Trammell, a Democrat, was elected mayor of Lakeland in 1900 and re-elected to a second term in 1901. In 1902, Trammell was elected to the Florida House of Representatives, representing Polk County. He served in the Florida House until 1904, when he was elected to the Florida Senate for Polk County. From 1905 until 1907, Trammell was the President of the Florida Senate. He resigned from the senate the following year, and returned to private practice.
In the 1912 gubernatorial election, Trammell ran to succeed Gilchrist as Governor of Florida. After securing the Democratic nomination, Trammell defeated four other candidates in the general election, receiving 80% of the vote. His closest competitor was Socialist Thomas W. Cox.[9]
As governor, Trammell endorsed a law in the Florida Legislature that would control spending in election campaigns, and also established a state tax commission in order to equalize property assessments across various counties. Trammell's governorship was also known for his blatant racism, endorsing racial segregation and overlooking the lynching of African Americans.[10] While Trammell was state attorney general, none of the 29 lynchings of black men during his term were prosecuted, nor were the 21 that occurred during his governorship.[7]
United States Senate
With the ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment on April 8, 1913, U.S. senators were to be popularly elected, rather than being elected by their state legislatures.[11] Trammell ran for the U.S. Senate in the 1916 election, defeating incumbent Nathan P. Bryan in the Democratic primary. He went on to defeat his Republican opponent, newsman William R. O'Neal, with nearly 83% of the vote.[12]
During his tenure as senator, Trammell was not afraid to deviate from his party. In 1916, Trammell, a member of the Old Right, an informal group of paleoconservatives in both major parties, staunchly opposed President Woodrow Wilson's call for conscription in World War I. Additionally, he opposed U.S. Supreme Court nominees Harlan F. Stone in 1925 and John J. Parker in 1930, the prior being successfully appointed to the court.[13]
In Florida, the test of voters' approval of the New Deal was the Democratic primary of the 1934 U.S. Senate election, in which Trammell, who generally ran unopposed in the primaries, faced the stiffest competition of his entire career.[14] Trammell faced former State Representative Claude Pepper, attorney Charles A. Mitchell, State Senator James F. Sikes, and Florida Democratic Committeewoman Hortense K. Wells. Though the race was mostly a competition between Trammell and Pepper, a social liberal, the latter three candidates pulled enough votes from Trammell to send the race into a runoff election between Trammell and Pepper.[15] Trammell defeated Pepper in the runoff, winning by just a 2% margin. Trammell was unopposed in the general election.[16][17]
Earlier in 1934, Trammell co-sponsored the Vinson-Trammell Act, along with House Naval Affairs Committee Chair Carl Vinson, which authorized the replacement of obsolete ship by construction of new ships in order to compete with the Japanese Empire.[5]
During his time in the Senate, Trammell was often referred to as the most useless member of the body, having missed 642 out of 3,168 roll call votes across his entire tenure.[18] Despite this, he was still popular among Florida voters.
Trammell married Virginia Darby on November 21, 1900. They were married until her death in 1922. He later married Beatrice Padgett, a divorced woman with a son, in 1934. Trammell had no children of his own with either woman.[citation needed]
^government, Robert Longley Robert Longley is a U. S.; since 1997, history expert with over 30 years of experience in municipal government He has written for ThoughtCo. "The 17th Amendment to the US Constitution: Election of Senators". ThoughtCo. Retrieved April 8, 2019.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
^ abBrackett, John M. (2005). "Wrongful Defeat: The 1934 Florida Senatorial Democratic Primary between Claude Pepper and Park Trammell". The Florida Historical Quarterly. 84 (2): 205–228. ISSN0015-4113. JSTOR30149988.
