Current, former first ladies due at Ford funeral (AP)

By LINDA DEUTSCH AND JEFF WILSON, Associated Press Linda Deutsch And Jeff Wilson, Associated Press – 34?mins?ago

PALM DESERT, Calif. – Michelle Obama and three former first ladies were among dignitaries heading to California to pay tribute to Betty Ford at a funeral focusing on her twin passions: politics and her world famous Betty Ford Center for substance abuse and alcohol treatment.

Ford, who died at the age of 93 on Friday, had mapped out plans for Tuesday's ceremony at St. Margaret's Episcopal Church, including who would deliver her eulogies.

She chose former first lady Rosalynn Carter and journalist Cokie Roberts as speakers along with a former director of the Betty Ford Center.

Mrs. Obama, Nancy Reagan and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton also planned to be there. And the former first lady of California, Maria Shriver, also planned to attend.

A spokesman for former President George W. Bush said he will be attending the California service and will convey condolences on behalf of his wife, Laura, who can't attend. Former President Bill Clinton canceled plans to attend to mechanical problems with a plane he was to fly on.

A second funeral will be held Thursday in Grand Rapids, Mich., where Gerald Ford is buried at his presidential museum. Former first lady Barbara Bush is expected to attend that event.

Before the scheduled late-morning arrival of the casket at St. Margaret's, Palm Desert residents took advantage of the pre-dawn cool to walk dogs, jog and reflect on Betty Ford's life.

"I don't know where a lot of people would be if it weren't for her," said Randy Gaynor, 47, a recovering alcoholic. "There's been a lot of first ladies and they did a lot of things, but this will be long remembered after she's gone."

Media satellite trucks lined a street near the church and TV cameras crowded big-rig flatbed trucks across the street.

A program prepared for the service featured a picture of Ford, the Emily Dickinson poem "If I Can Stop One Heart From Breaking," and the words, "The family thanks you for your support," followed by the signatures Mike, Jack, Steve and Susan, Ford's four children.

Jack and Michael Ford were to read passages from the Old and New Testaments of the Bible.

Speakers were expected to discuss politics, the White House and Ford's impact on substance and alcohol abuse treatment.

Roberts said Ford asked her to give a eulogy five years ago and specified it should be about the power of friendship to mend political differences even in these hyper-partisan times.

Roberts, a commentator on National Public Radio and member of a noted political family, said Ford asked her to talk about a time in Washington when Democrats and Republicans could be friends and partisan politics did not paralyze government.

It was that way, Roberts said, when her father, Democratic Congressman Hale Boggs, was House majority leader and Republican Gerald R. Ford was House minority leader. She said they could argue about issues but get together as friends afterward. The two families became close as did the Ford and Carter families, despite Jimmy Carter defeating Ford in the 1976 presidential election.

Carter spoke at Gerald Ford's funeral in 2007. The two families were so close that before his death, Ford asked the Carters to join his wife aboard Air Force One, which flew his body to its final resting place in Grand Rapids.

"Mrs. Ford was very clear about what she wanted me to say," Roberts said. "She wanted me to talk about Washington the way it used to be. She knew there were people back then who were wildly partisan, but not as many as today.

"They were friends and that was what made government possible," said Roberts, adding that the topic seems particularly appropriate this week when the two parties are divided over dealing with the national debt ceiling.

Roberts said she expects Rosalynn Carter to talk about life in the White House and the important role of first ladies in "greasing the wheels" for their husbands' accomplishments by forging bipartisan friendships.

Former Betty Ford Center official Geoffrey Mason will also speak. Mason, a former member of the center's board of directors, is expected to extoll Ford's vision and determination in building a substance abuse and alcohol treatment center after her own recovery.

Following the funeral, members of the public were to be invited to file past her casket and sign a guest book until midnight.

On Wednesday, her body will be flown to Grand Rapids where another church service Thursday will feature remarks by Lynne Cheney, wife of former Vice President Dick Cheney, and historian Richard Norton Smith.

Later Thursday, her body will be interred at the presidential museum along with her husband on the day that would have been Gerald Ford's 98th birthday.

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Associated Press writer Beth Fouhy contributed to this report.

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Former first lady Betty Ford dies, age 93 (Reuters)

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Betty Ford, the wife of the late President Gerald Ford, who overcame alcohol and prescription drug addictions and helped found a rehabilitation clinic that bears her name, died on Friday at the age of 93.

"I was deeply saddened this afternoon when I heard of Betty Ford's death," another former first lady, Nancy Reagan, said in a statement confirming Ford's death.

Ford once was dubbed the "fighting first lady" by Time magazine because of her outspoken political views, which often differed from those of her husband's Republican Party.

She strongly supported women's rights while her husband was president from 1974 to 1977, working the phones in a vain attempt to get states to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, which sought to give women and men equality under law.

Ford's candor was surprising for the time. She took a tolerant stance on abortion and admitted without shame that some of her children had tried marijuana. Nor was she alarmed by the prospect of her daughter having premarital sex.

Ford also was an early campaigner against breast cancer. She underwent a mastectomy in 1974, less than two months after her husband succeeded the disgraced Richard Nixon as president.

Her frank discussions about her disease helped raise awareness about breast cancer and she eventually took the same approach toward her alcoholism, which she battled even as first lady.

Ford's problems with chemical dependency may have begun in 1964, when doctors prescribed her painkillers for a pinched nerve. She developed an addiction to prescription drugs and also became dependent on alcohol during the 1960s.

The Betty Ford Center in California came into being in 1982 after Ford was treated for her addictions at the U.S. Naval Hospital at Long Beach, and saw the need for treatment that emphasized the special needs of women.

"She has been an inspiration to so many through her efforts to educate women about breast cancer and her wonderful work at the Betty Ford Center," Nancy Reagan, the wife of the late President Ronald Reagan, said in the statement.

"She was Jerry Ford's strength through some very difficult days in our country's history and I admired her courage in facing and sharing her personal struggles with all of us."

PRAISE FROM OBAMA, GEORGE W. BUSH

President Barack Obama praised Ford's courage and compassion.

"As our nation's first lady, she was a powerful advocate for women's health and women's rights," he said in a statement. "After leaving the White House, Mrs. Ford helped reduce the social stigma surrounding addiction and inspired thousands to seek much-needed treatment."

Former President George W. Bush described her as a valued friend who "made countless contributions to our country."

Ford remained an active chairman of the center's board of directors for decades and also worked to help handicapped children, the arts and the fights against AIDS and arthritis.

For most of her adult life, Ford was best known as the wife of Rep. Gerald Ford, a Michigan Republican, and the mother of four children. The couple had planned to retire from Congress in 1973 when Nixon, already under fire in the Watergate scandal, chose Ford to serve as vice president after the resignation of Spiro Agnew.

Ford became president after Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974, but he was defeated when he ran for the presidency in 1976 by Democrat Jimmy Carter. Betty delivered her husband's concession speech because he had lost his voice on the campaign trail.

Born April 8, 1918, in Chicago, Elizabeth Bloomer was raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She wanted to be a dancer and studied under Martha Graham and modeled in New York before returning to Grand Rapids and marrying a furniture salesman. They divorced after five years and she married Ford in 1948.

In her later years, Betty Ford slipped from the public eye but returned when her husband of 58 years died in 2006. Her stately demeanor in time of grief brought her to the attention of a whole new generation that possibly knew her name only from the famous clinic.

(Reporting by Bob Tourtellotte and Deborah Zabarenko; Editing by Christopher Wilson and Bill Trott)

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Mexico's former ruling party set to win state votes (Reuters)

ECATEPEC, Mexico (Reuters) – Mexicans voted for new governors in three states on Sunday in races slated to be big wins for the main opposition party and a blow to President Felipe Calderon ahead of next year's presidential election.

The key ballot is in the populous State of Mexico, where the vote is seen as a popularity test for the outgoing governor, Enrique Pena Nieto, an early favorite to win back the presidency for the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.

The PRI hopes the telegenic Pena Nieto, 44, will be a fresh face for the party whose 70-year rule was dogged by accusations of vote-rigging and corruption before losing power in 2000.

Pena Nieto backs the PRI's gubernatorial candidate, Eruviel Avila, the popular former mayor of the state's largest municipality Ecatepec, where voters turned out despite heavy rains from Tropical Storm Arlene that flooded neighborhoods and closed down streets.

Polls show Avila far ahead of the candidates running for Calderon's conservative National Action Party, or PAN, and the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution, PRD.

"The PAN or the PRD has never come here to help, Eruviel is the only one who has been giving us a hand," 58-year-old housewife Maricarmen Trejo said as she headed to the polls.

The PRI never lost power in the State of Mexico, a bastion of old-style machine politics where opponents accuse the government of using public funds to sway voters.

Opinion polls show the PRI also likely to sweep gubernatorial races in the states of Coahuila and Nayarit, further bolstering its platform for a comeback after a decade on the sidelines during two consecutive PAN governments.

Both states have seen a dramatic rise in drug killings over the past year, a critical liability for Calderon who has staked his term on fighting powerful cartels since taking office in late 2006. With drug violence surging over the past four years -- more than 40,000 deaths to date -- some voters are fed up.

"The violence is always getting closer, you see it touching your family, your neighbors," Israel Segura, 33, a vendor in Ecatepec said.

DRUG MONEY IN CAMPAIGNS

National protests over the past few weeks, led by a crusading poet whose son was killed by drug gangs, has turned up the pressure on Calderon to respond to victims complaints. Security for the first time is overtaking the economy as voters' top concern.

Worries about drug cartels backing candidates are swirling as the country gears up for the 2012 election.

In a rare admission by a politician, former PAN cabinet member Xochitl Galvez told the El Universal daily that she had been offered large sums of money by a cartel while running for governor of the central state of Hidalgo last year.

She did not win the race and said she refused the cash offer but did not say anything at the time out of fear.

"The offer was very clear," Galvez told the newspaper.

A messenger from the drug cartel said, "'I have instructions to give you 50 million pesos ($4.3 million), you are several points down with only a few weeks until the elections. With that money you can pay off all the leaders (so they support you.)'"

Hidalgo is also set to elect 84 new mayors on Sunday.

(Additional reporting by Mica Rosenberg; Writing by Mica Rosenberg; Editing by Paul Simao)

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