With Gov. Charlie Crist leaving the Republican Party on Thursday to continue his campaign for the U.S. Senate as an independent, he can find little comfort in Florida history:
The Sunshine State rarely elects third-party or independent candidates to office, though they can certainly make a difference as everyone who remembers hanging chads, Ralph Nader and confused voters backing Pat Buchanan can remember.
But there is one prominent exception in Floridas past: Gov. Sidney J. Catts, who was elected in 1916 as the Prohibition Party candidate. Despite being trained as an attorney, Catts ended up as a Baptist pastor who preached, amongst other things, about the evils represented by alcohol, the Catholic Church and African-Americans.
Catts resigned from the pulpit in 1915 and traveled around Florida in his Ford selling insurance. He ended up meeting so many people and connecting with them that he decided to run an insurgent campaign for governor. Catts ran in the Democratic primary and initially came in first -- until leaders of the party said they needed to have a recount, took it to the state Supreme Court and ended up knocking Catts off the ballot.
Claiming, with more than a little justification, that the nomination was stolen from him, Catts continued his campaign as the Prohibition Party candidate, raging against the menace that Benedict XV and Demon Rum posed to Floridians, and won the election with 43 percent of the vote.
Democrats in the Legislature ensured that most of Catts proposals went nowhere. Catts is probably best known for adding to the racism spreading across the state during the period, which would ultimately lead to the Rosewood massacre in 1923. When the NAACP complained about lynchings in 1919, Catts replied in blistering language, denouncing African-Americans as inferior to whites and insisting they were a threat to white women.
Yet Catts was not just a racist demagogue. He supported giving women the vote, fought to aid the mentally ill, backed prison reform and pushed for rural development by expanding road access.
Catts would end up back in the Democratic ranks, running for the U.S. Senate against Duncan Fletcher in 1920 and losing close battles for governor in 1924 and 1928. When the Democrats nominated Al Smith, a Catholic who wanted to repeal Prohibition, Catts spoke out against Smith and proved instrumental in securing Florida for Republican nominee Herbert Hoover.
Catts is an unlikely model for Crist to follow. But he remains the only candidate outside of Democratic and Republican ranks to win a statewide election in Florida. Like Crist, Catts ran as a major-party candidate before jumping over to run outside the two parties. Catts was the ultimate outsider, something that Crist cannot claim. But the unlikely political odyssey of Sidney Catts, Floridas Prohibition governor, is the only solace that history offers Crist as he runs for office outside the major parties.
