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Colorful days are gone - for good

By STEVE BOUSQUET
Published February 24, 2007

It was a different Florida then, and a very different Legislature.

Picture a Florida segregated by law and custom. A state with no I-75, no I-10, no Disney World, and no term limits.

This was the 1950s and '60s, and the Legislature met every other year in the historic Old Capitol.

Legislators forcefully debated the issues with great oratorical thunder in chambers festooned with brass spittoons. They chewed. They smoked. And, yes, they drank there at times, too.

The legislators socialized over fried catfish and good bourbon and held marathon poker games. The lobbyists picked up their dinner and bar tabs. The better of them lived by what they called the "yellow river code" - your word was your bond.

It took them forever to reapportion the state to provide fair representation, but they did it.

With each passing year, fewer and fewer of them are around to relive those colorful days, share the memories and reinforce how much really has changed.

Every now and then, the old-timers do that, encouraged by the Florida Legislature Research Center & Museum, created in 1998 to promote a better understanding of its history.

The center's third Statesmen's Luncheon Monday celebrated the careers of former Agriculture Commissioner Doyle Conner, the youngest House speaker in the state's history, and Mallory Horne, the first person since Reconstruction to be elected both speaker and Senate president.

Conner is 78. Horne is 82.

"Most of what these fellows did has faded from our memories," said former Rep. Sam Bell, who ran the proceedings. "So there's nobody here who can really contradict them."

Conner was a farm boy from Starke who was elected to the House as a 20-year-old sophomore at the University of Florida. He was speaker at 28, agriculture commissioner by 32, and he kept that job for 30 years.

Ol' Doyle described young Doyle sleeping all night on top of his corn crop at the farmers market in Jacksonville so he'd be the first one selling when the restaurant owners came through the door to buy corn the next morning.

Conner was famous for his "trade missions" on state-owned aircraft, including the planes at the Division of Forestry. He was once criticized by the auditor general for state-funded "trail rides" that were a legislative staple for decades but were more about fun than education.

That Florida no longer exists.

Horne was a fighter pilot in World War II who was elected to the House in 1955. As a Democratic speaker in 1964, he openly supported Barry Goldwater for president over LBJ. He also voted to abolish his own House seat as a way of nudging the pork choppers from North Florida into junking that terribly malapportioned Legislature once and for all.

About 250 people attended the luncheon, including 40 or 50 House and Senate alumni.

But only four current lawmakers - four, out of 159 - were there. What the rest of them missed were the thoughts of Gov. Reubin Askew (1971-1979), who spoke of the need for friendship even amid all the partisanship.

"You have to be able to disagree strongly and be able to walk off as friends," Askew said. "What's important is that we appreciate each other."

The problem is that too few legislators of today have an appreciation of what came before them. The history is all the more important because term limits have created a revolving door, here-today-gone-tomorrow atmosphere.

"They don't have time for each other," said Askew, who now teaches graduate-level political science. "Everybody's got their own media adviser."

[Last modified February 24, 2007, 05:54:22]