Mr. Graham retired from the Senate in 2005 after nearly four decades of public service. Apart from a short-lived campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004, he has never failed in his electoral campaign. He was also one of relatively few (five) Democrats elected governor of Florida in as many decades as the long-dominant state party lost its grip on what had become an unstable right-leaning swing state.
Mr. Graham, whose half-brother Philip, his sister-in-law Katharine and his nephew Donald were publishers of the Washington Post and made their fortunes early in real estate development, helping transform his father’s dairy and cattle farm into a planned suburban community eventually called Miami Lakes. He made millions of dollars from real estate investments while pursuing a political career. He won a seat in the Florida House of Representatives in 1966 and served in the state Senate through much of the 1970s.
His father, too a state legislator, had lost the Democratic primary for governor in 1944, a disappointment that Mr. Graham said fueled his interest in politics. With Governor Reubin Askew (D) term limited in 1978, Mr. Graham won a crowded Democratic primary to succeed him, then beat his Republican opponent, Jack Eckerd, of the Eckerd drugstore empire, in the general election.
Mr. Graham had little statewide recognition before the 1978 race and was seen in some circles as a wealthy South Florida liberal. But his campaign benefited from the “workdays” strategy orchestrated by pioneering political consultant Robert Squier.
Long known as “D. Robert Graham,” he began calling himself “Bob,” and he was filmed doing various jobs – waiting tables, laying bricks, paving roads, shoveling manure, packing citrus, teaching inner-city students – in all 67 counties across the state.
What began as a campaign stunt became a regular feature of Mr. Graham’s governorship. From the outset, he emphasized that his “work days” were not photo shoots. He didn’t put on an apron or a pair of work boots for an hour before leaving. He stayed after the camera crews left and worked a full day, getting to know his constituents and leaving an indelible impression on Floridians of all political persuasions.
“I learned not only how people make a living, but how they live their lives,” he later told the Orlando Sentinel.
In Tallahassee, the state capital, he led ambitious environmental efforts, including the Save Our Everglades campaign of 1983, which helped save the state’s most famous natural resource from development and ecological deterioration.
During Mr. Graham’s first term, Florida struggled a massive influx of refugees from Cuba and Haiti, and it took years to obtain federal assistance for their welfare and resettlement. Meanwhile, the state was grappling with crime increased, including rampant drug trafficking, and Miami’s Liberty City neighborhood was rocked by riots in 1980 after an all-white jury acquitted police officers who fatally beat a police officer. black insurance during a traffic stop.
As opponents of his 1982 re-election campaign accused him of being ‘soft on crime’, Mr Graham highlighted his support for the death penalty. The United States Supreme Court ended a moratorium on capital punishment in 1976, and Mr. Graham sent John Spenkelink, a convicted murderer, to the electric chair in May 1979. It was the first execution in Florida. in more than a decade. Enjoying broad popular support, he signed 16 death warrants as governor.
Mr. Graham was re-elected and won a seat in the U.S. Senate in 1986 by defeating one-term conservative Republican President Paula Hawkins. In Washington, he was less known for his legislation only for his ability to work across the aisle on bills affecting environmental and educational programs, health care for the elderly and infirm, and efforts to combat drug crime.
“What I think I do best is bring people together around an honorable and reasonable position,” Mr. Graham told the Tampa Tribune in 1998. “My approach to getting things done in the Senate is to start 50 meters. line and you start expanding in each direction until you get the majority. Very little happens, gets accomplished, when you start in the end zone.
Mr. Graham was floated several times as a potential vice presidential candidate, but never got the nod. Part of the problem, many political observers said, was his lack of charisma. He was made fun of for keeping notebooks in which he recorded the events of his day in minute detail. One entry read: “8:45 a.m. to 9:35 a.m. — Kitchen, family room. Have breakfast, peach branola cereal.
The post office once described him as a “sober, conscientious, unfailingly courteous grandfather who couldn’t light up a room with a barrel of Iraqi crude and a Zippo.”
His public persona changed significantly after the al-Qaeda terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, which occurred while he was chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Mr. Graham was among a handful of senators who became openly opposed to an invasion of Iraq, proposed by President George W. Bush, apparently on the grounds that the tyrannical regime of Saddam Hussein hid weapons of mass destruction.
From the Senate floor in October 2002, five months before the U.S.-led invasion, Mr. Graham supported with unusual fervor, believing that an attack on Iraq would distract from the pursuit of terrorist groups, which he believed posed a greater threat to the United States than that posed by Saddam Hussein. He also warned that an invasion could well provoke more terrorist attacks.
“We are not talking about a threat in 90 days! » » he roared with surprising emotion. “We are not talking about a threat that could arise in a year if nuclear materials were available! I’m talking about a threat that could occur this afternoon! …If you think that the American people will not face an additional threat, then, frankly, my friends – to use a blunt term – you will have blood on your hands.
Mr. Graham and Rep. Porter Goss (R-Fla.), who chaired the House Intelligence Committee and later served as CIA director, spent 10 months leading joint oversight hearings into the failures of the intelligence services linked to the September 11 attacks.
Released in 2003, their report called for an overhaul of intelligence collection, including dismantling barriers between intelligence agencies. Their work, however, has been largely overshadowed by the Independent 9/11 Commission, which offered similar recommendations.
That same year, Mr. Graham launched a campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, claiming that Bush had diverted resources and attention from the fight against terrorism to Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, which were never found.
“My life has been a progression, with a run for president being a logical conclusion,” he told the Post at the time. “What I was missing before September 11 was the ingredient of passion. Now I have the passion. But he attracted little support and dropped out before the primaries.
As a senator, Mr. Graham spent so much time in his home state that he never succeeded create a dynamic national personality, observed Tom Fiedler, a former editor of the Miami Herald who, as a reporter, had covered much of Mr. Graham’s early career. “He was never able to do nationally what he did in Florida,” Fiedler said. “He was always going to be the senator from Florida. It’s negative when you’re running for president.
Daniel Robert Graham was born in Coral Cables, Florida, on November 9, 1936, and grew up in a coral rock house in Pennsuco, near the Everglades, in Dade County (now Miami-Dade County). His father, Ernest “Cap” Graham, was a gruff and demanding cattle and dairy farmer, and his mother, the former Hilda Simmons, was a schoolteacher. Cap Graham’s first wife died and left him two sons, Philip and William, and a daughter, Mary.
Bob Graham worked for his father. He drove tractors, milked cows and showed prize Holsteins to the 4-H Club. At age 16, in 1954, he was named the county’s “best all-around teenager” by the Miami Herald. The newspaper noted his skills as a debater at Miami Senior High School, his leadership in student government, and his talent for ranching and raising Angus cattle, which he described as his future profession.
However, his older half-brother Philip, a graduate of Harvard Law School and 21 years older than Bob Graham, urged him to pursue other ambitions. At the time, Philip Graham was a Washington businessman who became publisher of the Post in 1946, six years after marrying Katharine Meyer, whose father, financier Eugene Meyer, owned the paper. Before committing suicide in 1963, Phil Graham mentored his younger brother, encouraging him to pursue law at Harvard and introducing him to members of Washington’s political elite.
“I felt like my father had passed away,” Bob Graham later told the Orlando Sentinel, speaking of Phil Graham’s death. He graduated from the University of Florida in 1959 and, as his half-brother advised, from Harvard Law School in 1962.
In 1959, he married Adele Khoury, a classmate at the University of Florida. They had four daughters, Gwendolyn, Glynn, Arva and Kendall. Gwendolyn Graham (Democrat of Florida) served in the United States House of Representatives from 2015 to 2017. She unsuccessfully ran for her party’s nomination for governor in 2018. The full list of survivors n was not immediately available.
After his presidential campaign, Mr. Graham established the Bob Graham Center for Public Service at the University of Florida. “My attitude to life is you’re always looking forward,” he told the Orlando Sentinel. “I have enjoyed and greatly enjoyed my political life. But I made the mental transition to the future.
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