Bob Graham and Broward County had a close but complicated relationship.
At election time, Broward voters loved “Chipmunk Cheeks,” as he was affectionately called, and they showed it, producing overwhelming margins in both of his victories for governor in 1978 and 1982.
“Just a nice person,” recalled R. Emmett McTigue, a Fort Lauderdale real estate broker who knew Graham for decades. “He didn’t carry himself as if he were an important person, which I thought was a lovely characteristic.”
Graham’s 1982 re-election was the stuff of legend. He won by a 2-to-1 margin over L.A. “Skip” Bafalis, a Republican congressman from Fort Myers who ran on an anti-crime platform with Fort Lauderdale Police Chief Leo Callahan as his running mate.
It was the time between elections that created so much drama.
Graham’s political timing was impeccable. His rise to statewide prominence paralleled the emergence of once-solidly Republican Broward as the dominant Democratic county in the state as a “gray wave” of hundreds of thousands of northeast retirees flocked to retirement complexes west of Florida’s Turnpike.
From their “apartments,” as they called their condos, they turned Lauderhill, Lauderdale Lakes, Margate, Sunrise and Tamarac into mini-boroughs of New York, and were loyal and reliable Democratic voters, though a few local Republicans also won them over.
In almost no time, the local political culture looked and sounded like part of Brooklyn. Broward became dominated by Democratic clubs, palm cards, kosher delis and elderly kingmakers dressed in Bermuda shorts and white socks.
Graham knew that a secret to his success was a willingness to spend hours working west Broward’s swimming pools and condo clubhouses, the air thick with perfume and cigar smoke, and letting all those elderly women pinch his cheeks and hug him.
But it wasn’t all fun. Over a four-year term, a governor makes thousands of appointments, and Graham made more than his share in Broward, with its bevy of elected offices, two hospital districts and an independent port authority.
He reshaped the local judiciary. He transformed local politics with the controversial choice of a sheriff. He appointed two county commissioners and a mayor in Sunrise.
No public official figured more prominently in this stage of Graham’s career than Bob Butterworth, who was Broward sheriff at the time.
Graham chose Butterworth to clean up the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles in 1979 after a scandal involving misuse of planes and patrol cars.
That state experience would soon help Butterworth in his first of four successful runs for attorney general, but it left an immediate leadership vacuum at home, in which Graham would play a central role in one of the lowest points for Democrats in Broward’s history.
Taking advice from lawyer Steve Josias and political aide Ron Villella, a former Pembroke Pines mayor, while navigating Broward’s feuding factions, Graham chose a little-known county judge, George Brescher, to replace Butterworth as sheriff, with the 1984 election on the horizon.
Brescher proved no match for the flamboyant Nick Navarro, who won despite switching parties too close to an election to qualify. Democrats went to court to throw Navarro off the ballot, but that failed, and it only fired up Navarro supporters even more.
Somehow, with a popular Democrat, Graham, as governor, Democrats had managed to fumble away control of Broward’s most powerful political office. They reclaimed it eight years later, after Republicans grew weary of a sheriff’s office constantly on the front pages for cronyism, favoritism and political stunts.
Graham appointed Phyllis Loconto and Maurice Berkowitz, among others, to the Port Everglades Authority, which would soon lose its political independence and become part of county government.
It was Graham who appointed Broward’s first Black county commissioner, Sylvia Poitier of Deerfield Beach, to fill a vacancy created by a close Graham ally, Marcia Beach, who resigned to go to law school.
He had already appointed another political neophyte, Eve Savage, to a commission seat after the 1981 death of Anne Kolb, an environmental champion.
Like Brescher, Savage could not hold the seat in an election, losing a Democratic primary to a well-financed, politically savvy Scott Cowan, mayor of Davie, who would never be described as an environmental champion, and who would dominate county government for the next decade.
Graham’s choices for judgeships were generally capable, and many long-time readers will recall these names. They included Henry Latimer, Jack Musselman, Jack Luzzo, Patricia Cocalis, Harry Hinckley, Zebedee Wright and Constance Nutaro.
Graham handed a county judgeship in 1981 to Dale Ross, who would later be chief judge of the circuit for 16 years.
Of course, a governor who giveth also taketh away, and Graham suspended Broward mayors in Dania Beach, Pembroke Park and Sunrise, where an indicted and soon-to-be-imprisoned John Lomelo’s long political career ended during the Graham era.
To bring Sunrise under control during Lomelo’s absence, Graham turned to a trusted hand, Bob Butterworth — again.
Steve Bousquet is Opinion Editor of the ֱ and a columnist in Tallahassee and Fort Lauderdale. Contact him at sbousquet@sunsentinel.com or at (850) 567-2240 or on X .
