Bob Graham, former Florida governor and US senator with a common touch, dies at 87

Bob Graham, perhaps the most peculiar and popular politician of modern Florida history, died Tuesday. The Democratic two-term governor (1979-87) and three-term U.S. senator (1987-2005) was 87.

He passed away at 8:30 p.m. of old age with his wife, Adele, and family by his side in a retirement community in Gainesville.

"We’re very attached and love him so much, so proud of him," Adele told the Tallahassee Democrat in a phone interview. "He was an absolute devoted person in public service, to get things done for everybody.”

As a wealthy Harvard-educated lawyer from Miami Lakes whose legislator father lost a bid for governor that kindled his son’s early political interest, Graham skillfully balanced his aristocratic pedigree with a quirky common touch.

In an era when being from Miami-Dade County was no advantage, he chose a rural lawmaker — the late Lt. Gov. Wayne Mixson of Marianna — as his running mate in 1978. Campaign lapel pins touted them as the “Graham-Cracker ticket.”

For nearly 40 years in public life, Graham staged monthly “work days,” working jobs alongside everyday Floridians ranging from short-order cooks and baggage handlers to drug-enforcement agents and Capitol Press Corps reporters. He said it helped him keep in touch with regular people.

Although his critics called the work days a gimmick, after completing about 400 of them Graham reflected that they played a significant role in his political career and personal development.

"From the roof, you get a new horizon," Graham said after working construction at a high school in 2003. "A horizon of the opportunities that are available in this great country."

He was also known for carrying a little notebook wherever he went, jotting down minutiae and monumental events of his day — ranging from major Cabinet decisions and huge legislative dealings to something some resident told him or what time his airplane landed.

The pocket-sized notebook is a detail in Graham’s official Capitol portrait.

He once played Mr. Hucklebee in “The Fantasticks,” a 1985 fundraiser for the Florida Repertory Theatre in Palm Beach, and would sometimes mix lyrics from his song in the show — Plant a Radish — to make a point in a political speech.

His predecessor, Gov. Reubin Askew, was the first to make a cameo in the Capitol Press Corps skits, but Graham made it an annual tradition — performing with “mystery guests” ranging from Jimmy Buffett to the FAMU Marching 100.

In more solemn matters, Graham presided over 16 executions, including the first of modern times. That drew furious protesters to the Capitol and worldwide appeals in 1979 for commuting the sentence of John Spenkelink, who had killed a man in Tallahassee. Graham calmly insisted that capital punishment was the law and the governor had to carry it out when a killer’s appeals ran out.

Critics on both sides accused Graham of trying to look tough and offset the “Gov. Jello” tag hung on him by the editorial board of what was then called the St. Petersburg Times in an unrelated matter. 

Florida was in the national spotlight in the late 1970s as singer Anita Bryant fought to repeal a Dade County gay rights ordinance. Two conservative state lawmakers put an amendment in the 1981 budget cutting aid to any state university where teachers encouraged “sexual relations between unmarried persons.” Although Graham couldn’t veto the budget language, he worked with then-Education Commissioner Ralph Turlington to get it declared unconstitutional.

During his term, Graham also dealt with hurricanes and later put in a “work day” sawing limbs when Hurricane Kate blew through Tallahassee in 1985.

He acted swiftly when truckers staged a strike that threatened fuel supplies to Florida’s vital agriculture and tourism industries. He activated 1,800 National Guard troops, escorted by Highway Patrol officers, to move some 600 truckloads of fuel.

As he began to retire from public life in 2004, he was hailed as as "a relentless advocate" for his positions "who could connect with everyday Floridians."

"Graham will be close to the top if not at the top when you think of great Florida statesmen," said Richard Sher, a political science teacher at the University of Florida, said in a 2004 New York Times profile.

His daughter, Gwen Graham, who was also in Congress, shared a family statement that Graham's favorite title wasn't governor or senator.

''It was the name his grandchildren gave him: Doodle. 'When I'm really good, they call me Super Doodle,' he liked to say," Gwen Graham wrote. "For 87 years, Bob Graham was so much more than really good. He was a rare collection of public accomplishments and personal traits that combined to make him unforgettable."

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Bob Graham: Son of an engineer who became a developer then a governor

Daniel Robert Graham was born in Coral Gables on Nov. 9, 1936, and grew up in South Florida. His father, Ernest “Cap” Graham, was a mining engineer who moved to Florida in 1920 to manage development near the Everglades for a Pennsylvania sugar company. His family ran a dairy and later developed the agriculture land to Miami Lakes.

The elder Graham was elected to the state Senate six days before his famous son was born. He served two four-year terms and finished third in the Democratic primary for governor in 1944. He ran for the Dade County Commission in 1948 but lost again.

Bob Graham became class president at Miami High in the 1950s and was named “best all-around teen-aged boy” by the Miami Herald. In 1955, he followed his half-brothers Phil and Bill to the University of Florida, majoring in political science. There, he met Adele Khoury, whom he married in 1959.

They have four daughters, including former Tallahassee congresswoman Gwen Graham. She lost a bid for governor in 2018 and went on to become an assistant secretary in the U.S. Department of Education under President Joe Biden.

He attended Harvard law school, graduating in 1962 and moving back to Miami.

The 1960s saw another land boom and the family real estate development thrived. Lawsuits were loosening the grip of the old “Pork Chop Gang” on the malapportioned Florida Legislature, shifting power to the major cities and populous southern counties.

Graham, then 39, ran for the state House and began an undefeated political career of four decades.

The son of one school teacher and husband of another, Graham gravitated toward education in Tallahassee. He moved to the state Senate in 1970 and chaired an education committee there. He could have been appointed to a Cabinet seat when Education Commissioner Floyd T. Christian resigned in 1974, but Graham asked Askew not to choose him and the job went to Turlington, then a state House member.

Instead, Graham had decided to run for governor in 1978.

From the head of state to the Senate

Attorney General Bob Shevin, another Miamian, was the clear frontrunner that year. Lt. Gov. Jim Williams of Ocala was another strong contender and Graham’s name recognition was in single digits. But he campaigned tirelessly, ran a skilled advertising campaign and edged past Williams to get into a runoff. 

“Graham used the campaign for governor to radically change his persona from D. Robert Graham, button-downed Harvard lawyer and millionaire dairy farmer and land developer, to folksy, down-home ‘Bob,’ “ history professor Steven G. Noll wrote in the University Press of Florida’s authoritative book, "The Governors of Florida."

The work day strategy and TV advertising got Graham 53 percent of the vote in the Democratic runoff. He went on to beat drugstore magnate Jack Eckerd, the Republican nominee, that November.

Four years later, Graham’s reelection would set an all-time record for governors. He beat U.S. Rep. L.A. “Skip” Bafalas of Palm Beach by nearly 800,000 votes — running up almost two-thirds of the statewide total.

Such popularity propelled Graham into a U.S. Senate race in 1986 against Republican Sen. Paula Hawkins of Maitland. She had won in the 1980 Reagan sweep, when Florida Democrats fractured themselves in a bitter primary that ousted Sen. Dick Stone. But Hawkins could not withstand the sixth-year jinx so many presidents run into — especially not running against Graham.

He resigned to take his U.S. Senate seat on Jan. 3, 1987, and Mixson served the three days remaining in Graham’s term.

Graham was easily reelected, beating former U.S. Rep. Bill Grant of Madison in 1992 and Republican Charlie Crist in 1998, who himself would later be elected governor in 2006.

In 18 years as a United States senator, Graham was best known for chairing the Senate Intelligence Committee. He led investigations of the 9/11 terror attacks and was an outspoken critic of the Saudi government. After leaving the Senate, he worked with the commission investigating the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster in the Gulf. And Graham voted against authorizing the invasion of Iraq. 

He briefly ran for president in 2004 but dropped out early. He decided against running for a fourth term in the Senate, yielding the seat to Republican Mel Martinez.

A champion of civics: 'We must work together'

Regarding education, Graham was always concerned that young people don't know enough about how government works. He wrote a book about it, “America: The Owner’s Manual,” and after leaving the Senate in 2005, he published “Intelligence Matters,” an account of his work with the Senate committee. He later wrote a novel, “Keys to the Kingdom,” about Middle East intrigue.

Graham even published a children’s book, “Rhoda the Alligator.” Based on bedtime stories he told his 11 grandchildren, the book was aimed at preschoolers and kindergarteners. It combined lessons of accepting differences with the need to preserve the Everglades.

In Bob Graham's farewell speech to the U.S. Senate, he summed up his approach to the problems facing public servants in times of increasing partisanship – an approach that would guide his post-retirement push for civics education in the classroom.

"We must work together," he said, "to understand the problem and then develop solutions which are driven by pragmatism, not ideology."

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Information from The Governors of Florida (University Press of Florida) and the USA TODAY NETWORK - FLORIDA archives was used in this obituary. Bill Cotterell is a retired Capitol reporter for United Press International and the Tallahassee Democrat.