Reubin O’D. Askew and the Golden Age of Florida Politics

Martin A. Dyckman, “Reubin O’D. Askew and the Golden Age of Florida Politics,” University Press of Florida, 2011, 292 pp.

The author states that he wrote this book so that contemporary Floridians would know there was a time in Florida’s history when progressive politics and legislative courtesy were not contradictions in terms.  I appreciated this sentiment about halfway through the book when it occurred to me that I was reading about “a responsible adult in the room accompanied by other adults.”  Some time ago I had a similar reading experience in a book about another Florida governor: LeRoy Collins. (See: Floridian of His Century: The Courage of Governor Leroy Collins.)

Reubin Askew became governor in 1971 and as part of a wave of progressive politics and legislative reform in Florida, continuing the legacy of his idol, LeRoy Collins, another man of uncompromising principle and independence.  Askew was elected primarily on a platform of tax reform and remained as governor until 1979.

By the time Askew left office in 1979, the legislature under his governance had replaced Florida’s obsolete 1885 constitution, a goal that had eluded Leroy Collins’s best efforts; reorganized the judiciary and the executive branch, made the governor rather than the elected six member- Cabinet responsible for the state budget; stopped cities from dumping raw sewage into the environment and created effective, enforceable pollution controls; established a pioneering system of water-management districts; enacted restrictions on developments and requirements for land-use planning; began the purchase of environmentally sensitive land for recreation and preservation; limited campaign spending and required effective disclosure of campaign contributors; passed an open-meetings law and strengthened the public-records statute; registered lobbyists; stopped the commercial dredging and filling of bays and estuaries; enacted a tax on corporate profits and repealed the sales tax on household utilities and residential rentals; made the judiciary nonpartisan and provided for appointing rather than electing the appellate bench; created an ethics commission and required public officials to disclose their financial assets and liabilities; ordered due process in rule-making and other administrative procedures; passed a deceptive trade practices act modeled on federal law; instituted no-fault divorce and auto insurance; given utility consumers an advocate before the Public Service Commission and switched its membership from election to appointment; granted home rule to cities and counties; created a statewide juvenile justice system; required treatment rather than jail for alcoholics; protected the civil rights of the mentally ill; rewrote the school code to more nearly equalize spending between rich and poor counties; reformed property taxation; demanded effective regulation of nursing homes; capped the small-county shares of state racetrack revenue; redistributed gasoline taxes to help growing counties; and taxed the mining of phosphate and other minerals.  (Pg. 5).

According to a political foe, "Reuben Askew established a kind of morality in office that causes people to have faith" in government.  However the Florida Legislature of the twenty-first century, in contrast to the “Golden Era,” is characterized by a rigidly conservative majority, a liberal minority, and relatively few members in the middle. 

My Notes:

Pg. ix:  Prior to 1940 Florida was the smallest populated state in the South and one of the poorest in the nation.  Its society and economy were rural and agricultural, biracial and segregated.  Most residents lived within forty miles of the Georgia border, and their culture and politics were consequently southern in orientation.  Like its southern neighbors, it was a one-party state with the Democratic Party dominating politics from the end of Reconstruction in 1876 to 1970.  But the influx of people following WWII changed things.  In 1968 Floridians threw out the Constitution of 1885 in favor of a new document better meeting the need of the changed state. By the 1990s, Republicans took their expanding constituency and their control of the districting process following the 1990 census to secure majorities in the state legislature and the congressional delegation. 

Pg. x:  Few Floridians realize that the state has operated under five different flags or that its colonial period began much earlier than that of New England or Virginia.  And few can tell you who Democrat Leroy Collins was despite Republican Jeb Bush’s acknowledgment of Collins as the model for all governors who followed him.  (See my earlier review of the book on Collins).

Pg. xi:  The author, Martin A. Dyckman, is a retired associate editor of the St. Petersburg Times who covered Governor Askew in his political career and additional events occurring from 1966 to 2005.  Yet the focus is principally on Askew, his Democratic successors, and legislators who redefined state politics in the era from 1970 to 1996.  Askew is rated by scholars as one of the ten best governors of the twentieth century.

Pg. 3:  The Golden Age was remarkable for how far the Florida legislature progressed in a very short time.  Until the 1960s, it had been by at least one quantifiable measure the nation’s worst.  Under a constitutional formula unchanged since 1924, rural areas that made up less than 15 percent of the population could elect a majority of both houses.  The Senate ruling clique, famously nicknamed the Pork Chop Gang for its 1950s resistance to fair apportionment, were segregationists who would have closed the public schools but for Governor LeRoy Collins 1957 veto. 

Pg. 72:  The Florida State Supreme Court ruled in 1972 that corporations were citizens.

Pg. 75:  Askew was one of four “New South” governors inaugurated in 1971—along with John C. West of South Carolina, Dale Bumpers of Arkansas, and Jimmy Carter of Georgia—so named by the press because their elections seemingly put racial politics to rest.

Pg. 191:  By 2006, after the US Supreme Court ruled mandatory spending ceilings such as Florida’s to be unconstitutional, spending by candidates for governor exceeded $50 million, which was nearly ten times more, adjusted for inflation, than in 1974.

Pg. 207:  After 1976 Florida Supreme Court justices and judges of the district courts of appeal have been appointed.  The public votes at six-year intervals on whether to retain them in office.  None has been defeated. 

Pg. 255:  The 1931 legislature had authorized pari-mutuel wagering.  By 1978 there were thirty-eight horse tracks, dog tracks, and jai alai frontons generating nearly as much tax revenue as Nevada’s 1,258 licensed casinos.  Pari-mutuels were significantly different from casinos in that they had no stake in the wagers.  Casino gamblers bet against the house, but pari-mutuel patrons bet against each other; the racetrack’s share and the state’s tax come off the top.  Askew opposed the introduction of Casino’s into Florida and prevailed against those trying to get them into the state.

Pg. 271:  Askew, in 1983 when running for president, was critical of the national media in their coverage  which “for the most part prefers to cover the horse race—who seem to be winning and losing, and above all who is raising the most money—than to report in-depth on what the candidates stand for.  When the polls rather than the principles become the story, the media are merciless to the trailing candidates. 

Pg. 284:  Jeb Bush’s idea of tax reform was to repeal Florida’s only state tax on accumulated wealth, the annual intangibles levy on stocks and bonds.  It had yielded nearly $1 billion in the peak fiscal year of 1997-98.  Florida became the second-worst in the nation, behind only the state of Washington, in the degree to which its taxes are regressive.  

Pg. 286:  In 2005 Republicans abolished the runoff primary that had made possible the careers of LeRoy Collins, Reubin Askew, Lawton Chiles, and Bob Graham.  The now imposed winner-take-all primaries tend to empower the ideological extremes in political parties, the Florida Legislature is likely to become even more partisan in the near future.  This undoing of the “Golden Era” was most significantly unleashed by the US Supreme Court allowing unlimited spending, single-member districts, computerized gerrymandering, the abuse of power by presiding officers, the term limits imposed by a 1992 initiative, and an increase in partisanship nationally, exemplified by Newt Gingrich.