Jack Latvala, the Lion of the Florida Senate
If Jack Latvala was your friend, he was your friend.
That sounds simple. In politics, it isn't.
Jack Latvala was the last of his kind.
Jack didn't stop knowing you because you lost an election, changed jobs or became politically inconvenient. He was always good to me.
Jack reached out Jan. 15 just to check in.
Now he is gone. He was 74.
The lion of the Florida Senate.
I first met Jack right after he left the Senate for the first time, when he was pushing a constitutional amendment that would force the Florida Legislature to review every sales tax exemption on the books.
The amendment failed.
Jack got it done anyway.
By 2010, the Legislature was reviewing every exemption. All of them got a hearing.
One day, the committee was scheduled to review the exemption for mobility aids used by disabled veterans.
We walked into the committee room and it was packed to the brim with crusty old, angry WW2 veterans. It felt like these guys were the last guys alive who stormed Omaha beach and they were coming for us that day because they heard the Legislature was looking to tax their wheelchairs, lifts, scooters, and special vehicles.
The first 15 minutes of the meeting were burned because every committee member had to give a groveling speech, apologizing for wasting everyone's time and promising the veterans their exemption was safe.
The exemption survived. More important, Jack had made his point.
Every tax exemption sounds questionable until the people who depend on it fill the committee room.
That was Jack.
He could lose the amendment and still win the fight.
Years later, another Jack Latvala fight landed in Broward and Palm Beach counties.
Republican Ellyn Bogdanoff was trying to reclaim her Florida Senate seat from Democrat Maria Sachs.
It wasn't just another legislative race, Bogdanoff was a vote for Jack in his campaign to become Senate president.
That made the race part of the war inside the Republican Senate.
Andy Gardiner was the incoming Senate president and controlled the party money. Bogdanoff kept being promised help. The help never came. The goalposts kept moving.
Gardiner didn't have to endorse Sachs. He just had to leave Bogdanoff and Jack to fight with one arm tied behind their backs.
In Tallahassee, that was close enough.
Jack fought anyway.
We dug through Sachs' records and raised serious questions about whether she actually lived in the district she represented. We found out she was riding around in a limousine paid for by taxpayer money (at least that's what we could prove, what we knew was much crazier!)
Jack knew how to find a loose thread and when to keep pulling.
The race turned into one of the nastiest and most expensive legislative fights in Florida. It was the race that pioneered the ‘fake’ blue and red cards a decade before that was even illegal.
Bogdanoff carried Broward County by nearly 6,000 votes.
Then the Palm Beach County numbers came in.
Four precincts around downtown Delray Beach were so lopsided that we stared at the returns in disbelief. A combined 3,040 to 275.
Bogdanoff lost. And Jack lost the vote for Senate president.
Still, Jack had taken on the Democratic incumbent and much of his own party at the same time…and he almost pulled it off.
That fight said more about Jack than any title ever could.
He understood that politics was personal.
He remembered who helped.
He remembered who didn't.
Jack remained a force because his power never came entirely from a title.
It came from relationships.
Jack came from a time when relationships in politics meant someone you've been in the trenches with and can rely on. It meant longevity and institutional knowledge.
Florida politics is different now.
Now, with term limits it's more scripted. More cautious and more controlled.
The personalities are smaller. The friendships are more temporary. Too many people look over their shoulders before deciding whether it is safe to admit they know you.
Jack never did that. If Jack Latvala was your friend, he was your friend.
The lion of the Florida Senate is gone.
There won't be another like him.