Politics

Buddy MacKay, a Democrat who briefly served as Florida’s governor, dead at 91

Published

1 year ago

January 3, 2025

TALLAHASSEE, Florida — 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.

Politics

DC is about to pick new leaders. Trump is watching.

Published

3 hours ago

June 16, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Washington will soon enter a new chapter after voters pick the capital’s first new mayor in a dozen years and its first new Congressional delegate since 1991. And no matter who wins Tuesday’s primaries, they’ll be on a collision course with President Donald Trump.

The frontrunners in both races have hinged their campaigns on opposition to Trump, who since returning to office has chipped away at Washington’s autonomy and sought to remake parts of the city in his image. Mayor Muriel Bowser, who has led the city since taking office in 2015, has taken a pragmatic approach to working with the president in an apparent effort to avoid further furor. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton has represented the District since 1991 and condemned Trump’s actions in strongly worded statements, but the 89-year-old has dodged the spotlight amid questions about her acuity and ability to serve.

The candidates running to replace them say that’s far from enough.

In interviews with Blue Light News, those leading candidates emphasized that they hoped to find common ground with the Trump administration and coordinate where possible, especially on projects that could jumpstart Washington’s sluggish economy. But they all drew a red line at Trump’s extraordinary law enforcement actions, including sending in the National Guard indefinitely and surging federal immigration agents in coordination with local police.

“Washington, D.C., residents want and deserve a mayor who’s going to stand up and fight back, and that’s what I’m bringing,” said Kenyan McDuffie, a relatively moderate, pro-business former D.C. Council member who is polling second in the mayor’s race. He has pledged to end coordination between the Metropolitan Police Department and ICE on his first day in office.

Janeese Lewis George, a D.C. council member who is polling more than 10 points ahead of McDuffie, has taken an even more adversarial posture against the president. She told Blue Light News she would “actively tell our employees to resist” if Trump again federalized the MPD, adding that she would work with D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb “to defend D.C.”

Trump is already making known his displeasure — particularly with Lewis George, a democratic socialist whose platform and campaign are reminiscent of those of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Asked last week about the possibility of Lewis George winning the primary, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office: “I wouldn’t like it.”

“Maybe we’ll take back Washington, run it on a federal basis,” he continued. “We won’t put up with it. We’re not gonna lose our businesses.”

Lewis George’s campaign almost immediately cut Trump’s comments into an ad. “Look, we’re not going to get ICE off our streets by fearing this president,” she said in response. “We’re not going to protect our rights, or Home Rule, by complying in advance. Threatening Home Rule because you don’t like how residents are voting is an attack on democracy itself. The people of D.C. elect their mayor, and they want someone who’s gonna stand up to Donald Trump.”

There’s a similar sentiment among the leading delegate candidates.

Robert White, a city council member and one of two frontrunners in the delegate race, described Trump’s surge of federal agents and National Guard troops to the city as “lawlessness” and “the opposite of public safety.” He said he would seek to build a coalition in Congress to “push back in every way.”

Brooke Pinto, a fellow council member and the other delegate frontrunner who has centered public safety in her campaign, said the administration’s use of National Guard troops and ICE agents have not helped the city. “While I am very committed to advancing public safety in the District of Columbia, what we’re seeing from the Trump administration undermines those efforts,” she said.

That type of messaging is politically savvy in a city with an electorate that heavily supported Kamala Harris in 2024 and whose lives have been directly impacted by the president’s grip over Washington — from the troop surge to his sweeping cuts to government programs and razing of the federal workforce, which have severely contracted the District’s economy. That’s not to mention his efforts to splash his name and face across federal buildings, and mounting moves to beautify portions of the city and stand up ambitious architectural projects.

“When politicians try to interfere with our local public safety, when they are sweeping up unhoused residents, cutting jobs, when they are pushing policies that negatively affect our local economy and driving up overall costs of everything from gas to housing, I’m going to fight back,” McDuffie said.

But it sets the candidates — whoever wins — in explicit opposition to Trump, who has consistently sought to bring his enemies to heel whenever he gets the chance. The president has several levers at his disposal if he chooses to retaliate against Washington, from another federal law enforcement surge to using his influence over Congress to weaken D.C. Home Rule. The city also depends on the federal government for high-profile projects that would improve public spaces and bring jobs to the District, including upgrades to Union Station and the redevelopment of the RFK Stadium campus.

Asked how the White House is preparing for a potentially more adversarial mayor and delegate, a spokesperson referred Blue Light News back to Trump’s Oval Office comments.

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