G. Harrold Carswell - U.S. Senate Campaign

U.S. Senate Campaign

On April 20, 1970, Carswell resigned from his judicial position to run for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate from Florida. His opponent was U.S. Representative William C. Cramer of St. Petersburg. Expecting to benefit politically in Florida from the rejection of Judge Carswell to the Supreme Court, aides of either Governor Claude R. Kirk, Jr., or U.S. Senator Edward Gurney of Winter Park urged Carswell to resign from the bench to run for the Senate seat being vacated by the long-term Democrat Spessard Holland. Cramer claimed that Gurney had in a 1968 "gentlemen's agreement" agreed to support him for the seat. Gurney declined to discuss the "gentlemen's agreement" with Cramer but said that he and Cramer, who had been House colleagues, had "totally different opinions on this. That is ancient history, and I see no point in reviving things. ... If I told my complete version of the matter, Cramer would not believe me, and I don't want Bill angry at me." Gurney claimed that he was unaware that Cramer had considered running for the Senate in 1968 and had deferred that year to Gurney, with the expectation that Cramer would seek the other Senate seat in 1970.

When Kirk and Gurney endorsed Carswell, Lieutenant Governor Ray C. Osborne, a Kirk appointee, abandoned his own primary challenge to Cramer. Years later, Kirk said that he "should have stuck with Osborne," later an attorney from Boca Raton, and not encouraged Carswell to run. Kirk also said that he had not "created" Carswell's candidacy, as the media had depicted.

Carswell said that he ran for the Senate because he wanted to "confront the liberals who shot me down" but denied that Kirk took advantage of the failed confirmation to thwart Cramer. ... Neither then nor now did I feel used. ... What feud they had was their own." Carswell said that he had no knowledge of a "gentlemen's agreement" between Gurney and Cramer and had considered running for the Senate even before he was nominated to the Supreme Court.

Carswell instead blamed his loss on the "dark evil winds of liberalism" and the "northern press and its knee-jerking followers in the Senate."

Carswell reported that U.S. Representative Rogers Clark Ballard Morton of Maryland, who was also in 1970 the Republican national chairman, had told him that he believed Carswell was "clearly electable" and that Cramer should not risk the loss of a House seat that had been in Republican hands since 1955. Cramer, however, claimed that Morton had termed the intraparty machinations against Cramer the worst "double crosses" that Morton had ever witnessed in the party. President Nixon sat out the Carswell-Cramer primary even though in 1969 he had strongly urged Cramer to enter the race. Deputy Press Secretary Gerald Lee Warren said that Nixon had "no knowledge and no involvement" in Carswell's candidacy.

Gurney claimed that Harry S. Dent, Sr., a South Carolina political consultant with ties to Republican U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, had urged Carswell to run. Carswell further secured endorsements from actors John Wayne and Gene Autry and retained Richard Viguerie, the direct mail specialist from Falls Church, Virginia, to raise funds.

Cramer defeated Carswell, 220,553 to 121,281. A third contender, businessman George Balmer, received the remaining 10,947 votes. Thereafter, Cramer was defeated, 54-46, by the Democrat Lawton Chiles of Lakeland in a heavily Democratic year.

Senate Republican Leader Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania, who opposed Carswell's confirmation to the Supreme Court, said that Carswell "was asking for it, and he got what he deserved."