The History of Florida (87 page)

Hol and, Keith V., and Lee B. Manley.
The
Maple
Leaf:
An
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American
Civil
War
Shipwreck
. Jacksonville, Fla.: St. Johns Archaeological Society, 2002.

Johnson, Brian.
Fly
Navy:
The
History
of
Naval
Aviation
. New York: William Morrow, 1981.

Konstam, Angus.
Confederate
Blockade
Runner
1861–65
. Westminster, Md.: Osprey, 2004.

Martin, S. Walter.
Florida
during
the
Territorial
Days
. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1944.

McCarthy, Kevin M.
Thirty
Florida
Shipwrecks
. Sarasota, Fla.: Pineapple Press, 1992.

Milanich, Jerald T., and Susan Milbrath, eds.
First
Encounters:
Spanish
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in
the
Caribbean
and
the
United
States,
1492–1570
. Gainesvil e: University Press of Florida, 1989.

Molloy, Johnny.
From
the
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to
the
Keys:
A
Paddle
through
Florida
History
. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003.

Muel er, Edward A.
Perilous
Journeys:
A
History
of
Steamboating
on
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Chattahoochee,
Apalachicola,
and
Flint
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1828–1928
. Chattahoochee, Fla.: Historic Chattahooch-proof

ee, 1990.

Murphy, Leo F.
Flying
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Pensacola:
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History
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1909
to
1929
. Gulf Breeze, Fla.: Pensacola Bay Flying Machines, 2003.

Schafer, Daniel L.
Thunder
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Florida.
Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2010.

Smith, Roger C. “Treasure Ships of the Spanish Main: The Iberian-American Maritime

Empires.” In
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, edited by George F. Bass, 85–106. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1988.

———.
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. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Stuart, John, and John Stack, eds.
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. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2008.

Weddle, Robert S.
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1685
. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1995.

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22

Florida Politics

The State Evolves into One of the Nation’s Premier

Political Battlegrounds

Susan A. MacManus and David R. Colburn

(With the assistance of Tifini Hill)

Florida became a state in 1845. One hundred years later, the state was still

being described as a sparsely populated, humid, swampy col ection of coun-

try towns, fishing vil ages, migrant labor camps, Indian settlements, sug-

proof

arcane fields, and orange groves, with a few plush coastal resorts catering

to wealthy winter guests.1 There were fewer than 2 mil ion residents and

the state ranked twenty-seventh in population. Political power rested in the

northern tier of counties with the “pork choppers,” who dominated the state

legislature, the state’s multiple executive offices, and the state’s courts.
Flor-

ida
politics
was
white,
conservative,
segregationist,
and
one-party
Democratic
.

The state’s politics began to change with the end of World War II. It was

the beginning of a decades-long population boom that continued into the

2000s. The influx of newcomers from the Northeast, Midwest, and Latin

and South America markedly transformed Florida economical y and po-

litical y. The state changed “from one of the least appealing, most racial y

polarized, and poorest states to one of the most desired, most diverse, and

most prosperous; from a state that had been anything but a bel wether of the

nation to one that . . . is ‘the whole deal, the real deal, a big deal.’”2

By the beginning of the twenty-first century, Florida had truly become

one of the most political y competitive states in the United States. Nothing

proved that more definitively than the 2000 presidential election when Re-

publican George W. Bush bested Al Gore in Florida by a mere 537 votes—

the closest vote in American presidential history and one of the most

· 415 ·

416 · Susan A. MacManus and David R. Colburn

controversial. Other statewide contests (U.S. Senate, governor, cabinet)

were being won by both Democrats and Republicans and were often close,

with independents usual y being the real swing voters. Diversity (racial/

ethnic, gender, age, sexual preference, religion) among elected officials be-

came more commonplace, especial y in the state’s large metropolitan areas.

Political power shifted first from the north to the south, then to the center

of the state. The now famous I-4 corridor that stretches from Daytona Beach

east to the Tampa Bay area became “the swing part of the swing state.”

The political transformation of the Sunshine State did not come with-

out social and economic strife. Markedly different value systems stemming

from diverse cultural backgrounds and experiences were often at the heart

of the tug-of-war between newcomers demanding change and old-timers

wedded to keeping the status quo. But eventual y, a smal , rural, one-party-

dominated Deep South state of the Confederacy evolved into one of the

nation’s premier political battlegrounds. In the new Florida, the faces of

its elected officials reflected the nation’s racial and ethnic diversity, and its

pressing issues often mirrored those facing the country at large. In some

places, however, one can still observe the vestiges of the major fault lines,

particularly racial, that characterized the state for so long, although they

have faded considerably over the years. The new dividing lines are more

proof

partisan in nature.

Deep South, Confederate Florida: Agriculture, Whites, and

Democrats Dominate in the 1800s

Florida seceded from the Union in 1861. Along with other southern states,

it participated in the bloody war for independence in order to secure its

southern economic, social, and cultural values. By joining the Confeder-

acy, Florida was forced to share the costs of the conflict and the burden of

military Reconstruction. It was a painful period for Floridians, and they

remained isolated from the national mainstream and mired in rural poverty

for much of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a result of

this decision.

Florida’s leaders did not accept the results of the Civil War graceful y. At

every stage in the Reconstruction process, they took steps to preserve many

of the traditions of the past. And in the aftermath of Reconstruction, they

established a caste system, at first informal y and then through law, that per-

meated the entire society, denying African Americans the rights promised

Florida Politics · 417

them during Reconstruction. This Jim Crow system imposed a subservient

status on African Americans until well into the second half of the twentieth

century. The ramifications of this racial system had a profound impact on

state politics during this era. The costs of civil war and the commitment to

segregation hobbled Florida and the entire region for decades.

Florida’s Unique Attributes: Land Area, Distance between Cities,

Economic Diversity

While Florida was part of the Confederate Deep South, its frontier-like en-

vironment shaped its social and economic character and its politics in a

manner different from the rest of the region during the first forty years of

the twentieth century.

In 1900, Florida had the smallest population of any southern state, less

than half that of the next smallest, and most of the state was undeveloped

and often inaccessible wilderness. Political leaders recognized the critical

importance of a development program if Florida was to prosper, but the

state lacked the capital to spur development and population growth. The

only resource political leaders had to barter was land, and they did just that

by granting large sections of land indiscriminately in order to encourage

proof

ambitious and wealthy men to develop the state and to make it accessible to

others.

The state’s geography was a second aspect of its uniqueness. Its popula-

tion was isolated and fragmented by enormous distances that stretched from

as far as Key West to Pensacola—approximately the same road distance as

that from Pensacola to Chicago. Tampa was as far from Miami as New York

from Boston, and travel was so difficult that few passed from one city to the

other. Even in the early twentieth century, Florida’s southern region was

closely linked to the Caribbean, and people from the islands moved freely

to south Florida. Cubans settled in the Tampa Bay area around the turn of

the century, where they established a substantial cigar industry. Other im-

migrants, including Italians and Greeks, also settled in the southern part of

the state. Few residents of north Florida would have recognized the Tampa

Bay area as part of their state.

A third unique attribute of Florida was its economic diversity. The state

escaped the “curse” of cotton, a dependence on a one-crop economy and the

oppression of tenant farming. Although Florida remained a poor state up to

World War II, its economy varied significantly from cotton, tobacco, timber,

418 · Susan A. MacManus and David R. Colburn

and turpentine in the north to citrus, phosphate mining, cattle ranching,

and tourism in the south. Florida thus never had the same commitment to

the “southern way of life” that so influenced its southern neighbors.3

A One-Party (Democratic) State Controlled by North Florida Politicos

In examining southern politics prior to World War II, political scientist V.

O. Key Jr. was the first to recognize Florida’s differences and predict that

Florida would be the first southern state to develop a viable two-party sys-

tem. His projection was based on Florida’s sharp geographical differences

and the immigration of newcomers, each of which factionalized its politics

and discouraged political cohesion. He also pointed to Florida’s relatively

small black population compared to other southern states as allowing for

the reemergence of the Republican Party as it became less effective for white

Democrats to play up blacks as a threat to white domination.4

Little did Key realize at the time that the Florida Democratic Party would

dominate state politics every bit as thoroughly and for nearly as long as it

did in those southern states with large black populations.
For
approximately

ninety
years,
from
the
post-Reconstruction
period
to
the
late
1960s,
al
statewide
elections
were
effectively
decided
within
the
Democratic
Party.
The gen-proof

eral election, during which Democrats seldom bothered to campaign, only

confirmed the decisions of the party primary, better known as the “white

primary.” These same Democrats adopted a series of segregation ordinances

in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that prevented whites

and blacks from being educated or socializing together, so that racial under-

standing and cooperation could not continue or develop further.5

North Florida’s longer-than-anticipated political dominance was aided,

ironical y, by the massive flow of newcomers into the state beginning in the

1940s. The majority of them settled in the region south of Ocala. They often

remained more attached to their native states and rarely got involved in

Florida politics except at the local level to vote against any new taxes, having

moved to the Sunshine State to get away from high taxes.

Meanwhile, north Florida politicos, most of whom lived within fifty miles

of the Georgia border, dominated the state legislature and established an ap-