Karl Rove's Florida Frankenstein

Did Team Bush turn once-moderate GOP Senate candidate Mel Martinez into a gay-bashing, reactionary ogre?

By Mary Jacoby

Oct. 8, 2004 | Here is the campaign narrative that Mel Martinez had once hoped to present to the voters of Florida: Cuban immigrant, sent to America by his parents as a little boy to escape tyranny, grows up to become a successful trial lawyer, mayor of Orlando and a member of the president's Cabinet. Known to all as a "really nice guy," he caps his American dream with a run for governor.

Now here is the narrative that White House political chief Karl Rove, in pursuit of every possible advantage for President Bush in the crucial swing state of Florida, has foisted on Martinez: Cuban immigrant becomes mayor of Orlando (note to Mel: Drop the "trial lawyer" part) and a member of the president's Cabinet. Known for appealing "to the worst in people" with a vicious anti-gay campaign, he caps his American dream with a run -- for U.S. senator.

Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Melquiades Martinez's surprising political transformation from sunny moderate to snarling right-winger is testament to the self-effacing loyalty expected of presidential teammates in pursuit of the ultimate goal: ensuring that George W. Bush prevails on Nov. 2.

In Florida, a big and diverse state, successful statewide candidates cannot afford to veer far from the middle. But Martinez, who is reluctantly running for the Senate at the behest of the White House, presided over a GOP primary campaign so thuggish that even the president's brother, Gov. Jeb Bush, cried foul. Florida's largest newspaper, the St. Petersburg Times, withdrew its endorsement of Martinez for the low-blow tactics he used to vanquish his primary opponent, former Rep. Bill McCollum, a House prosecutor in the Senate impeachment trial of President Clinton.

Polls now indicate a tossup race between Martinez and Democrat Betty Castor, a former president of the University of South Florida in Tampa, for the seat now held by retiring Sen. Bob Graham, a Democrat. Castor is running as the moderate heir to the popular Graham, stressing her support for a strong defense, education and lower prescription drug costs. Martinez, on the other hand, has defied Florida's centrist tradition by continuing to list to the right. His campaign sent an e-mail news release recently that called the federal law enforcement agents who removed shipwrecked Elián Gonzalez from the home of his Miami relatives for return to his father in Cuba "armed thugs." And he has attacked Castor for failing in the mid-1990s to fire a tenured USF computer science professor who was suspected of (and later indicted for) helping lead a Palestinian terrorist group.

The tactics -- which Martinez has plaintively blamed on his staff -- have little to do with getting the former Bush HUD secretary elected to the Senate. Rather, they appear aimed at spurring turnout for President Bush among key Hispanic blocs in Orlando and Miami and depressing it among Democratic-leaning Jewish voters in a state that vaulted Bush to the White House in 2000 by a margin of 537 votes when the Supreme Court stopped the counting.

And what if Martinez's political reputation and future get sacrificed in the process? Well, it's all for a higher cause -- or, at least, that is what Rove must undoubtedly be hoping Martinez will understand.

Martinez came to the United States in 1962, at age 15, under the Roman Catholic Church's "Pedro Pan" relocation program for Cuban children. It would be four years before his parents were able to follow; a photo on the Martinez campaign Web site shows his joyful parents rushing off an airplane and into Martinez's arms.

Martinez has played heavily on the theme of an immigrant who flees a dictatorship for opportunity in the United States. He spoke no English when he arrived, but by 1973 he had earned a law degree from Florida State University and married his American-born wife, Kitty. One of his television ads, titled "Dreams," tells voters: "He escaped Communism as a young boy and fell in love with America." Martinez repeated his inspirational tale in a prime-time speaking slot at the Republican National Convention.

Yet from there his official campaign narrative skips quickly over his long career as a tort lawyer. It does not mention that he was president of the Florida Academy of Trial Lawyers in the late 1980s, or that he once fought Florida doctors who tried to limit the amount of pain and suffering damages awarded in malpractice cases. There is no discussion of his past campaign donations to Democrats such as Sen. Fritz Hollings of South Carolina. Although Martinez would cap damages awarded in medical malpractice cases at $500,000, double what McCollum, President Bush and most other Republicans support, he backs the rest of the Republican Party's tort reform agenda.

This turnabout strikes his former lawyer colleagues as opportunistic. "Mel Martinez is a good person. The Mel I know is someone you cannot dislike," said John Morgan, a prominent plaintiff's lawyer in Orlando who has been friends with Martinez for years. "But Mel fought against tort reform his whole life. Either he didn't believe what he was talking about then, or he doesn't believe what he's talking about now. And I don't believe Mel believes what he's saying now."

Next page: Rove began twisting Martinez's arm to get him to run for the Senate