George A. Smathers
George Armistead Smathers (born November 14, 1913) is an American lawyer and politician who represented Florida in the United States Senate for eighteen years.
Smathers was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey (his uncle, William Howell Smathers, was a U.S. senator representing New Jersey). His family moved to Miami, Florida in 1919, and he attended the University of Florida for his undergraduate degree and law school education. After completing his LL.B. in 1938, Smathers returned to Miami, where he served as assistant U.S. district attorney from 1940 to 1942. During World War II, he served as an officer in the United States Marine Corps.
After the war, Smathers was elected to serve two terms in the United States House of Representatives, from 1947 to 1951. In 1950, he ran for the United States Senate against incumbent Claude Pepper, and was elected by a margin of over 60,000 votes. The race was marked by echoes of the Red Scare: Smathers repeatedly attacked Pepper for having communist sympathies, pointing out his pro-civil rights platform and campaign for universal health care. It is also widely claimed that Smathers won the election by using linguistic tricks to attack Pepper before uneducated audiences, such as stating that Pepper had a "thespian" sister and a "Homo sapiens" brother, although Smathers repeatedly denied these claims during his term in the Senate.
Smathers served as chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee for six years. During the 1960 presidential campaign, Smathers was a candidate for the Democratic Party's nomination. He later managed John F. Kennedy's campaign in the southeastern U.S.
In 1968, Smathers declined to run for re-election and announced his candidacy for president. He was defeated in the primary race by Hubert Humphrey.
In 1991, Smathers gave a $20 million gift to the University of Florida library system, now known as the George A. Smathers Libraries.
