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Politics

He was Florida's charmer in Washington

By CRAIG BASSE and BEN MONTGOMERY
Published January 21, 2007

George A. Smathers wore tailored suits when many Floridians did business in shorts.

He bought John F. Kennedy's drinks and thought Richard Nixon was uptight.

A renowned charmer, he spent 22 years in Congress, dropping out in 1969, just as the presidency came into view.

He died Saturday (Jan. 20, 2007) on a private island near Miami. He was 93. He had suffered a stroke Monday.

The Democrat helped create the Everglades National Park, and earned the nickname "Senator from Latin America" for his deep interest in economic aid to the region.

He moved federal holidays to Monday to steer tourists to Florida on three-day vacations. But he is remembered by many for his playboy style and charming demeanor.

His college pals called him "Smooch Smathers" for his way with the coeds. He was telegenic before that was vital. In the clubby Senate, he made friends with everyone - segregationists, liberals, Republicans.

"He is usually considered to be a lazy, playboy politician, but what people overlook is the hours he spent researching Latin America, working on his speeches, the hours he spent working with Lyndon Johnson," said Brian Lewis Crispell, author of Testing the Limits: George Armistead Smathers and Cold War America. "He was more than just a pretty face."

"He was at one point probably the only Florida politician with tremendous clout because he was the friend of two presidents," said Jerald Blizin, who covered Sen. Smathers as the St. Petersburg Times' Washington correspondent and who became Mr. Smathers' press secretary from 1964 to 1969.

Sen. Smathers did not, however, earn the favor of many black people in Florida. His record on civil rights was consistent with other statewide politicians at the time.

But in the end, his charm carried him from politics into a lucrative Washington lobbying practice and other successful business ventures, where he made a fortune. Part of that fortune he shared with the University of Florida, donating $20-million, then the biggest gift to a public university in the state.

The endowment to support the university's libraries ranked among the 50 largest gifts to any American university. The university's library system now bears his name.

George Armistead Smathers was born in Atlantic City, N.J., the son of a judge who had helped in the campaigns of Gov. Woodrow Wilson.

Frank Smathers encouraged his children to develop public speaking skills. In the evening before dinner, he required George, his brother and sister to make a speech or recite a poem.

Sen. Smathers moved to Miami with his family at age 6.

Popular and good in sports, Sen. Smathers attended Miami Senior High School, where he was class president and was honored as Dade County's top athlete.

He was wooed by the University of Illinois as a football player, but his father wouldn't have it. Frank Smathers doubted his son was big enough for college football and recognized he needed friends at the University of Florida to build a successful law firm in this state.

In Gainesville, Sen. Smathers was student body president and captain of the university's teams in basketball, track and debate. He was a Rhodes Scholar finalist.

After graduation from the University of Florida law school in 1938, he was appointed an assistant U.S. attorney in Miami.

In 1942, he joined the Marine Corps. He spent the next 39 months mostly in the Pacific. After the war, he spent a short time prosecuting war frauds for the government and then ran for House of Representatives.

Four years later, he easily defeated five-term incumbent Sen. Claude Pepper .

He shows up at age 33 in a 1947 photograph of freshmen members of the House of Representatives. To his left are an introspective Californian named Nixon and a skinny Massachusetts representative named Kennedy.

Sen. Smathers said later that he went to Congress without the burden of any deep philosophical beliefs.

"I didn't come as a great flag carrier with great, great issues," he said in 1968. "Probably I should have, but I didn't. I thought our country was pretty good."

In 1950, Sen. Smathers defeated Pepper, a fellow Democrat and his mentor from his University of Florida days.

His campaign, amid the hysteria of the McCarthy years, pounced on remarks by Pepper urging cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union in a move toward world peace.

To open his campaign, the young challenger declared: "You will not find in me an apologist for Stalin, nor an associate of fellow travelers, nor a sponsor of Communist-front organizations."

Years later, Pepper called it "a campaign of vicious distortion."

Best remembered in the campaign lore were tales of Sen. Smathers telling unlettered Panhandle residents that Pepper was "a shameless extrovert" who "practiced nepotism" with his sister-in-law. Pepper's sister, according to one purported speech, had once been a "thespian in wicked New York."

Sen. Smathers always denied the remarks, which found their way into many articles. He went so far as to offer $10,000 to anyone claiming to have heard the remarks in person. There were no takers.

In 1962, Pepper returned to Congress as a member of the House and began a second career as a champion of the elderly.

Years later, a letter seeking funds for Pepper arrived at Sen. Smathers' office and he wrote a check. "I guess," he told a reporter, "I'm getting old enough to where I kind of feel like he may speak for me."

Sen. Smathers wasn't progressive on race issues. When the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was jailed in St. Augustine, Sen. Smathers offered to pay his bail - but only if King would leave the state. He opposed Thurgood Marshall for the U.S. Supreme Court and the landmark civil rights act of 1964. But behind the scenes, he was said to have supported voting rights bills, giving political cover to other Southerners to inch forward.

Sen. Smathers listed as his prime accomplishments the Transportation Act of 1958, which helped put the railroads back on their feet, and a combined income tax increase and spending reduction bill in 1968. As a leader in the Senate, he rose to serve for six years as secretary of the Democratic conference, the No. 3 leadership post.

He was the confidant of Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, yet never sought the presidency for himself. Johnson once offered the reluctant senator the post of Democratic whip, which is second only to the majority leader.

Some observers said he had lived on the brink of greatness.

"I have been fortunate," he said in 1968 as he prepared to leave the Senate. "I was president of my class in high school, I was president of the student body at the University of Florida, I was captain of the teams on which I played, but I never ran for anything. I have regrettably not been one of those who sought bigger responsibility, for if I had I probably could have ... been the official whip. ...

"But when I had these opportunities presented to me, I have frankly tried to avoid them. This is within me. I don't know why."

After his retirement from the Senate, he practiced law and became a director of Winn-Dixie Stores Inc. and Aerodex, a defense contractor. He invested in real estate and raised money for the universities of Florida, Miami and North Florida.

Survivors include his wife, Carolyn; two sons, John and Bruce, a former Florida state senator and secretary of state and onetime candidate for governor; and three grandchildren.

Times staff writer Cristina Silva contributed to this report, which includes information from Times files and the Associated Press.

[Last modified January 21, 2007, 01:21:30]