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TALLAHASSEE - Jack Eckerd ran twice for governor and once for the U.S. Senate. His obituaries noted that he never won. That was true, but he deserves lasting credit for helping to make it possible for two of Florida's finest leaders to win those offices: Reubin Askew and Lawton Chiles.
Had Eckerd not sought the Republican nomination for governor in 1970, Askew probably could not have won that race, and Chiles, who later became governor himself, might not have been elected to the U.S. Senate.
Claude Kirk, the Republican governor whom Askew deposed in 1970, has always blamed Eckerd for softening him up in the GOP primary, where he forced Kirk into a runoff, and said so again the other day. Yes, Eckerd hurt him. And yes, Eckerd helped Askew. But not entirely in the ways Kirk seems to think.
Eckerd's fundamental contribution was to panic other candidates into supporting legislation that for two campaign cycles strictly limited what they could spend to run for state and federal offices in Florida. It was no coincidence that some of the best people Florida ever elected began or advanced their careers on that leveled playing field.
"I think it probably had an impact on my election," Askew acknowledged the other day.
From the moment Eckerd announced, his personal wealth - the many millions he had earned in building a flourishing chain out of three small drugstores - was the dominant factor in the race. Before formally qualifying, he had already spent some $801,000, more than the six other gubernatorial candidates combined. Three of them happened to be state senators: Democrats Askew of Pensacola and John E. Mathews Jr. of Jacksonville, who was the Senate president; and L.A. "Skip" Bafalis, a Republican from Palm Beach County. Mathews expected to be in a runoff with Attorney General Earl Faircloth (nearly everyone else thought so, too) but was looking apprehensively beyond him to how much Eckerd might spend.
The result was a law, enacted on the next-to-last day of the session, allowing candidates for governor and U.S. senator to spend no more than $350,000 on their primaries and $350,000 on the general election. Lower ceilings were set for other offices, down to $25,000 for legislative primaries and general elections. Kirk, who might have vetoed the bill if he hadn't been worried about Eckerd's outspending him, too, let it become law without his signature. Because so much already had been spent, largely by Eckerd, the law applied only to expenses after July 1. All told, Eckerd spent $1.1-million before losing the runoff, Kirk spent $789,310 through November, and Askew, who had less money available at each stage than Mathews, Faircloth or Kirk, spent $737,548. That wasn't as small as it looks; it was the equivalent of $3.5-million in today's dollars, but nobody who proposed to spend so little would be taken seriously today. Without the Eckerd-inspired spending ceilings, Eckerd might have beaten Kirk in their runoff. But if not, the incumbent governor could have vastly outspent any of the Democrats; Kirk was shy about nothing, least of all raising money.
"We just thought Jack was going to buy it, and he could have, I guess," says former Sen. Mallory Horne, who managed the spending limit in tough negotiations with the House. Two state senators running for Cabinet positions were the official sponsors, but Horne recalls that Mathews "lobbied pretty heavily on it."
Askew supported the bill also, against the advice of some colleagues who thought spending limits would give the incumbent an advantage against anyone who was so poorly known statewide. (A joke among the press early that year was "Reubin Who?") Askew voted for the bill when it first passed the Senate but opposed the final version because of a conference committee amendment raising the individual contribution limit from $1,000 to $3,000 for a statewide race. Adopted at the insistence of the House, which wanted an even higher limit, it meant allowing as much as $9,000 from a single donor during the course of a campaign. When Askew sought re-election in 1974, he accepted only $100 per donor per stage, or $300 overall. When Chiles became governor in 1991, he had the legal limit lowered to $500, or $1,500 overall.
The 1970 ceilings clearly benefitted Askew as well as Chiles, another little-known state senator who in the primary had to overcome a former governor and the House speaker, and whose November opponent, U.S. Rep. William C. Cramer, had the entire Nixon administration stumping for him. Other factors figured in, notably a serious split between the Kirk and Cramer wings of the GOP and the innovative Chiles campaign technique of walking from Pensacola to the Keys. But the spending ceiling was as important as any.
In 1976, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled mandatory spending limits unconstitutional in the case of Buckley vs. Valeo, one of its worst decisions. By equating free spending with free speech, Buckley has corrupted American politics beyond any present prospect of repair.