An American Son: A Memoir (17 page)

I
MADE A POINT OF ARRIVING EARLY FOR WORK THE MORNing after my election. I wanted the partners to see I was committed to the firm and wouldn’t let my new civic responsibilities distract me. When I got there, I was called into the managing partner’s office. Three senior partners, including Al, were waiting for me, and quickly got to the point. As far as they were concerned, my election didn’t change anything. I was a junior associate and was expected to put in the same hours the other junior associates worked. I said all the right things in response and thanked them for supporting me. But I left the meeting a little taken aback. I thought the reminder was an overreaction, and the timing, the morning after my election, seemed odd. I never felt the same about the firm after that.

My swearing in took place a week later in the small commission chambers on the second floor of city hall, followed by a small reception with family and friends. I settled easily into my responsibilities on the commission, which met only twice a month to consider mostly uncontroversial matters. The only contentious issue we faced all year was a proposal to change the local code to permit the construction of two-story houses.

I was approached that summer by a law firm that specialized in land use and zoning law, Ruden McClosky, to gauge my interest in joining their practice. The firm’s main office was located in a neighboring county, but it
had recently opened a Miami office and hired a politically active Cuban American attorney, Armando Lacasa, to run it.

It wasn’t a difficult decision. I didn’t think my prospects for making partner at Tew Cardenas were very good. The firm’s culture didn’t value its government relations practice, and it didn’t really consider land use and zoning matters legal work at all. I still had a bad taste in my mouth from my meeting with the partners, and Ruden McClosky had offered me a $13,000 raise. I gave Tew Cardenas two weeks’ notice, transferred my cases to another attorney at the firm and went to work for Ruden McClosky.

I wasn’t nearly as busy there as I had been at Tew Cardenas. They had brought me in as part of a plan to expand the Miami office, but they didn’t have enough work yet to keep me fully occupied. I worked as Armando’s associate, and most of his work involved facilitating business deals in Latin America. So I dabbled a little in bank loan document work, and spent a lot of time trying to bring in new clients and representing the firm at public events. On most days I was home before seven.

I decided to use the time before my wedding in October to tie up any loose ends in my life. Jeanette and I searched West Miami for a house to buy. We found a nice two-bedroom house only two blocks from my parents. Jeanette’s mother generously offered to buy the house for us with the understanding we would buy it from her when we had saved enough money.

Jeanette and I had dated for seven years. I wasn’t frightened or nervous about getting married. Marrying her seemed the most natural and sensible decision in my life. The night before our wedding, I went to bed for the last time under the same roof as my parents. I had gone away to college, but I had lived with them most of my life. Veronica had married two years earlier. Now the last of their children was leaving home. I felt nostalgic and a little sad. It was the natural order of things, but I couldn’t help feeling I was abandoning them, even though I would live only two blocks away. Before I went to sleep I said a familiar prayer, a prayer I had offered thousands of times before, but had special meaning to me that night.

On the evening of October 17, 1998, two hundred of our family and friends gathered to watch Jeanette and I exchange our vows at the Church of the Little Flower in Coral Gables. I waited at the altar and looked down the aisle as the church doors opened and my impossibly beautiful bride, angelic in her white dress and veil, entered. Most brides make a striking appearance. And most grooms believe their brides to be the loveliest of all. But they didn’t see Jeanette that night.

I don’t remember being impressed at the time with the homily Father O’Brien, the priest we had asked to officiate, gave at our wedding. But years later, when I listened to it again on videotape, I was struck by how prophetic he had been. He said love isn’t a feeling, it’s an action. Marriage isn’t supposed to be the Hollywood version of romance, but rather a real-world union in which two people agree before God to share all of their lives and all of themselves with each other, the good and the bad. In the years that ensued and to this day, Jeanette and I have faced the bad as well as the good.

We have been blessed. We have four healthy, happy children. We are not wealthy, but we have more than our parents ever had. We have shared the highs and lows of my career, and we have had the opportunity to see and do things neither of us would have imagined possible on our wedding night.

We have struggled, too, and she has borne the brunt of it. Our life is far different than the one she hoped we would have when we married. Naturally, there are regrets. Regrets for the trips we haven’t taken as a family, the nights she has cared for our children alone, the school plays and concerts I’ve missed, all the demands on my time that keep me away from my family and distract me when I’m home. She has accepted a life she never wanted, only because she believes the influence I can have on important issues is worth the sacrifices she makes.

I joined the band and sang two Sinatra songs to her at our reception: “My Way,” which seems all too fitting now, and “New York, New York,” as an ode to our engagement. We honeymooned in France, spending five days in Paris and five more in the Normandy countryside. Paris was Paris, as enchanting as advertised, and impossible not to enjoy. But we enjoyed Normandy just as much. We rented a car and drove to the landing beaches, toured the German fortifications and visited Pointe du Hoc, where Americans, barely older than boys, had scaled the steep cliff under fire. We stared
wordlessly at the endless rows of crosses and Stars of David in the American cemetery.

We moved into our new house as soon as we returned from our honeymoon. We had modest plans for our immediate future. I would concentrate on my work at the firm, and Jeanette would continue working as a bank teller part-time and enrolling full-time in design school. We would save money and establish a foundation for our future financial security before we considered having a family. And for the time being, I would restrict my political aspirations to serving on the West Miami City Commission, where my duties didn’t demand much of my time. But life often surprises with unexpected opportunities and blessings that make a hash of your plans.

From my days as a volunteer on Lincoln Diaz-Balart’s campaign, and even earlier, when I was a young boy following the 1980 Democratic convention, I had been fascinated by campaigns and the process of politics. But it was my service on West Miami’s city commission that instilled in me an appreciation for the privilege of public service. Neither then nor now do I believe government is the solution to all our problems. On the contrary, when government assumes too great a role in our economy and private affairs it crowds out the individual initiative and risk-taking entrepreneurism that are the engine of our prosperity and the essence of Americans’ problem-solving genius. Government at its best can make a positive difference in our lives when it listens to the people, and responds to their concerns effectively without exceeding its mandate and assuming responsibilities that we are able and prefer to manage ourselves.

When I walked door-to-door in my first campaign for office, I listened to my future constituents raise concerns about their neighborhoods and the responsibilities of city leaders to help address them. I promised them that if I were elected I would do all I could to make certain the commission responded to their concerns. I tried to be true to my word after the election, and by the end of my time on the commission, I understood, much better than I had before, how government within its limited scope of activities can help improve the lives of ordinary people.

One experience from that time has remained with me ever since as a reminder of that lesson. During the campaign, several people in one neighborhood complained to me that the city had planted trees along the right-of-way of every neighborhood but theirs. When the commission initiated
the next city beautification project after the election, I made sure it included the purchase of trees for the neighborhood that had none. It was a small thing, to be sure. But as I stood there and watched landscapers plant the trees, I realized it was happening because of me. Through my seat on the city commission I had made possible this little improvement in the quality of my neighbors’ lives. I had listened to the people I served, and used my office to help them. Campaigns can be fascinating and exciting, but they are not, by themselves, fulfilling. Public service is or can be. It can give our lives greater meaning not because of the titles and privileges it confers but because of the impact it can have on the lives of others. I enjoy politics. But on the city commission of the small city of West Miami, I found my purpose.

I became close friends with the Lacasa family during my time at Ruden McClosky, especially Armando’s oldest son, Carlos. He was a member of the state legislature, in line to become the next budget committee chairman, a position of considerable influence. Florida voters had approved eight-year term limits for legislators in 1992, which meant that half the state’s districts would have open seats in the 2000 election. One of them was in the district adjacent to mine, and in 1999 Carlos encouraged me to consider running for it.

The Florida House seemed like the logical next step in my political career, but this opportunity came too soon. I had planned to spend ten years practicing law full-time, and in the less intensely scrutinized world of West Miami politics before I considered running for another office. But Carlos argued convincingly that the 2000 elections might be a once in a lifetime opportunity for me. Not only were there an historic number of vacancies in the house, but, were I elected, I could gain influence in state politics quickly because there would be relatively few veteran legislators left to contend with.

I had reservations. I didn’t think Jeanette would approve of a sudden change in the plans we had just made. She was busy with her design school studies and didn’t need the distraction of a political campaign. I didn’t think the firm, despite Carlos’s support, would approve of it, either. The Florida House meets in session for nine consecutive weeks every spring. That is an awful lot of time for a junior associate to spend away from the firm’s business. To my surprise, though, neither Jeanette nor the firm’s partners objected to the idea. At Carlos’s suggestion, I decided to open an
account for campaign donations as a way to gauge support for my candidacy and to reserve my option to run. I wouldn’t have to make a decision until early in the new year. Then life interrupted my plans, again.

Late one night in August, Jeanette mentioned she had been feeling ill. When she described her symptoms, I remarked they sounded like the symptoms of pregnancy. She dismissed my diagnosis curtly. I got in the car and drove to the nearest pharmacy, where I bought the most expensive and, therefore, to my mind, most reliable pregnancy test kit I could find on the shelves. I convinced Jeanette to take it, which she did grudgingly, handing me the stick when she emerged from the bathroom and returned to her studies.

I stared at the stick as a single line appeared, and then, a few moments later, a second one. I was holding a positive pregnancy test in my hand. I showed it to Jeanette. She was skeptical about the result, so I returned to the store and bought three different brands of pregnancy tests. All of them were positive.

I was ecstatic. I was going to be a father. Sure, it was a little earlier than we’d planned, but a blessing all the same. “It’s God’s will,” I kept telling her. Jeanette’s reaction was less enthusiastic. After the initial shock wore off, she started to cry and called her mother. We had been married less than a year, and she wasn’t ready to have a child yet. She wanted to finish school, and her studies often kept her up well into the night. She wouldn’t have the energy for a healthy pregnancy. We weren’t financially secure. I was thinking of running for the legislature.

She was upset, and my joyful reaction to the news wasn’t making her feel any better. I wasn’t going to suffer morning sickness. My body wouldn’t be transformed. I wouldn’t endure labor. She would. Her reaction was understandable and temporary. By the morning, she was as excited by the news as I was.

The first three months were rough on Jeanette. She suffered severe morning sickness and had little energy for school; it subsided by the second trimester. Her belly started to show, and her spirits were good. And we had a new plan—a good one, I thought. Early the next year, we would decide whether or not I would run for the legislature. The baby was due in April, and, if I did run, I wouldn’t have to start campaigning full-time until early June. Everything was coming along nicely in our lives—a little ahead of schedule, but manageable.