John Morgan was for the working people in 2020
This is one in a series of stories about the six finalists for 2020 Central Floridian of the Year. See others at OrlandoSentinel.com/CFOTY.
John Morgan dropped by one of his favorite charities a few years ago and hated what he saw. In the line at the food bank were people dressed in their grocery store uniforms.
They had full-time jobs, but they still needed a handout to feed their families.
“That’s bull-(bleep),” Morgan said.
A lot of people might have said that. Morgan did something about it.
He organized a group to raise Florida’s minimum wage. Then he pumped about $6 million into the campaign.
The result came in on Election Night 2020: Voters passed amendment No. 2, which will incrementally raise the state’s minimum wage from $8.56 an hour to $15 in 2026.
Morgan is rich. He didn’t stand to gain anything from a higher minimum wage. But
his determination to see the amendment through on behalf of the Florida’s low-wage workers struck a blow against Florida’s rigged economy.
His advocacy is why Morgan is a finalist for the Orlando Sentinel’s 2020 Central Floridian of the Year award.
Morgan knows a lot of people might scoff at a high-profile personal injury lawyer being considered for Central Floridian of the Minute, much less the year.
“If I gave a damn I wouldn’t be a trial lawyer,” he said. “You can’t imagine how much grief I have gotten for that.”
Morgan isn’t just a trial lawyer. His “For the People” persona has made him one of the most famous people in the state.
The slogan evokes fighting for the little guy. Whether you buy it or not, there’s no question Morgan took on some big guys in the $15 battle. He called the amendment “an act of compassion and decency.”
The Florida Chamber of Commerce and the Republican power structure in Tallahassee called it an act of economic lunacy.
They rolled out studies saying the amendment would kill jobs and endanger small businesses. Morgan countered with his own studies. He had tons of money. But perhaps more than anything, he had a not-so-secret weapon. Namely, John Morgan. “I made a decision long ago,” he said, “to just be me.”
Being John Morgan is a life of contradictions. He hobnobs with U.S. presidents but can’t stand the “pompous, fraudulent and phony” people who rule high society.
He admits to being a “natural-born braggart” but has anonymously donated a fortune to charity. He’ll curse a blue streak and quote scripture in the same sentence.
Being John Morgan means not worrying about what people think. That largely goes back to an incident in 1976. Though he’s told the story hundreds of times, Morgan’s voice still quivers.
His brother, Tim, was a lifeguard at Disney World. A panicked woman started yelling that her daughter was missing. Tim dove into a lake, hit a submerged pylon and broke his neck.
A distraught and bewildered family hired the first lawyer it could find, but Disney’s legal eagles overwhelmed him. Tim’s settlement consisted of a graveyard-shift job answering phones for Disney.
“I just became incensed,” Morgan said. “To be powerless and hopeless and helpless is a terrible feeling.”
Being incensed has fueled quite a career as a lawyer, entrepreneur and political power broker. Morgan splits time between his Maui getaway and an opulent, 12,000-square foot home in Heathrow.
It backs up to Wekiwa Springs State Park. He sat by the pool recently and recalled how a bear tried to crash a fundraiser he was throwing for Barack Obama in 2011.
“The Secret Service didn’t know what to do,” Morgan laughed.
Difficult early years
His life story reads like something a president would tell in the Fourth of July speech. Morgan is the oldest of five children, raised in Kentucky by alcoholic parents who didn’t get along.
His father was a fundraiser who was often absent. His mother would drink herself to sleep and leave the kids to fend for themselves.
That left it up to the oldest to get up early, feed and change a baby, make breakfast for the other siblings and wait for his mother to awaken from her boozy stupor. Then Morgan would rush to make it to his fourth-grade class.
Morgan’s father got a job in Orlando in the early 1970s. The family moved to a small house with no air conditioning in a part of Winter Park where tourists don’t go.
Kids from all social strata attended Winter Park High, and Morgan blended easily with them all. He found out he wasn’t very adept at math or science.
“What I could do was B.S.,” he said. “I knew I had that ability.”
He knew he had a future as an attorney.
Morgan went to the University of Florida and became president of Florida Blue Key, the honor society where the state’s aspiring power brokers get connected.
After Tim’s accident, Morgan knew what kind of attorney he wanted to be — personal injury.
An ambulance chaser.
A legal career takes off
It was not exactly a Blue Key career move.
Morgan would go to social events and other lawyers would make siren sounds. Even worse than being a personal injury lawyer, Morgan wanted to advertise his services.
The white-shoe crowd saw him as an embarrassment to the profession. Morgan saw advertising as the future. He went to Channel 6, bought $100,000 worth of ad time and started winging it.
“I’d shoot it at 5 p.m. and have a 5 o’clock shadow and no makeup,” he said. “I didn’t have any idea what I was doing.”
What he was doing was filling a huge legal void. Millions of people were injured every year but didn’t know how to find an attorney.
Up popped John Morgan proclaiming to be “For the people” in his Kentucky drawl.
He’s not sure if he got the slogan from the the Gettysburg Address or somewhere else. Wherever it came from, it worked.
What began as a two-man firm now has almost 1,000 attorneys all over the country. About 2.5 million people called Morgan & Morgan last year.
“His shtick is ‘For the People,’ but it’s not B.S.,” said Ben Pollara, a political consultant who’s worked with Morgan on the minimum wage amendment and on the medical marijuana amendment Morgan backed. “It’s not just a slogan. It’s really who he is.”
A Jacksonville woman hired Morgan after a city bus hit and killed her son. Years before, she’d worked as a waitress at a Bob Evans.
One Christmas eve, Morgan stopped in for a bite and left a $100 tip. He didn’t intend it as a business solicitation, but it turned out to be a pretty good one.
“We settled the case for $3 million,” Morgan said.
Medical marijuana
He channeled his money and passion toward medical marijuana in 2014. Morgan saw the relief the drug brought Tim, so he wanted everybody to have it.
The amendment got 57% of the vote, shy 60% needed to become law. Morgan spent a few million more and the amendment passed with 71% approval in 2016.
“Tim wanted it so badly,” Morgan said of the victory. “It was like his validation.”
Tim got his. John did not. His search led him to one of Mother Teresa’s prayers. The fruit of silence is prayer. The fruit of prayer is faith. The fruit of faith is love. The fruit of love is service. The fruit of service is peace. To find peace, Morgan decided he needed to do more, and set his sights on the $15 minimum wage amendment.
“There is no chance this even would have been on the ballot without John Morgan,” Pollara said.
It needed 766,200 registered voter signatures to get on the ballot. Then it needed 60% approval to become law.
A day before the vote, Gov. Ron DeSantis declared Amendment 2 would “close small businesses, kill jobs and reduce wages.”
“Bull-(bleep),” Morgan said. “Here was an opportunity to lift 1.5 million people out of poverty.”
On Nov. 3, 60.8% of voters sided with Morgan.
“I tell you, on Election Night I went to bed feeling incredibly peaceful,” he said. “It was like the whole prayer made sense.”
So what’s next? Morgan turns 65 in March. He makes the big decisions, but the law firm runs itself. Morgan & Morgan added 100 lawyers during the pandemic. It’s partnering with Google to make “For the People” as ubiquitous in Omaha and Oakland as it is in Orlando.
The so-called embarrassment to the profession has essentially become the profession. But how many Maui getaways does one man need?
Morgan and his wife, Ultima, say his “political philanthropy” will keep flowing.
“She wants to give away more money,” he said. “She wants to give it based on the gross. I want to give based on the net.”
Whatever the sum, Morgan knows it won’t be enough to please everybody. Some will always see him as America’s leading ambulance chaser.
“I’ll tell you another story,” he said, “that’s hard to tell.”
His eyes began to well up. After a long pause, Morgan swallowed hard and recounted a conversation his father had with Tim shortly after the accident.
Tim was a Type-A optimist, full of laughter and magnetism. He said he was glad the accident happened to him instead of his siblings.
“I can handle it,” Tim said. He told his father that John probably would have committed suicide if he’d been left a paraplegic at 18.
“I’m not as brave as Tim,” Morgan said. “I don’t know he’s done it.”
Being John Morgan has meant a life of trying to reconcile that event.
Sure, he’s done it for the money. But he’s done it for his brother, whom doctors said wouldn’t live to see 30.
“Tim just turned 62,” Morgan said.
He’s done it for people waiting in marijuana dispensaries. He’s done it for waitresses working on Christmas eve.
He’s done it for grocery workers standing in line at food banks.
That $15 minimum wage amendment?
Morgan really did do it for the people.