Gov. Mike Foster: The Peoples’ Governor

Former Gov. Mike Foster passed away Sunday at his home, Oaklawn Manor, in Franklin. With his passing, Louisiana lost its best governor since the mid-1950’s, and I lost a dear friend.

Mike Foster never worried much about polls or getting reelected, but doing the right thing for the people of the state seemed always to be his primary goal.

I first heard of Mike Foster in 1987 when he was running against my friend Sen. Tony Guarisco, whom I had served with on the Bill of Rights Committee of the Louisiana Constitutional Convention of 1973.  Although Tony was a staunch liberal, he was an honest man who had a deep respect for individual rights. Unfortunately for him, he was far too liberal for his Senate district, which included St. Mary Parish.  

Mike was angry with Guarisco because of his support for trial lawyer legislation and the difficulty he had reaching him on the phone.  Using mostly his own money, Mike won the Senate seat with 64 percent of the vote.

When Mike Foster arrived at the State Capitol in 1988 as a 58-year-old freshman senator, I was only 40 but had 15 years’ experience in the Louisiana House.

When I first met Mike, I pegged him as “a blue collar millionaire,” a very successful businessman who was also a plain-talking man of the people.  He had no airs or pretense. He was just an ordinary person who was fed up with the direction of government. I never changed that opinion.

In the Senate, Mike Foster was relatively quiet his four years and did not generate much controversy. He was learning the ropes.  I didn’t hear much about him.  But when he began his second term in 1992, he became to take on bigger causes. On numerous occasions, he walked over to the House Chamber to get my opinion on a bill or lobby me for his latest cause.

He told me stories about his grandfather, Murphy J. Foster, who served as governor during the 1890’s and who was best known for ending the Louisiana Lottery, the scandal-ridden gambling enterprise which funded corruption in Louisiana politics for the last quarter of the 19th Century.

Ironically, during Sen. Mike Foster’s second term in the state Senate, there was another member of the legislature with ties to Gov. Murphy Foster. His name was Rep. Steve Gunn, the only Independent member of the House or Senate. Steve’s grandfather was a member of the Louisiana House in the 1890’s when the first Gov. Foster repealed the Louisiana Lottery. In fact, Rep. Gunn’s grandfather played a pivotal role in the repeal.

Supporters of the Louisiana Lottery were paying legislators $30,000 to vote to keep the lottery’s corrupt franchise in place. Rep. Gunn’s grandfather had been offered that amount, and he was enraged that such people had Louisiana by the throat.  When the roll was called on passage of the bill, the House was meeting in the House Chamber of the Old State Capitol, where Louisiana had voted to secede in 1861 and where Gov. Huey Long was impeached in 1928.

When Rep. Gunn’s grandfather name was called, he leaped atop his desk and shouted at the top of his lungs, “No!”  

No wonder Steve Gunn was an Independent!

Rep. Gunn told that story to Sen. Mike Foster while the three of us were working on a constitutional amendment in 1995. Mike never liked taxes, and the proposed amendment was right down his ally.

Under the Louisiana Constitution, a tax increase required a two-thirds’ vote of both the House and the Senate. However, the courts had ruled that a “fee” could be increased by a simple majority of each house.  As a result, most bills coming before the legislature to raise revenue were dubbed “fees” that required a simple majority vote to pass.

Our idea was to require the same vote to approve a fee increase as to pass a tax increase — a two thirds’ of both houses!  The proposal was controversial and drew great opposition from those who make their living foisting tax or fee increases on the unsuspecting public.  Nevertheless, we won a two-thirds of both houses and when the constitutional amendment when before the voters on Oct. 21, 1995, it passed statewide.  

That section of the Constitution came up this year when LSU wanted the legislature to give it authority to pass tuition increases without legislative approval.  No, no, the Constitution says it takes a two-thirds’ vote of both houses to raise fees, thanks to Mike Foster and Steve Gunn!  The legislature rejected their proposal.

October 21, 1995 was also the date Sen. Mike Foster clinched the governorship.

I had followed Sen. Foster’s voting record during his second term in the State Senate and knew he was a good conservative, although not 100 percent. In fact, he had a strong libertarian streak. His fight to repeal Louisiana’s mandatory helmet law for motorcyclists was proof of that.

Mike Foster was an ardent motorcyclist, and 

he absolutely hated wearing a helmet.  In fact, in typical blue collar fashion, he generally hated being told what to do about anything “for your own good.” Year after year, I worked with Mike to repeal the helmet bill, and we were successful.

Our nemesis on such legislation was Rep. V. J. “Safety First” Bella, who was later State Fire Marshal. He loved the helmet law and fought us every step of the way.

His way of convincing legislators to support his helmet bill was to place a head of lettuce on the podium in the House chamber.  He would say, “Look at this!” and slam a machete through a head of lettuce, cutting it in two.  Then he would place a head of lettuce inside a football helmet and slam the machete onto the helmet, causing no damage to the lettuce.  “You see, helmets work!” he said.

Meanwhile, Sen. Mike Foster, Rep. Steve Gunn, and I were arguing that it was an issue of liberty. People have the right to take risks in life.  We also argued that the science was largely against helmets.  Why?  Research showed that helmets provide real protection only when the motorcycle driver is traveling under 20 mph. However, helmets actually cause more deaths and injuries than not wearing a helmet at speeds over 20 mph.  How so? The weight of the helmet causes the neck to whiplash, resulting in deadly or life altering injuries at a greater rate than damage caused to the skull when it is unprotected by a helmet. 

During one of our debates, the data on the danger of wearing a helmet was getting through to House members, and Rep. Bella was worried.  In a question to me at the mic, he said, “Mr. Jenkins, you say helmets are dangerous at speeds over 20 mph. Then why do football players wear helmets?” Mike was standing next to me near the podium. He leaned over and whispered, “Tell him football players all travel under 20 miles an hour.  So they need a helmet!”  I told V. J. that from the mic.  It got a big laugh from House members, and we passed the bill to make the wearing of motorcycle helmets voluntary.

The wearing of motorcycle helmets was voluntary most of the time Foster was governor, although the helmet law was reimposed after he left office in 2004.

One day in May 1995 during the regular legislative session, Sen. Mike Foster walked over to the House side and sat down next to me. His gubernatorial campaign was going nowhere. He said he was at 2 percent in the polls and was having trouble getting endorsements. In fact, he said he didn’t have the support of even a single member of the House or Senate. He asked if I would consider endorsing him. Without hesitation, I agreed.  “Can we have a news conference to announce it?” he asked.  I said yes, we could have it at my home on North Foster Drive.

On the day of the announcement, Mike pulled up to our home, and he was shocked. More than 100 people came, packing the living room.  Better still, all of the major news media from Baton Rouge and New Orleans were set up in the room. I introduced Mike and he spoke.  He did a great job, and the news story went statewide.

Ironically, I ended up being the only legislator in the state who endorsed him for governor until the final days before the runoff.

After the news conference was over and everyone had left, he lingered.  “What is the name of this street?” he asked.  I said, “North Foster Drive, Foster — it’s named after your grandfather!”  “Ohhhh!” he said, “I had no idea!”

We sat down to talk about the campaign.  He said, “Woody, I have some money, but it would take everything I have to fund this campaign, I can’t do that to my family.”  I said, “Mike, I know how you can win this thing with very little money.” How? he asked.

I had been thinking about a path to victory for Mike Foster. It involved what seemed perfectly clear to me but to virtually no one else in the political world.  

The key was to get in the runoff with Congressman Cleo Fields.

The secret to victory was newspapers.

I said, “Everyone will buy TV time. It is ridiculously expensive, and the airwaves will be jammed. You can spend a fortune and still get almost no attention.  The key is newspapers.  People say newspapers are dead but that is far from true.  The reality is that in every city there are many TV stations and radio stations but only one newspaper.  It is a very efficient buy, and almost 100 percent of newspaper readers are voters.  With them, you are reaching the people who need to reach.”

Then I described a very specific series of ads.  I drew out three examples, showing the size ads and what to say.  I explained how often to run the ads, where to place them in the paper, and the repetitive format of the ads.  Then I handed him a list of newspapers to run the ads in.  He followed my advice to the T. 

When we sat down and discussed the campaign, Mike was at 2 percent in the polls.  Over the next eight weeks, the only media he bought were those newspaper ads.  Not a penny on radio or TV.  But eight weeks later, he was at 17 percent in the polls and near the top of the pack of candidates.

The poll encouraged donors and in the final weeks of the campaign, he was able to raise the money he needed to buy the TV and direct mail necessary to finish out the campaign.  On election day, he finished first among the Republican candidates and faced Cleo Fields in the runoff.  At that moment, the election was all but over.

During his time as governor, Mike Foster fulfilled his duties with honesty and integrity.  He answered his own phone and returned calls. If you dropped by his home in Franklin, he personally answered the door. He never sought personal, financial or political gain.  Rather, he was a true public servant.  A man of the people.  Pro-life.  Conservative.  He cared about the little man. He was truly the Peoples’ Governor!