TALLAHASSEE - It is not true that the lobbyists always get what they wish from the Legislature. Last Tuesday, for example, the Senate elected Tom Lee as its president for the next two years He comes with a memory that is long enough, and clear enough, to remember when they did not contribute generously to his campaigns.
It was early in 1996. Lee, a Brandon homebuilder and an honest-to-goodness political outsider, was preparing for what became a three-way Republican primary to succeed Sen. Malcolm Beard, R-Seffner, who was retiring. He went to a party function in Tallahassee.
"I met a lot of lobbyists," Lee told the Senate Tuesday. "I got a lot of warm smiles, encouragement, and what seemed like offers to help. I left with a fistful of business cards . . ."
Leaving Tallahassee, he drove the wrong way on I-10 for 45 minutes before he saw the sign that said 146 miles to Pensacola. That, he said, was when he knew he had the right IQ for public service.
But he was happy because he had all those business cards. Trouble was, when he got home, "I couldn't even get a returned phone call." So Lee, his friends and family had to campaign the old-fashioned way. They raised all they could locally and walked door to door.
(The secretary of state's records show that by mid-June, Lee had raised nearly $60,000. But how much of that came from Tallahassee, where all those lobbyists roam? Five contributions totaling $1,650.)
"By the middle of June," Lee said, "we had raised enough money locally, developed a grass-roots network and gained the endorsement of Sen. Beard. Shortly thereafter, all those March phone calls began to get returned, by some of the very lobbyists sitting in this gallery."
Looking at the gallery, Lee said he would call some of them by name to stand and be recognized. But then he said he was "just kidding," which disappointed everyone listening except the lobbyists.
Lee said it took him a while to figure out that "the timing of all of those belated returned phone calls was no coincidence." The Tallahassee pros had done their polling, "and I was looking like a safe bet."
(They placed their bets big time. From mid-June through October, lobbies with Tallahassee addresses sent Lee more than 70 contributions totaling nearly $60,000. That figure doesn't include some $61,000 in checks and services provided by the Republican Party - which got the money mostly from lobbyists - after Lee won the nomination.)
"What I learned from this experience," Lee said, "is that special interests seldom get involved in your campaign until one day after they're convinced you are going to win, and their support is not as much a contribution as an investment."
He also realized, he said, "that the same people who wouldn't return my phone calls until they knew I was a winner probably weren't going to return them once I was gone. And that's why you don't trade old friends for new ones."
One of his oldest friends, a man named Jim "Bo" Graves, wasn't there to hear it. But his widow and wife were, and his picture appeared on the large screen over the rostrum. Though dying of cancer, Graves had insisted on campaigning door to door for Lee, and when he could no longer walk, he drove.
"So if over the past eight years, I appear to have been offended by the power and at times the arrogance of special interests, if I have spoken out about how I believe the proliferation of unregulated money in our political process is destroying the foundation of our democracy, if I have been impatient with the shallowness of politics," Lee said, "I make no apologies, because I want my public service to honor the memory of people like Jim Bo Graves."
You may be wondering if this guy is too good to be true. And if you are a cynic, you may be puzzled how Lee can reconcile those words with the fact that he has raised more than $1-million, much of it from or through lobbyists, for his political committee, Floridians Uniting for a Stronger Tomorrow Inc., since creating it 13 months ago.
So consider this: It was Lee who single-handedly stopped the electricity deregulation steamroller a few years ago. It was Lee who publicly disclosed those contributions long before he had to see www.flust.com) and who has rewritten the rules to require timely disclosure from everyone else in the Legislature.
Lee said he wanted money to defend Republican senators who might be targeted in the primaries because of their opposition to Gov. Jeb Bush and the medical lobbies during last year's drawn-out, multisession malpractice debate. That didn't happen, so if he has to use it in 2005 or later, Lee said, it will be "institutional, not partisan."
That was a message to the lobbies. If they try to run a propaganda campaign like the one against John McKay's tax reforms a few years ago, this time the targets will fight back.
