TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Former Florida governor Buddy MacKay, who lost to Jeb Bush in 1998 but served 23 days in office after the sudden death of Gov. Lawton Chiles, has died. He was 91 years old.
The former Democratic governor took a nap after lunch at his home in Ocklawaha, Florida, and never woke up, his son Ken MacKay told The Associated Press.
“It was a very quiet end to a great life,” MacKay said.
Buddy MacKay, two-term lieutenant governor of Chile, whom Bush defeated in the 1998 gubernatorial election, died six weeks later, on December 12, 1998, at the governor’s palace in Chiles. That put MacKay in the top job for three weeks, where he oversaw the final stages of the transition to the Bush administration.
“It was incredibly sad,” MacKay recalled in a 2012 interview with The Associated Press. “(Chiles) got so far in his tenure and everything stopped. For me, it was just about being a caretaker and trying to help with the transition. The main thing we could do was stay out of the way.”
The MacKays never went to the mansion.
“He was very, very sensitive as the last caretaker that was there,” Democratic political strategist and MacKay adviser Jim Krog once said. “He was clearly aware that he was the governor and there were some loose ends that needed to be tied up.”
MacKay was out of politics in 1990 when he convinced Chiles, who had retired from the US Senate two years earlier, to run for governor against Republican Bob Martinez. The Chiles-MacKay team was selected in November and again in 1994.
MacKay, who also served in the Florida Legislature and the U.S. House of Representatives, ran for state three times and lost each time, but he never lost his easygoing sense of humor.
“I left politics because of illness,” Bush said the day after his defeat. “The voters got sick and tired of me.”
MacKay ended his political career as President Bill Clinton’s special envoy for Latin America before retiring to his home in central Florida near Ocala. MacKay stood by the former president when many Democrats distanced themselves from Clinton in the wake of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. In the later years of his life he was busy doing pro bono work for Southern Legal Counsel and also served as a mediator in the juvenile court system.
MacKay narrowly missed winning election to the US Senate in 1988, losing to Republican Connie Mack III by less than 1 percentage point. It was the closest race in the state’s history until the 2000 presidential contest between George W. Bush and Al Gore.
In a primarily Democratic field once held by former Gov. Claude Kirk — a Republican — and Reubin Askew, who retired before the election, MacKay rebounded from second place in a six-game primary to beat an opponent. then insurance commissioner Bill Gunter.
With Democrats still in control of Florida politics, MacKay was expected to beat Mack and hold Chiles’ seat.
But Mack, who also served in the U.S. House, coined a catchphrase, “Hey Buddy, you’re a liberal,” MacKay couldn’t shake at a time when moderate Florida was drifting away from traditional Democratic politics.
It took two days of the 1988 election before the official vote count showed Mack winning by less than 34,000 of the more than 4 million votes cast.
Like many of Florida’s leading Democratic politicians of the second half of the 20th century, MacKay began his political career at the height of the state’s integration movement.
MacKay grew up working with black workers, but attended schools and ate in segregated restaurants.
“It was pretty exciting,” he said. “It was always very uncomfortable. My family farmed and I worked many days with African-American crews and some of those adults were part of our family and raised me.”
MacKay’s views on race and the potential for desegregation changed dramatically in the US Air Force between 1955 and 1958.
“It wasn’t until I joined the Army that I saw the possibility of this being behind us,” MacKay said. “I went in there and it was fully integrated from day one and there were no problems. It was a very liberating experience.”
Kenneth H. MacKay Jr. He was born on March 22, 1933 in Ocala.
“In the old South, which I was born in, ‘Buddy’ means young,” MacKay said. “The judges and school teachers called me Kenneth, but no one else did. I’m more of a Buddy than Kenneth.”
After leaving the service he became a lawyer and citrus grower. He won election to the State House in 1968, to the State Senate in 1974 and to the US House in 1982 before losing his bid for the US Senate.
___ Kate Payne is a member of The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for the Americas It is a national non-profit service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on the issues they cover. Kallestad is a former Associated Press reporter.
