Claude Kirk
| Claude Roy Kirk, Jr. | |
 Official Kirk portrait (1967) | |
| In office January 3, 1967 – January 5, 1971 | |
| Preceded by | W. Haydon Burns |
|---|---|
| Succeeded by | Reubin Askew |
| Born | January 7, 1926 San Bernardino,California. |
| Died | September 28, 2011 (aged 85) West Palm Beach, Florida |
| Resting place | South Florida National Cemetery at Lake Worth |
| Nationality | American |
| Political party | Democrat (pre-1960; 1978-1990) Republican (1960–1978; 1990-2011) |
| Spouse(s) | (1) Sarah Stokes Kirk (married 1947-1950 and 1951-1966, twice divorced )
(2) Erika Mattfeld Kirk (married 1967–2011, his death) |
| Children | Seven children Four from first marriage, two daughters and twin sons |
| Alma mater | Sidney Lanier High School (Montgomery, Alabama) |
| Profession | Businessman |
Military Service
| |
| Service/branch | United States Marine Corps |
| Rank | First lieutenant |
| Battles/wars | World War II and Korean War |
Claude Roy Kirk, Jr. (January 7, 1926 – September 28, 2011), was the first Republican governor since Reconstruction of his adopted state of Florida, with service from 1967 to 1971.[1] On November 3, 1970, he was unseated in a bid for a second term by the Democrat Reubin Askew. A former Democrat himself, Kirk returned to the Democratic Party from 1978 to 1990, and he then returned to the Republican Party for the remainder of his life. Because of his flamboyance and larger-than-life persona, Kirk was sometimes called "Claudius Maximus."[2]
Contents
Background
Kirk was born in San Bernardino, California, and later lived in Chicago, Illinois, and Montgomery, Alabama, where he attended Sidney Lanier High School, named for a southenr poet. After high school, Kirk enlisted in the United States Marine Corps Reserve and rose to the rank of second lieutenant, having served stateside during World War II. He briefly attended Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, but transferred to Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree. Kirk subsequently graduated in 1949 from the University of Alabama School of Law in Tuscaloosa. Then he was recalled to the Marines for the Korean War. He later served aboard the battleship USS New Jersey (BB-62) and was discharged as a first ieutenant in 1952.[3]
Business
Kirk apparently never practiced law but sold building supplies and insurance. In 1956, he and William Ashley Verlander (1920-2009) started the American Heritage Life Insurance Company in Jacksonville, Florida.[4] Kirk had to recruit investors in the venture, including a brother-in-law. The firm catered to the wealthy and made Kirk a fortune. Six years later, he left American Heritage Life and purchased a partnership in the New York securities firm, Hayden, Stone & Company.[5]
Political career
In 1960, Kirk first witched parties and headed the Florida campaign for Vice-President Richard M. Nixon, who lost the general election to John F. Kennedy, The GOP won the state's then ten electoral votes for the third consecutive time. Indeed, Nixon won in Florida in all three of his presidential races.
In 1964, Kirk ran as a Republican against veteran U.S. Senator Spessard Holland, a former governor and epitome of the Florida Democratic establishment. With Barry Goldwater losing Florida to U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson. Kirk polled only 36.1 percent of the vote.
Thereafter, Kirk became embroiled in an intraparty squabble with U. S. Representative William C. Cramer of St. Petersburg, the first Florida Republican to be elected to the U.S. House. Cramer recalled Kirk having "begged me" to allow him to address meetings held during the 1964 delegate and national committeeman races. Thus, Kirk became acquainted with Republican activists who could be helpful to him his later career.[6]
As governor
In 1966, Kirk scored a huge upset in the gubernatorial general election against the Democrat Robert King High (1924-1967), a Tennessee native who was then theliberal mayor of Miami, 55 to 45 percent. High had unseated incumbent governor William Haydon Burns (1912-1987), a Conservative Democrat, in the primary. , Kirk won majorities in 56 of the state's 67 counties.[7] Had High won the race, he would have served as governor for only eight months because he died less than a year after the election.
Kirk benefited from Burns' refusal to support High. Upon taking the oath of office on January 3, 1967, he became the state's first Republican governor since 1877. During his term, a new Florida Constitution went into effect in 1968. Kirk was frequently at loggerheads over issues of taxes with both Democrat and Republican legislators. He earned the nickname Claudius Maximus because of his brash, acerbic style of leadership.[8] A significant event of his tenure was a controversial statewide teachers' strike in 1968.
Kirk was a strong supporter of capital punishment in contrast to former Governors Thomas LeRoy Collins (1909-1991), Cecil Farris Bryant (1914-2002), and Haydon Burns. If elected, Kirk said that executions would resume, but there were no executions under Kirk's tenure because of an informal nationwide moratorium on capital punishment. When he visited the Florida State Prison in Bradford County and shook hand with several inmates facing executions. If elected, Kirk told the inmates, "I may have to sign your death warrants."[9]
In 1970, as he geared for a reelection bid, Kirk tried to thwart a desegregation plan in Manatee County. He quipped that the judges of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, based in New Orleans, Louisiana had been "drinking in the French Quarter and reading dirty books."[10]
Although he had a Democrat-controlled legislature, Kirk could exercise his veto, and the numbers were not usually there for a successful override.[11]
Feud with Cramer
The schism between Cramer and Kirk accelerated in 1966 to the point that in a 1988 interview, Kirk said that he could not recall Cramer having rendered him any assistance at all in either the 1964 or 1966 campaigns: "Cramer never helped me do anything. At all times he was a total combatant."[12]
Kirk claimed that Cramer himself wanted the 1966 gubernatorial nomination after Burns, the primary loser, refused to endorse Mayor High. Kirk said that Cramer's legislative assistant, Jack P. Inscoe, later a real estate developer in Tampa could verify that Cramer had asked Kirk to bow out of the race with High. Kirk claimed that the three met "in a car... probably in Palm Beach County." Inscoe said: "This never happened. Kirk is not known for telling too much truth." Though Cramer said that he had no ambition to be governor, Kirk retorted, "How could I have brought this up if it didn't happen?"[12]
Cramer said that he subsequently urged Kirk to merge his own organization into the regular party structure in Cramer's home county of Pinellas, but Kirk maintained a separate entity in the hope of maximizing crossover support from conservative Democrats unhappy with the nomination of Mayor High. Cramer recalled this disagreement over strategy as the "first indication that Kirk intended to do his own thing and attempt to form his own organization."[12]
Kirk asked the representative and later Senator Edward Gurney of Winter Park to chair Kirk's gubernatorial inauguration though Gurney had not been involved in the Kirk campaign. By contrast, Cramer was not even asked to serve on the inaugural committee. In 1968, Governor Kirk dispatched his staff to the Republican state convention in Orlando to push for Cramer's ouster as the state's Republican National Committeeman. Kirk justified his move against Cramer: "I wanted my own man. After all, I was the leader of the party. If Cramer had been the leader of the party, he would have wanted his own man too."[13] Cramer said that Kirk was attempting to be "not only the governor but the king of the party, and I was about the only person at the time who stood in his way from taking total control."[13]
Despite Kirk's opposition, Cramer attributed his retention in 1968 as national committeeman to the loyalty of organizational Republicans: "I had proved myself an effective congressman. I was on the House leadership as vice chairman of the Republican Conference and was ranking member on the House Public Works Committee."[13]
In 1988, Cramer recalled a visit twenty-one years earlier to Kirk's office when a former state legislator was denied an appointment with the governor even though the man was a stalwart Republican. According to Cramer, "Kirk made it very clear that he got a great deal of joy in making sure that this guy didn't get an appointment.... He just loved to kick people in the teeth to show how much power he had."[14] Despite observing this incident, Cramer said that party unity led him to avoid public criticism of Kirk. Cramer viewed Kirk as "his own worst enemy."[13] Kirk even claimed that he had never had a "serious discussion" on any topic with Cramer.[13] Walter Wurfel (c. 1937–2018), a Floridian who was later the deputy press secretary for U.S. President Jimmy Carter, termed Kirk's election "the worst thing that could have happened to the Republicans. He wasn't interested in the Republican Party; party was a matter of convenience for him."[15]
Cramer said he believed that Kirk may have well become vice president or even president had he tended to his gubernatorial duties rather than openly seeking the second position. Eyeing the vice presidency in 1968, Kirk stood alone in the Florida delegation at the Republican National Convention in Miami Beach by supporting Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York, rather than the clear frontrunner, Richard Nixon, for whom Kirk had campaigned in 1960. Cramer said that Nixon may have selected Kirk, rather than Spiro Agnew of Maryland for the second slot had Kirk been a more serious governor. Kirk claimed that it "had been agreed" that he would run with either Rockefeller or Nixon, but Nixon chose Agnew in the hope of enhancing campaign contributions from Greek- American businessmen.[16]
Defeat in 1970
In 1970, Kirk was challenged in the primary by drug store magnate Jack Eckerd (1913-2004) of Clearwater and state senator and later U.S. Representative Louis Arthur "Skip" Bafalis (born 1929). Eckerd said that though he had supported Kirk in 1966, he became disappointed and embarrassed with Kirk: "I was offended by his public behavior and chagrined that he was a Republican."[17]
With no candidate obtaining a majority of the vote, Kirk and Eckerd met in a runoff contest, which Kirk won. The challenges strained Kirk and used up campaign funds. Despite Kirk's tactics, Eckerd said "time heals all wounds, and now I chuckle about it." He added that his defeat in 1970 probably prolonged his life.[18]
In the general election, Kirk lost 57% to 43 percent to the Democrat state Senator Reubin O'Donovan Askew, of Pensacola. In that same 1970 general election, William Cramer, Kirk's intraparty nemesis, lost to Democrat Lawton Chiles himself a future Florida governor) from Lakeland and the successor to Senator Spessard Holland. In the primary Cramer had defeated Kirk's preferred Senate choice, Fifth Circuit Court Judge George Harrold Carswell (1919-1992) of Tallahassee, an unsuccessful Nixon nominee to the United States Supreme Court.
When Kirk's term of office ended on January 5, 1971, he returned to his business pursuits, but he later campaigned several times for governor, senator, and Florida commissioner of education under both party labels.
Personal life
Kirk's first wife, the former Sarah Stokes, was the daughter of an automobile dealer. The couple married in 1947, whle Kirk was in law school, divorced in 1950 and remarried in 1951, only to b e divorced again in the year of Kirk's election as governor. The union produced four children: two daughters, Sarah and Kitty, and twin sons Frank and Will. In a 1967 interview, Sarah Stokes commented that Kirk "drinks to excess quite often (and) has indiscreet public associations with other women".[19]
Divorced when he took office, Kirk's mother, the former Sarah Myrtle McClure (1903-1998), was the First Lady[20] until Kirk at the age of forty-one married the German-born Erika Mattfeld, eight years his junior,[2] an actress whom he met during an unsuccessful business venture in Brazil. From this second marriage he had two daughters and a son.
One of the Kirk daughter, Kitty, of Jacksonville is an author married to former U.S. Representative Alexander Mann "Ander" Crenshaw (born 1944), who represented Florida's 4th congressional district. r.[21]
In February 2011, Kirk survived a mild heart attack but died in his sleep some seven months thereafter on September 28, 2011.[3] He is interred at the South Florida National Cemetery in Lake Worth.[1]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Claude Roy Kirk, Jr.. findagrave.com. Retrieved on March 25, 2021.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 "Florida: I, Claudius, Time Magazin,e December 15, 1967.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Steve Bosquet, "Former Florida Gov. Claude Kirk dies at age 85," St. Petersburg Times', September 28, 2011.
- ↑ William Ashley Verlander (1920-2009) - Find A Grave Memorial, accessed March 25, 2021.
- ↑ Craig Basse. "Former Gov. Claude Kirk dead," Lakeland (Florida) Ledger, September 28, 2011.
- ↑ Billy Hathorn, "Cramer v. Kirk: The Florida Republican Schism of 1970," Florida Historical Quarterly (April 1990), p. 407.
- ↑ State of Florida, General election returns, November 8, 1966.
- ↑ David Bauerlein, David, "Former Florida governor Claude Kirk dies," Florida Times-Union," September 28, 2011.
- ↑ Michael Mello, Deathwork: Defending the Condemned (St. Paul: the University of Minnesota Press, 2002), ISBN 0-8166-4088-2, ISBN 978-0-8166-4088-1
- ↑ Miami Herald, September 5, 1970.
- ↑ Florida: A New Way of Operating," Time Magazine," April 7, 1967.
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 "Cramer v. Kirk," p. 408.
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 13.3 13.4 "Cramer v. Kirk," p. 409.
- ↑ "Cramer v. Kirk, p. 409.
- ↑ Alexander P. Lamis, The Two-Party South (New York, 1984), p. 292.
- ↑ "Cramer v. Kirk," pp. 409-410.
- ↑ "Cramer v. Kirk," p. 416.
- ↑ Jack M. Eckerd and Charles P. Conn, Eckerd (Old Tappan, New Jersey, 1987), pp. 113-119.
- ↑ "Former Florida. Gov. Claude Kirk Dies At 85," National Public Radio, September 28, 2011.
- ↑ Myrtle McClure Kirk (1903-1998) - Find A Grave Memorial, accessed March 25, 2021.
- ↑ Kitty Crenshaw (Author of The Hidden Life) (goodreads.com), accessed March 25, 2021.
