In my ongoing series I guess on Florida Gov's, I have to list my favorite Gov of All Time in our State. My parents knew him, btw he is still alive and well living in Palm Beach, and said he was the Real Deal...The True Maverick.
Gov. Kirk once said after hearing of a Killing in a Nightclub in Quincy (the town of my birth)..."That's just another Sat. Night in Gadsden County"...Good Stuff.
As the article below will tell he was a Stud and a Great Promoter of Florida. They Don't make 'em like Claude anymore.
Yours in the Bond.
He was a playboy bachelor, the first Republican governor of Florida since Reconstruction and a promising candidate for the vice presidency. His name was Claude Kirk Jr.
Four decades later, the legend of Kirk endures. He was a Florida original, a pure character, a combination of Huey Long, P.T. Barnum and Jesse Ventura. At his inaugural ball in January 1967, the 41-year-old governor was accompanied by a ravishing, 33-year-old green-eyed blonde known only as "Madame X." If Charlie Crist weds Carole Rome, he will be the first governor to marry in office since the man the Miami Herald dubbed "Claudius Maximus" exchanged vows with Erika Mattfeld.
Born in California in 1926, Claude Roy Kirk was raised in a hardscrabble section of Montgomery, Ala. He joined the Marines at age 17 and fought in World War II and Korea. The GI Bill put him through Emory University and the University of Alabama law school. In 1956, Kirk founded American Heritage Life Insurance Co. in Jacksonville.
The 1960s transformed Florida and Kirk. He switched his political allegiance to the Republican Party in 1960 and chaired the "Floridians for Nixon" campaign. By the mid-1960s, the convulsive social and cultural change sweeping the country - free love, drugs, anti-war protests, black power, race riots, youthful rebellion and political alienation - convinced Kirk that a Republican could win Florida.
When he announced his candidacy for governor in 1966, few commentators noticed. Florida had not voted in a Republican governor since the election of Ossian B. Hart in 1872.
"I got elected," Kirk recalled, "because I could read numbers. I was a businessman, an insurance man."
It helped that the Democratic Party was imploding. Gov. Haydon Burns, a former five-term mayor of Jacksonville, fully expected to be renominated by his party in 1966. His term in office had been turbulent: He helped lure Walt Disney World to Orlando but had mishandled civil rights and, overall, was an ineffective leader. The conservative Burns was challenged by Lakeland businessman and populist Scott Kelly and Robert King High, the liberal mayor of Miami.
The May 1966 Democratic primary was hard fought, bitter and close. Only 40,000 votes separated the three candidates, with Burns and High qualifying for the runoff. In that primary, writes Kelly biographer Dorothy Smiljanich, "Governor Burns would make the mistake of his political life." Burns spread a malicious lie that Kelly was offering his political support to High for $500,000. Outraged, Kelly swore vengeance. He volunteered to help High for the pure pleasure of defeating Burns.
Kirk read the headlines and beamed. Precisely at the moment that Americans were becoming disillusioned with Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and questioning the wisdom of Florida Democrats, the party nominated High. Kirk could not have dreamed a better scenario for November.
Signs began to appear on lawns in Central and North Florida: "I'M A DEMOKIRK."
Kirk routed the hapless High in the fall election, carrying 56 of the state's 67 counties and winning by almost 160,000 votes. Kirk received 62 percent of the white vote. He and Winthrop A. Rockefeller of Arkansas, who also won in 1966, became the first Republican governors elected in the South since Reconstruction.
Kirk proved to be a better campaigner than governor. He faced a Democratic-controlled Legislature. Critics charged that the flamboyant governor was more interested in jet-setting to glamorous locales than governing. Faced with a rising crime rate, Kirk hired a private security firm to combat the problem.
The governor did have a sense of humor. When newspaper reporters discovered that a state commission had paid for his German honeymoon, Kirk quipped, "Very good reporting!" He then added, "Suppose a political enemy instead of the press had found it? That would have been terrible."
He was also a great salesman. At a 1967 Republican Governors' Conference, Kirk was a one-man show, giving dozens of interviews. When Time magazine accused him of "hogging the spotlight," he responded with a burst of candor, "I'm just sellin' orange juice. Sellin' juice, sellin' Kirk, sellin' Florida."
In January 1968, Brandon astrologer Teresa Maddux said the stars were aligned for new Tampa Mayor Dick Greco and the new governor.
By late July, it seemed that Kirk might become Republican presidential nominee Richard Nixon's running mate. The Tampa Tribune was not impressed. In an editorial July 28, 1968, "Trying Harder Won't Put Kirk in No. 2 GOP Spot," the Tribune called the governor an overrated, "gallivanting chief executive."
Frustrated and fuming with the Legislature, local school boards and governor, Florida teachers did the unthinkable: They struck. In February 1968, thousands of teachers from kindergarten through high school walked off their jobs, closing down a third of Florida's schools. Floridians were furious. By the fall, 63 percent of Floridians disapproved of Kirk's performance in office.
Kirk, however, turned out to be a good environmental governor. He appointed Nathaniel Reed as his environmental adviser, and together they accomplished much.
It was President Johnson and other Democratic leaders who had authorized the Cross-Florida Barge Canal. It was to connect the Gulf of Mexico with the Atlantic Ocean, stretching from Palatka to the mouth of the Withlacoochee on the Gulf Coast. Environmentalists fought furiously to stop the project, fearing that the canal would slice through the aquifer. Kirk helped persuade President Nixon to stop construction in 1971.
Kirk lost his bid for a second term to Democrat Reubin Askew.
At age 81, Kirk remains active. He and Erika live at Bear Island in West Palm Beach.
Gary R. Mormino directs the Florida Studies Program at USF St. Petersburg. He would love to hear from teachers who remember the 1968 Florida teachers strike.
