An American Son: A Memoir (23 page)

I was still mostly unknown to Floridians outside my district, but my leadership of the campaign committee and my impending speakership were the beginning of my ascent to statewide political prominence. I was eager for the responsibilities and enhanced public profile my new leadership role would give me. I was not, however, prepared for the greater scrutiny accorded to prominent political figures. In the months following my election as speaker, I would make political and personal decisions that would cause me considerable political difficulty and embarrassment in the future when I tried to explain them to a skeptical press.

I spent much of the summer of 2004 cultivating relationships with the party’s leading donors, many of whom didn’t know me. I authorized my
political committee to pay a retainer to my fund-raiser, Bridget Nocco, who organized the meetings and would later serve as the finance director for house campaigns. I paid my consultant Richard Corcoran a retainer so he could afford to take time away from his law practice and help my political operation. And in the fall of 2004, I also authorized my committee to hire my nephew Landy, as well as Jeanette’s brother Carlos and her cousin Mauricio, and I sent them to help several house campaigns around the state. They were too young to rent a car, so we rented my mother in law’s old van to use as transportation.

I didn’t consider these decisions to be anything less than practical and appropriate. Bridget and Richard were instrumental in organizing my political activities. And I needed young, inexpensive campaign aides to help me, and Landy, Carlos and Mauricio were capable and available. But years later, as a U.S. Senate candidate, some of the press would see things differently. The retainers paid to Richard and Bridget would be deemed lavish. And I would be accused of funneling money to my relatives. I didn’t have enough experience to know it then, but I would learn in the years ahead that every decision I made, even the smallest personnel and spending decisions, could be potentially exploited by my political adversaries.

I had my own reelection race in 2004. A young Democratic activist challenged me, and while my district was safely Republican, I didn’t want to take any chances. As the future speaker of the Florida House, I couldn’t afford to win reelection by a smaller margin than expected, which might encourage a late challenge to my speakership. I raised a considerable sum for my campaign and used it to run television and radio advertisements. I would win reelection by a wide margin, but the full-scale campaign I ran had an additional benefit as well. Most state legislators are unknown outside their districts—some aren’t even very well known in their own districts. My 2004 reelection campaign raised my profile considerably, not just in my district but throughout South Florida.

My personal circumstances greatly improved in 2004 as well. That summer, Mike Corcoran introduced me to attorneys at Broad and Cassel, a large firm with offices in several Florida cities. The firm’s Miami office, its founding headquarters, had become stagnant, and they were looking to revitalize it. They offered me a $300,000 annual salary to be of counsel to the firm—nearly three times what I earned at Becker and Poliakoff. I was
torn. I had been in difficult financial straits when Alan Becker had offered me a job, and I was indebted to him. But I couldn’t afford to refuse the financial security the Broad and Cassel offer would provide. I was thirty- three years old and the sole income earner in a young family. I had a mortgage, student loans and other debts, and we lived paycheck to paycheck. We had outgrown our two-bedroom home in West Miami, and my salary at Broad and Cassel would make it possible for us to buy a bigger house and settle some of our debts. I asked Alan if he could match the Broad and Cassel offer. He couldn’t. I felt terrible about leaving Becker and Poliakoff, but knew it was in our family’s best interests that I accept the offer.

In October, we learned Jeanette was pregnant with our third child. After the scare at Daniella’s birth, our joy was tempered with worries for her health. We hadn’t planned her first two pregnancies and the third wasn’t an exception. It was a blessing, and we accepted it as such. So we took every precaution to ensure she wasn’t predisposed to postpartum hemorrhaging. She had five ultrasounds during her pregnancy and, to our relief, every one indicated a normal pregnancy and uncomplicated delivery.

We found a place two blocks from our current home in December 2004. The two-story, four-bedroom house with a pool hadn’t been built yet and the address was still an empty lot when we put down a deposit to buy it for $550,000. Like all preconstruction homes during the overheated real estate boom, the house would appreciate in value once it was built. We added several upgrades to it as well, which we paid for in cash. When we closed on the finished house a year later, it was appraised at over $700,000, which made it possible to apply for a home equity loan. We used the line of credit to add more upgrades and buy furniture.

I had much to be thankful for as 2004 came to a close. We were expecting a baby in the summer of 2005. We were financially secure for the first time in our married lives. We would move into our new house by Christmas the following year, and we had paid off some of our debts. I would be speaker of the Florida House in two years’ time. And my future, after I retired from the legislature and returned full-time to my legal career, looked bright.

I wanted to use the two years before I became speaker to concentrate on building the leadership team and governing structure I would need to succeed. So I spent much of 2005 and 2006 working on issues important to
my district, strengthening my relationships with my colleagues and running house campaigns.

Running a statewide political operation is expensive. In addition to the traditional responsibilities of the incoming speaker to conduct meetings and fund-raisers with candidates and donors in every part of Florida, I also participated in the “idearaisers” we had conceived as the basis for the policy agenda I would pursue as speaker. All these activities incurred expenses. There were expenses associated with travel—airline tickets, hotel rooms, car rentals, meals. Equipment costs were substantial as well. We couldn’t use state property for political purposes. The equipment used for every phone call I made or e mail I sent or speech I wrote for house campaigns had to be paid for with political funds. And there were a variety of incidental expenses, like flowers for a donor who had suffered a death in the family.

In the past, previous incoming legislative leaders had these costs defrayed by asking lobbyists to pay them. It was not unusual for some members to ask a lobbyist to call his credit card number into a restaurant to pick up the tab for a meal the committee hosted or to ask a lobbyist to lend the committee his private plane. Richard Corcoran strongly advised, and I agreed, that I should discontinue the practice. Lobbyists could still make financial donations to house campaigns, but we wouldn’t rely on them to pay our bills.

I could have paid for my travel and other expenses and then sought reimbursement from the state party. But rather than see my name appear dozens of times in the party’s financial reports, I used a party-issued American Express business credit card from February 2005 through November 2008 to pay for party-related expenses. There was nothing unusual about it—the party typically provided charge cards to legislative leaders to pay for party-related expenses. The monthly statements made it easy to identify and itemize specific political expenditures for the financial report the party filed quarterly. Unlike most credit cards, you can’t roll over American Express charges from month to month. The balance has to be paid every month. The card was secured under my name and Social Security number and with my personal credit. I would be responsible for paying any charges that were not incurred in my work for the party.

From January of 2005 until October of 2008 I charged about $160,000 in party-authorized expenses on my party-issued American Express card.
Eighty-nine percent of it was for travel, lodging, car rentals, fuel and meals. In fact, during my two years as speaker, we saved Florida taxpayers $32,000 by having the party, and not the state, pay for my travel costs to and from Tallahassee.

But from time to time a few personal expenses were charged to the card as well. For example, I pulled the wrong card from my wallet to pay for pavers. My travel agent mistakenly used the card to pay for a family reunion in Georgia—a single expenditure that represented 65 percent of personal charges on the card. Each time, I identified the charges and paid the costs myself, directly to American Express. The Republican Party of Florida didn’t pay a single one of them.

Nevertheless, in hindsight, I wish that none of them had ever been charged. When the statements were later leaked during my Senate campaign, they invited press skepticism, confused some of the public and allowed an opponent to suggest the party had paid for personal expenses. As often as it is remarked, it always bears repeating: in politics appearances are as important as reality.

In my final legislative session before becoming speaker, Speaker Allan Bense appointed me the chairman of a select committee he had created in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision
Kelo vs. City of New London
. The gist of the ruling held that a government could seize private property by eminent domain and transfer it to another private party if it deemed it to be in the public interest. The decision sent shock waves across America, angering Americans who believed their property rights were sacred. States scrambled to figure out ways to get around the ruling. It wasn’t a partisan issue. Democrats and Republicans opposed it. My job as chairman of the select committee was to deliver a bipartisan legislative fix that could serve as a model for the nation.

But for a brief stint as chairman of the House Claims Committee, I hadn’t much experience running a committee. I had always been in leadership, and hadn’t needed a committee chairmanship to acquire influence in the house. This would be a big test of my leadership abilities, and I could sense people were watching for clues to how I would conduct myself as speaker. We spent several months taking testimony from members, the public and outside experts. We carefully crafted both a bill and a constitutional amendment in an open and collaborative process. I let a freshman
member, Dean Cannon, offer the legislation and manage the debate. Years later, Dean would become speaker, and I think that early opportunity to demonstrate his leadership helped him win the office. When we finished, I was commended by all involved, including the most prominent Democrats on the committee, which gave my colleagues confidence I could lead the house fairly and productively as speaker.

I attended the Super Bowl in Jacksonville in January of 2005. My fondest memory of the experience had nothing to do with the game. I saw a father and his little boy both dressed in Philadelphia Eagles jerseys and caps, both of them excited to share a cherished experience they knew they would always remember, just as my father and I had at many Dolphins games in the past and were doing that day. For the first time in my life I felt a strong yearning for a son. I had two beautiful daughters, whom I loved so completely I had never felt a moment’s regret that I didn’t have a son. But when, a little more than four months later, Anthony Luis Rubio was born, I was ecstatic.

I was terribly anxious when Jeanette went into labor because of her experience after Daniella’s birth. The doctor who delivered him was as prepared as he could be in the event she hemorrhaged again. He had three of his best nurses in the maternity ward assisting him, and an operating room and anesthesiologist on standby. As it turned out, Jeanette’s labor was the briefest and least complicated of her four pregnancies, and there were no complications after Anthony’s birth.

That morning I held my infant son in my arms and, as I did with all our children, I imagined our lives together. Of course, it included football.

I would be officially designated speaker that September, and sworn in as speaker in the next legislature. Even that experience, the realization of an ambition I had worked hard to achieve, could never compare to the experience of holding your son for the first time, and the pure, almost otherworldly love you experience when your children are born. I try to remember that as I make my way in this world, so I don’t forget where my heart truly belongs.

I spent the summer after Anthony was born working on the speech I would give when I was designated speaker, devising a writing regimen around his feeding schedule. Jeanette would go to bed around eleven; I would feed him at midnight, get him to sleep and write until dawn. Then I would go to bed until nine.

I rewrote the speech many times. I wanted it to accomplish several things. I wanted to honor my parents and the sacrifices they had made for me. I wanted to acknowledge the Cuban exile community that had helped raise me and then elected me to office. Finally, I wanted to show the house the purpose I had for my speakership. For years, the driving force behind all significant policies in the state government had been the vision of the man I most admired in Florida politics: Governor Jeb Bush. I didn’t believe any of the candidates running to succeed him as governor would follow his example of bold leadership, but the house could fill the vacuum he would leave.

On the day of my designation, the chamber was packed with virtually every prominent Republican in the state, who had all come to hear me deliver the most important speech of my political career to date.

I used the speech to announce my plans to travel the state and join legislators as they asked their constituents to give us their recommendations for our policy agenda. I wanted to make the announcement in a dramatic way. I had book jackets printed for “100 Innovative Ideas for Florida’s Future,” and a copy of the book placed in each of their desks. I asked them to look in their desks and open the book they found there. When they did, they saw the pages were blank. I let a few moments pass before I told them the pages would be filled by the time we met in session in November 2006, after we had enlisted the help of our constituents and selected their best ideas. The people of Florida would set our agenda; their priorities would be ours.