How Florida Happened

Buddy MacKay (1933-2024) was born in Ocala and elected to the Florida House of Representatives in 1968, where he served for nearly a decade and won a number of awards as most effective legislator. From 1983 to1989, he served three terms in the United States House of Representatives.

MacKay received the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate in 1988, only to lose to his Republican opponent by less than one percentage point. He was hardly finished with politics, however, as he convinced his political ally and friend Lawton Chiles to run for governor in 1990. For eight years he served as lieutenant governor with Chiles, only to personally learn in 1998, after his unsuccessful run for Florida governor, that the era of the Yellow Dog Democrat in Florida was officially over.