Former U.S. Sen. George Smathers dies at 93

Former U.S. Sen. George A. Smathers, a dashing South Florida politician who forged friendships with presidents, waged war against communism, resisted civil rights legislation and was an early voice cautioning of Fidel Castro’s rise to power in Cuba, died Saturday. He was 93.

The Democrat, who served two terms in the U.S. House and three in the Senate, had a stroke Monday, said his son, Bruce. He lived in Indian Creek Village, an island community outside Miami.

Sen. Smathers was among a group of congressmen — along with John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon — who arrived on Capitol Hill in the late 1940s with a worldliness that few before them brought. Shaped by World War II duty in the Marines, Sen. Smathers used his more than two decades in Washington to focus on international issues and fight the spread of communism.

The senator was a political force who managed to unseat familiar faces, attract the ears of the powerful and stake out a place as a moderate. But by the time Sen. Smathers left office in 1969 — at his own choosing — some dismissed his legislative achievements as much less impressive than his Rolodex.

Former U.S. Rep. Clay Shaw of Fort Lauderdale knew Sen. Smathers only casually but said he helped the state and nation through turbulent times.

“I think George Smathers did a great job for the state of Florida,” Shaw, a Republican, said. “I would have to guess if he were to enter politics today that he would be a Republican.”

Charming and 6-foot-2, so dapper in his tailored suits that his opponents took to calling him “Gorgeous George,” Sen. Smathers seemed to win friends wherever he went.

At Kennedy’s wedding rehearsal dinner, Sen. Smathers spoke on behalf of the groom. When Lyndon Johnson suffered his first heart attack, Sen. Smathers was at his side.

And when Nixon sought a refuge from the White House, it was Sen. Smathers who sold him his Key Biscayne home.

Like many other Southern Democrats, Sen. Smathers coddled segregationist white voters. He supported voting rights for blacks but sought to weaken other equal rights measures or opposed them, as he did with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He said such matters were better left in the hands of the people.

“I don’t like bigotry and intolerance,” he said, according to a 1999 biography. “But they do exist and I don’t think you’re going to get them out by passing laws.”

He opposed Thurgood Marshall’s nomination to the Supreme Court. He called the Brown vs. Board of Education decision a “clear abuse of judicial power.” And when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was jailed in St. Augustine, Sen. Smathers offered to pay King’s bail, but only if he left the state.

While such positions led some to call Sen. Smathers a racist — those who knew him insist he was simply trying to keep his job — his expertise on Latin America made him an early advocate for the people of that region, if for nothing more than to quash communism’s expansion.

Sen. Smathers pushed the Alliance for Progress, which pumped billions of dollars in additional aid to the region, and was among the earliest and loudest voices cautioning of Castro’s communist leanings, urging a hard-line approach to Cuba and a total embargo.

“We have a moral as well as a legal responsibility to pursue a policy that will lead to Castro’s downfall,” he once said.

George Armistead Smathers was born Nov. 13, 1913, in Atlantic City, N.J., son of a federal judge. His family moved to Miami when he was 6. He attended Miami Senior High School, where he ran for student body president and, like every other election he entered, won.

After earning undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Florida, Sen. Smathers was an assistant U.S. district attorney, then entered the Marines. After his discharge, he unseated a four-term congressman in 1946.

His Senate race four years later was among the most contentious in Florida’s history.

The congressman badgered incumbent Sen. Claude Pepper on his support of civil rights and labeled him a communist sympathizer. But his most celebrated remarks — innocuous declarations intended to appear scandalous to less educated audiences — might have never been uttered.

“Do you know that Claude Pepper is known all over Washington as a shameless extrovert?” Sen. Smathers was quoted as saying. “Not only that, but this man is reliably reported to practice nepotism with his sister-in-law and he has a sister who was once a thespian in wicked New York. Worst of all, it is an established fact that Sen. Pepper, before his marriage, habitually practiced celibacy.”

Sen. Smathers denied ever making those remarks. He offered a $10,000 reward to anyone who could prove he did, but no one could.

Sen. Smathers helped pass bills to create Medicare, the Small Business Administration and Everglades National Park. He pushed for federal holidays to be moved to Mondays, essentially creating the modern three-day weekend.

After leaving office in 1969, he made a fortune through lobbying and varied business ventures. He gave tens of millions of dollars to his alma mater, the University of Florida, and to the University of Miami.

Sen. Smathers’ first marriage, to the former Rosemary Townley, ended in divorce; she died in 2002.

He is survived by his second wife, the former Carolyn Hyder, to whom he had been married since the early 1970s; his son Bruce, a former Florida secretary of state who lives in Jacksonville; son John, of Arlington, Va.; a sister, Virginia Myers, of Coral Gables; and three grandchildren.

A funeral service is scheduled for Jan. 29 at the Church by the Sea in Bal Harbour. Instead of flowers, the family is requesting that donations be made to the Fisher House Foundation, which provides support to U.S. military personnel and their families.

Staff Writer Brian Haas contributed to this report.