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 said in the lawsuit filed this week that her husband and the woman dated in college, reconnected and began having an affair while he was in Congress and living in a building where several Christian lawmakers reside on C Street near the U.S. Capitol.
Leisha Pickering is seeking 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 it has not been finalized.
Chip Pickering, 45, was elected to Congress in 1996, retired in January and is now a lobbyist in Washington for Cellular South, the company Creekmore Byrd’s family owns. The lawsuit does not say when the affair started.
He said in a statement Thursday that his marriage is irreparably damaged.
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.”
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 the grounds of irreconcilable differences.
