The changing hues of Florida politics
Since World War II, the changing nature of the state has created a kaleidoscope of shifting values and political realities.
By Martin Dyckman, Special to the Times
Published October 21, 2007
No state has grown faster than Florida or changed more radically since World War II began to toll the end of everything familiar. Merely 29th in population in 1940, smallest even in the South, it subsisted on agriculture, not subdivisions.
It was as Southern politically as Mississippi or Alabama: rural, reactionary and racist. The voters were unshakeable "yellow dog" Democrats - except when their party nominated a Roman Catholic for president.
Could they have foreseen Florida today, they would be startled not only that it has become a multi-ethnic megalopolis of some 18-million people but also that it is solidly controlled by the Republican Party.
This political revolution is the well-told theme of University of Florida historian David L. Colburn's latest work, From Yellow Dog Democrats to Red State Republicans: Florida and Its Politics Since 1940. It is concise, insightful and readable.
Unlike some, Colburn considers racial prejudice a "minor factor at best" in the GOP's swift march to power, although he concedes that events of the 1960s - among them, the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts of the U.S. Congress and the moderation of Gov. LeRoy Collins - provoked "the most devout" Florida Democrats to begin looking for alternatives. They elected a Republican governor in 1966 and a Republican senator two years later.
Over time, however, other factors were weightier:
- The mass in-migration of middle class workers and retirees accustomed to two-party politics elsewhere. Colburn finds that "tradition, taxes and crime were often the most important issues in their decisions to become Republican."
- Supreme Court decisions imposing "one man, one vote" on a Legislature that had been dominated by rural Democrats. Overnight, there were GOP legislative opportunities on friendlier turf: Florida's new suburbia. Holding only 12 legislative seats in 1965, the Republicans within four years had 58.
- Nearly a century of one-party rule. It had left the Democratic Party weakened by factionalism, unable to establish continuity from one term-limited Democratic governor to the next, and incapable of matching the consistent Republican messages of limited government and low taxation. The state's first two GOP governors in the 20th century, Claude R. Kirk Jr. (1967-71) and Bob Martinez (1987-91), owed their elections to Democratic disunity, but neither succeeded at re-election or producing Republican majorities in the Legislature.
Indeed, three popular (and racially progressive) Democratic governors, Reubin Askew (1971-79), Bob Graham (1979-87) and Lawton Chiles (1991-98), stayed the Republican tide for what another writer has called "the long generation."
But over time the Republicans proved more skillful at recruiting able young grass roots candidates and at collaborating with black Democrats to design mutually beneficial legislative districts. "The creation of every black Democratic district creates two Republican districts," exulted the party's brilliant former chairman, Tom Slade. "Now, as far as the eye can see, Republicans will control both houses in Florida." They soon did.
Colburn, the leading expert on Florida governors, is sharply critical of Republican Jeb Bush (1999-2007), the most partisan and the first to bring a passionate ideology to the office. Bush knew what he wanted to do to government - reduce its revenue, diminish it and outsource as much as he could - and was uninterested in contrary advice.
As University of Florida provost, Colburn was on the losing side of Bush's determination to end affirmative action admission policies in favor of his One Florida program. That was "indicative of the governor's style of leadership in many ways," Colburn writes. Bush sought little advice within his inner circle and none without, and he punished the university with construction vetoes for protesting (accurately, as it turned out) that black enrollment would fall sharply. Colburn's analysis belongs on the reference shelf of anyone pondering a future Jeb Bush presidency.
No author is immune to error - I speak from personal experience - and there are wayward details in this book that illustrate why fact-checking should not be a vanishing aspect of the publishing trade. Examples: Betty Castor ran for lieutenant governor, not governor, in 1978; Askew ran for president in 1984, not 1980; and the Florida House of Representatives had the maximum 120 members in 2005, not the 129 shown in a table. These misstatements do not undermine Colburn's thesis, but they are regrettable.
Martin Dyckman is a retired associate editor of the St. Petersburg Times and author of "Floridian of His Century: The Courage of Governor LeRoy Collins," also published by the University Press of Florida.
From Yellow Dog Democrats to Red State Republicans: Florida and Its Politics Since 1940
By David R. Colburn
University Press of Florida, 262 pages, $29.95
Festival of Reading
David Colburn will speak at 10 a.m. Saturday at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg.
Look for a special section about the Festival of Reading in Thursday's St. Petersburg Times.