and is known as the Motor Voter Act. Ford’s leadership roles included chairman of the Rules Committee and head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
He declined to seek reelection in 1998, decrying the rising costs of campaigns. He was succeeded by a Republican, Jim Bunning, who held the seat until his retirement in 2010.
“Democracy as we know it will be lost if we continue to allow government to become one bought by the highest bidder, for the highest bidder,” Ford said when he stepped down. “Candidates will simply become bit players and pawns in a campaign managed and manipulated by paid consultants and hired guns.”
He articulated a vision of government in which elected officials represented the views of their constituents.
“You’d be surprised at how eyebrows raise when you stop at a corner store and buy a pack of cigarettes and chat a little,” The Associated Press quoted him as saying. “Boy, they unload and tell you. Then you’re able to represent them more. I’m convinced that’s what you ought to do — represent the majority of your constituents’ views.”
Wendell Hampton Ford was born Sept. 8, 1924, in Daviess County, Kentucky. He attended the University of Kentucky before joining his family’s insurance business. He served in the Army from 1944 to 1946 and for two decades with the Kentucky National Guard.
He built his name recognition by becoming increasingly active in the leadership of the Jaycees and was a top assistant to Democratic governor Bert T. Combs in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Ford won a seat in the state senate before becoming lieutenant governor and then governor in 1971.
As governor, he was credited with helping to eliminate the sales tax on food and offsetting it with increases in other taxes. He also raised spending on schools, according to The Associated Press.
In 1974, he defeated an incumbent Republican, Marlow Cook, to win his Senate seat. Ford unsuccessfully challenged Sen. Alan Cranston, D-California, for the position of Democratic whip in 1988 and won the position two years later. In addition to his legislative work, he led the congressional committees that oversaw several presidential inaugurations.
After leaving the Senate, he worked with the legal and lobbying firm Dickstein Shapiro. He founded the Wendell H. Ford Government Education Center at the Owensboro Museum of Science and History.
Besides his brother, survivors include his wife of more than seven decades, Jean Neel Ford of Owensboro; two children, Steven Ford of Owensboro and Shirley Dexter of Lexington, Kentucky; a sister; five grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.
“You can say anything you like about cigarettes, it’s all been said before,” Ford once remarked. “When you come from a state where you have to defend beautiful women, fast horses, bourbon, cigarettes and coal, you’ve got a hell of a tough job.”