One hundred years ago, the 1916 Democratic primary for Governor of Florida featured several strong candidates including former state legislator Frank A. Wood, former Speaker of the House Ian Ferris, and state Treasurer William B. Knott. It also featured an outsider candidate: a one-eyed, red-haired baptist preacher Sidney J Catts known as the “Cracker Messiah.”
Sidney’s slogan was “Florida Crackers have only three friends in this world: God Almighty, Sears Roebuck and Sidney Johnston Catts.” In churches throughout the state, Sidney tapped into people’s anger. They felt the political elites did not represent them. He spoke of the dangers of alcohol and Catholics. While campaigning, he was referred to as a prairie populist and was a staunch prohibitionist. He was anti-railroad, anti-black, anti-Catholic, anti-corporate and anti- railroad. He pushed for a state income tax, taxation of church property and women’s suffrage.
In 1916, the Democratic primary was all that mattered. Once you had the Democratic nomination the election was a forgone conclusion. The primary results on the initial count had Catts winning over Knott by 544 votes. Knott demanded a recount. After months of legal wrangling the Florida supreme court decided to accept a recount that had Knott winning by 23 votes.
Many felt that the Democratic party had stolen the nomination from Catts through legal tricks. Catts decided to run as a third party candidate. On October 9th, he accepted the nomination as the Prohibition Party Candidate. This was less than a month before the election.
The St. Petersburg Times (Tampa Bay Times) endorsed the Democrat, William Knott stating that “The Times is a Democratic (Party) newspaper. … Because it is a Democratic newspaper, it believes in the doctrine of party loyalty. Shall Florida be the first Southern state to weaken the chain of the Solid South?”
Catts ran an energetic campaign in the final days. He used the fact that he was questionably denied the Democratic nomination to excite his supporters. He also played into the fears that people had about African Americans, Catholics, and other foreigners. Catts beat Knott by more than ten percent of the voters.
The tricks of Democratic political insiders backfired. The Democratic leaders, concerned that they would field an unpredictable candidate, managed to keep him from the nomination, but ended up losing the election to a third party candidate.
However, the party leaders were probably correct to be concerned about Catts. He is generally considered to have been a poor governor. At the start of World War I, he pushed a conspiracy theory that the Catholics at St. Leo’s Abbey were going to rise up and arm the African Americans, together with the support of Pope Benedict XV they would take over the state and swear allegiance to Kaiser Wilhelm II. Pope Benedict would then move the Vatican to the tiny town of San Antonio, Florida.
He passed prohibition legislation. He claimed, “There is no question that rum and Romanism go together.” Catts also refused to attend his own inaugural ball because he opposed dancing.
The same attributes that made him a strong campaigner: his conspiracy theories, intransigence and bluster, made him ineffective at governing. He was not re-elected and failed to win election again even though he ran many times.