While he is not running in 2010, U.S. Sen. George LeMieux is already the subject of whispers that he will run against U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson in 2012 -- and history may not be against him as much as it is other politicians appointed to the Senate and looking to win elections.
LeMieux was appointed by Gov. Charlie Crist after Mel Martinez resigned his Senate seat. Despite his close personal relationship with Crist, LeMieux has not backed the governors independent campaign for the Senate; instead, he's sticking with former House Speaker Marco Rubio, the likely Republican candidate in the race.
Susan Page at USA Today did a recent piece on another appointed member of the U.S. Senate, Michael Bennett, D-Colo., and his quest to win an election in his own right. Bringing up examples of the past, including John Foster Dulles and Pierre Salinger, Page concludes that appointed members of the Senate generally have not done well when they sought election in their own right.
On a national level, there is little room to argue with Page. There are exceptions of course -- for example, appointed U.S. Sen. Harris Wofford in Pennsylvania shocked the political world in 1991 when he fended off a challenge from U.S. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh.
But, as is so often the case, the history of the Sunshine State is a bit different. Instead of treating appointed members of the Senate as placeholders, Florida is often willing to give these new legislators a chance.
Granted, most of Floridas appointed senators simply did not attempt to run for a term of their own.
Floridas first appointed member of the U.S. Senate was William Jennings Bryan (no relation to the three-time Democratic presidential candidate) who was appointed to the seat in 1907 after the death of Stephen R. Mallory II. Bryan died in 1908 before he could run in his own right.
Bryan was replaced by William Hall Minton, who would spend the better part of six decades in Florida politics. More concerned about local matters than national ones, Minton had no desire to stay in the Senate and headed back home after a year.
In 1936, both of Floridas senators were appointed when Duncan Fletcher and Park Trammell, who had both served for years, died a month apart. Scott Loftin, a former president of the American Bar Association, was appointed to take Trammells seat and served only five months. Loftin had no desire to win an election in his own right. Longtime Fletcher aide William Luther Hill was appointed to his old boss job in the same year. Like Loftin, Hill was not a candidate in his own right.
But the two times when appointed senators from Florida sought election of their own, Sunshine State voters backed them.
Nathan Bryan, the older brother of the late William Bryan, was appointed to the U.S. Senate in 1911, when James Taliaferro resigned after being denied renomination. Bryan would win a term of his own, but would serve only one term before the Democrats failed to renominate him.
After the death in 1946 of Charles Andrews, who had taken Loftins place, Gov. Millard Fillmore Caldwell appointed former Gov. Spessard Holland to the seat. Holland won election to the Senate in his own right and held on to the seat until he retired in 1971.
In short, while LeMieux has work to do to knock off Nelson in 2012, especially with other Republicans looking at running, Floridas political history offers a bit more solace than that of other states.
In fact, the Sunshine State should have had one more appointed U.S. senator, if only Gov. Edward Perry, a Civil War hero, had done the right thing back in the 1880s.
Charles W. Jones was one of the rising stars of Florida politics during the 1870s and won election to the U.S. Senate in 1875 -- an early sign of Republican rule in Reconstruction starting to crumble. Jones won a second term in 1881 but started to show signs of mental instability. Jones left the Senate in 1885 to go on vacation in Canada and Detroit, and never came back. There were rumors that he was stalking a prominent young woman and that he had gone insane. Jones would wander the streets of Detroit for a few years before being placed in an asylum, where he died in 1897.
Perry faced pressure to appoint someone to take Jones seat, but the governor left it vacant until the election in 1887. For two years, Florida had only one U.S. senator while President Grover Cleveland pushed through a lower tariff, currency reform, the Interstate Commerce Commission and civil service reform -- some of the most important federal issues of the Gilded Age.
Contact Kevin Derby at kderby@sunshinestatenews.com or at (850) 727-0859.
