Ex-senator fought for equality for all citizens

Former Florida Sen. Lee Weissenborn’s most famous “failure” turned out to be his most substantive win.

Weissenborn, who died May 7 at 88 in Palmetto Bay, represented Miami-Dade and served in Florida’s House of Representatives from 1963 to 1967 and the Florida Senate from 1967 to 1972. In 1967, while in the Senate, he presented a bill to create a commission to study the feasibility of moving the state capital from Tallahassee to Orlando.

Weissenborn, who had been a delegate to the 1960 Democratic National Convention, had become incensed with Tallahassee’s record on civil rights. Through the 1960s, Tallahassee was a provincial Southern town with segregation the rule. During that period, Tallahassee opted to close its public swimming pools rather than integrate them.

When Weissenborn proposed the idea, he didn’t know how far it would go, his son Stephen Weissenborn said. Some thought it was the young South Floridian’s attempt to yank the chains of power from Tallahassee. But that wasn’t exactly it, either, his son said. Rather, it was designed “to bounce the old guard into the new realities.”

It worked. Tallahassee, of course, remains the state capital so, in that regard, he was not successful.

But in response to Weissenborn’s movement, Tallahassee opened its swimming pools to all. The dry city also ended its era of prohibition. North Florida power brokers authorized construction of a new Capitol building so massive and so expensive that no one would propose building another elsewhere.

He was born in St. Louis on March 19, 1929, and adopted at age 1. He, along with his mother, Pauline, moved to Miami when he was 9. Pauline, who struggled during the Depression, was the inspiration for her son’s concerns for the disenfranchised, his family believes.

“I think that helped form a lot of his passions,” said civil trial attorney Sheridan Weissenborn, his wife of 40 years. “He was a caring person and a giver and he wanted people to be equally treated. He wanted people to have the best life they possibly could and he became passionate about the things he fought for — and he a fighter.”

His first legislative battle as a House member was a bill designed to extend Florida’s then limited state kindergarten program to Miami-Dade and other counties of the state, which had been excluded from the program. He prevailed. Weissenborn, a captain in the Marine Corps during the Korean War, championed legislation mandating a statewide, state-administered food stamp program throughout Florida. He led the floor fight to fully fund Florida’s free and reduced school lunch program.

Weissenborn’s political career ended in 1972 when he was defeated by car dealer William Lehman for a congressional seat for District 13, a then-new seat that covered Liberty City and the condo communities of Northeast Miami-Dade.

Weissenborn turned his attention to his law practice and was renowned for fighting on behalf of the underdog.