Bob Graham, former Florida governor and senator, 87
Bob Graham, a Florida Democrat who, as a little-known state senator, cleaned stables and waited on tables in a clever populist strategy that helped to boost him into the governorship, the US Senate, and a run for the presidency, died Tuesday at his home in Gainesville, Fla. He was 87.
His death was announced in a family statement sent by Chris Hand, a family spokesperson who is a former aide to Mr. Graham and his coauthor on books about effective citizenship in democracy. Mr. Graham was disabled by a stroke in May 2020.
The son of a Florida state senator, Mr. Graham had gained little political traction after 13 years in the state Legislature. He seemed destined to rise no higher than his father. Then he had an idea. Besides his official duties, he resolved to work eight hours a day in hundreds of mostly entry-level jobs to bond with his constituents. He performed what he called “Workdays” off and on for the rest of his career.
He was, for a day, a short-order cook, a bellhop, a social work aide, a plumber. He saw a murder victim on a night riding with cops. He was a department store Santa, a citrus packer, and an office temp. He applied for food stamps. He picked tomatoes under a broiling sun, filled potholes, collected garbage, cut down tree limbs broken after a storm, and was a circus clown.
Voters and the press, especially television news programs, loved these “Workdays,” which became a campaign staple. Mr. Graham would win two terms as governor (1979-1987) and three terms in the Senate (19872005) and launched a heady but hopeless run for the White House in 2003.
When he retired from the Senate after 38 years of public life, Mr. Graham, an obsessive diarist of minutiae that read like an hourly log, had itemized all his “Workdays” experiences as well as his activities as governor, senator, and presidential aspirant. The record showed that, outside his official duties, he had worked in 921 more-orless ordinary jobs in 109 cities and five states.
“I have a reputation, that is not undeserved, as being more of an understated person, and I’m not easily aroused to fervent, some people would say charismatic levels,” he said in a campaign interview with The New York Times in 2003. “But I think maybe what the American people want right now is someone who can give them a sense of steady leadership, as opposed to an emotional jolt.”
He always relied on steady progress. As Florida’s 38th governor, he won high marks for educational strides in public schools and universities, as well as for economic programs that added 1.2 million jobs and raised per capita income above national averages for the first time. His environmental policies brought fragile lands, including the Everglades, under state protection. He was easily reelected in 1982, and he left office as one of Florida’s most popular politicians, with an 83 percent voter-approval rating.
In the 1986 Senate election, he beat the Republican incumbent, Senator Paula Hawkins, 55 percent to 45 percent, and he won reelections over Bill Grant in 1992 and Charlie Crist in 1998 with about two-thirds of the votes. Mr. Graham was chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee during and after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, which killed some 3,000 people.
After the attacks, he became a national spokesperson on intelligence and security issues, and he was a severe critic of President George W. Bush and his administration’s response to terrorism and the long and costly US involvement in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Mr. Graham and 22 other senators voted against the invasion of Iraq by a US-led coalition in 2003 — an attack rationalized by Bush’s claims that Iraq’s President Saddam Hussein supported Al-Qaeda and possessed weapons of mass destruction. Mr. Graham led the joint congressional investigation into 9/11, which in 2004 found no evidence of any ties between Hussein and Qaeda. Weapons of mass destruction were not found in Iraq.
Throughout Mr. Graham’s Senate years, his name was raised in vice presidential politics. He was called a possible running mate to Michael Dukakis in 1988, to Bill Clinton in 1992, to Al Gore in 2000, and to John Kerry in 2004. Mr. Graham announced his own candidacy for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination in December 2002.
But that bid was a short dream. Within weeks, he had open-heart surgery, and the campaign faltered. He withdrew from the race in October 2003 and a month later said he would not seek reelection to the Senate in 2004. He retired when his term ended in January 2005.
Daniel Robert Graham, who never used his given name, was born on Nov. 9, 1936, in Coral Gables, Fla., to Ernest R. Graham, known as “Cap,” and Hilda (Simmons) Graham. By a previous marriage, to Florence Morris, Ernest Graham had three children, Mary, Philip, and William Graham, Robert’s half siblings. Phil Graham and his wife, Katharine (Meyer) Graham, whose family owned The Washington Post, were co-owners of the newspaper, and he also became publisher.
Ernest Graham, a dairy farmer, mining engineer, real estate developer, and Democratic politician, was a Florida senator from 1937 to 1944. His second wife was a teacher.
Mr. Graham received a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Florida in 1959 and earned a degree from Harvard Law School in 1962.
In 1959, he married Adele Khoury. They had four daughters: Gwen, Cissy, Suzanne, and Kendall. Gwen Graham was a US representative from Florida from 2015-17, ran unsuccessfully for governor of Florida in 2017, and became an assistant secretary of education in the Biden administration.
He leaves his wife, his daughters, 10 grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.
Mr. Graham lived in Miami Lakes, a town founded by his family. He began his political career in 1966 with election to the Florida House of Representatives from Dade County. He won a seat in the Florida Senate, also from Dade, in 1970 and was reelected in 1972 and 1976 in a redrawn district that encompassed parts of northern Dade and southern Broward counties.
Mr. Graham was a member of the Senate Education Committee when it held public hearings around the state in 1974. In Miami, he spoke of a dearth of civic awareness among students. In response, a frustrated high school teacher, Sue Reilly, complained that no one on the committee had any experience with education, and she challenged Mr. Graham to teach a civics class for a day.
He agreed, thinking it would never happen. But Reilly fixed a date at Carol City High School in Miami. Teaching for a day inspired Mr. Graham’s “Workdays” idea, and he decided to teach the civics class for a semester. In succeeding years, he incorporated such days into all his election campaigns, and in 1978, when he won the governorship, he published “Workdays: Finding Florida on the Job,” an account of his experiences in many occupations.