Napoleon B. Broward - Road To The Governor's Mansion

Road To The Governor's Mansion

Broward did not run for the House again in 1902, because he was busy with a salvage operation in the Keys. During the summer of 1903, he decided to run for the governorship. He had been approached numerous times during the spring and the summer about running for the office, and, hard pressed to find another liberal candidate, agreed to do so. Broward was never wealthy, and in fact frequently found himself in debt for one reason or another. The liberal forces in the state did not have great financial backing, while the conservative forces controlled most of the money and most of the newspapers in the state, as well as the major cities. Broward said of his chances,

"I don't intend to go after the cities. Their newspapers are against me and they don't take me seriously. But I'm going to stump every crossroads village between Fernandina and Pensacola and talk to the farmers and the crackers and show them their top ends were meant to be used for something better than hatracks. I'm going to make 'em sit up and think. They won't mind mistakes in grammar if they find I'm talking horse sense."

Broward began campaigning immediately. His strongest opponent was Robert W. Davis, the railroad (and hence Flagler) candidate; two other candidates presented smaller threats. Broward hit Davis early and throughout the election for being a railroad man; Davis and the city newspapers generally derided Broward as a liberal whose time had passed and an idiot.

The greatest issue in the campaign was Everglades drainage, a program first examined by the sitting governor, William S. Jennings. Broward came out strongly in favor of drainage, calling the ground "the fabulous muck" and carrying with him an elevation map of the various parts of the Glades; when Broward found that he was losing an argument over drainage, he would point to his map and say, "Water will run downhill!"

Davis and Broward easily moved ahead into the second primary, and the campaign grew fiercer, with Davis at one point saying, "Mr. Broward is a man of but little ability and no intellectual brilliance whatever?" Broward used Davis' Congressional record to hit him for his railroad ties again and again. Broward appealed to few urban voters and no business interests, while Davis could not win support among farmers or rural voters. On election day, Broward's rural voters gave him the victory by only 600 votes out of 45,000. The general election some weeks later was uneventful, and Broward was inaugurated on January 3, 1905.