Who Bob Graham was: ‘We work for all the taxpayers, not just the ones who vote for me.’ | Opinion

There are ambitious politicians and there are committed public servants.

Florida man extraordinaire Bob Graham — state representative, the state’s 38th governor, three-term U.S. senator, and brief presidential candidate — was the latter.

A proud Democrat, he governed a kinder state in which party wasn’t the be-all, end-all it is now, and his initiatives in education weren’t political, but aimed at elevating student learning and ensuring public dollars went to enrich public schools, not private ones.

All people mattered to Daniel Robert Graham, a public servant for nearly four decades.

He died Tuesday night at 87 — and from his tree-canopied hometown of Miami Lakes, that his family founded, to Tallahassee, where he rose to prominence as a legislator and governor, people are praising the legacy he leaves.

The most important, perhaps, is that everyone counts, regardless of party or voter status.

It was the first lesson his longtime aide, Lula Rodríguez, learned from Graham after the Cuban American civic activist was recruited in 1984 to work for the governor in his South Florida office.

She described one memorable moment: Late as always, she and Graham were rushing through Miami’s airport trying to make a flight to Tallahassee when a group of three people approached the governor and identified themselves as Haitians in need of his help with immigration papers.

Right then and there, Graham took out his signature “little book” and started to write down their information as if he had all the time in the world.

“I was frantic because he was going to miss his flight,” Rodríguez told me, hours after his death was announced. “So I got close to his ear and said, “Sir, you’re going to miss your flight and these folks can’t even vote yet.”

Bad choice of words — and while that might have swayed other politicians, not a convincing argument for Graham.

“By the dirty look he gave me — the only one during the 10 years I worked for him — I knew I had made a mistake,” Rodríguez remembers. “He finished taking all the details and told them he would have his INS [immigration agency] person reach out to them. He then politely excused himself and we ran the rest of the way to the gate. He made it on time, but not before he told me — and very politely like always — ‘Lula, we work for all the taxpayers of the state of Florida, not just the ones who vote for me.’ ‘’

Rodríguez says she was so embarrassed she couldn’t sleep for days.

“When I picked him up at the airport next time, I brought it up and tried to apologize,” she said. “He said there was no need, but that it was a good lesson to learn if I was going to stay in public service. I never forgot that important lesson and went on to stay serving the public until 2001. He was a great role model. They don’t make public servants like Bob Graham anymore.”

She helped him serve his constituents and deliver wins to South Florida Democrats at all levels of government in a bipartisan state and in blue Miami-Dade County. Rodríguez went on to a life of service herself. After Graham was elected senator, she became district representative of his South Florida office, then moving on to Washington, D.C., to serve in the Clinton administration’s State Department and other public and private posts.

No, easy-going and erudite, diary-keeping Graham didn’t hold grudges — unless you were the FBI director trying to keep Congress and the American public from information about Saudi Arabia’s ties to the 9/11 infamy.

Then, he was unrelenting in pursuit of truth and disclosure, as Dan Christensen wrote on his watchdog website, FloridaBulldog.org, in “Bob Graham, 9/11, the FBI and me.”

READ MORE: Bob Graham, former Florida governor and U.S. senator, dies at 87

Graham, the Miami Laker

Although I covered the first Hispanic caucus in the Florida Legislature in the 1980s, I didn’t get to write about Graham.

To me, the governor was a neighbor, the millionaire celebrity who lived in the townhouse subdivision across from mine in the 1990s. His was, incredibly so for a public figure, ungated; my newer one, built by the Graham Company, had a gate.

“He acted just like another neighbor here, walking in the mornings with his headphones on, very gentle and friendly, always asking for the name of the person saying hi to him,” Miami Lakes resident Alberto Comas wrote on X.

The governor, who could’ve lived in the richest part of town, also drove a stick-shift Honda without air conditioning. No one could force him to give up, not even wife Adele, Rodríguez said.

“The purpose of a car is to take you point A to point B and that car does that for me,” Graham would say.

I can vouch for that. The last time I saw him we were both pumping gas at the corner Chevron.

We said hello and shook hands. He had no clue who I was. My picture didn’t run with my stories then, but when he asked my name and I told him, he knew. He didn’t flinch when I confirmed that he had a Miami Herald journalist for a neighbor. His smile didn’t change, as that of others weary of our penchant for nosiness might have.

I also often saw Adele at the Cuban salon where I did my hair — the one where color, cut and blow dry could be had for $35. When my hair stylist first whispered in my ear in Spanish that the woman next to me, waiting for her color to set, was Bob Graham’s wife, I had to chuckle. The subjects broached loudly between women in a Cuban salons aren’t exactly fodder for a governor or senator’s wife.

Adele was nothing but gracious. The Spanish chatter didn’t bother her.

Nor did Miami’s second language intimidate her husband in times of deep divisions over its use.

In fact, Rodríguez said, Graham wanted to learn Spanish and was fascinated by words with the diacritical mark used in “güe” words like nicaragüense (Nicaraguan) and vergüenza (shame). He was tickled when she taught him sinvergüenza (shameless).

RIP to Florida’s finest

Graham’s death reminds us of just how cruel others in Tallahassee are now.

The man who proudly took on hard jobs during his famous “workdays” would have never denied workers protection from the intense heat of climate change in a state setting new records. Would have never demonized immigrants for political profit — or for any other reason.

Basic human decency was high on his list of values.

May Floridians take this time not only remember the humble public servant he was, but also who we were.