Special Reports
Jeb's Legacy
Published: Jan 31, 2007
TALLAHASSEE - The results three months ago were eye-opening: Almost half of the Floridians polled said things were heading in the wrong direction in the state.
Respondents to the Florida Chamber poll cited several reasons: the homeowners insurance crisis, education and the property tax pinch.
Most telling was where the blame did not fall. In the same poll, Gov. Jeb Bush was showered with a favorable rating by 63 percent of respondents.
John Ellis Bush leaves office Tuesday still hovering at the peak of his popularity, almost unheard of for a two-term governor. The effect of his major initiatives, including an overhaul of the education system and $19 billion in tax cuts, will be debated by partisans for years to come.
But there is virtual unanimity in what will be the distinguishing feature of the Bush era: the transformation of the office itself.
Partly through the reorganization of the branches of state government, partly through his powerful personality and bully pulpit, partly through the fealty of a GOP-dominated Legislature, he became, in the words of an adversary, "the ubergovernor."
Bush would undoubtedly scoff at such a description, but he acknowledges that redefining what it means to be governor of Florida is perhaps his greatest accomplishment.
"I believe a weak form of governorship is not appropriate for a dynamic state like Florida," he said recently. "My gift, perhaps, is that with this office now, we've shown that governors can be activist, they can be reformers if they want to. If they want to create the agenda and work as a team with the Legislature, things can be accomplished."
He contrasts his record with the constant logjam in Washington on key domestic policy issues. "Compare it to what's going on here, and there is a sense that … I think people would say that we're doing things. They might not agree with everything we're doing, but there's stuff being done. And I think people like that."
'Things Were Just Aligned'
Bush was sworn in on a frigid Tallahassee afternoon eight years ago, a brash 45-year-old on a conservative mission. He hit the ground running with his "BHAGs," or "big, hairy, audacious goals." He rolled out two of his more controversial initiatives by the fall: the A Plus education overhaul and the One Florida program eliminating racial preferences in college admissions and state contracting.
In Bush's corner were Republican majorities in the House and Senate. By 2000, the eight-year term limits voters had demanded in 1992 had sent many veteran lawmakers packing.
In 2001, there were 75 rookie lawmakers, 12 in the 40-member Senate and 63 in the 120-member House.
"That first year, 63 lawmakers came on board [in the lower chamber] ready to jump off any cliff he asked them to," said state Rep. Dan Gelber, D-Miami Beach, who coined the "ubergovernor" tag and now serves as House Democratic leader. "And they did it, smiling, singing Kumbaya."
Chris Smith, the previous Democratic leader who just ended an eight-year term as a state representative from Fort Lauderdale, agrees. "I think things were just aligned for Jeb Bush," Smith said. "The Bush name was riding high. Term limits had really just kicked in. He had a majority new to Tallahassee, and he was the rock star governor. He was the right person at the right time to assemble all that power."
Bush also benefited from a constitutional amendment that overhauled the Cabinet. Instead of five elected officials sharing executive-branch power, there would be three. The secretary of state, who oversees elections, and the education commissioner would be appointed by the governor beginning in 2002.
Meanwhile, the governor pushed to be allowed to appoint judicial nominating committees, which forward candidates for the bench to him. The Florida Bar had a significant role in such committees until the Legislature handed Bush sole authority in 2001.
Bush also dismantled the Board of Regents, which oversaw the state university system, replacing it with individual boards of trustees also appointed by him. (Voters eventually restored a statewide university governing board through a constitutional amendment.)
The overall consolidation of power left Bush with tremendous potential to make a mark.
"What Jeb Bush got as governor of Florida was an opportunity to either advance a coherent agenda or to just sit back on his laurels," said Peter Schweizer, author of "The Bushes: Portrait of a Dynasty." "He chose to advance an agenda, and that's pretty rare in this era of polls and polling."
He steamrolled the entrenched state teachers union to get A Plus approved. He defied public outcry over One Florida. He scuttled job protections for public employees and downsized state government.
Also passed: his own version of Everglades restoration; a growth-management bill that requires developers to pay for infrastructure such as roads and schools as they build; tort reform that makes it harder for Floridians to sue businesses and doctors.
"It's been a hell of an eight years," said Cory Tilley, Bush's former communications director and deputy chief of staff who now runs a consulting business in Tallahassee. "I think he's really done things that will change Florida forever. He did not tinker around the edges, he has made fundamental changes."
Some Issues 'Non-Negotiables'
In January 2000, the furor over the plan to eliminate affirmative action was cresting. Two black Democratic lawmakers, state Sen. Kendrick Meek of Miami and Rep. Tony Hill of Jacksonville, staged a sit-in in the gubernatorial office suite. Members of the Capitol press corps accompanied them.
"Kick their asses out," Bush ordered, apparently unaware of the presence of the television crew that captured the moment.
He maintains he was referring to the reporters. But other incidents brought Bush a reputation for heavy-handedness. In 2002, he told a group of lawmakers he had "devious plans" to derail an amendment to limit class sizes if voters approved it, again unaware that a reporter was present. (His efforts over the years to eliminate the limits failed.) This spring, Senate majority leader Alex Villalobos, R-Miami, was stripped of his post after he refused to tow the Bush-supported party line to restore a school voucher program, and Bush later campaigned against Villalobos' re-election.
Smith, the former Democratic house leader, calls it a "bull in a china shop personality."
Bush acknowledges he has had to soften over his tenure.
"I think my convictions and my impatience combined has given," he paused, choosing his self-criticism cautiously. "It's correct to say that the combination of those two things - both of which could be considered virtues, by the way - but the combination of those two things creates a defect. That I've worked on. I'm much more patient." Schweizer, the conservative author and Bush family biographer, rejects the characterization of Bush as abrasive. "He's a man with real ideals and principles that are non-negotiables," he said. "There are Democrats like that, as well. Oftentimes, those are not the most popular people in the Capitol."
Even detractors acknowledge that a principled and determined workaholic was exactly what Florida needed in 2004 and 2005, when eight major hurricanes tore through the state. Bush warned Floridians. He calmed them. He marshaled an impressive emergency response. He even handed out ice and bottled water with relief workers.
Combined with his eight-year policy record, the performance in the wake of the storms fired up speculation about the governor's future. He was rumored to be a candidate to head the Federal Emergency Management Agency after Hurricane Katrina, whose nightmarish aftermath contrasted sharply with Florida's rebound. A pal pitched his name as commissioner of the National Football League.
But the greatest speculation is on the big prize, the one held by both his brother and his father.
Bush has denied he will run for president in 2008. Likely GOP candidates - Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Sen. John McCain - are said to be courting Bush as a running mate.
In the short term, at least, Bush is returning to Miami, and many expect him to re-enter the real estate business. He recently signed on for his first postgubernatorial commitment, launching the Inter-American Commission on Ethanol with a couple of Latin-American heavy hitters to push the Western hemisphere's use of the alternative fuel. Regarding his future, Bush said recently:
"I tell you sincerely that I have done something I didn't know I could do, which is to not worry about it and not do something about it until I'm almost out of here. And I'm pretty close to achieving that. It's flattering that people actually care what's going to happen to me. But I don't know, and I'm trying really hard not to know.
"I think it's better to [decide] in a more decompressed setting, and January in Miami is a beautiful time."
Reporter Jerome R. Stockfisch can be reached at (850) 222-8382 or jstockfisch@tampatrib.com.
The FCAT Era
Bush made education the heart of his eight years as governor with an accountability system that, coupled with his commitment to choice through charter schools and vouchers to private schools, created dramatic change.
Bush called his initial A Plus and the more recent A Plus Plus education plans "the bookends" of his two terms.
Driving both is the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test that has come to dominate instruction and materials in every Florida public school.
The FCAT affects high school graduation, extra money for teachers and schools, and the failing marks Florida has received on a national report card. The way the FCAT is used remains unpopular with many teachers and parents.
Two far-reaching constitutional amendments approved by voters in 2002 did prove popular but costly. Bush fought the amendment to cap class sizes, but the other, universal prekindergarten for 4-year-olds, carries his mark, being provided by mostly private and faith-based schools.
Marilyn Brown
A Footprint On The Environment
Bush's supporters say he will be remembered for signing the Everglades Restoration Act in 2000 and approving $2 billion in land acquisitions, water storage and water treatment projects in the River of Grass.
Critics, however, say the vast majority of Everglades projects are meant for flood control and water supply to enable more development in crowded southeast Florida. Bush showed his true stripes, they say, when he signed legislation in 2003 that weakened limits on phosphorus pollution flowing into the Everglades.
Bush is broadly credited with supporting the Florida Forever land-buying program that has preserved more than 1 million acres since 2000. However, under him, the state Department of Environmental Protection has been seen as siding with polluters and developers in water discharge and wetlands permitting.
Starting in the late 1990s, then-DEP Secretary David Struhs tried to remove hundreds of waterways from the state's "impaired" list, meaning they no longer needed to be cleaned up. The department insisted on throwing out years of data on all the state's impaired waters, postponing for years the cleanup required under the federal Clean Water Act.
Mike Salinero
Weathering The Storms
"This has been an incredible month," the governor said, showing fatigue at the state emergency operations center. "There are difficult moments, and this is certainly one of those times."
Bush couldn't imagine the difficult moments his state was in for when he made that statement as Hurricane Ivan approached Florida in September 2004. Ivan would be the third hurricane to plow into the state that year, to be followed less than two weeks later by Jeanne. Four more devastating storms piled on in 2005.
The ultimate toll would be $36 billion in damage, with tens of thousands of homes damaged and hundreds of thousands of Floridians displaced.
Bush was ubiquitous. He nagged residents to prepare - in both English and Spanish. He encamped at the emergency center. He visited victims.
The 2004-05 hurricane seasons are still being felt - the property insurance market is teetering, and blue tarps still top off some houses. But the contrast between Florida and New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina is stark, and the "education governor" earned the new moniker of "hurricane governor."
Jerome R. Stockfisch
Showdown Over Schiavo
On Feb. 25, 1990, Theresa Marie Schiavo, then 26, suffered a heart attack and collapsed in the St. Petersburg apartment she shared with her husband, Michael. More than a decade later, she became the center of a right-to-die dispute and media circus that reached the state Capitol, Washington and even the Vatican.
Schiavo was in a persistent vegetative state, and her husband insisted she did not want to be kept alive artificially. Family members - and later state lawmakers, with Bush's support - tried to force her sustenance. Courts stopped the Legislature, and later Bush, from ordering a feeding tube reinserted. Schiavo died March 31, 2005.
Despite overwhelming public distaste over the government's intervention - by a 2-1 ratio in one poll - Bush remains unrepentant. He said recently that he remains "deeply disappointed that a woman was starved to death."
"I can respect other people's opinions, but at the end of the day, that is what happened," he said. "And it happened because the broader law … does not provide protection for the disabled and for the people that don't have a voice."
Jerome R. Stockfisch
A Tight Fiscal Ship
Bush left no doubts as to his fiscally conservative credentials when he took office in 1999, proposing a $1 billion tax cut.
Over the next eight years, the cuts continued: The intangibles tax, gone. The estate tax, on its way out. Sales tax holidays. All told, Bush takes credit for $19 billion in tax cuts.
He also attacked another boogeyman to fiscal conservatives: big government. In his second inaugural address, he said he envisioned a time when "we can make these buildings around us empty of workers; silent monuments to the time when government played a larger role than it deserved or could adequately fill."
Tallahassee hasn't exactly gone dark, but the ranks of state employees are about 11,000 thinner than when Bush took office.
Then there are what the governor calls "nerdy little things" - budgeting reforms, limits on state debt, a surplus in the state pension fund, the buildup of state reserves. They go largely unnoticed but are high on the list of accomplishments Bush ticks off as he prepares to leave office.
"The state is better off today, fiscally, than it was when I got here. I can promise you that," he said.
Jerome R. Stockfisch
Uproar Over One Florida
Early in his first term, Bush unveiled a plan to lift minority participation in higher education and government contracting by eliminating the quotas and set-asides that made up the state's affirmative action policy.
Under the One Florida plan proposed in 1999, race is not a factor in university admissions. Instead, a spot is guaranteed for the top 20 percent of high school graduates, and there is a voluntary commitment among the state's purchasing agents to do more business with minorities.
Opponents reacted with a 1960s-style backlash, including a sit-in and massive demonstration at the Capitol. The success of One Florida is debated. Since fall 2000, minority enrollment at Florida universities increased 29 percent, to nearly 103,000, and the total enrollment increased 20 percent. However, enrollment among black students has lagged behind other groups.
Jerome R. Stockfisch