User:12george1/Joel Daves

Joel T. Daves, III (July 14, 1928 – July 20, 2021) was a lawyer and an American politician. He was appointed as the Palm Beach County Solicitor in 1959 and won the election to that office in 1960. Daves declined to seek re-election in 1964 and instead ran for a seat in the Florida House of Representatives. He served for two years as state representative, before being defeated in 1966. Attempting a political comeback, Daves ran for United States Senate in 1970, but placed last among the five candidates for the Democratic primary. After over two decades of not seeking a political office, he unsuccessfully ran for Mayor of West Palm Beach in 1991. He was then elected City Commissioner in 1992 and Mayor of West Palm Beach in 1999. However, Daves was defeated by Lois Frankel in the 2003 mayoral election.

Early life
Joel T. Daves III was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on July 14, 1928. In 1938, when Daves was 10, he and his family moved to West Palm Beach, Florida. As a boy, he was involved with the Boy Scouts of America, earning the rank of Eagle Scout. Daves worked a paper route and eventually became a car dealer. He also played football at Palm Beach High School and later for the University of the South. Daves studied law, earning a bachelor's degree at the University of the South, before completing a J.D. at University of Florida's Fredric G. Levin College of Law. After that, he was in the United States Marine Corps from 1953 to 1955. By 1955, Daves began pursuing his profession as an attorney, joining the law firm of B. F. Paty, who was his father-in-law at the time.

Daves entered public office for the first time in 1959, when he was appointed by Florida Governor LeRoy Collins to the office of Palm Beach County Solicitor on July 7, which was being vacated by the resignation of Charles A. Nugent on August 1. In 1960, former FBI agent and assistant county solicitor John Hiatt challenged Daves for re-election in the Democratic primary. On May 3, Daves defeated Hiatt by a vote of 17,183 to 14,686, and then faced no opposition in the general election. While serving as county solicitor, he filed charges against Richard Paul Pavlick on December 30, 1960. Pavlick was accused of plotting an assassination attempt against then-president-elect John F. Kennedy. Charges were reduced to only a misdemeanor charge for illegally transporting dynamite across state lines after federal judge Emett Clay Choate ruled on December 2, 1963, that Pavlick was legally insane. Dave announced on January 2, 1964, that he would not seek another term as county solicitor.

1970 United States Senate election
On June 10, 1970, Daves declared his candidacy for the Democratic Party primary for the United States Senate election held on September 8, with incumbent Spessard Holland retiring. He ran on an anti-Vietnam War platform, calling "immediate and total withdrawal of all American troops from Vietnam". He called the war "idiotic" and stated that "The war defeats every constructive effort to restore our national sanity and heal our wounds." As for the draft, he favored it becoming universal or removed altogether. He held no strong opinion on the Cuban airlift, but remarked that "I think we have to learn to live with Castro". Daves believed in refining foreign policy to change the mindset of viewing communism being an international conspiracy. On school desegregation, he suggested that the issue be left in the hands of the courts.

The campaign gained little traction. By late August, he had raised only about $10,000, released no commercials, purchased no billboards, and opened only one campaign headquarters. In the primary election, he placed last in the group of the five candidates, behind attorney Alcee Hastings, Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives Frederick H. Schultz, State Senator Lawton Chiles, and former Governor of Florida C. Farris Bryant. Daves received 33,939 votes – 4.65% of all votes cast. Bryant and Chiles advanced to a runoff election, which Chiles won. Chiles would ultimately win the general election against Republican U.S. Representative William C. Cramer on November 3.

Personal life
On July 20, 2021, Daves died at the age of 93.