By
The Associated Press
Former Florida senator and governor Bob Graham, who rose to national prominence as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee after the 2001 terrorist attacks and as an early critic of the Iraq war, has died. He was 87 years old.
Graham's family announced his death Tuesday in a statement posted on the social network X on his daughter Gwen Graham's account.
“We are deeply saddened to report the passing of a visionary leader, a dedicated public servant and, most importantly,
a loving husband, father, grandfather and great-grandfather
,” the family stated.
Graham, who served three terms as a senator, ran unsuccessfully in the 2004 Democratic presidential election, emphasizing his opposition to the invasion of Iraq.
However, his candidacy was delayed by heart surgery in January 2003, and he was never able to gain enough support from voters, so he withdrew in October. He did not run for re-election in 2004 and was replaced by Republican Mel Martínez.
Graham was a man of many peculiarities. He perfected the political trick of “work days,” in which he would spend a day doing a variety of jobs, from stable keeper to FBI agent, and kept a meticulous diary in which he noted almost everyone he spoke to, everything what he ate, the TV shows he watched, and even his golf scores.
Graham explained that the notebooks were a work tool for him and that he was reluctant to describe his emotions or personal feelings in them.
“I review them to see the calls that need to be made, the memos that need to be dictated, the meetings that I want to follow up on, and the things that people promise to do,” he said.
Graham
was one of the first to oppose the Iraq War
, stating that it diverted the United States' attention from the battle against terrorism focused on Afghanistan. He also criticized President George W. Bush for not having an occupation plan for Iraq after the US military ousted Saddam Hussein in 2003.
Graham said Bush brought the United States into the war by exaggerating claims about the danger posed by Iraqi weapons of destruction that were never found. He said Bush distorted intelligence and argued it was more serious than the sexual misconduct issues that led the House of Representatives to impeach President Bill Clinton in the late 1990s. This led him to launch his short and aborted presidential candidacy.
“The Iraq quagmire is a distraction that the Bush Administration, and only the Bush Administration, has created,” Graham said in 2003.
During his 18 years in Washington, Graham
worked well with colleagues from both parties
, particularly Florida Republican Connie Mack during their 12 years together in the Senate.
As a politician, few were better. Florida voters hardly considered him the wealthy, Harvard-educated lawyer that he was.
Graham's political career spanned five decades, beginning with his election to the Florida House of Representatives in 1966.
He won a seat in the state Senate in 1970 and was then elected governor in 1978. He was re-elected in 1982. Four years later, he won the first of his three terms in the Senate by unseating Republican Paula Hawkins.
Graham remained very popular among Florida voters, winning re-election by wide margins in 1992 and 1998, when he carried 63 of the 67 counties. In this last election, he defeated Charlie Crist, who later served as Republican governor from 2007 to 2011.
“It blew my mind, and I came to know even more why over the course of the campaign,” Crist declared Tuesday night. “I learned to respect him even more than he already respected me, and to love him for the good and decent man that he was.”
Crist, who has since changed parties and most recently served as a U.S. representative, said Graham was an influence on him.
“I always had the feeling that when I was governor, I was trying to govern for the people of Florida – in no way political or partisan – and I took that to heart and tried to, in some ways, emulate that,” Crist said.
Even when in Washington, Graham never lost sight of the state and the leadership in Tallahassee.
When Gov. Jeb Bush and the Republican-controlled Legislature eliminated the Board of Regents in 2001, Graham saw it as a move to politicize the state university system. The following year he led a successful petition campaign for a state constitutional amendment creating the Board of Governors to assume the role of regents.
Daniel Robert Graham was born on November 9, 1936
in Coral Gables, where his father, Ernest
Cap
Graham, had moved from South Dakota and established a large dairy business. As a teenager, young Bob milked cows, built fences and collected manure. One of his half-brothers, Phillip Graham, was an editor at
The Washington Post
and
Newsweek
until he took his own life in 1963, just a year after Bob Graham graduated from Harvard Law.
Graham was student body president at Miami Senior High School and attended the University of Florida, graduating in 1959.
In 1966 he was elected to the Florida Legislative Assembly, where he focused primarily on education and healthcare issues.
Graham had a shaky start as Florida's chief executive, and was nicknamed “Governor Jello” for some early indecision. He shook off that label thanks to his management of several serious crises.
As governor he also signed numerous death warrants, founded the Save the Manatee Club with artist Jimmy Buffett, and led efforts to establish several environmental programs.
Graham pushed a bond program to buy beaches and barrier islands threatened by development and launched the
Save Our Everglades
program to protect the state's water supply, wetlands and endangered species.
Graham
was also known for his 408 “days on the job
,” in which he served as a housewife, boxing announcer, flight attendant, and arson investigator. These “work days” arose from her teaching work as a member of the Florida Senate Education Committee and later became a campaign gimmick that helped her relate to the average voter.
“This has been a very important part of my development as a public official, my learning on a very human level of what the people of Florida expect, what they want, what their aspirations are and then trying to interpret that and turn it into policies that improve their lives,” Graham said in 2004 as he finished his last job as a Christmas gift wrapper.
After leaving public life in 2005,
Graham devoted much of his time to a public policy center
that bears his name at the University of Florida, and to lobbying the Legislature to require more Civics Education classes in the state's public schools. .
In June 2010, Graham was one of five members selected by President Barack Obama to serve on an independent commission to investigate BP's massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, which threatened marine life and beaches in the United States. several southeastern Gulf states.