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The late Gov. Claude Kirk, in his own words

Posted Sep 28, 2011 by Catherine Whittenburg, Tallahassee bureau

Updated Sep 28, 2011 at 02:21 PM

Former Florida Gov. Claude Kirk died Tuesday night at the age of 85.

Kirk, Florida’s first GOP governor after Reconstruction, was also one of its most colorful. Upon switching parties from Democrat to Republican—Kirk would switch back to Democrat later—he took office in 1967 declaring the need for big changes in government and displaying little fear of offending anyone, regardless of party or stature.

Kirk, who earned the nickname"Claudius Maximus” while in office, “disdained the political establishment that controlled Florida’s government [and] spent four years assaulting the state’s sacred cows ... with a wit and verve that offered political entertainment the likes of which had been seen rarely before 1967 and never since,” author Edmund Kallina Jr. wrote in “Claude Kirk and the Politics of Confrontation” (1993). 

More on Kirk’s life and administration here.

To this we add one more link—to the annual “Governor’s Transition Decision Handbook,” in which past governors pass along nuggets of wisdom and advice to the latest comer to the office.

Flip past the somber, fairly textbook entries by Florida’s more recent governors to the one standout of the bunch—Kirk’s entry on p. 39 (Adobe Acrobat p. 45), which offers a glimpse of that oft-described “larger than life” personality. It begins:

Greetings Governor, I can’t imagine that you had the temerity to seek this office from the people of Florida hoping to find this book to tell you how you should act…add to that, you sought no advice from me during the campaign…so, why would I expect you to respect my advice NOW…and much less, NOW follow my seriously studied and carefully written thoughts, cautions, and urgings.

Assign other bad problems to selected separate civilian volunteers for six months action periods.

More of Kirk in his own words here.