Governorship
Askew won the Democratic nomination for Governor in 1970. State Secretary of Florida Thomas Burton Adams, Jr., was his running-mate for lieutenant governor. In its endorsement of Askew-Adams and the Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Lawton Chiles of Lakeland, who defeated Republican William C. Cramer of St. Petersburg, the Miami Herald said that Askew had "captured the imagination of a state that plainly deserves new leadership." The incumbent Republican governor, Claude R. Kirk, Jr., ridiculed his opponent Askew as "a momma's boy who wouldn't have the courage to stand up under the fire of the legislators" and a "nice sweet-looking fellow chosen by liberals ... to front for them." Such rhetoric helped to reinvigorate the Democratic coalition. Mike Thompson, who managed the 1970 Republican gubernatorial primary campaign waged by state Representative L. A. "Skip" Bafalis, sat out the general election between Kirk and Askew. Himself the unsuccessful Republican candidate for lieutenant governor in 1974, Thompson insisted that the often ascerbic Kirk had demolished "the coalition of Republicans and conservative Democrats who elected him in 1966. ... The trail from Tallahassee to Palm Beach is littered with the bodies of former friends, supporters, and citizens -- all of whom made the fatal mistake of believing the words of Claude Kirk."
By the margin of 57-43 percent, Askew and Adams unseated Kirk and his running-mate, Lieutenant Governor Ray C. Osborne. From 1887 to 1969, with the appointment of Osborne, the Florida Constitution did not provide for a lieutenant governor. In 1974, Askew was re-elected, with J. H. Williams) as his running mate. He is one of just five Florida Governors to be elected for two terms (the others were LeRoy Collins, Bob Graham, Lawton Chiles, and Jeb Bush). Askew was also the first Governor to serve two full four-year terms (Bush is the second; Collins was elected to a two-year term followed by a four-year term, Graham resigned shortly before the end of his second term to become U.S. Senator, and Chiles died in office near the end of his second term).
In 1974, Governor Askew was named by the TIME magazine as one of the 200 Faces for the Future.
Read more about this topic: Reubin Askew