Just three other men have won election as governor of their home states as members of both the Democratic and Republican parties. Crist, who won the governorship as a Republican in 2006, is trying to be the fourth. He would follow in the footsteps of Mills Godwin, the first person to lead a state under both parties’ banners. ADVERTISEMENT Godwin won election in Virginia in 1965 as a Democrat, backed by influential Sen. Harry Byrd, a conservative Democrat who ran the commonwealth’s dominant political machine in the middle decades of the 20th century. But Godwin was the last in his line as Byrd’s power faded. He was replaced four years later, forced out of office by Virginia’s one-term limit on governors, by Republican Linwood Holton, the first non-Democrat to run the state since William Cameron won election in 1881 as a Readjuster.