49 Facts About Reubin Askew

Reubin O'Donovan Askew was an American politician, who served as the 37th governor of Florida from 1971 to 1979.

Reubin Askew led on tax reform, civil rights, and financial transparency for public officials, maintaining an outstanding reputation for personal integrity.

Reubin Askew served as a military intelligence officer in the United States Air Force during the Korean War.

Reubin Askew won election to the Florida House of Representatives in 1958 and to the Florida Senate in 1962.

Reubin Askew defeated incumbent Republican governor Claude R Kirk Jr.

Reubin Askew was one of the first of the "New South" governors and supported school desegregation.

Reubin Askew was the keynote speaker at the 1972 Democratic National Convention and declined an offer to serve as George McGovern's running mate in the 1972 presidential election.

Reubin Askew served as the United States Trade Representative from 1979 to 1981.

Reubin Askew sought the Democratic nomination in the 1984 presidential election but withdrew early in the race.

Reubin Askew chose to be a lifelong teetotaller and non-smoker after an unpleasant experience with a pipe as a teenager.

Reubin Askew would sell magazines, shine shoes, bag groceries and sell his mother's pies that were homemade to help supplement her income.

Reubin Askew's mother was a waitress and a seamstress for the Works Progress Administration.

In 1944, Reubin Askew was initiated as a member of Escambia Chapter Order of DeMolay, the Masonic organization for young men.

Later that year, Reubin Askew entered the Army as a paratrooper, serving for two years; in 1948 he was discharged in the rank of sergeant.

Reubin Askew next attended Florida State University, where he was a brother of Delta Tau Delta and Alpha Phi Omega.

At FSU, Reubin Askew was elected as student body president, beginning his long career in politics.

Reubin Askew later completed law school at the University of Florida Levin College of Law.

Reubin Askew oversaw the program for taking and analyzing airplane reconnaissance photographs of Western Europe.

Reubin Askew felt uncomfortable with this task as it violated existing treaties.

In 1955, Reubin Askew returned to Pensacola, where he formed a law firm with David Levin.

Reubin Askew proposed to her two weeks after the first date, and they married five months after.

In 1956, Reubin Askew was elected Assistant County Solicitor of Escambia County, Florida, as a Democrat.

Reubin Askew was reelected to a redistricted seat encompassing both Escambia and Santa Rosa counties in 1966, and again in 1967 and 1968.

Reubin Askew emerged as a progressive lawmaker: he supported reapportionment in the state legislature in order to recognize changes in population distribution and increase representation for urban counties, which had a higher population than rural ones.

Reubin Askew had opposed legal racial segregation and the continuing disenfranchisement of black voters.

In 1974, Askew was re-elected, with J H Williams as his running mate.

Reubin Askew is one of seven Florida governors to have been elected for two terms.

Reubin Askew was the first governor to serve two full four-year terms.

In every political role, Reubin Askew argued for transparency in government.

Reubin Askew tried three times to get the legislature to pass a bill requiring financial disclosure by public officials.

Governor Reubin Askew was chairman of the National Governors' Conference in 1977.

Reubin Askew supported school desegregation and the controversial idea of busing to achieve racial balance.

Reubin Askew expressed a progressive model in his appointments, naming the first black Justice of the State Supreme Court, Joseph Woodrow Hatchett.

Reubin Askew appointed M Athalie Range as Secretary of the Department of Community Affairs; she was the first black person appointed to state government since Reconstruction and the first woman to head a state agency in Florida.

But, Reubin Askew personally believed that the death penalty was appropriate only in rare cases.

Immediately after the ruling, which effectively reinstated the use of the death penalty in the United States, Governor Reubin Askew began signing death warrants.

Reubin Askew participated in part of the inquiry and in 1975 pardoned both inmates, who had been removed from death row after the Supreme Court's decision halting capital punishment.

Reubin Askew later accepted an appointment under President Jimmy Carter as chairman of the Advisory Committee on Ambassadorial Appointments.

Limited to two terms as governor by the Florida Constitution, Reubin Askew looked for his next opportunity.

Reubin Askew was the first trade representative who held the title United States Trade Representative, not Special Trade Representative, as his predecessors were called.

Reubin Askew joined a Miami law firm and at the same time began to organize a presidential bid for the 1984 presidential election.

Reubin Askew announced his candidacy on February 23,1983, after making visits to all 50 states.

The first serious presidential candidate from Florida, Reubin Askew never gained traction within the national Democratic Party.

Reubin Askew was anti-abortion but failed to win Catholic voters in Iowa, against the nuclear freeze, against the right of gays to work as teachers, and in support of President Ronald Reagan's invasion of Grenada in October 1983.

Reubin Askew withdrew on March 1,1984, after he finished last in the New Hampshire primary.

In 1994, former governor Reubin Askew was named to the founding class of the Florida DeMolay Hall of Fame.

From 1999 until his death, Reubin Askew gave a graduate seminar at the school, on topics of state and local government as well as international trade.

Reubin Askew died at a hospital in Tallahassee on March 13,2014, aged 85, from complications of pneumonia and a stroke.

Reubin Askew was designated a Great Floridian by the Florida Department of State in 1998.