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Horne, former Florida Senate, House leader, dies

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The Associated Press

The Tampa Tribune

Published: May 1, 2009

TALLAHASSEE - Mallory Horne, 84, the only person to serve as Florida's Senate president and House speaker since Reconstruction who later become the target of a federal money-laundering probe, died Thursday after a battle with lung cancer.

Horne, a Democrat, was elected to the Florida House from Leon County in 1955 and became speaker in 1962. He was elected to the Senate in 1966 and became president in 1973 and 1974.

He spent much of his legislative career trying to streamline the executive branch.

"He was brilliant in his knowledge of the rules," former legislative colleague Talbot "Sandy" D'Alemberte once said.

Horne left the Legislature after an unsuccessful run for the U.S. Senate nomination in 1974.

In the mid-1980s, federal prosecutors accused Horne of flying his twin-engine airplane to the Cayman Islands, loading it up with marijuana and returning to Florida to sell the drugs and launder the proceeds.

"Oddly, not one witness or one document was offered to substantiate that I or my airplane had ever been to the Caymans," Horne said after he was acquitted in 1985. A nephew and two others were convicted.

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