Hollywood to Hospitality State: How Sela Ward's husband became a U.S. Senate candidate

On a break from discussing campaign strategy one April morning, Howard Sherman drives a golf cart from his posh cottage around a bend, uphill to a grassy pasture where horses graze. 

In front of the white fence, a stone bench made of two small lion statues sits next to the graves of three Wards — kin to his wife, Emmy-winning actress and Meridian native Sela Ward.

The U.S. Senate candidate and venture capitalist said he'd rather be wearing jeans than his "official campaign uniform": khakis, brown loafers and unbuttoned chambray shirt with rolled sleeves over an undershirt.

He looks out on his family's large Meridian estate, the lake down the hill and several houses in the distance. 

"This is it. This is where they say I don't live," Sherman said.

Sherman, a Los Angeles native, is pegged the unconventional candidate running in the Mississippi Democratic primary for U.S. Senate with an initial $500,000 personal loan to his own campaign.

It's not the only money he's contributed in the Senate race. He gave the maximum individual donation, $5,000, to his would-be opponent, incumbent U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker, last summer.

It was a perplexing revelation to the start of his campaign, which would raise questions about Sherman's residency and his commitment to the Democratic Party.

In the weeks leading up to the June 5 election, the businessman is determined to endear himself to the people of Mississippi — a state in which he's never voted — while explaining his unexpected campaign and motivation to run.

Bookend campaign

Sherman, who grew up in Los Angeles and received his master's in business from Harvard, has spent the last 25 years supporting Ward's career. She's known for her roles on TV shows "Sisters," "Once and Again," "House," "CSI: NY," and most recently for her portrayal of the president of the United States in the 2016 film "Independence Day: Resurgence."

Sherman's initial interest in running for Congress came not during the political free-for-all following the 2016 presidential election of businessman and reality TV star Donald Trump, but in the early 1990s.

He was a 33-year-old, long-haired Southern California resident with a plan to run as a Democrat and win over his district's distinct voter groups, those from the nearby University of California campus and retirees in Palm Springs. (It's the seat Sonny Bono eventually held.)

As with many prospective politicians, Sherman's decision to run was contingent on his partner's blessing. Only Ward wasn't having any of it.

"She says, 'Are you doing this for your ego or are you doing this because you want to enact change?' I'm 33. I'm like, 'I don't know; 20 percent ego, 80 percent change.' Ego's in there. I'm a male. Most males have some amount of ego," Sherman said. "I was falling madly in love with her, and she said, 'Well, I'm the wrong woman for you.'"

Ward didn't want to be the wife of a public personality — an irony not lost on Sherman today. 

Sherman had met the up-and-coming actress on a blind date just months earlier; the relationship was more important to him than politics, he said.

"In some respect, this (campaign) is the bookend of that experience," Sherman said.

Ward now seems energized to take on politics in her home state. In 2000, she founded a Meridian group home called Hope Village for children caught in the middle of the state's broken foster care system. Just months ago, state lawmakers shorted the Mississippi Department of Child Protection Services' requested budget by more than $20 million.

Ward is critical of the effect that national policy and the long-running Olivia Y lawsuit against the state's foster care system has had on Hope Village. The group home has not been receiving the number of kids it did in the early 2000s.

Sherman said this also influenced his decision to run.

The federal government has for decades urged states to move away from institutions, whether for foster children or people with mental illnesses. A settlement in the Olivia Y lawsuit, which alleged the state failed to protect children in its custody, has forced the state to better prioritize its foster care system or risk federal takeover.

"With all due respect to the federal government, there's certain things they shouldn't be involved in and that's one of them," Sherman said, referencing a potential receivership.

Ward also spoke publicly in 2016 against the "archaic points-of-view" demonstrated by Mississippi's House Bill 1523, a law opponents argue legalizes discrimination against the LGBTQ community.

"I've been defending Mississippi," Ward told the Clarion Ledger in May. "I see that glazed-over look when someone hears I'm from Mississippi, because I have to travel all over the world. All they see is 'Mississippi Burning.' That's their image. And I'm tired of it. I'm 61 years old; I have never known this state not being number 50, rock bottom of everything. The brunt of the joke."

Political outsider

Sherman believes he can use a political platform to amplify initiatives he already plans to bring to Mississippi.

His company, Inventure Holdings LLC, has propelled a number of inventions, including a medical device that keeps bodies warm during surgery and a surgical scalpel that reduces scarring.

Sherman is cited in a 1998 book, "201 Great Ideas for Your Small Business," in which he says he's "personally attracted to companies that offer solutions to problems."

"Sometimes you can position a product as something that will change lives, and then investors view it as almost donating to a charity," he's quoted as saying.

One piece of technology in which he's invested helps to lower the rate of infections in hospitals.

Sherman, who has spent much of his career mentoring entrepreneurs, spoke to business students at Mississippi State University in March.

A fan of free-market ideology, Sherman said his priorities are health care, education and jobs, in which he plans to make improvements through public-private partnerships.

Though he touts himself as a job creator, he said he has yet to invest in companies based in Mississippi. The extent of his job creation inside the state is the hundreds employed since 2000 by Ward's Hope Village, which currently employs 40.

Sherman said he wants to bring jobs to the state using its existing industry — bringing a corn chip plant to the Delta where they're already growing corn, for example.

To drive down health care costs, he said he wants to turn Mississippi into a "medical tourism" destination, where providers can sustain low-cost procedures because of the volume of patients traveling for those savings.

But in an interview with the Clarion Ledger, he said he was unaware of a possible roadblock, the well-known state regulation called a "certificate of need" that requires a provider to demonstrate local demand before it is allowed to make certain capital investments or "create beds."

Sherman's campaign echoes Trump's swamp-draining rhetoric by playing up his business experience and distance from politics.

"Between Wicker and the Dem candidates, they have been in government for approximately 60 years and all we have to show for it is being #50," he wrote in an email to the Clarion Ledger.

Sherman's first radio advertisement describes him as an "outsider" — an interesting word choice considering his lack of Mississippi bona fides.

"Right now he's wearing the 'he ain't from around here' label," said longtime state politico Marty Wiseman. 

'More fun in the South'

Months after they married in 1992, Ward brought Sherman to a 500-acre piece of property, which would come to be called Honeysuckle Farms, outside Ward's hometown.

"'This is it,' she goes, 'It's our future home,'" Sherman said, describing the overgrown, neglected piece of land. "I'm like, 'Really?' She said 'Yeah, yeah, you will come to understand.'"

They tore down the existing dilapidated hunting cabin and built what's called the "Rose Cottage," a bungalow expertly decorated with Southern flare, where they live now.

For an anniversary present early on, Sherman sought to buy Ward a swan and also inadvertently acquired 40 bantam flying chickens.

Instead of a nearby tree, the chickens accidentally imprinted (or made their home) on the couple's cottage porch. Sherman recalls the swarm of birds flying around, defecating on Ward's newly covered patio furniture, as he tried hilariously to corral them.

"Suddenly I found we were having more fun in the South than in Los Angeles," he said. "Los Angeles is a remarkable city to make a living. It's a remarkable city for the weather, but there's no sense of community there. I'm not just saying that."

Sherman's feelings about Mississippi are perhaps best summed up by what his 23-year-old son, Austin, wrote in his college application essay a few years ago.

"Even though he has physically grown up in Los Angeles — that's where his family lived; that's where his mother worked — his sense of connection to community and not earth but The Earth, is here in Mississippi," Sherman said.

"He says, 'The only advantage I find of Los Angeles over the South is that there's sometimes this homogeneous way of thinking here in the South, whereas in Los Angeles everything is tolerated and everything goes," Sherman added, likely referencing Mississippi's race relations and position on LGBTQ rights.

Sherman certainly can't claim Mississippi his home of 25 years. He spent summers and holidays with his kids at Honeysuckle Farms over the years. But the family's Bel Air mansion — which they renovated with reclaimed materials from Mississippi before selling to singer-actress Jennifer Lopez for nearly $30 million in 2016 — is well-documented in high-end magazines.

The Mississippi farm is the only home they own today, Sherman said.

"You've got an actor's husband from California who's parachuted into Meridian, Mississippi," Wiseman said. "You know how politics in Mississippi are. It's a very personal thing. You need to be able to ask, 'How's your mama 'n them?' It's almost a sort of kinship you need to have. It takes a little bit of time to build that."

Sherman said he's lived in Mississippi since 2016. Wicker's campaign finance report shows Sherman's 2017 donation to the incumbent came from a Beverly Hills post office box the family keeps for business purposes.

Wiseman added that Sherman must also "clear the hurdle of convincing people he really is a Democrat."

Republican past

Sherman explained the donation to Wicker as an attempt to block the "dangerous and backward politics" of his then presumed Republican opponent, conservative and tea party-backed state Sen. Chris McDaniel. Since then, Sherman has voiced no confidence in Wicker's leadership.

But the recent Republican donation wasn't a one-off. Sherman was for years a registered Republican in California, where he voted in Republican primaries. He even hosted a Mississippi fundraiser in 2008 for then Republican presidential candidate, Sen. John McCain.

Sherman donated $2,000 to former Republican Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott in 2006 after the senator helped soften language in a federal act aimed at dismantling group foster homes like Hope Village. He also gave $500 to Republican U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions in 2003 after the then-senator helped secure federal funding for an invention backed by Sherman and his business partners.

Sherman justifies his Republican leanings later in life — despite the D by his name on the upcoming ballot — by stressing the difference in political climates between California and Mississippi.

"At the time when I switched (to the Republican Party), I didn't think the Democrats were centric enough in California on free market stuff — that you have to let some free market things come in. But I voted Democrat sometimes during that period of time," Sherman said.

Sherman said he would not have supported Trump's 2017 tax bill because he didn't see any evidence that the large corporate tax cuts were geared toward stimulating the economy.

Questions about both Sherman's politics and residency led one attorney to file a petition to disqualify him from the race, but the petition came too late and likely did not contain legitimate objections to Sherman's candidacy, according to Mississippi Democratic Party Chairman Bobby Moak.

Sherman's outlook on public benefits, and his support of Medicaid expansion, serves to boost his credibility as a progressive.

Sherman's mother immigrated from eastern Europe and his father, the child of parents from Ukraine, grew up in New York. They gave him all the resources they could and his success in life, he said, is partly the result of the lucky hand he was dealt.

"From a humanistic point of view, let's face it, all of us, everybody sitting here today, are really lucky. We're a member of the lucky club of people who are born into enough to have access to some really cool stuff. Reasonable health care, et cetera. But that's our luck. I didn't have anything to do with that," Sherman said. "For people who are not, for people in the Delta that don't have access to this stuff, I can't sleep by saying, 'Well, sorry pal, I won the lottery ticket and you didn't.'"

Twofer

Sherman has more campaign funds than any Mississippi Senate candidate besides Wicker, according to campaign finance reports filed so far. He has entrusted his messaging to staffers from the successful campaign of Democrat Doug Jones, the underdog who famously beat out Republican Roy Moore in Alabama's 2017 U.S. Senate race.

Sherman made his debut by purchasing radio ads on local gospel stations.

The scripts suggest he can help propel the candidacy of Mike Espy, former U.S. agriculture secretary under President Bill Clinton and one of the most viable African-American candidates for a Mississippi Senate seat in the state's history.

Espy is running in the special election, a jungle primary ticket, to replace former U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran following his April resignation. The Nov. 6 ballot will include both elections, giving Democrats a chance to simultaneously vote for Espy and the Democratic primary winner in the race against Wicker.

"I can bring him into fundraising circles. People in L.A. and New York who are holding fundraisers for me said, 'Win and come back with Mike.' They view Mississippi as this unique point on the universe where they could get two wins," Sherman said. "I have told Mike that the best thing we could do for each other is be a very unique proposition to the voters."

Hollywood A-listers Robert De Niro and Alec Baldwin are among those who've hosted a fundraiser for Sherman in Manhattan. De Niro's wife, actress Grace Hightower, grew up in the Montgomery County town of Kilmichael.

Whereas Espy is a known quantity in the Democratic Party, Sherman hopes to appeal to independent voters, women and some Republicans fatigued with the current direction of the party.

That's if they can get past the candidate's quirks.

"If they're hung up on how long I've been here, then I won't win," Sherman said. "I win if people go, 'It's time to try something new.'"

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