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Forgotten Lawton

The old "he-coon,' who would have turned 75 today, may have been the last of a breed

By STEVE BOUSQUET
Published April 3, 2005

TALLAHASSEE - The runoff election that propelled him to Washington is seen as a relic, a threat to smooth elections. His program to prevent kids from smoking is all but extinct. The big-money interests he denounced have a tighter grip on the state than when he was alive.

All are elements of the complex legacy of Lawton Chiles, who would have been 75 years old today.

Chiles, Florida's last Democratic governor, died in 1998, weeks before his second term ended. The only Republican who came close to beating him in a long and storied career was Jeb Bush, who followed him into office and has worked for seven years to reshape public education, cut taxes and reduce the size and scope of state government.

Bush, the son of one president and the brother of another, has a rock-star appeal not likely to be seen again in Florida any time soon. But as the years go by, it is equally apparent that Floridians won't soon see another figure like Chiles, either.

That is evident in the way Democrats are trying to recapture some of Chiles' magic as they search for relevance and a way to win back the governor's mansion in 2006. The burden for the Democrats is to find someone with Chiles' ability to connect with people in all those little Florida towns who like to hunt, fish and go to church on Sunday.

Seven years after Chiles' death, Florida schools remain severely overcrowded, but the "cash voucher" program he criticized Bush for proposing has not ruined the education system, as Chiles predicted it would. The Medicaid beast that Chiles could not tame remains out of control. Growth management is an oxymoron. The next big philosophical battle in Tallahassee is over whether the state is cutting too much money from health care.

But Chiles would not approve of the Legislature's decision to eliminate most of an antismoking ad campaign, part of the settlement with cigarettemakers that highlighted his second term. The Legislature is spending that money on an assortment of unrelated programs, from the Miami Beach Senior Center to a prescription drug program for the elderly in Pinellas County.

"This is a battle we've been fighting for three years," said Paul Hull of the American Cancer Society. "The Legislature has really grown to use that source of money as a crutch to fill other needs that they think they have, and we can't mask our displeasure that they don't put more money into smoking prevention."

Chiles was a product of a one-party, Democrat-dominated Florida. Today, state government is controlled by Republicans. Some Democrats fault Chiles for not doing more to broaden his party's political base.

Chiles was a native Floridian who had a connection to the place, especially rural regions where many voters have become estranged from the Democratic Party. He seldom doubted his instincts after he defied his handlers' advice and insisted on walking the length of the state to capture a U.S. Senate seat in 1970.

Chiles had already served nearly two terms in the U.S. Senate when a young Jeb Bush moved to Miami in 1981 to seek his fortune in business and politics.

In 1970, when Chiles became U.S. senator and Reubin Askew became governor, registered Democratic voters in Florida outnumbered Republicans by a ratio of 3-1. In most statewide elections, the Democrats' runoff primary was tantamount to the general election.

The runoff, which legislators are considering abolishing, forced voters in opposing camps to unite around a consensus choice.

Chiles' victory over former Gov. Farris Bryant catapulted the obscure state senator from Lakeland to statewide prominence. Along the way, he touched thousands of ordinary Floridians, shaping their views of what a political leader should be like.

Jimmy Barr met Chiles in that race. A University of Florida graduate like Chiles, Barr was taken by Chiles' populist style. The Panhandle banker has refused to join the Republican Party like many of his neighbors, and he still keeps a picture of himself with Chiles on the desk of his office, overlooking Panama City.

"He was not interested in representing the haves," Barr said. "He came across as someone who wanted to help everyone. I was impressed with his folksy, sincere style."

Chiles' halting way of speaking and his quirky, rustic mannerisms added to his appeal by signaling to voters that he wasn't the typical blow-dried, button-down politician.

"Lawton was an intuitive politician with impeccable political timing," said state Sen. Rod Smith of Alachua, one of the Democrats now looking for a way to retrace Chiles' famed footsteps. "And he was not an intensely partisan guy."

After three terms in the Senate, frustrated by Congress' unwillingness to balance the federal budget, Chiles came home and defeated incumbent Republican Bob Martinez to clinch the governorship in 1990.

Those closest to Chiles, including former chief of staff Jim Krog, say that in hindsight, Chiles' philosophy was closer to Bush's than people might think.

As governor, Chiles tried to trim the bureaucracy and reduce regulation. "Right-sizing," he called it. He wanted to revamp the civil service system. He favored faith-based programs, but put a palatable "community-based" label on them.

"He actually advocated a smaller, smarter government," Krog said. "He saw that we were choking on rules, that the bureaucracy was not representing the policymakers, and the budget was not a reflection of his priorities."

Chiles' populism did not hide his other traits. He enjoyed playing practical jokes on his aides - or "gotchas," he called them. He was headstrong and a little odd. He was not a good speaker, and he claimed to hear inner voices that guided his decisions.

"He would say, "The people of the state do speak to me, you know,' " Krog said.

Associates say he was bothered by the number of people who had the right to sign his signature in his absence - a bureaucratic necessity in a state where a governor was often traveling. So when Chiles wanted to sign a letter or note and remove any doubt that he had signed it, he would draw a smiley face next to his name.

The year Chiles narrowly defeated Bush to win re-election, 1994, was the year Republicans, led by Newt Gingrich and the Contract with America, took over Congress.

Chiles barely kept his head above a Republican tidal wave. He was the only Democratic governor in the 10 largest states to win that year. New York's Mario Cuomo lost to George Pataki, and Ann Richards of Texas lost to George W. Bush.

"He was the Dutch boy with his thumb in the dike," said Jack Peeples, one of Chiles' closest advisers. "That tidal wave just swept over everybody."

[Last modified April 3, 2005, 00:10:19]