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.
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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. 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.
With Democrats still largely in control of Florida politics, MacKay was expected to sweep past Mack and hold Chiles’ seat. 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’s views on race and the potential for desegregation changed dramatically during his time in the U.S. Air Force between 1955 and 1958.
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