Gov. Bush names circuit judge
Steve Rushing, Swiftmud's assistant general counsel, will start next month on the 5th Judicial Circuit bench.
By MICHAEL KRUSE
Published October 8, 2005
BROOKSVILLE - Steve Rushing is a Vietnam veteran, an editorial cartoonist and a former high school class president and captain of the football team, who is now a father of four living in the rolling hills out toward Ridge Manor. He calls himself an "idealist."
He's also Hernando County's new 5th Judicial Circuit judge.
Gov. Jeb Bush made the announcement this week. Rushing is set to start in the first week of November. He has a meeting Monday with administrative Judge Daniel Merritt.
Rushing got the personal call from Bush about 4:15 p.m. Thursday.
"Whenever you get that call, it's always a surprise," he said Friday on his cell phone while driving from a seminar in Ocala to a meeting in Tampa. "It's a call you never forget."
The 59-year-old St. Petersburg native works for the Southwest Florida Water Management District, where he's the assistant general counsel.
But he's active throughout the local law community. He serves as the secretary and newsletter editor for the Hernando County Bar Association and is also the vice chairman of the Citrus-Hernando Inn of Courts.
And he has worn the black robe before.
From 1989 to 1999, he was a Pinellas County judge. All three times that he ran for election there, he ran unopposed.
"I liked to be thought of as firm but fair," Rushing said. "I always had my dockets current. You've got a certain pressure to move cases, but you also need to take the time to make sure everybody gets their day in court. Justice delayed is often justice denied."
He advocated victim impact panels in cases involving drunken driving deaths and injuries.
"Maybe this is a way of making sense of the loss of a loved one," he was quoted as saying on the Web site for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. "I'm making it a standard part of my probation, and I'm hoping other judges will, too."
His boss calls him an ideal employee.
"He's got a tremendous moral compass," Swiftmud general counsel Bill Bilenky said Friday afternoon. "What he has is a unique ability to see the merits on both sides of an argument. So I think he's brilliantly suited for where he's headed."
But a circuit judgeship is different from a county slot.
The dockets will still be big - dockets are big everywhere, especially in growing Hernando - but the cases that come through circuit courts are more severe: capital murder on the criminal side, civil cases dealing with millions of dollars.
"This is definitely the next level," he said. "It's going to be very challenging - but also very rewarding."
Rushing called himself an "idealist" in his interview with the 5th Circuit Judicial Nominating Commission during the first week of August at the Hernando County Government Center.
He graduated in 1964 from St. Petersburg High School and in 1968 from the University of Florida. Then he volunteered for the Army. He served almost a year in Vietnam.
The GI Bill helped him get through the Stetson University College of Law, from which he graduated in 1975.
He worked his first two years out as a public defender in Bartow in Polk County and the next 41/2 as a prosecutor in the state attorney's offices in Clearwater in Pinellas County and then in Dade City in Pasco County. Then he took a pay cut to work for the Florida Bar Council, prosecuting cases against crooked lawyers.
He worked in a private practice in St. Petersburg for two years before his decadelong run as a county judge in Pinellas.
And about those editorial cartoons: He started drawing "Legal Insanity" during law school. He has had more than 300 published, he said, and three different books of them. They were on exhibit in the Brooksville City Hall Art Gallery last summer.
Rushing has called the North Suncoast home for the past four years. He lives off State Road 50 east of Brooksville and west of Ridge Manor with his wife, Mia, and his four kids: Holly, 21, Whitney, 18, Timothy, 14, and Matthew, 12.
Since moving here, he has been certified by the Florida Supreme Court as a professional mediator and also as a family law mediator. He also has been a judge in Hernando County's Teen Court program. That, of course, is all in addition to his role for the past 31/2 years as litigation attorney for Swiftmud.
"Having been a trial lawyer, then a trial judge . . . I have been able to observe many different judges," he said in his interview with the nominating commission. "Now I feel I would have the opportunity to be an even better judge."
Opportunity granted.
Michael Kruse can be reached at 352 848-1434 or mkruse@sptimes.com