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I’ve been learning tonight about Smilin’ Jimmy Sullivan and Governor Fuller Warren.

Warren was governor of Florida from 1949 to 1953. Wikipedia doesn’t have much to say about him, but offers this tremendous quote where comes out both for and against prohibition and anti-prohibition.

“If you mean the demon drink that poisons the mind, pollutes the body, desecrates family life, and inflames sinners, then I’m against it. But if you mean the elixir of Christmas cheer, the shield against winter chill, the taxable potion that puts needed funds into public coffers to comfort little crippled children, then I’m for it. This is my position, and I will not compromise.”

Warren and Sullivan caught the attention of the Kefauver Committee in the summer of 1950 when the Tennessee Senator visited Miami in his hunt for information about organized crime. Kefauver was the chair of the Senate Crime Investigation Committee which revealed the world of organized crime and the mafia to a post-war public. An improving economy and the access to inexpensive television sets kept the nation glued to the tube for a summer of revelations about the depth of corruption and the breadth of crime syndicate networks.

In Miami, presumed to be Al Capone’s winter home, the committee had a pretty good idea what they were looking for thanks to some local investigations in progress, and the material uncovered by Miami Crime Commission investigator Dan Sullivan.

Sen. Kefauver, Sen. Lester Hunt, Dan Sullivan

Both Governor Warren and Dade County Sheriff Smilin’ Jimmy Sullivan were deeply implicated in taking pay-offs to look the other way while the mob ran illegal gambling shops. Smilin’ Jimmy was called to testify and had trouble explaining how he had amassed $70,000 in cash, $10,000 of which he kept rolled up in a blanket in his closet. Soon after his testimony he was suspended.

In April of the following year, Governor Warren re-instated Sullivan claiming that the state supreme court had found the indictment invalid.

Two months later Smilin’ Jimmy ran for re-election. On the day of the election one paper (the SP Times article doesn’t say which paper) ran a photograph on page one of an illegal bookie joint displaying a giant “Re-Elect Jimmy Sullivan Sheriff” sign.

Sullivan won in a landslide.

(You can find out more about Jimmy Sullivan by searching for “Jimmy Sullivan” at the Google Newspaper Archive. Or, see here, here, here, and here.)