Bob Graham, ex-US senator and Florida governor, dies at 87
TALAHASSEE, Fla. — Former U.S. Senator and two-term Florida Governor Bob Graham, who rose to national prominence as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee in the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks and as an early critic of the Iraq war, has died. He was 87.
Graham’s family announced the death on Tuesday in a statement on X from his daughter Gwen Graham.
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 delayed due to heart surgery in January 2003, and he never managed to gain enough traction with voters to catch up, dropping out in October. He did not stand for re-election in 2004 and was replaced by Republican Mel Martinez.
Graham was a man with many idiosyncrasies. He perfected the political gimmick of the “workdays,” where he spent a day doing a variety of odd jobs, from horse groomer to FBI agent, and 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 on the advice of his campaign, concerned that reporting on its contents could be a distraction or potentially embarrass the candidate.
Graham said the notebooks were a working tool for him and he was reluctant to describe his emotions or personal feelings in them.
“I watch them for phone calls, memos that need to be dictated, meetings that I want to follow up on and things that people promise to do,” he said.
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 failing to create 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. He said Bush had distorted intelligence data and argued that this was more serious than the sexual misconduct issues that led the US House of Representatives to impeach President Clinton in the late 1990s. It led him to launch his brief, unsuccessful presidential bid.
“The Iraq quagmire is a distraction that the Bush administration, and only the Bush administration, has created,” Graham said in 2003.
During his eighteen years in Washington, Graham worked well with colleagues from both parties, most notably Republican Connie Mack of Florida during their twelve years together in the Senate.
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 and was then elected governor in 1978. He was reelected 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 was re-elected 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.
Graham was president of the student body at Miami Senior High School and attended the University of Florida, graduating in 1959.
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, earning the nickname “Gov. Jello” for some early indecision. 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. They emerged from a teaching stint as a member of the Florida Senate Education Committee and then turned into a campaign gimmick that helped him relate to the average voter.
“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 turn it into policy to make their lives better,” 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.