Florida's Long Road From Governor Kirk to a Republican Statehouse

If you want to find the least patient people in American politics, look for the ones who lose an election and announce that the party is finished. Then look at Florida. Republicans in that state waited from the end of Reconstruction until 1967 to see one of their own sworn in as governor, and after that it took them another three decades to turn a lone victory into a working majority at the capitol. Thirty years. Roughly the length of a mortgage. And yet, by the end of the 1990s, the thing everyone had called impossible was simply the way Tallahassee worked.

This is the dated story, entry by entry, with a line on why each step mattered. I think it is the best answer I know to the person who says that the party cannot win in a place where it is outnumbered. The answer is not a slogan. The answer is a calendar.

1874 to 1966: the long drought

The last Republican governor of Florida before the 1960s was Marcellus Stearns, who left office in 1877 at the end of Reconstruction. After that the state became part of the one-party Democratic South. For decades, the Democratic primary was the only election that counted, and the legislature was run by a rural bloc whose power came from malapportioned districts, famous as the "Pork Chop Gang" for their reputation as protectors of the rural north.

Why it mattered: a party that cannot win cannot recruit, and a party that cannot recruit cannot win. Republicans in Florida had to build the basics from scratch, one precinct at a time.

1952 and 1956: the presidential crack in the wall

Dwight Eisenhower carried Florida in 1952 and again in 1956, and Richard Nixon carried it in 1960. Those results did not produce a single state officeholder worth the name, but they told the party something. Florida voters, newly arrived from the North and increasingly suburban, were willing to vote Republican for president. The state was changing, as retirees, military families and migrants from other parts of the country poured in.

Why it mattered: the first crack in a one-party system tends to appear at the top of the ticket. The hard work is moving it down the ballot.

The 1960s: the courts redraw the map

Then came an unexpected ally: federal courts. After the Supreme Court's decision in Baker v. Carr in 1962 and its "one person, one vote" rulings that followed, Florida was forced to redraw its legislative districts to reflect where people actually lived. The rural-weighted legislature gave way to one more tied to the growing urban and suburban counties. That created seats a Republican could win.

Why it mattered: Republicans did not conjure those seats out of thin air. They came because a court order made districts equal in population. A party that waits for its moment has to be ready when the map changes.

November 1966: Claude Kirk wins

In November 1966, Claude Kirk, a Palm Beach businessman, ran for governor as a Republican against the Democratic nominee, Robert King High, the mayor of Miami. Kirk won. He was sworn in in January 1967, the first Republican governor of Florida since Reconstruction. In the same election, Republicans made breakthroughs in the legislature, as the new districts took effect.

Kirk was a showman, and he governed with a lot of noise. He fought with the Democratic legislature and the Democratic cabinet officers who shared the executive branch with him, and he did not win most of the fights. But the victory itself was the point. Florida had a Republican governor, and the sky had not fallen.

Why it mattered: a first win does not need to be a great win. It breaks the spell. A generation of candidates who had been told it could not be done now had proof that it could.

November 1968: a new constitution

In 1968 Florida voters approved a revised constitution, which took effect in 1969. The old 1885 document had been patched many times, and the 1968 revision streamlined the structure of state government, reorganized the executive departments and moved the legislature toward a more modern, annual-session model. It was not a Republican document. It was a product of both parties, written in a state that was changing fast.

Why it mattered: the rules of the game shifted underneath everyone, and a party that wanted to compete had to learn the new rules. Republicans learned to use the reorganized executive branch, which would pay dividends decades later.

November 1970: Kirk loses

Reubin Askew, a Democrat, defeated Kirk in 1970. The Republican governorship lasted one term. A less patient party would have called it a fluke and gone home.

Why it mattered: a single win followed by a loss is the normal pattern of party building. The test is whether the organization survives the defeat. Florida Republicans did, in part because they now had legislators, county organizations and donors who had tasted office.

1980 and the 1980s: Reagan and the first Senate seat

In 1980, Paula Hawkins won election to the U.S. Senate, becoming the first woman elected to the Senate from Florida, and Ronald Reagan carried the state in the presidential race. Through the 1980s, Republicans gained ground in the legislature, one district at a time, helped by the growth of fast-expanding suburban and retiree areas.

Why it mattered: slow gains matter because each seat is a candidate, a campaign and a base of volunteers. A party that elects ten legislators can recruit twenty.

1986: Bob Martinez

In 1986, Bob Martinez, the former mayor of Tampa, won the governorship. He was the second Republican governor since Reconstruction and the first Hispanic governor in the state's history. His term included a tough lesson. In 1987, he supported and signed a new sales tax on services. The reaction from businesses and voters was swift and negative, and the Legislature repealed it within months. In 1990, Martinez lost his bid for reelection to the Democrat Lawton Chiles.

Why it mattered: two lessons, both useful. A Republican governor can win in Florida. And a Republican governor who raises taxes and loses the business community will lose the next election. The party took note.

1994: Jeb Bush's first try

In 1994, Jeb Bush ran for governor against the incumbent, Lawton Chiles, and lost narrowly. That is a sentence worth reading twice. The man who would become one of the state's most consequential governors lost his first race.

Why it mattered: losses are tuition. Bush spent the next four years building the organization, the donor base and the policy agenda that made him ready. Nobody who watches the 1994 result should say that a narrow defeat is a reason to quit.

1994 to 1996: the legislature flips

In the mid-1990s, Republicans won majorities in the Florida legislature for the first time since Reconstruction. By 1996 Republicans held a majority in the House, and Daniel Webster, a Republican, became Speaker, the first Republican Speaker in more than a century. In the Senate, Toni Jennings became president, also a Republican. These were the first Republican legislative leaders the state had seen in generations.

Why it mattered: this was the payoff of thirty years of grinding work. The legislative majority was the thing Kirk had never had. It meant that when the next Republican governor arrived, there would be a legislature that could actually pass his agenda.

November 1998: Jeb Bush is elected

In 1998, Jeb Bush ran again, defeated the Democratic nominee Buddy MacKay, and became governor in January 1999. For the first time in Florida's modern history, Republicans held the governor's office and both chambers of the legislature at once. He was reelected in 2002 and served until January 2007.

Why it mattered: the governor and the legislature were in the same party, and the result was a period of rapid policy change.

1999: the A+ Plan and One Florida

In 1999, Governor Bush signed the A+ Plan for Education. It graded each public school from A to F based on student performance, and it offered Opportunity Scholarships to students in schools that repeatedly failed, allowing them to attend a different public or private school. In the same year he put forward One Florida, an initiative that ended the use of racial preferences in state contracting and university admissions, replaced by other efforts to broaden opportunity.

Both drew criticism. Opponents of the A+ Plan said that grades would stigmatize schools and that vouchers would drain the public system, and the Florida Supreme Court in 2006 struck down the Opportunity Scholarships program in Bush v. Holmes, relying on the constitution's uniformity clause. Supporters argued that parents deserve a way out of failing schools and that accountability works. The school-choice story that followed, including the legal fights over the old no-aid clauses, is told in The Blaine Amendments and the Century-Old Fight Over Religious Schools and in How a School Voucher Works, From the State Check to the Classroom Door.

Why it mattered: the governor had a legislature that would pass a bold agenda, and the agenda reached into classrooms and state contracts. That's what a majority is for.

What the climb teaches

Lay the entries out and the pattern is clear.

1. The first win is a beachhead, not a victory. Kirk's win in 1966 was followed by a loss in 1970. It still mattered, because it proved the thing could be done.
2. The map matters. Redistricting forced by the courts created seats where there had been none. A party that wants a majority should care about how the lines are drawn and be ready to compete when they change.
3. Candidates are the product. The Republicans of the 1980s and 1990s won because they ran people for every office, down to the county commission and the school board. how a county party recruits candidates for every empty line on the ballot explains the method.
4. Losing is part of it. Kirk lost in 1970, Martinez in 1990 and Bush in 1994. All of them left something behind.
5. Don't let one mistake define the brand. Martinez's services tax was a misstep. The party recovered because it learned the lesson, and by 1998 it had a candidate who talked about cutting, not raising, taxes.

Now the best objection, stated fairly. A skeptic will say the timeline proves nothing about patience, because Florida was handed a once-in-a-century demographic gift: millions of new residents, a retirement boom, a rapidly growing Hispanic population in the south, and a court-ordered map. Any party would have won with those tailwinds. The skeptic adds that the Republicans of the 1990s were as much the beneficiaries of Democratic fatigue after decades in power as they were builders.

There is truth in it, and I will not wave it away. Tailwinds matter. But a tailwind only helps a sailboat that has been built and launched. In 1966 the party had one statewide victory and almost no bench. What it did with the next thirty years, filing candidates in districts it expected to lose, holding county dinners with twelve people, recruiting a Hispanic mayor from Tampa and a future governor who lost his first race, is what turned a demographic opening into a majority. Luck opens the door. Organization walks through it.

Here is the fair caution. Florida was a special case. It had rapid population growth, a flood of new residents with no inherited party loyalty, and a map that opened up. Not every state has those advantages. But the lesson that matters most is not about Florida's demographics. It is about the habit of the people who built the party there: they kept running candidates, kept organizing, and kept going after losses.

For the national version of the same patience, The 1994 Contract With America and the End of Forty Years of House Rule tells how Republicans took the U.S. House after forty years, and The Reagan Democrats of Macomb County and the Voters Who Changed Sides describes the voters who moved. If you want to be part of a climb like this one, how to become a precinct committeeman and take over your county party is the first step, and Three Imaginary States Show What a Trifecta Really Buys You shows what a majority is worth once you have it.

The bottom line

• Florida elected a Republican governor, Claude Kirk, in 1966, the first since Reconstruction. It took until the mid-1990s for Republicans to win the legislature and 1998 for Jeb Bush to be elected governor with majorities in both chambers.
• Court-ordered redistricting, population growth and a party that kept recruiting candidates, win or lose, made the difference.
• Losses were part of the road: Kirk in 1970, Martinez in 1990, Bush in 1994. Each one left behind people and lessons.
• The A+ Plan of 1999 shows what a governor with a friendly legislature can do, and the court fights that followed show that the work does not end at the ballot box.
• If you live in a state where your side is outnumbered, think in decades. Recruit a candidate for the next empty line on the ballot and start the mortgage.