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Florida loses a tower of integrity

James L. Redman's public life showed how character can transcend politics.

By MARTIN DYCKMAN
Published May 29, 2006

There may be a soul somewhere with more courage and integrity than James L. Redman devoted to the people of Florida. But he or she would be hard to find.

The former legislator from Plant City, who died Monday of the cancer that he had fought for 28 years, was a hero in every possible way. He earned what was so often said of him - that he had been "the conscience" of the House.

"He had a very, very strong moral code," former colleague Marshall Harris of Miami, who served with him on the Joint Legislative Auditing Committee, said the other day. "It was probably as strict a moral code as anybody I've met in the Legislature. It was based on his religion. He saw things in black and white."

One person Redman battled was Tom Adams, the former lieutenant governor and a fellow Democrat whom he had tried to impeach in 1974. It was an ironic if not cosmic coincidence that Adams died in an automobile accident last week only a few hours after Jim Redman drew his last breath. The news brought to mind an indelible memory of Redman standing at his desk in the old House chamber, knowing he would lose the debate to those, including Gov. Reubin Askew, who contended that censure would suffice for the misuse of a public employee to run Adams' private farm. He pointed to the law books on his desk. Every member had copies. The reasons are in there, he said. Read them.

But the Adams conflict was hardly the only, or even the most serious, of the battles Jim took on for the people of Florida. As alternating chairs of the Joint Legislative Auditing Committee, Redman and Sen. George Firestone of Miami were also in the political version of mortal combat with half of the members of Florida's powerful elected Cabinet, two of whom - Education Commissioner Floyd T. Christian and Treasurer/Insurance Commissioner Tom O'Malley - eventually went to prison for taking kickbacks. Simultaneously, the auditor general, whom they supervised, was quietly assisting a federal investigation of Comptroller Fred O. Dickinson Jr., who was also the banking commissioner. That all took place simultaneously with the Watergate scandal, and comparisons were drawn. One significant difference was that Redman and Firestone were rocking their own party's boat. When assignments were issued for the 1975-76 term, they lost not only their chairmanships but even their seats on the auditing committee.

Jim had one more fight to wage, against an unprecedented second term for Speaker Donald L. Tucker of Tallahassee. Redman would have won, his colleague George Sheldon recalled last week, but for a directive from the House leadership that members should sign their "secret" ballots.

That was the end of his political career, or so he thought. Jim Redman went home to practice law, only to learn that he had multiple myeloma and that he likely had only six months to live. When we talked about that a few years ago, Jim said that the doctors had told him he had survived it longer than anyone else they knew. Gov. Bob Graham recalled him to active duty in 1983 to replace one of three Hillsborough County commissioners who had been purged for corruption.

Jim was so conservative on some issues that when the Republicans tried to recruit him he famously told them they were too liberal. But he was a fierce champion of the public schools and the author of a 1968 amendment to strengthen Florida's constitutional prohibition against aid to religious schools.

The lesson he taught me, as I wrote in 1993, is that character transcends politics; "issues come and issues go, but there is no alternative to integrity." That occasion was on the dedication of the Leon County library in honor of the late LeRoy Collins, who is widely regarded as Florida's greatest governor. Now they both belong to the ages.

Martin Dyckman is a former Times editorial writer and columnist.

[Last modified May 29, 2006, 05:46:56]