By CATHERINE DOLINSKI
The Tampa Tribune

Gerald Ford left his imprint across the Tampa Bay area as a leader in Congress, the White House and the world of business.

Every day, thousands of motorists here travel a highway that bears the name of a former congressman but which owes its existence to Ford ‑ The St. Petersburg Parkway/William C. Cramer Memorial Highway.

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Last March, Congress gave that name to the segment of Interstate 275 in St. Petersburg from the Sunshine Skyway Bridge to the Howard Frankland Bridge.

Cramer, a Republican who represented the bay area from 1955 to 1971, was a close colleague of Ford’s, who had arrived in the House in 1949 and served as minority leader from 1965 to 1973.

Ford helped Cramer during the late 1960s to build support in Congress for constructing 284 miles of I-275, from Tampa through Pinellas County and down the Gulf Coast, said Darryl Paulson, political science professor at the University of South Florida.

“They were close friends and confidantes,” said Paulson, who interviewed Cramer prior to his death in 2003 for a book Paulson is writing about the state Republican party.

“The planning phase had been approved; Cramer was on the public works committee at the time, which handled interstate transportation funds. But Cramer had a hard time pushing that through. Gerald Ford had moved up in Republican leadership at the time, and was instrumental in building support.”

Connections with men like Cramer, along with Florida’s rising political influence, drew Ford repeatedly to the Sunshine State. But like the rest of the country, Florida turned against the man who pardoned President Richard Nixon after the Watergate scandal.

To the White House

Hours before Nixon announced in 1973 that he was nominating Ford to replace Spiro T. Agnew as vice president, Ford phoned Rep. Cramer’s law partner, Benton Becker, who was arguing a case in Orlando.

“He said, ‘What do you know about the 25th amendment?” recalled Becker, now a constitutional law professor at St. Thomas University School of Law in Miami Gardens. “I said, not a hell of a lot, but I’ll know more by the time I get back to Washington.”

Becker, a former Justice Department lawyer, had gotten to know Ford as House minority leader during an investigation of corruption charges against U.S. Rep. Adam Clayton Powell Jr. The 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution had empowered Nixon to nominate Ford to replace Agnew, who had resigned in the wake of money laundering and tax fraud charges.

Soon after receiving Ford’s call, Becker and Cramer were representing him during his nomination hearings in Congress.

Ford’s nomination generally pleased bay-area politicos. U.S. Rep. Sam Gibbons, D-Tampa, told The Tampa Times that he had “great respect” for Ford and that he would bring credibility and strong knowledge of international affairs to the job. U.S. Sen. Ed Gurney, R-Fla., called Ford “one of the most highly respected members of Congress.”

Watergate would put that respect to the test. In 1974, Ford excoriated Nixon’s re-election campaigners for being “political adolescents” during an appearance in Clearwater. He added that he had also urged Nixon to surrender all evidence in the Watergate case to the House Judiciary Committee, which was studying the possibility of impeachment.

But the Nixon imbroglio had repulsed the nation, and Ford suffered from the taint. When he appeared at the University of Tampa in 1974 at an event honoring Cramer’s donation of his political papers, Ford was met with angry chants and placards waved by a group called Bay Area Citizens Opposed to Nixon, or BACON. A group of students streaked through the crowd.

Nationwide, Ford’s popularity plummeted when he decided to pardon Nixon the following year, a task he undertook with Cramer and Becker handling much of the paperwork. According to Becker, Ford made the decision to pardon against the counsel of nearly all his staff, in the belief it was the only way to move the country past Watergate.

“Gerald Ford was a decent guy; the only one that got hurt by pardoning Nixon was him,” said Lew Kwall, a former chairman of the Republican Party in Pinellas County. “He probably saved this country a lot of personal pain at great personal sacrifice.”

Nixon was not the only cause of resistance that Ford met from the public. Angry over high unemployment, cutbacks in government assistance for the poor, and Ford’s fiscal conservatism, protesters drowned out much of a speech that Ford delivered in Tampa in 1976, less than two weeks before the Republican primary.

After the White House

Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter wielded an obvious regional advantage over Ford in the South in the 1976 presidential race. Nonetheless, Ford staff members were hopeful the president might carry a few Southern states, Florida among them.

Pinellas and Hillsborough counties had supported Nixon in 1972 by 2-1 margins, but they split on Ford v. Jimmy Carter in 1976. After supporting Ford by a thin margin in the primary, Hillsborough chose Carter in the general election, 94,589 votes to 78,504. Ford pulled out a November victory in Pinellas with 150,003 votes, compared to Carter’s 141,870.

But as the majority of the country went, so went Florida, casting 1.6 million votes for Carter compared with 1.4 million for Ford.

In 1978, Ford returned to Florida to back GOP gubernatorial candidate Jack Eckerd, Tampa native and drugstore king. Ford urged Floridians to make Eckerd governor to “send a message” to President Carter that they were displeased with his administration. Eckerd lost to Democrat Bob Graham.

Talk of Ford running for office resurfaced in 1980, when columnists Robert Novak and Rowland Evans reported that Ford would seek the GOP nomination for president. But when pressed at a gathering of Eckerd College students in St. Petersburg, Ford would confirm nothing, telling a Tribune reporter only that he would not run unless his party asked him or some “unforeseen development took place.”

Ultimately, he backed away from the already crowded GOP primary. Ford traveled several more times to the Bay area over the years to back political and commercial interests. In 1985, he reappeared at age 71 as a paid consultant to the owners of Tampa’s new Harbour Island development.

After two failed tries, Ford drove a much-publicized golf ball across Garrison Channel to a crowd gathered at the island development to promote its grand opening.

Parting memories

During Ford’s hospitalization in August, Sara Cramer of St. Petersburg Beach recalled the former president’s attentions to her husband, Rep. Cramer, when he suffered a heart attack in 2003.

“President Ford called him. He never forgot all the help Bill gave him getting through his confirmation hearings,” she said. “After Bill passed away, Gerald Ford called and talked to me, telling me about all the fun they had.”

A former Capitol Hill staffer, Sara Cramer recalled Ford as “one of the most loved politicians” in Washington. “There was never any turnover on Gerald Ford’s staff. I remember; I wanted to work for him.”

Kwall, the former Pinellas Republican leader, predicted in August that people would remember Ford upon his death for the virtues of moderation and cooperation.

“It will remind us of the way he handled himself, of the mature way he handled himself as a president and a politician,” said Kwall.

“Sure, there were a few incidents of Ford tripping, falling down. But Gerald Ford was a very, very decent guy.”

Tribune researchers Buddy Jaudon and Melanie O’Bannon contributed to this report. Reporter Catherine Dolinski can be reached at (850) 222-8382.

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