Dockery enters Senate with ease

When she ran for the state House in 1996, the contest was heated. She ran unopposed this time.

By JENNIFER LIBERTO
© St. Petersburg Times
published August 17, 2002

LAKELAND -- Paula Dockery's first bid for a state Senate seat was a tad easier than her first state House of Representatives run: a door-knocking, mudslinging campaign topped off by a defamation lawsuit her husband later filed against the opposition.

This time, she ran unopposed.

The Polk County Republican clinched Senate District 15, which in part represents eastern Hernando County, on July 27, the last day for candidate filings. She also became the first out-of-county senator to represent Hernando in a decade.

"I was very pleasantly surprised that nobody got in," said Dockery, 41.

Earlier this year, the state Legislature divided Hernando into two districts, based on 2000 census data. Most of those living east of Deltona Boulevard are now in Senate District 15

The district spreads more than 100 miles, spanning parts of Hernando, Polk, Lake, Sumter and Osceola counties. While the district represents 55 percent of Hernando residents, Hernando's population is only 18 percent of the district's 400,000 people, who mostly, like Dockery, live in Lakeland.

Some Hernando County residents worry that Dockery will overlook Hernando's needs in the next session.

"I don't think she's going to ignore it, but Hernando's not going to be that important to her," said Dom Cabriele, chairman of the Hernando Democratic Executive Committee.

Dockery disagrees, and said Hernando will benefit from the issues she plans to focus on for the entire district, including better growth and development, infrastructure, transportation, agriculture, environment and water use.

"I think the people of Hernando County are really going to fare well," Dockery said. "I understand their apprehensions, and the best thing I can do is just be out there, talk to them and to hear what they have to say and do my best job of representing them."

To relieve those fears, Dockery may open a one-person branch office in either Spring Hill or Brooksville.

Born in Queens, N.Y., Dockery has lived in Florida since she was 6. She grew up in Broward County and earned a bachelor's degree in political science and master's degrees in mass communications from the University of Florida. She married her college sweetheart in 1985. She moved to Lakeland, because her husband, whom she divorced three years later, worked in the Lakeland office of then-U.S. Sen. Lawton Chiles, a Democrat.

When she moved to Lakeland, Dockery worked as an underwriter at State Farm insurance, but squeezed in campaign work. Although she loved politics, she preferred staying behind the scenes. She still gets the jitters whenever she must give a speech, she said.

"But, I soon found out you don't make a living running state legislative campaigns," Dockery said with a chuckle.

In 1996, she organized her own campaign, with some fund-raising help from her second husband, well-connected millionaire C.C. "Doc" Dockery, whom she married in 1989.

The campaign was ugly. The Florida Democratic Party distributed campaign brochures that said the Dockerys cheated on their tax returns. Actually, C.C. Dockery got into an argument with the Internal Revenue Service about the amount of taxes owed on a financial gift to his children. The claim was later dismissed by the U.S. tax court, which said Dockery didn't owe any more.

C.C. Dockery, 69, sued the party for defamation in 1997. Last October, the 2nd Court of Appeal dropped the case because the judges agreed he is a public figure. That requires the charge meet the stricter definition of "actual malice," which means proving the defamatory statement showed false and reckless disregard of truth.

Paula Dockery was elected anyway, and went on to serve three House terms, most recently chairing the general appropriations committee. She also chaired the environmental protection committee and served as majority whip.

Dockery's platform includes two issues that seem at odds: property rights and the environment. In 2000, she sponsored the sovereign lands bill, a controversial piece of legislation that tried -- but failed -- to give 100,000 acres of public shoreline to private interests. She still sees property rights and land acquisition as a priority.

Yet she also champions environmental issues. She sponsored legislation to fund Everglades restoration, although the final law included an provision that makes it difficult for people to challenge development.

She sponsored legislation to offer conservation easement payments to ranch and timber landowners. This year, she tried to stop a raid on preservation dollars. Her environmental work prompted the state Agriculture Department to rename a 5-mile Polk County hiking trail in Lake Wales Ridge State Forest in her honor.

"I don't know why people think the two have to be mutually exclusive," she said. "Farmers are huge proponents of property rights and are the best environmentalists."

Next year, Dockery wants to continue her environmental work by chairing the natural resources committee. Other committees she would like to serve on include appropriations, rules and transportation.

"I know from my driving to Hernando that you guys have some serious road problems and some drainage problems as well," she said.

But her top transportation goal is making certain high-speed rail becomes a reality in Florida.

In 2000, voters approved a ballot initiative to connect five urban cities by high-speed rail. Dockery's husband financed the campaign with at least $2.7-million of his own money. Construction must start by November 2003, according to the constitution.

Critics charge that Dockery's public support of the train in the Legislature is a conflict of interest. Such criticism is unsubstantiated, she said, because neither she nor her husband would directly benefit from the train. They own no land that the train would go through.

Now she wants the Legislature to move the necessary state dollars into the project, so Florida can try to capture matching federal funds.

"The money is there, we just need to rededicate some of it that's going to one mass-transit project to another," Dockery said. "I think the funding issue is a false issue, we can easily do this."

-- Times researcher John Martin contributed to this report.

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