To acquire name recognition and media coverage, Chiles walked about 1,003 miles (1,614 km) across the state of Florida and was given the nickname "Walkin' Lawton".

[5] On March 17, Chiles began the walk starting in Century, a small town in Escambia County along the Alabama state line.

[13] The 91-day walk earned him the recognition he sought, and the nickname that would follow him throughout his political career – "Walkin' Lawton", coined by Associated Press writer John Van Gieson after Chiles passed through the town of Ponce de Leon.

His former district assistant Charles William "Bill" Young of St. Petersburg, then the Florida Senate minority leader, ran for this seat.

[18] In April 1970, the Senate rejected Judge G. Harrold Carswell of Tallahassee as Nixon's second consecutive conservative nominee to the United States Supreme Court.

He had been newly appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, based in New Orleans, but his federal judicial service began under Dwight D. Eisenhower.

[19] Later that year, Carswell attributed his unsuccessful Supreme Court nomination to the "dark evil winds of liberalism" and the "northern press and its knee-jerking followers in the Senate.

Initially, Lieutenant Governor Ray C. Osborne was challenging Cramer for the Republican nomination, but dropped out after Carswell entered the race.

Carswell was endorsed by nationally known actors John Wayne and Gene Autry,[20] as well as Governor Kirk and Senator Gurney.

[19] In the primary campaign, Cramer stressed his amendment to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to prohibit forced busing to achieve racial balance in public schools.

A reporter from the Miami Herald compared Carswell's speeches to "legal opinions" aimed more at Senators Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Birch Bayh of Indiana, who had worked against his confirmation, than to Florida Republican primary voters.

At a time of cultural change and social unrest, Cramer went beyond the busing issue in his speeches to attack "cop killers, bombers, burners, and racial revolutionaries who would destroy America.