An American Son: A Memoir (20 page)

After the election crisis concluded, the rest of the legislative year seemed largely uneventful by comparison. As majority whip, I was given a few opportunities I might not otherwise have had to speak on the floor about several important bills. I hoped to impress colleagues with my leadership skills and public speaking, which I knew could give me an advantage over the competition were I to decide to run for speaker. When the 2001 session concluded in May, I was generally satisfied with the direction of my political career, and worried sick about my finances and my legal career.

My leadership role took more time from my work at Ruden McClosky and strained my relations with the firm’s partners. The weeks I spent in Tallahassee consumed nearly half the year. And when I was back at the firm, I was usually distracted. None of the firm’s work was as interesting to me as my work in the legislature, and it showed. The partners had good reason to be displeased with me.

My annual review at the firm was rapidly approaching, and I knew nothing good would come of it. The partners would either reduce my salary further or ask me to leave the firm. My salary was $72,000, more than my parents had ever made combined. But it barely covered our basic expenses. My student loan payments at the time were close to $900 a month. Rent was $1,500. Our car payments were another several hundred. I agonized over our monthly budget, and searched for expenses we could live without. We considered having Jeanette go back to work even though we had wanted her to remain at home until Amanda was old enough for school. But when we factored in the cost of child care, her net income would be negligible. So we decided to sell my car and move in with Jeanette’s mother for the time being. Even with these economies, we couldn’t afford any further reductions in my salary. I reached out to a professional headhunter with a difficult request. Find a firm that needed a land use and zoning attorney, and wouldn’t mind if I was absent half the year.

We were living in my mother in law’s house. I had given up my car. Still we were struggling to make ends meet, and I was facing either a catastrophic reduction in my salary or unemployment. My understanding wife, who had already sacrificed so much for my political career, now had to worry that I couldn’t provide for our family. I had never been so despondent. The only solution, I concluded, was to resign from the legislature and practice law full-time again.

I got in the car and started driving to clear my head. Eventually, I drove to the Church of the Little Flower, where we had been married and where I had often attended daily Mass. I entered the church, walked to the front pew, opened the kneeler and prayed. Why had God allowed me to come so far only to let me fail? Why had doors opened to me and then suddenly closed again? What did He want me to do? I prayed His will be done, and for the strength to accept it.

When I think of that moment now, I wonder if my despair was as great as my father’s and grandfather’s had been when they had suffered far worse misfortune. How anguished must my grandfather have been when he lost his railroad job, his home and the social and economic status that had meant so much to him, when he wandered for miles leaning on his cane in search of menial jobs to support his seven daughters, when he was refused work because of his disability? What did my father feel when he considered moving back to Cuba, when his small businesses failed, when he lost his job and our apartment at Toledo Plaza, when he searched in vain for work in Las Vegas and had to accept a job as a bar boy?

My grandfather and father had once been my age, and had ambitions no less dear to them than mine were to me. They both had known success for a brief time, and both had seen it taken away, never to be recovered. They endured and made the best of their circumstances, and gave their children a better start in life than they had ever had. But they had to settle for less of a life than they had wanted, hoping their children would never face the same disappointment.

Now I imagined telling my children someday that I had once been the majority whip of the Florida House but had lost my job and had to leave politics to make a living. I had a family to provide for and their future to plan for. Maybe, like my family before me, I would lose my dreams, too, and hope my children would live theirs.

I left the church still worried, but resigned to accept whatever happened. On my way back to my mother in law’s house, my cell phone rang. After weeks had passed without hearing from her, the headhunter was calling to let me know a law firm in Broward County, Becker and Poliakoff, had expressed an interest in my services.

I had just been on my knees in prayer asking God’s help. Now a door suddenly appeared to open and offer me a way out of my predicament. Was
it a miracle? I don’t know. I do know that whatever fortune or misfortune we encounter in our lives, God expects it to lead us closer to Him.

The headhunter put me in touch with the firm’s senior partner, Alan Becker, who had once served in the legislature, too. I met with him a few days later at his office in Hollywood, Florida. Becker and Poliakoff had a very successful land use and zoning practice in Broward. Alan told me they wanted to expand the practice to Miami-Dade. We spent most of the interview discussing the challenges of practicing law while serving in the legislature. We seemed to hit it off on a personal level, but he couldn’t make me an offer until he had discussed it with his partners and gotten their approval.

The next Monday, Alan called me and offered me the job, with a salary of $93,000—the precise amount I had budgeted before Ruden McClosky cut my pay. I didn’t hesitate a moment. Two weeks later, I drove to the firm’s Hollywood office for my first day in my new job.

I woke up early to beat the traffic. As I reached for my wallet before walking out the door, I saw the yellow sticky note attached to it:

The additional money gave us a little breathing room and would allow us to move back into our house in West Miami soon. I vowed not to make the same mistakes I had made at Ruden McClosky. I intended to arrive at the office before seven every morning. It wasn’t an election year and I would be able to spend more time in my law office that summer. Either I would make this opportunity work or I would have to give up my political career. I was determined to make it work.

I flew to Tallahassee for the start of committee work on a Tuesday morning in September. I was in my house office in a meeting when my aide Nelson Diaz passed me a note informing me that a bomb had exploded at
the World Trade Center. I had visited the towers just four weeks earlier when I had traveled to New York for a conference. Speaker Feeney had hosted a fund-raiser for our Florida House candidates at Windows on the World on the 107th floor of the North Tower. I had brought Jeanette and Amanda with me, and I remembered having a hard time getting Amanda’s stroller onto one of the tower’s escalators.

Nelson soon corrected his early bulletin. It wasn’t a bomb explosion—an airplane had crashed into the North Tower. Like most people, I initially assumed it had been an accident; the pilot of a small aircraft had probably flown too close to the New York skyline and had somehow lost control of the plane. We watched on television as the second plane struck the South Tower, and we realized the United States was under attack.

Within minutes the Florida capitol was swarming with heavily armed police. I appreciated the quick response but thought it was an overreaction. I didn’t believe that terrorists who had just struck New York and Washington would be interested in attacking the sleepy capital of Florida. Nelson reminded me that the governor, whose office was four floors beneath mine, happened to be the president’s brother. I decided that getting out of the capitol might not be a bad idea after all.

I wanted to go home as soon as possible, but all flights were grounded after the attacks. I drove to Miami the next morning with three of my colleagues. We lived just a few miles from the airport, and I had become accustomed to the sound of aircraft overhead. Now there was just an eerie silence above, and the empty sky seemed surreal.

The shock and uncertainty that gripped Americans in those first days and weeks after 9/11 began to subside slowly as people resumed their lives and things returned to what would become the new normal. I managed my time better and my work at the firm was going well. Our financial situation was much improved. We were growing more accustomed to the changes in our lives necessitated by my political career. We were as content as we had been in some time. And when Jeanette announced in October that she was pregnant again, we were both happy and excited about it. We hadn’t planned it, but we were thrilled Amanda would have a brother or sister close to her age.

The legislature would soon begin the politically charged, highly technical, once in a decade process of redistricting. I had no official leadership role in redistricting, but I managed to become a key player in the design of
the house districts, and a principal defender of the final plan. In the process, I gained favor with my Republican colleagues and with Johnnie Byrd, the next speaker of the house.

I didn’t know what my next role would be in the new legislature. After two years as majority whip, the logical next step was to run for majority leader. But with so many members ahead of me in seniority, I appeared to be a long shot.

Jeanette was scheduled to have an induced labor on June 18 that summer. The night before, I had an uneasy feeling about it. Researching all the potential complications of childbirth had made me a nervous wreck the day Amanda was born, and I attributed my anxiety that day to the memory of that experience.

Her labor went much more quickly than it had the last time. It seemed mere minutes had passed before I was introduced to my newest daughter, Daniella. We hadn’t known the sex of the baby in advance, and I was happy Amanda would have a baby sister and Jeanette would have two little girls to keep her company when I was away from home.

Jeanette delivered her in a birthing suite, a large and comfortable room intended to make the experience more like giving birth at home. Although the room was spacious, there were so many people present during the delivery that it didn’t feel large. The doctor, nurse, myself, Jeanette, her mother, my mother, Veronica and Jeanette’s three sisters were all present when Daniella entered the world. As soon as she was born everyone was instantly mesmerized by her without realizing that something was seriously wrong with her mother.

Jeanette was suffering from an obstetric complication called placenta accreta in which the placenta becomes so deeply attached to the uterine wall that the obstetrician has to remove it surgically. Women in this condition often hemorrhage, and the result can be a hysterectomy or even death depending on the severity of it. I could tell by the look on the doctor’s face that he was having trouble. He is a very calm and composed man who has delivered many of the children in our family. So when he suddenly ordered everyone except me to leave the room, we all knew something was wrong. He ordered three units of blood and told the nurses to have the operating room prepared. I heard one of the nurses page the anesthesiologist to report to the operating room as soon as possible. As they wheeled Jeanette
out of the birthing suite to surgery, I overheard the doctor tell the nurses what was going on.

The next thirty minutes were the longest half hour of my life. I paced right outside the surgery, praying for my wife’s recovery. I watched nurses race out of the operating room to retrieve more units of blood. I could hear our family in the waiting room, joking and laughing, unaware of the severity of her condition. I fought to keep from contemplating the worst.

We were fortunate our doctor succeeded in stopping the bleeding with a relatively minor surgical procedure that averted the necessity of a hysterectomy. I waited until Jeanette was back in her room and settled before alerting the family to the situation. The next twenty-four hours were critical. She had lost so much blood that even a little more bleeding would require urgent attention. I spent almost the entire night staring at her while she slept, watching for any sign of distress.

Later that night, the doctor came to her room and explained what had happened. There had been some difficulty stopping Jeanette’s bleeding when Amanda was born, and we had survived an all-out crisis with Daniella. He strongly advised us not to have any more children because he believed Jeanette suffered a predisposition to the condition. I was so relieved she and Daniella were okay, the last thing I was concerned with was having another child. Jeanette felt differently. She believed we would have more children, and considered his recommendation to be a casual caution. We went home a few days later with the admonition Jeanette needed to take it very easy for the next six weeks.

Primaries to nominate house candidates were held that summer. I decided to stay out of them for the most part. I wanted to spend time with Jeanette and the girls, and I didn’t want to further antagonize Gaston’s allies. Gaston was frantically traveling the state campaigning for candidates who would support him for speaker in the 2004 leadership election. If enough of them won, he would have the votes to defeat his rival, Allan Bense, and become the first Cuban American speaker of the Florida House. Had I campaigned, some of the candidates I would have helped were not Gaston’s supporters. So I limited my activity to supporting two Dole campaign alumni, David Rivera and Carlos Lopez-Cantera.

The primaries were held in late August. David won and Carlos lost. But the biggest news of the night was that not enough of Gaston’s candidates
had won. He dropped out of the speaker’s race that night and declared his support for Bense. That race was over, and I knew my colleagues would soon start concentrating on the next race for speaker of the house, in 2006, who would be chosen from my class.