00:00:00BOB SHORT: Im Bob Short, and this is Reflections on Georgia Politics,
sponsored by the Duckworth Library at Young Harris College and the Richard B.
Russell Library at the University of Georgia. Our guest is State Senator and
Public Service Commissioner Ford Spinks. Welcome, Ford.
FORD SPINKS: Thank you.
SHORT: Well, with your permission . . .
SPINKS: Its good to have you here.
SHORT: Well, thank you. With your permission wed like to divide our
conversation into three parts. First of all your early life and growing up here
in Tift County, how you got interested in politics and your public career, and
lastly your life after politics. So lets get started, if you will, by talking
about your early life here in Georgias agricultural belt in Tift County.
00:01:00
SPINKS: Well, I had the good fortune that both my grandparents were close to me
in many ways. But my mother, as a little girl, lived about a mile up the road.
And my daddy, as a young buck, lived about a half a mile up the road. So I had
great grandparents and great parents, so I was very lucky to have been born and
00:02:00brought up in this part of Tift County.
SHORT: And your parents were farmers, were they?
SPINKS: Both of my granddads were farmers. My daddy ran the dairy out at ABAC
when he was going to school out there, he and my mother. And then he took a job
with a dairy down in Florida. So actually my first year in existence was near
Tampa, Florida, a big, wide place in the road called Plant City, I believe. But
00:03:00that was long ago and far away.
SHORT: So you grew up and went to school here in Tifton, or in Tift County.
SPINKS: In Tift County. Our school was up where the fire department is now,
Excelsior School. Excelsior sort of has several meanings, maybe, but one
is that its supposed to be the best. Well, I dont know if I actually would
have applied to the school, but it was a good little country school. I had good
00:04:00teachers. I have no regrets about those schooldays in any way, shape, form or
fashion. This was just a wonderful place to grow up and go to school, and
everything worked out fine with that.
SHORT: Where did you go to high school?
SPINKS: First year I went to Tifton. And then the war hit, as you remember, and
me and my mother and a cousin or two went to Macon to work at Warner Robbins,
00:05:00and that was quite an experience. One little thing that was funny back then, I
didnt have a drivers license. I was not old enough to have a vehicle. And
to get back and forth to work on the plant every day, I rode my bicycle. And one
day the thing started coming apart. The piece that holds the handlebars broke.
00:06:00And there for about a month, before I could get a new piece, Id just ride it
to work every day without any handlebars. And I wondered if I was where the
finger idea was born. Anyway, Id just see all kind of folks pointing at me as
Id go by, and Im sure that did look a little funny. But that was at Warner
Robbins, and that would have been in, I guess, 43 or 44. But I finished
00:07:00high school at Bonaire. The first year I went to Tifton here and finished at
Bonaire. That was another long ago and far away trip.
SHORT: And then you went into the service, into the Army, I think.
SPINKS: Into the Army, yeah.
SHORT: And what did you do in the Army?
SPINKS: Went to Germany. And my cousin, Z. W. Morton, and I rode a bicycle, a
00:08:00motorcycle, a good bit in the community, and I remembered a little about that.
And when the Army found out that I knew how to ride a motorcycle, they put me in
a motorcycle platoon of the constabulary, 72nd Constabulary at Stuttgart,
Germany, and did that for about a year. We always had one more parade to do. And
00:09:00I think we were partly just showboating, but we didnt know that. We didnt
have to wear a tie. They gave us a big, pretty yellow scarf, and we wore a scarf
instead of a tie. And I guess we did look a little funny compared to what the
Germans had been seeing up until then. It was not hard duty, but our job was
00:10:00searching and seizures, is what they had written down. But the closest I ever
came to a search and a seizure was--it was our job, since we were sort of a
do-it-all section of the Army this was during the time of the Nuremberg
trials, and it was our duty to escort the people who needed to be escorted from
the Stuttgart area to Nuremberg for the trials. And we did that for several months.
00:11:00
SHORT: Did you attend any of the trials?
SPINKS: No. We didnt have time to do that. We would just take them up there
and come on back. I would have liked that and would have been happy to have done
that, but our job was to just deliver the prisoners to that location. And we
turned them over to another detail, another guard detail, at that point. So
00:12:00there was no opportunity at all to attend any of the trials. And I thought about
that at the time, that I wished theyd let us do that, but, "No, youve got
to get back as soon as you can."
SHORT: So after your tour in the service, you came back to Tift County.
SPINKS: Yeah.
SHORT: And what happened then?
SPINKS: Well, let me tell you one thing, on one of the trips, I believe his
00:13:00name was Ganto. I think Ganto was a corporal, and he was on the trip with us
going up one of the I call it a mountain, but probably to people in Germany,
the folks in mountainous country, it was probably just a hill. But it was pretty
high. Anyway, going up one of these hills, he was going a little faster than he
should have been and he let his motorcycle drift over into the oncoming traffic,
00:14:00and he hit a Jeep head on. And the Jeeps that we used over there had this
bulletproof shield in front of the driver and the passenger, and something on
that shield hit Ganto some place on his head. I didnt ever know the exact
specifics of it, but we never saw him again. I think he got over it all right,
but he was never the same after that. But that was just part of our job.
00:15:00
SHORT: So you came back to Tifton.
SPINKS: Came back to Tifton after that.
SHORT: And what happened then?
SPINKS: Well, me and a cousins friend started we decided wed go into
business, and we built a store up here at Excelsior. We had run one ever since I
was a little fellow that my daddy started, but we decided we really needed to
build a new one, and did. But television was not big in our area at that time.
00:16:00It was a very small portion of entertainment there. And so we built us a little
we had us some old church benches that we cut down and added to, and we made
them down in height so that the person on the back row had as good a vision as
the one on the first did. And we ran a country movie for several years there,
00:17:00four or five years, until that became I guess wed lost enough sleep that
we decided we needed to do something else, so we discontinued that. But it was
interesting that we had the old Roy Rogers and Tom Steele and the old cowboy
pictures there. They were plentiful. And we had a lot of fun with the old
00:18:00theater concept, and it served us well for three or four years. Then what did I
do? My dad had looked after my cows while I was gone. I had been in the dairy
business prior to being in the Army, and he had looked after them. So we got
back in the saddle, so to speak, and started the dairy business again. But we
didnt stay with it long that time. My mother was working for the Colquitt
00:19:00County EMC. It was already REA back then. And when I got home, the only kind of
new vehicle you could buy was a Jeep, so I bought a new Jeep. And then, after
Id been home about a year, I guess, we were able to buy a car. It wasnt
new. It was almost new. And on this day, she told me that she needed to do some
00:20:00work around Tifton that day and I could take the car and she would drive the
Jeep, and she did. And she was leaving Tifton, coming home, and a drunk soldier
from Albany hit her almost head on and killed her. So that terminated my work
with the EMC. I wasnt interested in doing that kind of thing any further. But
00:21:00thats the only outside employment, I guess, that Ive ever had. The rest of
my time of being gainfully employed had to do with other endeavors with
well, I dont need to talk about all tha. As you might understand, even
00:22:00thinking about the time when my mother was killed is not very pleasant.
SHORT: Somewhere along the line you attended Abraham Baldwin Athletic-- I mean,
I'm sorry, not Athletic--Agricultural College, ABAC here in Tifton.
SPINKS: Yeah. Well, I was going to ABAC when the Army called me first. And
00:23:00then, when I came back, I didnt go back to ABAC, since I had the cows and was
in the dairy business. I had branched into Omega and had a route of delivering
milk to homes and houses and businesses, and that was going very well. So that
was the first thing that I did when I got back was pursue that endeavor for a
00:24:00while. Somewhere along there I met my wife-to-be. And I didnt know it at the
time, but anyway, that developed then. And we went to Macon. Our former pastor
at Salem was living in Macon at that time, and after we had gone together for
00:25:00several months, we decided to go to Macon and let him marry us. And so that
ended another chapter of my life. And, thank goodness, all of that worked out fine.
SHORT: When did you first get interested in politics?
SPINKS: I had some good friends who thought they were doing me a favor to tell
me that they would support me and theyd do thus and so if Id get involved
00:26:00in it. And what happens so many times is somebody will push someone who is
really not interested into a situation because of their likes or dislikes, and I
think thats what happened to me. But, still, when I said yes, I said yes.
SHORT: So you first ran for the Georgia Senate. You first ran for the Georgia Senate.
SPINKS: No. I had one little race prior to that. I had had a little situation
00:27:00that caused me a little discomfort with the chairman of the county
commissioners, and I ran for that position. And I didnt win, but I guess I
00:28:00must have made some friends that stuck with me through thick and thin. And when
I decided to be in politics again, they were really ready to help me the second time.
SHORT: Do you remember your first campaign for the Senate? That was in 1962, as
I recall.
SPINKS: Mm-hm. Yeah, I sure do. I thought how unfortunate this is to run for
the Senate, get elected and then have to run again. And that was what happened.
00:29:00
SHORT: Lets talk about that for a minute. You ran and got elected, and then
they reapportioned . . .
SPINKS: They reapportioned.
SHORT: . . . and you had to run again.
SPINKS: Had to run again.
SHORT: Yeah. What was your district like after they reapportioned it?
SPINKS: Well, in my case, there was no difference. It was Brooks County,
Colquitt County and Tift County was the three counties before the
reapportionment, and it was the same three counties after the reapportionment.
But, of course, having to run twice to get the same job seemed a little unfair.
00:30:00
SHORT: Yeah, we might explain, Ford, that. During the days of the county unit
system, the senatorial districts were broken down into three counties that
rotated the senator every term.
SPINKS: Yes.
SHORT: So after reapportionment, those three counties became a district, and
you represented that district.
SPINKS: Yeah.
SHORT: But when you ran for reelection, you could do it every time instead of
rotating the counties.
SPINKS: Yeah.
SHORT: Right.
SPINKS: Yeah.
SHORT: So you were elected in 62. You went to the Capitol in 63, and you
were part of one of the famous classes in Georgia political history. You
remember those days, Im sure, produced three governors, one president, the
00:31:00mayor of Columbus, captains of industry, generally considered the best Senate in
Georgia history. What do you remember about those days?
SPINKS: Well, my memories specifically, as you might imagine, are a little
blurred in that I remember generalities, but not too many specific details. But
I remember thinking at the time that Jimmy Carter, Hes somebody I could
00:32:00really support, could work for. Hes very knowledgeable. And it goes without
saying that you can tell that hes educated and has a lot of smarts. And
the fact that he was so helpful in the atomic program with Admiral Rickover
proved to me that, "Heres a fellow that knew a little more than the average
00:33:00man on the street, and Id be happy to support him. So when it came time to
give him support, to put my mouth where my thoughts had been, it was very easy
to support him.
SHORT: You were one of several senators who encouraged him to run for governor
in 1966.
SPINKS: Mm-hm.
SHORT: Lets talk a little bit about that race. It was a very strange election.
SPINKS: Mm-hm.
SHORT: Carter was one of several candidates in that race, and he ran a
creditable race, but he didnt quite make it to the runoff. He was ousted by
Lester Maddox, as you recall. Some people think, Ford, that if that election had lasted another week or 10 days, Carter might have won. Do you think thats true?
00:34:00
SPINKS: Yes. I thought so at the time. Yeah. And nothing has happened to make
me think differently since, yeah.
SHORT: Uh-huh. In the runoff between Governor Arnall and Lester Maddox, did you
take any part in that?
SPINKS: No.
SHORT: Did Senator Carter? Did Senator Carter support either one of those two candidates?
SPINKS: Not to my knowledge.
SHORT: Okay.
SPINKS: His campaign had not really cranked up at that point. We were still
getting started. The fact that you were not on the scene then proves that we
were just getting ready to . . .
00:35:00
SHORT: To go for the next time.
SPINKS: Yeah.
SHORT: Yeah. Yeah. Well, he spent four years running for election in 1970
against former Governor Carter, who was very much ahead in the polls.
SPINKS: Former Governor Maddox.
SHORT: Well, he ran against Governor Sanders. We both are getting it a little
confused. In 1970, former Governor Sanders . . .
SPINKS: Yeah.
SHORT: . . . who was substantially ahead in the polls at the beginning of that race.
SPINKS: Yeah.
SHORT: What do you think happened that got Carter ahead?
SPINKS: I think his running proved to a majority of the electorate that,
"Heres an average man, an honest man, an educated man, heres somebody that
I wont be ashamed of in any way, shape, form or fashion, and Id like to
00:36:00help him."
SHORT: Lets go back a minute, if you will, to 1966 when Maddox was the
Democratic nominee and Bo Callaway was the Republican nominee, and nobody won
the general election; it went into the legislature. You were in the legislature
at that time. How did you vote?
SPINKS: I voted for Lester.
SHORT: Im sure that thats the way your district voted, was it?
SPINKS: Yeah.
SHORT: Were you ever ashamed of casting that vote?
SPINKS: Probably so, but I cant recall an instance at the moment.
SHORT: Yeah. What did you think of Maddox as a governor? Some people gave him
good marks, thought he was an efficient governor. Did you think that?
SPINKS: At that point I was not close enough really to have formed an opinion
about that, and so the question sort of hits me cold.
00:37:00
SHORT: How do you think he treated rural Georgia?
SPINKS: Lester was more of a political person than a lot of folks gave him
credit for. There might have been some exceptions when things didnt go as
00:38:00well as they could have, but, by and large, he did an admirable job, really. If
I had had the ability to have changed two or three things at the time, I
00:39:00probably would have. But then, again, thats long ago and far away.
SHORT: In 1970, when Jimmy Carter was elected governor, Lester Maddox was
elected lieutenant governor, which was rare in our state.
SPINKS: Mm-hm.
SHORT: That had never happened before. And during that campaign, both Carter
and Sanders were vying for an endorsement from Maddox, and I think you had a
role in that episode.
SPINKS: Yes. I think that, if I understand it, what really went on was the
endorsement by Lester or Carl had already taken place, or rather the document
00:40:00stating that, but it was not to be made public til another hour or two later.
And the Carter campaign got word of it somehow, so I was sort of designated to
I wasnt sort of--I was designated to turn that around and not let that
00:41:00become public knowledge. I had a list of 12 people who was cloe to Lester,
close enough to have made some influence in his thinking, so I started looking
for the 12. One was Zell Miller. And I found Zell, talked to him about the
00:42:00situation, and he didnt think he could help me. So I found Governor Griffin.
He was in Tallahassee with his wife. His wife was in the hospital in
00:43:00Tallahassee, and he was there with her, and thats where I found him. Thats
why I remember that much about that. Now, some of the other folks, Id have to
go back and look at my list and see who the other people were. But it did
finally work out all right. But I tell you who gets credit. Peyton Hawes was the
one fellow that responded in the affirmative. He responded in a way that he said
he would help, and did.
00:44:00
SHORT: Do you think an endorsement of Sanders by Maddox would have made any difference?
SPINKS: Bob, I dont know now, but I know that at that time, when this was
happening, we all thought it would have made a difference. All that I heard
express any views about it thought it would have made a difference.
SHORT: Well, Maddox was very popular at the time.
SPINKS: Yes.
SHORT: He was. And Im sure he would have had some influence. But I always
felt that Carter would have won anyway, that he had done a tremendous job of
campaigning against Sanders and making Sanders look liberal and rich and all of
that. And people just werent ready for that at the time.
SPINKS: Mm-hm. Well, thats true.
SHORT: Now, going forward there, Maddox, when he became lieutenant governor,
accused Governor Carter and his friends in the Senate of trying to take over the
Senate. Was there any organized move to do that?
SPINKS: Not to my knowledge.
SHORT: Well, you would certainly know, because you were one of Governor
Carters biggest, strongest friends there in the Senate and worked with him on
his legislation and that sort of thing. One of the big issues that became very,
00:45:00very controversial with Maddox was his reorganization plan.
SPINKS: Mm-hm.
SHORT: He had no problems in the House, but he had problems with Maddox in
getting it through the Senate. Do you remember all that?
SPINKS: Vaguely.
SHORT: Well, tell us about it.
SPINKS: Thats one of those things that was long ago and far away.
SHORT: Yeah.
SPINKS: Yeah.
SHORT: We were talking about reorganization and Governor Carters primary
plank in his campaign platform. He was able to pass legislation to reorganize
the state government.
SPINKS: Mm-hm.
SHORT: Do you think that that has worked efficiently?
SPINKS: Bob, I really havent had any occasion to evaluate any part of that reorganization.
SHORT: Well, let me get your opinion here. On a scale of one to ten, ten being
the highest, how would you rate the Carter administration when he was governor
00:46:00of Georgia?
SPINKS: How would I rate Carter?
SHORT: As compared to other governors.
SPINKS: Now, this question implies that all the governors did well.
SHORT: Right.
SPINKS: Yeah.
SHORT: Every governor in my lifetime that I can remember had some very positive
things to their administration.
SPINKS: Mm-hm.
SHORT: My thinking was that at that particular point that Jimmy Carter might
have been a little more advanced than most of the other governors at that point.
SPINKS: Mm-hm.
SHORT: Of course, as the state grew and as the economy grew, governors got a
little more money to do more things with.
SPINKS: Yeah.
SHORT: But I guess what Im asking is, do you think he was poor, average,
good or excellent as a governor, in your view, while you were in the Senate?
SPINKS: Well, I think that question was answered by the electorate of the
United States, because when the people of the United States pass judgment on a
fellow, you cant get any higher than that. And so given that, that means that
the majority of people in the United States agreed, and theres no higher
00:47:00court in the land than the court of public opinion of all of our people.
SHORT: Governor Carter appointed you to the Public Service Commission. Lets
talk for a minute about that. What does a public service commissioner do?
SPINKS: Well, the gas, the electric, radio, utilities of our country comes
under their supervision. The Public Service Commission has to make sure that the
companies that are in this business maintain the healthy financial situation
that allows them to provide the services that the people want. And thats the
reason there has to be rate increases. Thats just the way the system works.
00:48:00For them to be able to provide those services, they have to build plants and put
in more equipment. And we dont have the luxury of just denying a rate
increase request just because we dont want to pay more for electricity or for
telephone service or gas or whatever. The companies have to be in position,
which means they have to have the equipment for there to be a generating plant,
00:49:00or whether it be more telephone wires. They have to have that, and the law says
that the Public Service Commission has to provide that money that gives them the
ability to provide these services.
SHORT: Well, that is a political office, and its statewide. So when you ran
for reelection, you had to run statewide.
SPINKS: Yes.
SHORT: A little bit different than running from three counties.
SPINKS: A whole lot different. Yeah.
SHORT: How do you go about a statewide race like that?
SPINKS: Very carefully. Its just like any campaign anywhere. You call on
your friends. You call on your friends to help you. And if you have been trying
to be a good public servant, most times the people will respond.
SHORT: Those elections are very costly, arent they?
SPINKS: Mm-hm.
SHORT: I mean, if you have to use television.
SPINKS: Very costly, yeah.
SHORT: How do you go about raising enough money to do that?
SPINKS: Very carefully. Very carefully. Because if youre not careful about
that, there are all kind of pitfalls that you can encounter with public funds
that are generated like that. But the public was good in my behalf. Everything
worked out well for each encounter with whatever possibilities might have been
00:50:00at that time.
SHORT: You ran how many times?
SPINKS: It must have been three times.
SHORT: Three times.
SPINKS: Yeah.
SHORT: Why did you decide to leave the commission?
SPINKS: You get to thinking after a while that enoughs enough, and you get
tired and worn out. It starts becoming a thankless job in that not enough people
00:51:00realize that the commission is there by law, and what it has to do it has to do
by law. So I dont think thats ever been explained adequately for the
general public to understand. I really think thats the gist of the job of
being public service commissioner. Its a thankless job, because some folks
00:52:00have the idea that we can do anything we want to. Well, you might up to a point.
But if the law had been written that says youve got to do certain things,
then you try to do what youve got to do.
SHORT: Ford, getting back to Governor Carter for a minute, when did you first
suspect that he was thinking about running for president?
00:53:00
SPINKS: I can remember that, but I dont remember anything that I could tie
it to that would make sense to you.
SHORT: You remember the document that Hamilton Jordan was supposed to have
written while Jimmy Carter was governor that outlined the steps that he needed
to take to run for president. Were you aware at that point that he was going to
do it?
SPINKS: No. I knew that he had that in mind, but at that point I was not aware
of the fact that he was going to. I guess, knowing him, I should have known that
he was.
SHORT: What was your reaction when you learned that he was ready to announce
for president? Was there doubt in your mind about his ability to win?
SPINKS: Yeah. I remember thinking, I know he has the intelligence. He has
the savvy. He has the education. Hes got all the needed elements to be that.
00:54:00But would this be rushing it just a little bit? I guess what it was is that,
at that point, I hadnt thought about it enough to convince myself that
00:55:00nows the time. I knew that he was capable and that he had all the little
extras that he needed to be ale to do it, but I was fearful that we might be
trying to move just a little too fast.
SHORT: Mm-hm. Well, he did a tremendous job of campaigning with his family and
with Hamilton with him. Hamilton had certainly a brilliant political mind.
00:56:00
SPINKS: Yeah.
SHORT: Dont you think?
SPINKS: Yeah.
SHORT: During that period there was problems in the Republican Party. President
Nixon had resigned. President Ford had been made vice president and later
president without running for either office. And there was disarray in that
party at that time. Do you think that that helped President Carter and the
Democrats in that year, 1976?
SPINKS: No doubt it did.
SHORT: Do you think that President Fords pardon of Richard Nixon helped the Democrats?
SPINKS: Id have to say yes, but Id have to say, too, that it hurt them
more than it helped them.
SHORT: How is that, now?
SPINKS: Well, most of the voters are probably a little more savvy than some of
us old codgers might want to think.
00:58:0000:57:00
SHORT: How were you involved in the Carter campaign. Were you on the Peanut Brigade?
SPINKS: Bob, I dont think youd find my name on anybodys list, but I
was making appearances for him and, in some cases, making talks for him and so
00:59:00forth before the Peanut Brigades really got going. So I was there. I just
didnt get credit for it.
SHORT: Lets go back to a minute, if you will, to Ford Spinks. Is there
anything that weve left out, Senator, that youd like to talk about?
SPINKS: No. Ill think of something after youve gone, Im sure.
SHORT: Yeah.
SPINKS: Yeah. Why didnt I think of this, and why didnt I tell you this?
SHORT: Well, weve enjoyed having you as our guest. And I want to thank you
on behalf of Young Harris College and the University of Georgia for being with
us today.
SPINKS: Well, thank you, Bob.