Bob Graham transcended party. He was the governor of Florida for two terms and its U.S. Senator for three. He was a moderate Democrat whose signature issues were education, the environment and national security. But his greatest legacy might be in the hearts of ordinary Floridians. Graham died Tuesday at the age of 87.
“Senator Graham, first of all, I called mostly to say thank you for your many years of public service in such a dedicated fashion.” [Thank you very much, Jim.] “Senator Graham, I truly appreciate your dedication and admire and appreciate all your hard work for the students of Florida.” [Thank you.]
That’s Graham talking with members of the public back in 2007 on a WFSU call-in show called “Florida on the Line."
“Hey, Senator Graham, you’re one of my biggest heroes. I was born in Jacksonville. I’ve always admired you a great deal.” [Well, thank you, John. Where do you live now?] “I work at the University of Florida. I live in Gainesville.” [Okay. How are the Gators doing after Saturday night?] “Let’s not talk about that.” [Laughs.] “It’s too painful.”
Graham took questions about public policy and brainstormed with callers about how to make the state better.
“He was a Harvard-educated guy. He was absolutely one of the most brilliant human beings I’ve ever met in my life. But he also – despite coming from a very, frankly elite background and all this – he was incredibly relatable.”
Steve Schale is a Democratic strategist and Graham’s longtime friend.
“And it was because of those experiences with people. And he loved to tell those stories. And he loved seeing people he had met," Schale said. "He remembered them, and it was a core part of who he was.”
Graham is well known for his 400-plus workdays. He started them as a state senator after speaking to a group of teachers about what he saw as the problems in teaching civics. A woman named Sue Reilly told him she was sick of politicians telling teachers what to do and challenged him to try it himself. He did.
His workdays came to include stints as a deputy sheriff, a busboy, a trucker, a garbage collector, a nursing home attendant, a steelworker, a tomato picker and a bank teller.
Political scientist Susan MacManus says her students were most impressed by the fact that Graham worked the whole eight hours of the workday, not just the photo op.
“And he picked jobs that people wouldn’t think a politician at his level would do," MacManus said. "And yet that’s what endeared him so much to everyday people. Again, now we see so many stories about the distance between people in office and their constituents. Gone is the personal touch, and he certainly had that.”
The workdays also taught him how people’s lives could be bettered by public policy. As a parking attendant, for instance, he learned that lowering the height of a curb could make life much easier for people with disabilities. MacManus says Graham used the days as a chance to really get to know his constituents.
“By the time he left – if he was working in a restaurant, by the time he left the establishment, he would know every single person’s name that worked there, something about them personally, their family, and a little bit about what they did at the workplace," MacManus said. "All of that before he left, or he wouldn’t feel it was a successful workday.”
The workdays also contributed to the other thing that average Floridians remember about Graham: his notebooks. His official portrait as governor shows him holding one. He filled thousands, color-coded for each of the four seasons. They contain such pedestrian details as his weight and what he was wearing. But they also contained the seeds of legislation and the people he met.
Delaitre Hollinger was one of the latter. He’s now the co-executive director of the Florida Civil Rights Museum. When he was a student at Tallahassee Community College, Hollinger was elected president of the Student Government Association. The swearing-in happened to be on the day Graham and his daughter Gwen were visiting the campus, so Hollinger asked them to do the honors.
“And so, they agreed to it," Hollinger recalled, "and it was just a beautiful day.”
Like so many, Hollinger is trying to imagine Florida without Bob Graham.
“And now I have to say, ‘What do we do? What do we do now that the torch has been passed? Where do we go from here?’ And those are questions that are not cliché, but they do need to be answered.”
Schale says he doubts the Everglades would be what it is today if not for Graham.
“…the work he did on Forever Florida, and then leading a constitutional amendment ten years after he left office to ensure that that doc stamp money went into land preservation…I remember more than once staffing him in the halls of the Capitol as he came to Tallahassee…2018, 2019…still knocking on doors to talk about that. And so, the vast treasure that is still much of Florida – you know, a lot of that really is because of him and his work.”
Bob Graham never lost an election. He won nine, five of them statewide, averaging 61 percent of the vote.
