Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Want insight into Tom Lee? Meet his dad

The state Senate president from Brandon is a lot like his father.

By LETITIA STEIN
Published September 9, 2005

Everyone knows where the political bug started in the Lee family. The 74-year-old family patriarch has quietly influenced politics for decades in east Hillsborough. He was instrumental in starting his son's career.

In 1996, Tom, then 34, jumped into the race to replace Sen. Malcolm Beard, a Seffner Republican who remains a close friend of his father's. Until then, Tom Lee mostly had expressed disdain for the government circles that fascinated his father. He had no political experience, either.

Jim managed his son's campaign.

"Obviously, Tom won by himself, but I think that his father's experience in the political arena was an asset to him," said Mark Proctor, a Brandon political consultant who ran against Lee in the Republican primary.

Now Proctor sends candidates to the elder Lee for advice.

"He's got some good historical perspective on the area," Proctor said.

Lee's friendship with Beard, a popular former sheriff, did not hurt his son's campaign either. When Beard endorsed the younger Lee, he sailed into office.

For Jim Lee, politics is an avocation.

One of his three degrees is a master's in public administration from the University of Oklahoma. He ran unsuccessfully for the state House in the 1970s. Since then, he has campaigned for scores of elected officials in Hillsborough.

The son of a small businessman from Texas, Jim served for two decades in the Air Force, ultimately working in military intelligence. In the service, he met Ann, his wife of 49 years.

In 1969, they moved to Brandon with four children. Ann had grown up here, when Brandon was a small town where all businesses closed on Wednesday afternoons.

All four of Lee's children stayed in Hillsborough, close enough to return home for roasted pork and brownies at Sunday dinner. Tom even named his son, Brandon, for the area.

Today, the Lee clan includes eight grandchildren.

Tom and his brother went into the home-building business with their father at family owned Sabal Homes. Jim remains president of the company at 74, an age when many of his peers are retired.

That's part of the reason that Jim grimaced at first when Tom decided to seek a state post on Florida's Cabinet.

Jim hoped his son would return to the family's business.

"Frankly, I was not only disappointed, I was a little angry," Jim said about his son's decision to run for state office. "We had been looking forward to him coming back to our company, where we really need him."

But he realized he was being selfish, he said. He knew Tom could contribute to Florida as its chief financial officer.

"I'm like a bull with a ring in its nose," Jim Lee said. "Whichever way I'm pulled, I go."

Jim' wife can see where age has tempered her husband's strong opinions.

"He's mellowed out now," said Ann Lee, who sometimes plays referee between Tom and his father.

Still, the stronged-headed father and the strong-headed son clash.

"I don't think that Tom is ever going to accept everything that his father says. He's determined to be his own man," said Ann Lee, 69.

"But he's going to take advantage of the wisdom."

A standing-room-only crowd gathered last week at the Greater Brandon Chamber of Commerce's offices. Next to his tall son, Jim looks almost fragile. His tanned face is lined.

But the elder Lee is at ease in the limelight. He works the crowd, speaking without looking at his notes.

In contrast, his son's head bows over a prepared speech.

Afterward, Jim downplays the friends that call Tom a chip off the old block.

"I think that's probably an insult to him," he said.

Still, his son will continue to seek his father's advice.

"I would expect that from time to time he will run something by me," he said.

Letitia Stein can be reached at 661-2443 or lstein@sptimes.com

[Last modified September 8, 2005, 10:42:04]