Pardon respected, though not all agreed

Spokane mayors don’t often have the president’s ear.

However, Dave Rodgers, who held the city’s top elected office for most of the 1970s, met with President Gerald Ford three or four times.

“He was just a straightforward Midwestern kind of guy,” Rodgers said Tuesday night. “He was just a very classy guy.”

Rodgers said Ford did what was right for the country by pardoning disgraced President Richard Nixon even though it may not have been the best thing for Ford politically.

Skip Chilberg, who served in the Democratic administration of Idaho Gov. Cecil Andrus, said he voted for Jimmy Carter, not Ford, in 1976, but he still respected Ford and his decision to pardon Nixon.

“Gerald Ford was truly a statesman,” said Chilberg, the recently elected Spokane County treasurer. “He got the country through that painful time and did it honorably.”

Many, however, didn’t agree with Nixon’s pardon, including Spokane Mayor Dennis Hession – though he has come to appreciate the decision.

“I do believe that kind of act took a significant amount of courage,” Hession said. “I don’t think he ever got the credit he deserved when he was president.”

Rodgers’ invitation to meet with Ford came as a surprise as he was preparing to leave Washington, D.C., after a meeting of mayors.

Ford had sent word that he wanted to meet with him and a dozen or so Republican mayors who were gathered in the capital city.

Within hours, Rodgers was sitting in the Oval Office.

Earlier in the week, the Republican mayor of Cleveland had been chatting in a hotel bar with Rodgers and other GOP mayors about how to help Ford, who was being challenged for the Republican presidential nomination by Ronald Reagan. Most of those gathered, including Rodgers, said they would help, and they formed a Republican mayors committee to support the president.

Word of the committee leaked to the Washington Post, and by the end of the week, the mayors were meeting with Ford.

Rodgers, now 83, said the group met with Ford two or three more times. Ford was a politician who didn’t spin and a man who could be trusted, Rodgers said.

In the meetings, Ford sat with the group, at least once with a fire in the fireplace. He inquired about what was happening in their cities.

“He was the right guy at the right time in a tough situation,” Rodgers said. “I never met anybody who didn’t like him.”