MIAMI – Former Florida Governor and US Senator Bob Graham has died.
Graham, who chaired the Intelligence Committee after the 2001 terrorist attacks and opposed the invasion of Iraq, was 87 years old.
His family announced the death on Tuesday in a statement on X from his daughter Gwen Graham.
The Florida Democratic Party released the following statement on Graham’s passing:
“There are no words that can fully express what Bob Graham meant to the state of Florida. A giant in Florida politics, Bob set the standard for every elected official who followed – both Democrat and Republican. He lived a life that most of us could only live. dream of, one in which he impacted the lives of millions of people with an unparalleled heart for service and a moral compass that always pointed to the truth. Our thoughts go out to Adele, Gwen and the entire Graham family as they mourn their loss and celebrate his incredible life.
“Part of the DNA of every Democrat in Florida is living the example Bob Graham set for us. As we honor his legacy, may we all love and serve Florida as he did – with a twinkle in our eye and a curiosity about things unknown.”
Graham, who served three terms in the Senate, made an unsuccessful bid for the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, emphasizing his opposition to the invasion of Iraq.
But his bid was postponed due to heart surgery in January 2003. Unable to gain enough traction with voters to catch up, he bowed out in October. He did not stand for re-election in 2004 and was replaced by Republican Mel Martinez.
A man of many idiosyncrasies, Graham perfected the political gimmick of the “workdays,” spending a day doing a variety of jobs, from horse stable mouse to FBI agent. He kept a meticulous diary, recording almost everyone he spoke to, everything he ate, the TV shows he watched and even his golf scores.
But he closed the notebooks to the media during his short-lived presidential bid.
Graham was an early opponent of the Iraq war, saying it diverted American attention from the fight against terrorism in Afghanistan. He also criticized President George W. Bush for not creating an occupation plan for Iraq after the U.S. military ousted Saddam Hussein in 2003.
Graham said Bush drew the United States into the war by exaggerating claims about the danger of Iraqi weapons of destruction that were never found. Graham claimed that Bush had distorted intelligence data and that this was more serious than the sexual misconduct issues that led to President Clinton’s impeachment in the late 1990s.
It spurred Graham to launch his brief presidential bid.
“The Iraq quagmire is a distraction that the Bush administration, and only the Bush administration, has created,” Graham said in 2003.
As a politician, few were better. Florida voters hardly regarded him as the wealthy, Harvard-educated lawyer he was.
Graham’s political career spanned five decades, beginning with his election to the Florida House of Representatives in 1966.
He won a seat in the Senate in 1970, was elected governor in 1978 and re-elected in 1982. Four years later, he won the first of three terms in the U.S. Senate when he unseated Republican incumbent Paula Hawkins.
Graham remained highly popular with Florida voters and won reelection by wide margins in 1992 and 1998, when he carried 63 of 67 counties.
Even while in Washington, Graham never took his eyes off the state and leadership in Tallahassee.
When Governor Jeb Bush and the Republican-controlled Legislature eliminated the Board of Regents in 2001, Graham saw it as an attempt to politicize the state university system. The following year, he led a successful petition for a state constitutional amendment, creating the Board of Governors to assume the role of the regents.
Daniel Robert Graham was born on November 9, 1936 in Coral Gables, where his father, Ernest “Cap” Graham, had moved from South Dakota and built a large dairy business. As a teenager, young Bob milked cows, built fences and shoveled manure. One of his half-brothers, Phillip Graham, was publisher of The Washington Post and Newsweek until he committed suicide in 1963, just a year after Bob Graham graduated from Harvard Law.
In 1966, he was elected to the Florida Legislature, where he focused largely on education and health care issues.
But Graham got off to a shaky start as Florida’s CEO and was nicknamed “Governor Jello” because of his early indecisiveness. He shook that label by his handling of several serious crises.
As governor, he also signed numerous death warrants, co-founded the Save the Manatee Club with entertainer Jimmy Buffett and led efforts to establish several environmental programs.
Graham pushed through a bond program to buy beaches and barrier islands threatened by development, and also started the Save Our Everglades program to protect the state’s water supply, wetlands and endangered species.
Graham was also known for his 408 “workdays,” which included stints as a housewife, boxing ring announcer, flight attendant and arson investigator.
“This has been a very important part of my development as a public servant, learning on a very human level what the people of Florida expect, what they want, what their aspirations are and then trying to interpret that and create a policy to make sure that will happen.” improve their lives,” Graham said in 2004 as he completed his last job as a Christmas gift wrapper.
After leaving public life in 2005, Graham spent much of his time at a public policy center named after him at the University of Florida, where he pushed the Legislature to increase civics classes in America’s public schools the state to demand.
Graham was one of five members selected by President Barack Obama in June 2010 for an independent commission to investigate a massive BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that threatened marine life and beaches along several southeastern Gulf states.
Here is a social media post from the family about Graham’s death:
CBS Miami Team
