GOV FOSTER DIES — Former Louisiana Gov. Murphy James "Mike" Foster, who served as governor from 1996 to 2004, died Sunday. According to a statement released last week--Foster had entered into hospice care. The announcement said COVID-19 was not a factor and the move to hospice was due to complications with his old age, He was 90 years old.
Foster was also a former senator who represented half of Terrebonne Parish for eight years. The bald and burly millionaire businessman from south Louisiana switched from the Democratic to the Republican Party in 1995 and launched what many considered a longshot bid to succeed four-term Gov. Edwin Edwards. After winning the Governor’s seat, Foster pushed major changes in education policy and lawsuit rules through an increasingly conservative state Legislature in the 1990s, It was said that Foster had a “business-like style” to governing. During an interview in 2014 with Louisiana Public Broadcasting Foster explained his approach.
"You pick good people, you leave them alone and you change them if they can't do the job," Foster explained. "I be if you go back to the people that ran my departments and ask them how many times I called them to do something for me or for somebody, you wouldn't see two or three phonecalls."
"You pick good people, you leave them alone and you change them if they can't do the job," Mike Foster, former Governor of Louisiana
Foster was born in Shreveport and graduated from LSU in 1952 with a degree in Chemical Engineering. He joined the Air Force and served in the Korean War. He returned home to Franklin, Louisiana and began farming sugar cane and also started a construction business before entering politics. According to a statement from a former press secretary, Foster died Sunday at his home in Franklin, Louisiana surrounded by relatives. Among Foster’s successes were passage of a public school accountability program, creation of a community college system and changes in lawsuit rules that he said were stacked against business.
