That’s what the late Senator Fred Karl called it: when insipid vanities like the one above stop anything useful from happening in Tallahassee.

In 1972, government in Florida was so different it’s hard to believe it ever existed that way. In this antediluvian age the Governor, a populist reformer, worked with moderate Republicans and rural Democrats — using bold moral arguments and his reputation for integrity — to enact a strong environmental regulatory regime, campaign spending limits and districts that reflected the shape of the electorate. Anyone who began reading the newspaper in the last ten or fifteen years wouldn’t be familiar with much of the above, but they could probably recognize the motives behind the anecdote we’re discussing today in the first installment of our new Throwback Tuesdays feature: the time when the Florida Senate torpedoed the Equal Rights Amendment for reasons of petty jealousy.

Senate president Jerry Thomas, a Palm Beach Democrat who would later switch parties (a classic symbol of the principled pol), filed a bill during the ’72 session to establish a new seal for the upper house of the legislature. The House, reasoning that the seal of he state of Florida worked just fine for them, let the bill languish unheard.

Foiled by the separation of powers, President Thomas took matters into his own hands. He refused to pass anything originating from the House until he got his way. When Speaker Richard Pettigrew, a friend and ally of Governor Reubin Askew, finally capitulated and agreed to hear the bill creating his tacky new seal, Thomas sent a dozen senators to lurk in the back of the House to ensure its passage. (Ed. note: I saw maybe three or four senators enter the House all session long this year. Priorities.) But he didn’t stop his acts of retaliation at slowing down the people’s business or menacing his colleagues.

When ratification of the ERA came before the legislature, the prevailing wisdom was that it would pass easily. President Nixon, both of Florida’s U.S. Senators and Governor Askew, the de facto leader of the state Democrats, were in favor of it, as was a majority of American citizens. It even passed the Florida House, by a vote of 81-3. Instead of letting the members decide how to act of the amendment, however, President Thompson invoked an obscure, legally dubious provision of the Florida Constitution which stated that a federal amendment cannot be voted upon until another election intervenes.

This type of provision, which dated back to the days when defeated Confederates were dragging their feet to prevent the implementation of Reconstruction in Florida and elsewhere, had been struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court years before during the debate over women’s suffrage. Indeed, Speaker Pettigrew and others sued Thomas in federal court and won a ruling that said he ought to have allowed the Senate to vote on the amendment on that basis. But by then ’72 session was long over and a national opposition to the ERA was beginning to form under the leadership of Bircher Phyllis Schlafly: the momentum was gone and the moment past. Florida was by the largest and most influential state to not ratify the ERA, which fell just three states short of the two-thirds required to become law.

So when you see social progress impeded by trifling egomaniacs in Tallahassee policing their picayune fiefdoms, be comforted and know that it isn’t the first time.