Edward Gurney - Dispute With Bill Cramer

Dispute With Bill Cramer

In 1970, Congressman William C. "Bill" Cramer of St. Petersburg ran as the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by the retiring Democrat Spessard Holland. Gurney and then Governor Claude R. Kirk, Jr., opposed Cramer's nomination and supported an intraparty rival, former U.S. Supreme Court nominee George Harrold Carswell, who stepped down from the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to make the race. Cramer easily defeated Carswell for the Senate nomination but then lost in the fall, when a divided GOP worked to the benefit of the Democratic senatorial nominee, then State Senator Lawton Chiles of Lakeland.

Cramer and Gurney had been prospective primary opponents in 1968, until Cramer yieled to Gurney, with the understanding that Gurney would back Cramer for the other Senate seat, which Holland was expected to vacate in 1970. According to Cramer, Gurney "pledged his support to me, and I did to him, and we shook hands."

Cramer's former law partner, Herman Goldner, a former mayor of St. Petersburg who had refused in 1964 to support Barry M. Goldwater against U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, ran against Gurney in the 1968 primary but received few votes. Gurney then carried all but four counties in the race against Collins. Thereafter, Gurney and Cramer criscrossed the state in various party-building ventures. In the fall of 1969, Cramer declared his candidacy for the Senate, and Holland soon announced his expected retirement. President Nixon encouraged Cramer's candidacy: "Bill, the Senate needs you, the country needs you, the people need you -- now, run."

The Cramer-Gurney "gentlemen's agreement" unraveled after April 8, 1970, when the U.S. Senate rejected Judge Carswell, Nixon's second consecutive conservative nominee to the high court. Gurney and Holland, both Carswell supporters, were dismayed when a bipartisan coalition rejected the jurist, fifty-five to forty-five on allegations of "mediocrity and past "racism."

Cramer and Gurney had worked well as colleagues but were not friends. "In looking back on it," said Cramer, "I realize that Gurney was very much his own man and apparently was not comfortable with my being the ranking Republican in the Florida delegation."

Gurney declined to discuss the "gentlemen's agreement" with Cramer but said that he and Cramer 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."

Meanwhile, Governor Kirk tried to isolate Gurney from Cramer by naming Gurney's Orlando law firm the counsel for the Florida Turnpike Authority at a $100,000 annual retainer. Cramer's firm received no state business.