Sam Bell warned us, but too few listened

TAMPA — Sam Bell excelled at many things.

But what stands the test of time is that he told people in Florida what they needed to hear — even when it wasn’t in his best political interest. That’s the big difference between yesterday’s legislators and today’s.

That’s how much Bell cared about Florida, and it’s what this state needs now more than ever. But his voice is silenced.

Bell was a legislator, lawyer, lobbyist, child advocate, public health expert and “first husband” at the University of South Florida, where his wife, Betty Castor, served as president. A Democratic member of the Florida House from 1974 to 1988, he died of health complications on March 14. He was 83.

The son of a Methodist minister, Samuel Paris Bell III was born in West Virginia but spent his formative years in Fort Lauderdale, where he became an Eagle Scout and graduated from Fort Lauderdale High in 1957. After attending Dartmouth and law school at Duke, he settled in Volusia County, started a family and befriended Hyatt Brown, an up-and-coming political leader and insurance executive.

Bell’s funeral last Friday, at a packed Palma Ceia Presbyterian church in Tampa, produced such an outpouring of former state leaders that it looked like a legislative reunion.

Brown, his friend and mentor, delivered a eulogy. Three other speakers were there: Jon Mills of Gainesville, Tom Gustafson of Fort Lauderdale and Peter Wallace of St. Petersburg. So, too, were former Gov. Bob Martinez, former Senate President Toni Jennings of Orlando, former senators George Stuart of Orlando and Paula Dockery of Lakeland, former Reps. Mary Figg and Ron Glickman of Tampa, Bob Hartnett of Orlando and Winston “Bud” Gardner of Titusville, and many others.

Bell was a legislative workhorse who could be tough as nails. When he got worked up, his balding head would shine brightly red. Highly competitive, he played to win, whether it was golf, racquetball or the New York Times crossword puzzle.

“Sam did not waste a single day in his life,” his son Douglas said at the funeral. “He sucked the marrow out of life.”

He showed fearlessness in his persistent criticism of Florida’s long history of short-changing education, health care and other essential needs.

Decades after Bell exited the political stage, Florida still has among the lowest teacher salaries in the U.S., long waiting lists for human services and chronic turnover in its prison system (even with billions in the bank).

Bell was right. But too few listened. “His passion and intensity for what he believed in is his legacy,” said Peter Wallace, the last Democratic speaker (1994-96).

Bell wasn’t always right. More than once, he said a personal income tax was “inevitable” in Florida, even though it’s prohibited by the state Constitution, and every year the prospect of an income tax seems less and less likely.

When times are good and the state has billions stockpiled in reserves, politicians can comfortably stick their heads in the sand. When times are bad, no one wants to suggest raising taxes.

Term limits have stripped away institutional knowledge and in today’s transactional Capitol, it’s a safe bet that practically nobody has any idea who Sam Bell was.

But he holds a special place in the annals of state politics. As he neared the peak of his power in 1988, he lost his House seat to a little-known challenger. It cost Bell the House speakership he had worked for years to attain. He was not alone: Senator Dempsey Barron, the archetype of a crafty backroom dealmaker, lost the same year to a political novice as well.

Bell’s shocking loss was widely attributed to the fact that he spent too much time in Tallahassee and not enough time in his Daytona Beach-area district, asking for votes.

But he was also clearly identified in the public mind with taxes. He was a leading proponent of a reform of Florida’s regressive sales tax in 1987 that the Legislature passed, only to repeal it a year later. Democrats lost their nerve after Martinez dropped his support of taxing services amid intense business opposition — including newspapers opposed to an advertising tax.

As the door to Bell’s political career slammed shut, other doors opened.

He became a leading champion of child health care, especially prenatal care, and the legal rights of the mentally disabled. He worked on adoptions, foster care and child poverty.

He nurtured the College of Public Health at USF and lobbied for children for decades, increasingly fighting an uphill battle in a conservative Capitol.

Soon after Bell left the House, he told the Orlando Sentinel that wimpy political leaders too often took the easy way out, rather than confront the state’s many festering problems, but he remained hopeful.

“The people who love this state will prevail,” Bell said in 1989.

Maybe someday, the people of Florida will prove he was right.