An American Son: A Memoir (39 page)

He vetoed the bill on the afternoon of April 15, and the next day he was greeted as a conquering hero at a celebration rally held at Alonzo and Tracy Mourning Senior High School in Miami. Suddenly Facebook and other social media were inundated with teachers and even union officials thanking Crist, and urging support for his Senate bid as a reward for vetoing the bill.

Some people in my campaign began to panic. They believed Crist had seized a rare and perfectly timed opportunity to transcend traditional politics and win the election in a three-way race. They thought he would be able to put together a coalition of moderate Republicans, centrist Democrats, independents and teachers’ unions. I was less worried about it. I recognized he had managed in a single stroke to generate enthusiasm for his campaign and open a path to victory in the fall. But I knew, too, he would have to sustain the new enthusiasm over an entire summer and the beginning of the new school year until the general election. That was a steep hill to climb. Furthermore, if anyone should have been worried, it was Kendrick Meek, the expected Democratic nominee. The teachers’ unions were part of his base, not mine.

Over the weekend there were more signs Crist was getting ready to run as an independent. He pulled his ads comparing me to Sansom off the air, and rather than replace them with another ad, he asked that his money be returned. He was saving his money again.

On the afternoon of April 19, Rob Jesmer, the executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, sent an e mail to Republican donors, affirming his view that Crist would not run in the Republican primary. He concluded, “Whether or not you supported our endorsement of Governor Crist, we all share the same goal of keeping the seat in Republican hands. To that end, if the Governor decides to run independent . . . we will support Marco Rubio in any way possible.”

That same evening, for the first time, Crist admitted what everyone already knew: he was seriously thinking about running as an independent. “I’m getting all kinds of advice,” he told the press corps with a chuckle. “I take my cues from people in Florida. That’s what I care about. . . . This is a decision that has to be made by the thirtieth, and I want to do what’s right for the people of our state.”

The next week was dominated by speculation about Crist’s intentions. It was clear to me what he was going to do. Meanwhile, far offshore in the Gulf of Mexico, the oil rig Deepwater Horizon was about to explode, a disaster that would soon have an impact on the campaign.

The rest of April was fairly uneventful until it was time to qualify for the ballot at the end of the month. We held a filing announcement in West Miami on the twenty-seventh. We chose as the site a small city park just a
few blocks from my house. The park had sentimental value to me. I had played there as a kid after we returned from Las Vegas. I had taken pictures of Jeanette and my parents there that I included in a mail piece in my first campaign for West Miami commissioner. We held Amanda’s first birthday party there.

My father’s breathing had become so labored that we had to drive him in a car right up to the stage. After I made brief remarks in English and Spanish, I sat down at a table and signed the qualifying documents. My father sat to my left. He was nearing the end of his life—a life that had begun over eight decades earlier in Havana, a life that had known pain, hunger, suffering and more than six decades of hard work. Now his younger son might be elected to the U.S. Senate in seven months—an achievement that seemed unlikely to me just a year before, an achievement that would have been unimaginable to him when he arrived penniless in his new country over half a century before. It was the last time he would appear at any of my public events.

Later that evening, word spread that Crist had scheduled a major event in his hometown, St. Petersburg, for the evening of April 29. There wasn’t any doubt or drama anymore about what he intended to do. He would run for the Senate as an independent. At 9:07 on the morning of April 29, I received a text message from Al Cardenas regarding news he had just received from Crist’s campaign manager Eric Eikenberg.

Alex Leary of the
St. Petersburg Times
wrote an article a few days later that described the factors that had influenced Crist’s decision. Leary had spent the entire day before the announcement with Crist. He wrote about people who had called to encourage the governor. According to Crist, Donald Trump, Arnold Schwarzenegger and tennis great Chris Evert had all urged him to run as an independent. So had a good many teachers and school superintendents. So had people in the street he had met that day, who expressed to him their frustration with partisan gridlock. But the most telling incident included in the article had occurred at 11:12 a.m. that day, when Crist’s pollster told him he was winning a three-way race for the Senate by twelve points.

I listened to his announcement on the radio as I drove Anthony to his T ball game. Crist decried partisan politics and condemned Republicans in the legislature as recalcitrant. He didn’t want to work for a political party, he said. He wanted to work for the people of Florida. He wanted to do this for them. That might have all been true. But as Alex Leary’s article made clear, most of all he wanted to win. And so did I.

I
T HAD BEEN QUITE A RIDE ALREADY. I HAD GONE FROM A sure loser without a viable way to quit the race to the surging front-runner. Now the stars had aligned again for Crist. The bickering Florida legislature and an unpopular bill had given him the opportunity to wear the mantle of a postpartisan populist. He made the most of his opportunity and reclaimed the lead in the race for the U.S. Senate. A Rasmussen poll released on May 4 confirmed he had retaken a lead, though by a smaller margin than Crist’s pollster had given him. Making matters worse, a new issue loomed that gave him the perfect platform from which to take command of the race.

The explosion on the Deepwater Horizon had resulted in an uncontainable oil gusher that was pouring fifty-three thousand gallons of oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico, threatening Florida’s coastline. Predictably, support among Floridians for offshore drilling dropped dramatically. I was asked by a reporter on May 4 if I still supported offshore drilling. I responded by acknowledging the horrible threat from the oil spill, and confirmed I still supported offshore drilling. I didn’t believe we could become energy independent without it. Crist saw his opportunity and pounced. Although he had supported drilling in 2008, he was now 100 percent against it. It was a smart political move.

I knew that as long as oil was spewing uncontrolled into the Gulf,
offshore drilling would be unpopular. But when the well was capped and the spill contained, over time support for offshore drilling would increase. People understood the country needed all its energy resources. But in the present crisis, support for drilling, like support for Social Security and Medicare reform, would be a test of principle over politics. My only hope was that voters would give me credit for being serious about the issue and not opportunistic. Time would tell.

Another issue that had come to the fore began to hurt us as well. I was troubled when the Arizona legislature passed an immigration bill that allowed law enforcement officers to demand proof of legal residence from anyone they had lawfully detained and suspected of being in the country illegally. I thought the law would lead to racial profiling. As I started to hear more about Arizona’s illegal immigration problem, I recognized that Arizona’s situation was different and more severe than Florida’s. Florida doesn’t share a porous border with a neighboring country. It’s surrounded by ocean. We certainly have an illegal immigration problem, but it is mostly caused by people overstaying their visas.

The Tucson border sector in Arizona is the scene of rampant illegal crossings, drug smuggling, gunrunning and human trafficking. An all-out drug war in Mexico was starting to export violence to Arizona cities. Arizonans were fed up. They wanted something done immediately to address the crisis, and state legislators had answered by passing the new immigration law.

When I was first asked about it, I strongly criticized the law and said it raised the specter of a police state. But as I learned more about the situation in Arizona, the provisions of the law and the modifications that had been made to it, I softened my opinion. I still didn’t support state immigration laws, and I didn’t want a law like Arizona’s enacted in Florida. But I understood why Arizonans supported it. If I had been in their shoes and my state had been overrun by cross-border violence, I probably would have voted for it, too.

Now I was getting it from all sides. The anti-illegal-immigrant crowd was upset with me because I didn’t think Florida should pass a similar law. Pro-immigrant groups denounced me for supporting the law in Arizona. I had managed to unite both sides against me.

For a time, the Arizona law became a litmus test issue in the national
debate on immigration. You were either for it or against it. Like the debate itself, there seemed to be only two acceptable positions: you were either for strictly enforcing immigration law and expelling all people who were in the country illegally or you were in favor of letting them all stay. But it’s always been hard for me to see the issue in such black-and-white terms.

The anti-illegal-immigration side often loses perspective on the issue. But the pro-immigration crowd is also guilty of a maximalist approach. They ignore how illegal immigration unfairly affects immigrants who live here legally or are trying to immigrate here legally.

Every year my Senate office is approached by hundreds of people who request our assistance in expediting changes to their immigration status. They’ve followed the rules, paid the necessary fees and patiently waited. It isn’t fair to them to permit millions of people to remain here who didn’t follow their example and apply for legal status. What message does that send to aspiring immigrants? It tells them they can immigrate to our country a lot quicker if they do so illegally.

Immigration advocates also allow themselves to be manipulated politically, which is something Cuban Americans have experienced in every election. Many candidates have campaigned in Miami’s Cuban communities promising to get tough on Castro. “Cuba Libre,” they shout, and then, after they’re elected, they ignore the issue. Today, it’s common for Democratic candidates to make all sorts of unrealistic promises about immigration reform to Latinos in the hope of mobilizing their support, and once in office they fail to keep them. President Obama was elected with a substantial majority of Latino support even though John McCain was one of the most outspoken immigration reform advocates in the Republican Party. The president promised he would pass comprehensive immigration reform in his first year in office. He didn’t. He didn’t even propose a comprehensive bill despite having Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress. Why? Because the solution is a lot more complicated and harder to put together than Democrats ever concede. Also, immigration is such an effective wedge issue against Republicans, some Democrats would just as soon keep it than make the necessary concessions that could lead to a bipartisan resolution of the issue.

Immigration reform advocates have allowed Democrats to define the debate by insisting on support for specific bills that are unlikely to become
law in their current form. For example, the vast majority of Americans and my Republican colleagues support the idea behind the DREAM Act, of making a distinction for and helping undocumented students who are high academic achievers—kids who were brought to the United States when they were very young and have grown up here. They’re ready to contribute to the country’s future. They’re not in compliance with immigration law and, thus, not American citizens. But they are culturally as American as anyone else’s children. I’m sure we would find a way to keep them here if they could dunk a basketball. Why would we deport them if they’re valedictorian of their high school class?

But the bill is too broad as currently written. It could encourage chain migration, by authorizing the relatives of students covered by the act to come here. A narrower bill would serve the same primary purpose of the DREAM Act, permit undocumented students to remain in the country and go to school without exacerbating the illegal immigration problem. The modifications necessary to assure its passage are not difficult to conceive or write into law. Nor should they trouble people on either side of the debate. But many activists refuse to concede that and denounce any opposition to the current DREAM Act as anti-immigrant. And many Democrats happily urge them on. I don’t question that many of my Democratic colleagues are sincere in their desire to help undocumented students. So am I. But I’m not so naive that I don’t recognize that some Democrats enjoy the advantage with Latino voters that Republican opposition to the bill gives them.