Buddy MacKay has shattered many myths and conceptions surrounding the office of lieutenant governor. It's tough being a lieutenant governor. You have no constitutional duties other than to succeed the governor if something happens to the state's chief executive. If nothing happens, you sit in the wings awaiting assignments from the governor.
Some lieutenant governors are key advisers.
Some are ignored or are shuttled off to obscure agencies. Some publicly bicker with the boss. But MacKay, a former state legislator and congressman who has twice run for the U.S. Senate and long seriously toyed with the idea of running for governor, has defied all those roles and has emerged as the state's most influential lieutenant governor ever. When the massive Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services was embroiled in a welfare computer crisis, Gov. Lawton Chiles dispatched MacKay to run the agency until the problem could be contained. MacKay is credited with talking Chiles out of political retirement and into the 1990 governor's race.