The year was 1980, and Republican Clay Shaw won a seat in Congress from an overwhelmingly Democratic district in Fort Lauderdale. He had lots of help from Ronald Reagan, who was elected president that year atop the same ballot.
"I don't kid myself," Shaw said Wednesday. "Without him being at the top of the ticket, and the landslide he produced, I don't know if I'd be here."
Shaw, who has been elected 11 more times, will be among the Floridians at the funeral for Reagan on Friday at the National Cathedral in Washington. An estimated 4,000 people have been invited to the private service, including all four living former presidents, as well as foreign leaders, political figures and friends of the Reagans.
Gov. Jeb Bush and first lady Columba Bush will attend, as will other members of the state's congressional delegation. Security will be extraordinarily tight, with arrangements handled by the U.S. Army Military District of Washington, which handles all funeral arrangements for former presidents.
Former U.S. Rep. Bill McCollum of Longwood, who like Shaw went to Congress in 1981 as part of what was known as the Reagan Revolution, also received an invitation to the funeral.
"I feel part of the Reagan Revolution," McCollum said.
McCollum said former members of Congress were given priority to attend in place of current members who opted not to go.
McCollum, whose office is decorated with pictures and other mementos of himself with the former president, recalled a phone call from Reagan. The president, himself a former Chicago Cubs announcer, called McCollum back while taking in a Cubs game at Wrigley Field with play-by-play man Harry Caray.
"He was doing business between innings," McCollum said. "A page came running up to me, all out of breath and said, "C-C-Congressman McCollum, President Reagan's on the phone, for you!"
Reagan's buoyant optimism helped shape Florida by encouraging a generation of conservatives to get into politics.
In the 1980 presidential campaign, a young law school student named Charlie Crist went to a Hilton hotel in downtown Birmingham, Ala., to shake Reagan's hand. Crist remembered how Secret Service agents seemed nervous about a sharp-pointed fountain pen he was holding.
"He indicated to someone behind him to give me a business card, and it was an old card. It said "Governor Reagan' on it," Crist said. "But in that very brief exchange you could tell what a nice guy he was."
Crist, who attended both of President Reagan's inaugurals, wanted to go to the funeral, but space was too limited. Instead, he said, he drove to a conference in Orlando earlier Wednesday so he could watch part of the funeral procession on TV.
"Obviously, I would love to have been there," Crist said.
Former Gov. Bob Martinez, who credits a White House meeting with Reagan as instrumental in his decision to run in 1986, said he would not go to the funeral, citing family issues. Martinez said he isn't sure he would have run for governor without Reagan's words of encouragement.
"He is a friend. He did a lot for me," Martinez said.
Shaw was one of 52 members of Congress first elected in 1980. He is one of seven still in office, and the only one from Florida.
On Tuesday night, Shaw said, they went to the House Rules Committee to reminisce about the days when Reagan was at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue and Tip O'Neill was speaker of the House. "We sat down, had a few drinks and just talked about how things were," Shaw said. "It was a different era. Politics was a lot less mean-spirited than it is today, and I think Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill had a lot to do with that."
