Remembering the wit and wisdom of Claude Kirk - Palm Beach Post

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Bruce Bennett/The Palm Beach Post

Claude Kirk in 2008.

Palm Beach Post Staff

With the death of former Florida Gov. Claude Kirk Jr. at 85, Palm Beach County lost more than just an elder statesman. It lost one of its most colorful characters.

Claude Kirk was no programmed politician. The one-term Republican governor, who lived in West Palm Beach, said what was on his mind, and what was on his mind was often wise, witty and for a politician, remarkably candid and sometimes controversial.

Here are some of Kirk's pithiest sayings, culled from an in-depth interview he did with Palm Beach Post writer Michael Browning in 2002:

On losing a second term as governor to Reubin Askew in 1970: "I didn't lose. I just came in second."

On the Republican politicians who gained prominence after Kirk's reign: "They are all the children of my loins."

On a dredging company owner who claimed that then-Gov. Kirk's policies were putting him out of business in Florida: "There's always the Bahamas."

On a former Secretary of the Navy, who wouldn't go along with then-Gov. Kirk's plan to turn battleships into floating prisons, moored in the St. Johns River: "Damned unimaginative sonofabitch!"

On his childhood, which he was reluctant to talk about: "My parents both worked for the railroad. They met in California. That's where I was born. My father didn't finish the sixth grade. My mother's forebears came from South Carolina. They were Presbyterian missionaries in Brundidge, Alabama. One of my grandfathers ran a store, the other ran a restaurant in Mineral Wells, Texas. He kept my father in a basket underneath the counter."

On his abilities as a politician: "Getting elected doesn't make you a politician. I proved that."

On fighting organized crime as governor: "I looked around like a general with no troops. They told me: 'You've got 67 sheriffs to enforce the law.' Well, 65 of them were corrupt."

On his efforts to save Florida's environmental resources: "If I hadn't been governor, they would have paved over Tampa Bay."

On his marriage to Erika Mattfeld two months into his administration and their children Erik and Claudia: "The greatest achievements of my administration."

On smarts: "Some people say George Bush is dumb. The media say he is, but that don't make it so. I don't think he's dumb. Hell, I got C's in school. C's were all I got! I thought 'C' was for 'Claude.' I didn't know there were such things as A's and B's."

On his failed effort to be Richard Nixon's vice-presidential candidate at the Republican National Convention in Miami in 1968: "Nixon had two choices for vice president when he showed up in Miami: Howard Baker and Claude Kirk. Then (Aristotle) Onassis got to him and said he wanted a Greek vice president, so he picked (Maryland Gov. Spiro) Agnew. Agnew was so damned dumb I had to teach him how to make a speech. I tell you what: If Nixon had picked me, he wouldn't have had to resign."

On his controversial stand to stop busing during his administration, which aligned him with the likes of segregationist governor George Wallace at the time: "There was nothing wrong with having a contest about forced busing. That was a serious matter. Who the hell is right, now, today? Who is for busing today? Why should you take a little child out of his or her home on the north side of Jacksonville in the winter and bus them an hour and a half to some damned school in San Mateo, which is probably no better than the school they left behind, and drag them back in the evening?"

On how he helped Florida Democrats: "Before I came along, the Democrats thought they owned Florida. I forced them to straighten out and pick good candidates like Reubin Askew and Lawton Chiles. They learned from their mistakes. Any time one party thinks they've got a lock on power, they're vulnerable."

On Bill Clinton's sex scandal: "If he had been a Republican, he wouldn't have had time to zip up before we got rid of him. As for his success as a politician, well, if you don't have to be intellectually honest, you can stay in office any amount of time."

On Florida's biggest need: "Education. We have defrauded our children systematically. If you don't have educated children, you can't attract industry. Sure, we can get plenty of tourists, because we've killed the mosquitoes, put in air conditioning and everybody has power steering in their automobiles, but without education, you've got no future. We need a state income tax to keep more people from coming down here and freeloading off us, and make the people who are here pay for all that they enjoy

"You can bring Walt Disney down, you can bring Universal Studios down. That's nice. God bless. But until you start bringing CEOs of big companies down here, Internet people, smart people, you haven't begun. Where are they? In San Jose. In Boston. Why aren't they in Florida? They've all got vacation homes here. Why won't they live here? Education."

On his three favorite restaurants in Palm Beach County - Toojay's, Duffy's and Pollo Tropical: "The elite dining spots."