Guest AuthorLast of four parts.
On Nov. 7, 1944, Floridians went to the polls. The re-election of President Franklin Roosevelt to a fourth term was the compelling headline. The race for governor, featuring Millard Caldwell against his Republican opponent Bert Leigh Acker, was not a page-one story.
Florida’s Grand Old Party (GOP), still burdened by the ghosts of Reconstruction, struggled to be relevant.
The Democratic Party’s dominance on the national and regional levels in the 1930s and 1940s only aggravated the woes of the Party of Lincoln.
In 1942, more than 600,000 Floridians registered as Democrats, while only 36,000 identified themselves as Republicans. Almost no one considered themselves independents.
Cole Blease, South Carolina’s fiery U.S. senator, summarized the hold the Democratic Party held upon southern voters. In 1924, Republican President Calvin Coolidge received only a few hundred votes in the Gamecock State. When asked to explain the paucity of votes, Blease replied, “I was surprised to know they were cast, and astonished to know they were counted.”
Some Floridians in the 1930s and ‘40s may never have known a Republican. In Baker, DeSoto, Franklin, Indian River, Jefferson, Lafayette, Liberty, and Washington counties, not a single citizen registered as a Republican.
On election day, Caldwell defeated his Republican opponent. Acker, a native of New York City and a silent screen actor, received over 35 percent of the vote.
But a new day was dawning for the GOP. Since the 1920s, the GOP’s hopes had shown in Pinellas County, as Midwestern transplants brought their isolationist values and Republican identities with them. They, too, had sat on their grandfathers’ knees and heard heroic tales of Shiloh and Seven Pines. The lesson was clear: “Vote as you shot.”
“The nearest approach to the ‘two-party system’ in Florida is Pinellas County,” editorialized the Tampa Tribune in 1944. Such prospects so frightened Pinellas County Democrat Archie Clement that he warned voters, “If you want to commit political suicide so far as getting any state benefits is concerned, you have merely to let just one Republican into the courthouse and get yourself known at Tallahassee as a Republican county.”
Governor-elect Caldwell rewarded friends and quickly established a reputation for his icy independence. His law partner recalled a visit by Bernie Papy, a powerful Key West state senator who had opposed Caldwell in the primaries. “Bernie,” replied the governor-elect, “When you didn’t support me, you shot snake eyes.”
Not since 1861, when the star-crossed John Milton was sworn in as governor, had war been so omnipresent in the state capital. Had Gov. Milton returned to Florida, he would have felt at home.
The Lost Cause endured at courthouse squares and on schoolhouse plaques. Fourteen Confederate veterans still received $40 monthly pensions. In Tallahassee, two Civil War cannons guarded the entrance to the Capitol. On Jan. 2, 1945 as inaugural crowds began to assemble, a legislator noticed that the cannons faced the people, the democracy. He promised to introduce a bill requiring the cannons to face down the government.
Juanita Green was a rarity in 1945, a female reporter. She recently had been hired by the Tampa Daily Times, principally because so many male reporters had been drafted.
Ordered by her editors to ask Caldwell why he had snubbed some Tampa “bigwigs,” she dutifully phoned the governor-elect’s office and a man’s voice answered.
“Could I please speak to Governor Caldwell”” she asked nervously.
“Speaking,” the governor replied.
When asked why he had not appointed her editors’ friends, he explained brusquely: “Young lady, in politics you reward your friends and punish your enemies. That is my explanation.”
