Background
A native of Youngstown, Ohio, and styling himself as a "Taft Republican", Suit had Southern ancestry — his father was born in North Carolina and his mother in Alabama.
Governor of Georgia November general
A native of Youngstown, Ohio, and styling himself as a "Taft Republican", Suit had Southern ancestry — his father was born in North Carolina and his mother in Alabama.
A 19-year-old college student in 1941 at the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he studied history and political science at the University of Florida at Gainesville, Florida and later studied at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida.
During the remaining years of World World War II, he served in the United States Army, was twice wounded and decorated for valor. Upon leaving the military, he became, in 1947, a radio news announcer. In 1954, he moved to Albany, Georgia, where he was part of the founding staff of the city"s first, and sole Very High Frequency television station, WALB-television, which began broadcasting on April 7, 1954.
After five years, Suit moved to WSB-television in Atlanta, the state"s first television station, which first went on the air in September 1948.
During that period, WSB-television was affiliated with National Broadcasting Company, and Suit became known to a national audience by doing frequent reports from the South for the network"s news broadcasts. In 1970, Suit was named his state"s most outstanding citizen by Georgia"s Toastmasters.
That year, according to The New York Times, his picture was identified by 91 percent of registered voters who watched WSB, the station described as "the most powerful and influential in Georgia". In a measure of just how little infrastructure existed in the Georgia Republican Party at the time, 107,555 votes were cast in the first-ever Republican gubernatorial primary held in Georgia, but the Democratic turnout surpassed 798,000.
Additionally, fewer than a hundred Republican ballots were cast in ninety-nine counties, and fewer than ten votes were tabulated in eight other counties.
The Republican vote came mostly in urban areas favorable to Suit but at the expense of Bentley. Four years later in 1974, the Georgia Republican primary turnout barely exceeded 22,000. Suit subsequently lost the general election to Carter, 424,983 (406 percent) to 620,419 (593 percent).
Thereafter, Suit became president of the Atlanta-based communications company, Production 70"s, through which he continued to deliver opinion pieces on radio and in newspapers.
In 1972, Suit announced that he would run again for governor in 1974. However, he did not get the nomination.
He died there at the age of seventy-two.