of DeMolay. 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. The state houses had been apportioned by geographic county, resulting in inequities that did not represent current state conditions. Urban areas were underrepresented in the legislature. As was typical of many states, rural legislators had resisted reapportionment in order to retain power. Askew had opposed legal racial segregation and the continuing disenfranchisement of black voters. They had been disenfranchised since the turn of the century, when Florida had passed a new constitution with provisions for voter registration and elections that effectively blocked blacks from the polls. Passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 authorized the federal government to exercise oversight over jurisdictions in which classes of voters were historically underrepresented in voter rolls and voting patterns; African Americans were helped to re-enter the political system. Governorship Askew won the Democratic nomination for governor in 1970. Secretary of State of Florida Thomas Burton Adams, Jr., was his running-mate for lieutenant governor. In its endorsement of the Askew-Adams ticket, the Miami Herald said that Askew had "captured the imagination of a state that plainly deserves new leadership." During the campaign, the incumbent Republican governor, Claude R. Kirk Jr., ridiculed his opponent Askew as "a momma's boy who wouldn't have the courage to stand up under the fire of the legislators" and a "nice sweet-looking fellow chosen by liberals ... to front for them." Such rhetoric helped to reinvigorate the Democratic coalition. Mike Thompson, who managed the 1970 Republican gubernatorial primary campaign waged by state representative L. A. "Skip" Bafalis, sat out the general election between Kirk and Askew. Thompson later said that the often acerbic Kirk had demolished "the coalition of Republicans and conservative Democrats who elected him in 1966. ... The trail from Tallahassee to Palm Beach is littered with the bodies of former friends, supporters, and citizens -- all of whom made the fatal mistake of believing the words of Claude Kirk." With 57% of the vote, Askew and Adams unseated Kirk and Lieutenant Governor Ray C. Osborne. (From 1887 to 1969, the Florida Constitution did not provide for a lieutenant governor. The change allowed the top two positions to be filled by running mates from the same political party.) In 1974,