What was the first part of FL to turn Republican

[jiacinto]

And why?

[ElsewheresDaughter]

1. the panhandle/tallahasse...civil rights movement 65

i'm a native floridian...raised on miami beach 50/60s...i live in NY now tho

[Nazgul35]

2. yep.....

no more need respond...this is the correct answer...

This was the region that was engaged in gerrymandering into the seventies to provide the panhandle excessive representation...

[jiacinto]

3. Ok

What about the SW part? Was looking at results from the 1960 election and Nixon fared very well there and in ironically Palm Beach and Broward Counties.

[janekat]

7. bunch of wealthy retirees from the midwest - Republican

that's where I live, by the way.

[ewagner]

8. There was something else involved in 1968

The first Republican Governor since the reconstruction days, who was actually pretty progressive, CLAUDE KIRK, was from West Palm Beach and carried a lot of other Repubs with him. I know because I ran his campaign organization in Seminole Co. The rest of the state was still considered democratic but was many, many times more conservative than the Fla repubs at that time....especially on the Civil Rights Issue.

edited for spelling

[jiacinto]

10. So where did Claude Kirk do well

Did he do well in the urban areas of Florida? Also by how many votes did he win? And did he win re-election in 1970?

[ewagner]

16. Kirk won handily in Central Fla

and also in the other urban areas (excpet for Pensacola.)

Claude was not re-elected because of a really nasty, nasty primary fight with Jack Eckard (ever hear of Eckard Drugs?) We took Orange and Seminole counties for him almost 10-1 in the primary but Jack took Tampa/st Pete away and the grudge never healed.

Crimminy, I was with the Young Repubs then and we almsot had brawals at our convention!

[jiacinto]

17. Ok

What was the margin of his victory and why did you leave the GOP?

[ewagner]

18. I can't recall the exact numbers

but in the first election it was something like 55% of the vote.

I left the GOP because the progressive veneer was really very thin.

When I went to campaign management schools I learned that they didn't give a rip about the rank-and-file, they were treated more like worker bees.

And then there was Viet Nam. Remember Nixon's Peace with Honor? I got drafted the week after I left college. After the Air Force, I worked for a Repu State Senator, whom I thought was progressive....until I found myself assigned to draft the State's Right-to-Work Law. (fortunately it didn't pass the session I was there) but we got some good legislation through: like first licensing of child care centers, setting standards and licensing for mobile home parks...I got to work with Bob Graham's staff at that time too!

Anyway I was pretty disillusioned with the whole thing and left politics after one year. Didn't get back into it until I moved to Wisconsin where I was and am very much "at-home" with the progressive tradition.

[jiacinto]

19. Ok

So why was Kirk able to win?

[ewagner]

20. I think because

Kirk tapped into some anger on the part of the Dems....real dems who didn't like the conservative approach and defiance of the Civil Rights Act. Funny thing, Florida Repubs sort of went their own way in the mid to late sixties. They didn't buy into the whole National republican agenda until much later.

[jiacinto]

21. Ok

Interesting. Could it be because a lot of them were originally from the NE and the Midwest?

[DemocratSinceBirth]

9. Tally Is Reliably Democratic...

It even went D during the Reagan landslide....

[uberotto]

4. Not sure, but if I were to guess...

I would guess that the pan-handle fell first. I lived in Jacksonville a few years ago and many of the people I knew there considered themselves more Georgian than Floridian. I've heard other people say something similar about cities such as Destin and Pensacola. So as the southern ignorance movement overtook the southern states, northern Florida got caught up in the overflow. Just so you know, I've lived in Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina as well as Florida, where I live now, and I don't consider Florida to be a "real" southern state.

My second guess would be the massive influx of wealthy criminals and cuban exiles into the southern part of the state in the 80's. For some reason, cuban american's tend to vote republican more often than democrat. And as we all know, wealthy criminals always vote republican.

[jiacinto]

5. ok

thanks.

[carpetbagger]

6. SW Florida, oddly enough because of northerners. (IMO)

Parts of Florida had established themselves as republican relative strongholds due to high numbers of northerners who came down with the invention of air conditioning, the Model T, and with the railroads. These folks represented the Hoover/Taft race of Yankee republicans. If you look at the history of some of these counties, they seem to be dominated by tycoons and other republican types. West Palm Beach had the most.

The Panhandle, like other parts of Alabama, was a democratic lock until the 1960's. It was really the 1980's and 1990's that finally saw it break to the GOP.

This is all just my opinion.

[jiacinto]

11. Ok

Thanks.

[GBD4]

12. SW FL

has not voted for a Dem for Prez since 1948

[jiacinto]

13. Interesting

It didn't even vote for LBJ? By the way when was the last Democrat elected to the House from there? Why did it change then?

[GBD4]

14. LBJ

Collier & Lee each went for Goldwater in 64 by more than 10%

[jiacinto]

15. So then

Was that the area where the first Republicans were elected to office in Florida?

[TroubleMan]

22. Bay of Pigs didn't help either

A lot of Cubans in Dade county and in other parts of Fl still vote straight repug, because of JFK and the Bay of Pigs.

DUMBEST REASON TO VOTE REPUG.....EVER

[jiacinto]

23. Ok

thanks.