Ex-GOP pol's wife sues for alienation of affection

JACKSON, Miss. - The estranged wife of former U.S. Rep. Chip Pickering claims in a lawsuit that the Mississippi Republican had an affair that ruined their marriage and derailed his political career.

Leisha Pickering seeks unspecified damages in the alienation-of- affection lawsuit she filed this week against Elizabeth Creekmore Byrd of Jackson. The Pickerings filed for divorce in June 2008, but the divorce is not complete.

The lawsuit says Chip Pickering and Creekmore Byrd dated in college, reconnected and began having an affair while Pickering was in Congress and living in a Christian building for lawmakers on C Street, near the U.S. Capitol.

Pickering, 45, was elected to Congress in 1996, retired in January and is a Washington lobbyist for Cellular South, the company Byrd's family owns. The lawsuit does not say when the affair started.

He said in a statement yesterday that his marriage is irreparably damaged and he will not comment further.

"I still believe it is in the best interest of our five boys if our differences are resolved privately and before the appropriate court and not in the media," he said.

Pickering is the third Republican with ties to the same C Street complex to find his personal life making headlines in recent weeks.

The first was Sen. John Ensign, a Nevada Republican and member of the Christian ministry Promise Keepers who has lived in the C Street house. Ensign stepped down from the Senate Republican leadership in June, after admitting he had an affair for much of last year with a woman on his campaign staff.

Just days after the Ensign story broke, South Carolina Republican Gov. Mark Sanford admitted an affair with a woman in Argentina. He apparently never lived in the C Street house, but has said he turned to "C Street" for counsel and solace while having the affair.

The building is affiliated with a Christian group that sponsors the annual National Prayer Breakfast.

Pickering cast himself as a defender of decency, particularly on television and the Internet, and was among House members urging then-President George W. Bush to declare 2008 "the National Year of the Bible."

Leisha Pickering's lawsuit says that when Republican Trent Lott resigned from the U.S. Senate in December 2007, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour offered the seat to Chip Pickering, who declined. Barbour spokesman Laura Hipp said yesterday that the governor offered the Senate seat only to U.S. Rep. Roger Wicker, who accepted it.

The lawsuit contends that Creekmore Byrd gave Chip Pickering an ultimatum, saying their relationship could not continue if he became a senator because he would have to stay married.

"Ultimately, Creekmore Byrd gave Pickering the option to remain a public servant or become a private citizen and continue relations with her," the lawsuit says.

The voice-mail box at Creekmore Byrd's home was full yesterday and messages left by the Associated Press for her divorce attorney were not immediately returned.

Creekmore Byrd, 45, is a member of Mississippi's wealthy Creekmore family, founders of the Cellular South phone company.

Pickering announced in August 2007 that he wouldn't seek another term. After leaving office in January, he joined the lobbying firm Capitol Resources LLC, in which one of Barbour's nephews is a partner. The firm, which counts Cellular South among its clients, lists Pickering as a member of its Washington and Mississippi teams.

In the House, Pickering specialized in telecommunications issues, including one dear to Cellular South: making sure Congress took into account the interests of cellular companies serving rural areas.

In Pickering's second term, he made it onto the House Commerce Committee, a post that a senior Republican, Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La., joked that he "had to fight like a demon" to get.

Creekmore Byrd and her husband, Dr. Douglas Byrd, were married in 1990 but stopped living together in June 2006. They were granted a divorce in 2007 on grounds of irreconcilable differences. *