Florida: Detour to Tallahassee?

In a state that counts tourism as its No. 1 business, it seemed only good politics when Florida’s popular Governor Haydon Burns proposed a $300 million road-widening program last spring. Democrat Burns, 53, a former mayor of Jacksonville whose snappy dress and smooth talk have earned him the nickname “Slick,” campaigned all over the state for the issue, acknowledging that his political prestige was at stake. Last month, in the wake of a Tampa Tribune report that the Gov ernor had requested $250,000 from contractors to ballyhoo the road pro gram, Florida’s voters rejected the bond issue by a humiliating 5-to-3 margin.

Cause to Be Won. Thus, though Slick Burns seemed assured of a six-year reign when he was elected to a special two-year term last year,* his chances for re-election now seem to be seriously in doubt. Last week a campaign was under way to draft former (1955-61) Governor LeRoy Collins, 56, for the Democratic nomination. A rigorous, statesmanlike administrator who man aged to minimize racial friction during his crucial six years in the Statehouse (including the two-year unexpired term of a Governor who died in office), Collins later headed the Federal Community Relations Service, which was set up by the 1964 Civil Rights Act to provide inter-racial conciliation; he is now U.S. Under Secretary of Commerce. According to the St. Petersburg Times’s statewide poll of urban residents, LeRoy Collins today would get 59% of the vote v. 21% for Slick Burns, with 20% undecided. Collins was clearly interested. Having sniffed the political air since election day, he non-announced last week: “If I run for this job, I’m going to run because I think there is a cause to be fought for and won.”

Burns’s only official opponent so far is Robert King High, 41, now in his fifth term as mayor of Miami, who announced his candidacy last week. High ran against Burns in the 1964 primary runoff and won a surprising 42% of the vote. Like Collins, High would count heavily on moderates and Negroes in opposing Burns, who is a mild segregationist.

Career Cap. As for Collins’ ambitions, even his supporters acknowledge that he would hardly throw over his post in Washington for another four years in Tallahassee. The U.S. Senate seems a likelier cap for his career. Senator George Smathers, who has been seriously ill with ulcers and a kidney ailment, has already announced that he may not run again in 1968. Senator Spessard Holland, now 73, may also decide to step down when his present term expires in January 1971. Though little more than a mile separates the Commerce Department from Capitol Hill, in Collins’ case a detour back to Florida might prove the shorter route between the two.

*Normally, Florida’s Governors serve for four years and may not succeed themselves. However, the Democratic-controlled legislature persuaded the electorate to accept a rules change for 1964 so that gubernatorial and presidential elections would no longer be held in the same year. Burns got the right to run for a full four-year term in 1966.