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From dropout to becoming state senator

Mike Fasano quit high school to go to work to support his family. He has created a life and career of service to others.

By BRIDGET HALL GRUMET and COLLINS CONNER
Published May 16, 2005

In one 18-month period in the mid-1980s, the IRS came after him for back taxes, voters handed him a crushing defeat at the polls and he lost his job.

At age 28 - with no income, no marketable skills, no education - Mike Fasano had hit rock bottom.

"What do I do now?," he thought. "I've got a mortgage payment, a mom to take care of."

He sold his house. He shipped his mom to a relative. He scrambled for work. And he plunged deeper into the one arena that offered him hope:

Politics.

These days Fasano, 47, is a state senator with a decade's experience in the Legislature, a pit bull reputation and a habit of closing conversations with "God bless."

In Tallahassee, he has gained and lost leadership positions in both houses. His district includes North Pinellas down to State Road 580, plus western Pasco, Hernando and Citrus counties. His power base is in Pasco.

He's single and lives a disciplined, almost ascetic life. No alcohol. No red meat. Twenty minutes on the treadmill, 15 more with free weights, three times a week.

During the session, he's at the capitol by 5:30 a.m. Back in New Port Richey, he often leaves home so early and returns so late, his mother, who lives with him, doesn't see him at all.

If all this sounds too grueling, too single-minded, you should know that politics is more than Fasano's job.

It's his saving grace. * * *

Fasano's father, Alexander, was a meat-cutter in Long Island. His mother, Joan, was an English war bride. Mike was the youngest of five children.

In 1971, when Fasano was 13, his dad was diagnosed with cancer. Hoping warm winters would ease his suffering, the family moved to Pasco.

With his parents focused on his father's illness, Fasano started missing class and befriending the subdivision retirees. They helped him build bird houses and let him serve coffee at bingo games.

Fascinated by politics even then, Fasano spent hours in front of the television, tape-recording the Watergate hearings. His mother called it a "lonely life" for a boy.

On Christmas Day 1973, an ambulance took Fasano's father to what was then Tarpon Springs General Hospital, where he died Jan. 5, 1974. His widow, with two minor children but no job or driver's license, was penniless.

Fasano, then 15, quit school and went to work, mowing lawns, installing sprinkler systems and helping deliver newspapers. At 18, he got his own newspaper route for the St. Petersburg Times, ultimately tripling the route's original size.

"This is a guy who got up at 4 a.m. to work two different shifts to pay the bills and take care of his mother," said longtime friend Richard Corcoran. "He knows what it's like to live paycheck to paycheck."

But politics was his calling.

By 22, he was a leader of the Pasco GOP, heading local Republican clubs and coordinating the successful state House campaign of John Renke II, the father of Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge John Renke III.

For the older club members, Fasano went beyond what was expected of a club officer, organizing bus trips, first to Tallahassee, then to Sea World.

"A lot of those people do not have a lot of social life," said Tom Weightman, a Republican and Pasco's former superintendent of schools. "Some didn't drive. Mike was an outlet for them.

"Those people would do anything for Mike Fasano." * * *

Still, Fasano was brash and contentious, attacking Democrats, the media and some fellow Republicans.

Then, in 1985, he got hit for nearly $4,000 in back taxes for deductions the IRS disallowed.

In 1986, he ran for the Pasco County Commission and lost. A week later, he was fired as a Times carrier in a dispute over the newspaper's plan to split his circulation district.

"Ten years of having a job where I didn't need (special skills), then all of a sudden, having nothing, I'm telling you, I was lost," Fasano said.

He sold his house, sent his mother to his sister's place in Spring Hill and rented an apartment. He got his GED and briefly attended junior college but did not complete work for a degree.

A friend from church gave him a job with the investment firm Dean Witter Reynolds (now Morgan Stanley). He flunked his first licensing exam, took a cram course and passed it on the second try.

He bought another house and brought his mom back home.

"And I plugged away at politics," he said.

In 1992, he ran for the state House of Representatives. His opponent called him "the Prince of Mud" for his campaign tactics. He lost in the primary and attributes the humbling rejection to being "too deeply involved in factions within the party apparatus."

In 1994, he won election to the state House, spending two terms there before going to the Senate, where he is serving his first full term.

In Tallahassee, Fasano is a man of contradictions: A tax-cutter who supports social service funding, a friend to both consumers and business, a sometimes-ruthless politician who protects the elderly and disadvantaged.

In 2001, he abruptly resigned from his powerful position as House majority leader after complaints about his bare-knuckled management and demands that fellow Republicans vote the party line.

Yet Sen. Ken Pruitt, R-Port St. Lucie, notes that Fasano broke ranks with the GOP and Gov. Jeb Bush to oppose the 2003 telephone rate hike.

"The easy course was to go along to get along, but he was like a pit bull," Pruitt said. "He said, "No, this isn't right."'

Fasano quickly reacts to news stories about someone in trouble, often intervening with personal assistance or a local bill addressing the problem.

The payoff: in Pasco, Fasano is the Republican godfather. He recruits, grooms and sometimes endorses candidates. And he wants to stay in politics himself. He can run once more for the Senate before term limits force him out. After that, he's thought about running for Congress or something else.

For him, politics is both benefactor and lifeblood.

"To go from a high school dropout to ... be in public office for 10 years, majority leader of the House, state senator, chairman of a very powerful appropriations committee.

"God," he said, "has blessed me.

"Pinch me."

[Last modified May 16, 2005, 01:12:02]