TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Former Florida Gov. Buddy MacKay, who lost to Jeb Bush in 1998 but still served 23 days in office after the sudden death of Gov. Lawton Chiles, has died. He was 91.
The former Democratic governor took a nap after lunch at his home in Ocklawaha, Florida, on Tuesday and never woke up, his son Ken MacKay told The Associated Press. All of the governor’s adult children were present at the time, he said.
“It was a very peaceful end to a great life,” said MacKay, who hopes his father is remembered as a defender of Florida’s environment and an advocate for minorities.
Floridians honored MacKay not just for his brief service as governor, but his time as a state legislator, Congressman and diplomat.
“We mourn the passing of Buddy MacKay,” Gov. Ron DeSantis posted on X. “A U.S. Air Force veteran and lifelong public servant, MacKay was dedicated to our country and our state. May he rest in peace.”
In a social media post, Bush offered his condolences to MacKay’s family, saying that his one-time competitor had served the state “with honor and distinction.”
MacKay, Chiles’ lieutenant governor for two terms, had been trounced by Bush in the 1998 gubernatorial election when Chiles died six weeks later on Dec. 12, 1998, at the governor’s mansion. That put MacKay in the top job for three weeks, where he focused on overseeing the final stages of the transition to Bush’s administration.
“It was overwhelmingly sad,” MacKay recalled in a 2012 interview with The Associated Press. “(Chiles had) gotten that far through his term and it all just stopped. For me, there was nothing but to be a caretaker and try to help with the transition. The main thing we could do was stay out of the way.”
The MacKays never moved into the mansion and Florida hasn’t had a Democrat in the governor’s office since.
“He was very, very sensitive to the fact he was there as the final caretaker,” the late Democratic political strategist and MacKay adviser Jim Krog once said. “He was clearly conscious of the fact that he was governor and there were some loose ends that needed to be tied up.”
MacKay was out of politics in 1990 when he persuaded Chiles, who had retired from the U.S. Senate two years earlier, to run for governor against incumbent Republican Bob Martinez. The Chiles-MacKay team was elected that November and again in 1994.
MacKay, who also served in the Florida Legislature and U.S. House of Representatives, ran statewide three times and lost each time, but never lost his quiet sense of humor.
“I got out of politics because of illness,” he said the day after being defeated by Bush. “The voters got sick and tired of me.”
An inveterate policy wonk, MacKay finished his political career as a special envoy to Latin America for President Bill Clinton before retiring to his central Florida home near Ocala. MacKay stood by the former president when many Democrats distanced themselves from Clinton in the wake of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. He kept busy in the final years of his life doing pro bono work for the Southern Legal Counsel and also serving in a mediation role in the juvenile court system.
MacKay narrowly missed winning election to the U.S. Senate race in 1988 when he lost to Republican Connie Mack III by less than 1 percentage point. It was the closest statewide race in the state’s history until the 2000 presidential contest between George W. Bush and Al Gore.
In a Democratic primary field that at one time included former governors Claude Kirk — a one-time Republican — and Reubin Askew, who withdrew before the election, MacKay rebounded from a runner-up finish in a six-way primary to win a runoff against then-Insurance Commissioner Bill Gunter.
With Democrats still largely in control of Florida politics, MacKay was expected to sweep past Mack and hold Chiles’ seat.
But Mack, who had also been in the U.S. House, came up with a “Hey Buddy, you’re a liberal,” catchphrase that MacKay couldn’t shake at a time moderate Florida was moving away from traditional Democratic politics.
It took two days after the 1988 election before the official vote count showed Mack had won, by fewer than 34,000 votes out of more than 4 million 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 had grown up working in the fields with Black laborers but went to segregated schools and ate in segregated restaurants.
“It was fairly wrenching,” he said. “It was always very awkward. My family was involved with agriculture and I worked many days in the field 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 during his time in the U.S. Air Force between 1955 and 1958.
“Not until I went into the military did I see the potential for getting this behind us,” MacKay said. “I walked in there and from the first day it was totally integrated and there wasn’t a problem. It was a very freeing experience.”
Kenneth H. MacKay Jr. was born March 22, 1933, in Ocala.
“In the old South, which I was born into, ‘Buddy’ means junior,” MacKay said. “Judges and school teachers called me Kenneth, but nobody else did. I’m more of a Buddy than a Kenneth.”
He became an attorney and citrus grower after leaving the service. He won election to the state House in 1968, the state Senate in 1974 and to the U.S. House in 1982 before losing his U.S. Senate bid.
MacKay spent his final years at the home he shared with his wife, Anne, on Lake Weir. According to his son Ken, MacKay remained active in his church, and enjoyed tending to his camellias and spending time on the family farm, where they raise citrus and cattle.
___ Kate Payne is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Kallestad is a former Associated Press journalist.
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