Recently, I had several of Governor Kay Ivey’s closest friends and confidantes invite me to visit with them. Over lunch, they posed the question to me, “Do you think Governor Ivey has become a legacy governor?” My response was that she has been an outstanding governor, but I need to give some thought to the meaning of a “legacy” governor.
My perception over the years was that a legacy governor left an indelible, particular generational project that could be linked to their name for posterity. My memory of governors only goes back 60 years and there are only three or four who have left that specific mark.
Our larger-than-life political giant of a governor, James E. “Big Jim” Folsom, paved all the rural roads in the state, so that the small farmers who lived on dirt roads could get their produce they cultivated all year to the market. His creation of the Farm to Market Road Program gives him a legacy…