Clipped from p5, June 28, 1916 Tallahassee Democrat

Jerry Carter's left and gone away. . . .
Died 43 years ago.
In his sleep at 84, more than 60 years after a cut-em-up political baptism in the Tennessee hills.
And with him went his kind.
''A bunch of those Republicans up there beat the hell out of me - see how crooked my nose is? - so I got my knife and cut some of them up,'' Mr. Democrat recalled not long before his death.
''I had a good knife, and it was sharp,'' the old man told Rich Oppel of The Associated Press. Happened more than once, he said.
Why, at 75 he tried to punch out Jim Fair at a formal dinner for President Kennedy. . . .
The quirks and tumbles of rowdy politics could not stay Jerry Carter's anointment as Florida's ''Mr. Democrat.''
Jerry Carter outlasted all the rest, and he never met a Republican he didn't dislike.
Carter was the orphaned seventh son of an Alabama preacher who grew up between the Western Carolina-Tennessee mountains and the family Florida homestead in St. Lucie County. He became a sack-on-the-back peddler early in life and soon became, by his own assessment, the best salesman Singer sewing machine ever had.
He settled in Florida with one wife, one child and one dollar before World War I and linked up with the Rev. Sidney J. Catts, divinely inspired insurance salesman and candidate for governor.
Carter's role in the Catts campaign included posing as a priest while Catts whipped up anti-Catholic prejudice in the back country.
Catts won as the candidate of the Prohibition party in 1916 and named Carter hotel commissioner - Carter insisted he spelled ''hotel'' with two ts.
However he spelled it, Carter outlasted Catts.
Succeeding governors Cary Hardee and John W. Martin kept Carter as hotel commissioner and by then he had rewritten the job to include the Florida Travel Bureau.
Carter's innovations generally are credited with helping Florida recover from the bust of the Florida Boom. State funds went to cooperate with cities and counties and private business to re-attract business and tourism to Florida.
He managed political campaigns, became a delegate to the national Democratic convention in 1924 and so ensconced himself in the Florida political apparatus he never was dislodged, despite losing one race for governor and two for the U.S. Senate.
Carter became institutionalized as a member of the state Railroad Commission, which became the Florida Public Service Commission, serving from 1934 until his retirement soon before his death.
From Jacksonville to the Keys to the Panhandle, Carter became the personification - stereotype, if you like - of the Yellow Dog Democrat, the Cracker politician, the gregarious glad-hander with a twinkle in his eye.
Carter was 83 when he left public life as Florida's longest-serving office-holder. He had served under 12 governors and figured he had saved the people of Florida $322 million in utility rate reductions over the years.
Most everybody in public life sometime, somewhere owed Jerry Carter a favor and most people voted for him, time and again, even though he said he never made a campaign promise other than to show up on payday.
Carter became a national figure when he described himself to a Congressional committee as a ''cheap politician'' - the only kind Florida could afford.
Carter described his success to Bryan Mack of the Pensacola Journal:
''It is just a case of the Lord takes care of His own,'' said Mr. Democrat. ''Even though He owns some mighty sorry property.''