Chris Cate: Welcome to the Fluent in Floridian podcast featuring the Sunshine State’s brightest leaders talking about the issues most important to the people of Florida and its millions of weekly visitors. In this episode created by SalterMitchellPR, our executive producer Heidi Otway and the president of SalterMitchell PR talks to former United States senator George LeMieux.

Heidi Otway: Senator LeMieux, thank you so much for joining us on this episode of the Fluent in Floridian podcast.

Senator LeMieux: Thank you, Heidi. It’s a pleasure to be with you today.

Heidi Otway: So, you are from south Florida. You were born and raised in Broward County. I’m from Miami Dade County. So, we kind of grew up in the same area, and I just love me some south Florida. Tell me about your upbringing down in Coral Springs.

Senator LeMieux: Yeah. First born in Fort Lauderdale, Broward General Hospital, lived in downtown Fort Lauderdale. My parents in 1973 decided to move us to this new city that was being built in western Broward County called Coral Springs, which was in those days like going to visit the Everglades. It was so far away and hard to get to, but grew up out there, went to public schools in Coral Springs, and had a great upbringing in south Florida.

Senator LeMieux: Very few people from south Florida are like us in the sense that they were born here unless they’re still kids. A lot of folks are from some place else who come to south Florida. I love it here. I’ve always loved it, and happy to be back after my time in public service.

Heidi Otway: So, you didn’t go to a Florida school. You went to Georgia? Emory in Georgia, right?

Senator LeMieux: Yeah. I wanted to get a little further away. I didn’t want to have to be so close, because I had to mow the grass on the weekends. So, I was a debater in high school. Emory has a great debate program. So, that was what originally attracted me to the school. After I visited the school, I feel in love with it and had four great years there and then went off to Washington, DC to Georgetown where I went to law school.

Heidi Otway: Wonderful. So, what inspired you to get into politics? I see that you interned for congressman Clay Shaw, Jr and US senator Connie Maddox. So, what inspired you to get into politics?

Senator LeMieux: The real defining moment for me, Heidi, was being a kid. I guess about 11 years old. The day that Ronald Reagan was sworn into office. I’ll never forget watching him, and at the same time they showed a split screen on the television as the hostages were being returned from Iran after 444 days in captivity. I thought, wow, that makes a difference. There’s somebody who he hasn’t even taken the oath of office yet, and he’s already been able to achieve something that the previous president couldn’t achieve. It made me realize that you could do a lot for people in public office, and you could be impactful. So, I think that’s when I really got the bug to be involved in public service.

Heidi Otway: What did you do after your internships and after you graduated from law school?

Senator LeMieux: I went back to Fort Lauderdale. I went to work at the same law firm that I have the privilege of being at today, the Gunster Law Firm. I started here in 1994. It will be 25 years this August, and started to practice law, and got involved in my community, got involved in Republican party politics. That was sort of where I got my start.

Heidi Otway: So, you were the chair of the Republican party down in south Florida at one point in your career. Is that correct? Tell us about that experience.

Senator LeMieux: Yeah. I was the chairman of the Broward County Republican party, which I joke is like being the one-eyed man in the valley of the blind. Broward County is the most Democratic county in the state, one of the most Democratic places in the country, but it was a great experience. I was chairman of the party, kind of overlapping with our prior chairman, during the 2000 recount. So, we spent 37 days in the courthouse fighting the Bush v Gore battles. I had some great experiences. It was a great political training ground for me.

Heidi Otway: Then you went and worked for governor Charlie Chris and actually helped him get elected. Is that correct? And then you went on to become his chief of staff. Let’s talk about that time when you were in the governor’s office.

Senator LeMieux: Well, I started off first in the attorney general’s office. I went up there and worked as the deputy attorney general for three years and helped him run the attorney general’s office, which was a great privilege. I was a young lawyer at the time. I was managing more than 400 lawyers and got to argue in courts around Florida, even got to do a case in the United States Supreme Court.

Senator LeMieux: Then the governor, then attorney general, Chris asked me to run his campaign for governor in 2006. So, I left state government. I ran that campaign, and we were fortunate that we won, and I went in after that to be chief of staff to the governor, which I did for a year in 2007.

Heidi Otway: So, you ran for office before. Did you have any idea that your work in the governor’s office would lead you to become a US senator?

Senator LeMieux: I had no idea. I mean, it’s really and amazing circumstance and a throwback to an earlier America that a governor gets to appoint a US senator. Most folks don’t know that US senators were not directly elected until the early part of the 1900’s. We changed the Constitution to allow for direct election of senators. Prior to that, senators were chosen by the state legislature.

Senator LeMieux: The reason why in Florida the governor still can appoint a replacement for a senator if there’s less than two years left on the term is a throwback to the way that we used to select them. So, I was extraordinarily fortunate to be at the right place at the right time.

Heidi Otway: So, what were some of your most proudest accomplishments in that role?

Senator LeMieux: Well, being in the senate was a tremendous privilege. I was there during the beginning of President Obama’s tenure. That was a tough time to be a Republican. I guess my training in Broward County helped me for that. We only had 40 US senators, and the Democratic party had 60. So, they could whatever they wanted to without any Republican votes, and they did. They passed the Affordable Care Act. They passed Dodd Frank.

Senator LeMieux: What I’m most proud of is I worked across the aisle and was able to get five things passed while I was there. My goal was not to hit home runs. It was to get singles and doubles, but I wanted to make sure that I was doing well for the people of Florida. So, we passed some small business acts that allowed for banks to be able to loan money to small businesses that were struggling during the recession. I was proud of that work. I was proud of work we did to cut fraud in healthcare in the federal government, legislation that passed that the president signed, which has saved billions of dollars for the taxpayer from healthcare fraud.

Senator LeMieux: So, worked on those things. Worked on things concerning armed services. The committee that I served on, which was a great privilege to be there for the men and women in our armed forces. It was an amazing time. It was a short period of time, but I’m very thankful I had the opportunity.

Heidi Otway: So, your career has run the gamut from the governor’s office to serving in the senate, and now you are an author of a new book that came on last year, “Florida Made, the 25 Most Important Figures Who Shaped the State.” Tell me, what inspired you to become an author at this point in your career?

Senator LeMieux: When I would travel around the state, both in state government and when I was in the US Senate, I would realize that there was a great varying degree of knowledge about Florida and Florida’s history. If you’re in Pensacola or Niceville or Panama City, you probably find some multi-generation Floridians whose parents, grandparents, even great-grandparents grew up in Florida. Those folks know a lot more about the history of Florida than many of us, but a lot of people in Florida are from some place else. They know more about where they came from than where they are.

Senator LeMieux: We also are such a huge state that you may know the history of Jacksonville but not know the history of Miami and vice-versa. So, I thought there was a real need to tell the story, and frankly there were gaps in my knowledge of what Florida history was. There’s some really good books out there about Florida. Professor Gannon at the University of Florida wrote some great books. There’s a great book called Finding Florida by TD Allman, The Swamp by Michael Greenwald, but I still thought that there was a lot that needed to be explained, and I was very curious myself about the topic of who were the people who helped develop Florida.

Senator LeMieux: Florida is the earliest place in what is now the United States that was discovered and settled by European colonists, and even though we were the earliest, well before Plymouth Rock, well before Jamestown, Florida developed relatively late. Really not until the late 1800’s did Florida start to grow.

Senator LeMieux: So, I wanted to know those reasons why it developed late, how it developed, who were the people who made those impacts. So, that was the inspiration for the book.

Heidi Otway: So, you talk a lot about Henry Flagler who you called the state’s founding father, and he’s actually first up in the book. Talk about what you learned about him without giving too much away for all of our listeners who we actually want them to go read your book.

Senator LeMieux: Well, he’s an amazing person, and I don’t know that there’s been anybody who’s been more impactful on any state than Henry Flagler was in his impact on Florida. He’s an amazing man. He grows up, born in 1830 in upstate New York, in Madonna, New York. He leaves home at 14, which is an incredible thing to think about as a parent that you’d have your 14 year old say, “I’m leaving.”

Heidi Otway: Yeah.

Senator LeMieux: Gets on a ship across the Great Lakes, goes to Ohio, starts working, has his ups and downs, but meets a young man who’s also entrepreneurial, hard worker at the same time. Through some successes and failures they start to work together in a new and emerging business in the country which is the oil business. He and his partner create what would end up becoming the largest company in the world and the most profitable company in the world. That was Standard Oil. His partner was John Rockefeller.

Senator LeMieux: They became fabulously wealthy. Rockefeller became the richest man in the world or one of them, and Flagler became one of the richest people in the United States. He moved to New York. The US government broke up Standard Oil, and later in life around age 50, he had the occasion to visit Florida with his wife who was ill at the time. Her physician had told her that she needed to get out of the cold climes of the northeast and go someplace warm in the winter. So, they went to Jacksonville, and Henry Flagler got the bug, and he came back a few years later, and he started to develop a hotel in Saint Augustine, build the train between…

Senator LeMieux: Better build the train between Jacksonville and Saint Augustine, and bring his wealthy friends down to Saint Augustine to winter. Eventually does that in Palm Beach, gets recruited by another enterprising person in our book, Julia Tuddles, to extend the railroad to what was then called Fort Dallas, which is now Miami. Then if that were not enough, having built the railroad in the cities along the way, decides he will do something that’s just truly incredible, which is he connects an island that’s 90 miles off the shore with an overseas railroad. So, just an amazing figure in our state’s history.

Heidi Otway: Yeah. I love how on page 13 of your book, you said that the story of the Sunshine State begs the question, who built Florida? Then you close that paragraph by saying the real question is absence of this person’s influence, how would Florida be different? It’s safe to say that without Henry Flagler, we have no idea what Florida would look like.

Senator LeMieux: It could be very different. This is what was fun about it, because there were people we didn’t include. We didn’t include Ponce de Leon, even though we mention him as one of the most important people, because he didn’t do anything when he was here. He ran around, looked for gold, got most of his troops killed, and he died as well. You had to be someone who really made a difference. If you think about Florida without Flagler and out that railroad infrastructure that brought people to Florida in the 1920’s during the booming ’20s when we had our land boom when cities like Miami and Coral Gables and Fort Lauderdale were really developed, where would they have been if the Great Depression had come and then the war? Florida might not have developed until after World War II, and it might have developed in a completely different way.

Heidi Otway: Yeah. I thought it was interesting that you included Fidel Castro. Did you get any feedback or some highly unpopular commentary about including him in your book?

Senator LeMieux: Well, people are amazed and a little surprised that we would include Castro. The test for this book is not whether you’re a good person. The test for this book is not even whether you lived in Florida or are from Florida. Fidel Castro, as far as I know, has never been to Florida, but if he would not have taken over Cuba and we would not have had this diaspora of amazingly talented people all leave their country around the same time and have the vast majority of them settle in Miami, south Florida would not be what it is today, which is an international city, the capital of Latin America.

Senator LeMieux: Miami in 1960 looked a lot like Kansas City, Missouri and its population and economic throw weight. So, it was a terrible thing for the people of Cuba, but it ended up being a wonderful thing for the people of Florida.

Heidi Otway: Well, I can tell, Senator LeMieux, that you truly love Florida. Let’s talk a little bit about your life now and what you’re doing now. Recently you were selected to be on the transition team for Governor Ron DeSantis. How do you think he’s progressed so far in his role? He just completed his first session.

Senator LeMieux: I think he’s had the best beginning time of being a governor of anyone I’ve seen in my lifetime. He’s really done more than hit the ground running. He surpassed everybody’s expectations, and he had a great legislative session. He’s worked hard on issues concerning the environment. He’s worked hard on school choice issues. He’s really an advocate for what the people want, and what he ran on he’s achieved. So, I think he’s doing a great job. I was very honored to be one of just a few people who were on the steering committee of his transition. I spent a lot of time in Tallahassee helping the governor pick the right people for government.

Senator LeMieux: He’s got a great group of people. He’s got a great chief of staff, Shane Strum. So, I think he’s doing an excellent job, and I think the future is very bright for him and because of that, very bright for Florida.

Heidi Otway: So, have you been sharing any of your experiences and best practices with our newest US senator, Senator Rick Scott?

Senator LeMieux: I did have the opportunity to visit with Senator Scott about a month ago in Washington, DC as well as visit with Senator Rubio’s team. I think that Senator Scott is doing a very good job as well. I think he’s hit the ground running. I mean, his experience as governor is invaluable to being able to serve us in Washington. He’s still focused on all the right things, and I think he’s frustrated as I was with how broken the federal government is, but we need people like that who know how government should work. It works well in Florida, to kind of teach the lesson to Washington that we can do better.

Heidi Otway: Well, I have a question for you having served in the role as a US senator. Would you run again for that position?

Senator LeMieux: I don’t know. I have four kids, and they are ages nine to 16. So, this is not the right time for me to be pursuing those things when I’ve got a lot of things to do as a dad, but maybe some day in the future I will pursue public life again.

Heidi Otway: Wonderful. Well, let’s talk a little bit about your LeMieux Center for Public Policy. Tell our listeners about it and why did you choose Palm Beach Atlantic University to house the center?

Senator LeMieux: The LeMieux Center for Public Policy is center at Palm Beach Atlantic University that focuses on trying to bring thoughtful conversation around important issues to the south Florida community. We’ve been there about five years, and we’ve had a lot of success. I’m very proud of the work that the university has done, and I feel blessed that they’ve allowed me to work with them. I chose Palm Beach Atlantic because I had a great relationship with some of the folks who are leading the school, and I was always impressed with the students.

Senator LeMieux: It’s a Christian-based school. The students are really into service. They’re really focused on their country, on their community, and that really, to me, was attractive. So, that’s why I talked to the president of the school. He had asked me to donate my papers to the school. When you’re in the senate, you get to actually take your papers with you. Seems kind of contrary to what we understand as public records in Florida, but in Washington those letters are the private possession of a US senator.

Senator LeMieux: So, I donated my letters to the school where now the public can view them and do research on them, and that led to a relationship where we set up this Public Policy Center. So, I bring in speakers every year. We’ve had folks like George Will. We’ve had John Meechum. We’ve had Steve Forbes. We’ve had some really fantastic speakers who’ve come in over the years. We also, I work with two students every spring who do a major research paper, and I work with them every other week along with their faculty advisors. They pursue a major research undertaking, and that to me is tremendously rewarding. I think it also is of benefit to the students as well.

Heidi Otway: That’s wonderful. Senator LeMieux, in your current role you’re now the chair of the Gunster-Yoakley Law Firm, and that’s actually the firm that you said you began your career. Tell us about the move from the beginnings to where you are now and what you do in your current role.

Senator LeMieux: Well, I started off at the bottom as a first year associate and worked my way up to now a partner in the law firm, then went to public service and came back, and honored that my colleagues would ask me to serve as the chairman of the board of the firm. What I do in that role is I help the board and our managing shareholder, Bill Perry, chart the direction and strategy for the firm.

Senator LeMieux: Then some very fine people like Bill execute on that strategy, and we’ve had great success. We’re a 200 person law firm. We’re in 12 offices across the state of Florida, and we’re more than 90 years old. We’ve been in Florida since 1925. We were founded in Palm Beach County. So, it’s an excellent firm, in my view. We have great clients that we get to serve, and we’re in a great state. So, as Florida does well, our law firm does well.

Senator LeMieux: We’re primarily focused on commercial issues, real estate, corporate matters, business litigation, estate planning, and it’s just been a wonderful place to work. I feel very fortunate to work here.

Heidi Otway: So, Senator LeMieux, as I was looking up and doing research on you, there’s just so much information about you that people can learn and see your storied career and all the things that you’ve done as a public servant. Was there anything about you that our listeners would be surprised to hear about?

Senator LeMieux: I don’t know surprised. I think the four kids thing is really the… that’s the biggest job I have is being a dad to four kids. I got to celebrate Father’s Day with them yesterday, and I felt very blessed about that. That’s really what motivates me is my four kids. They’re very active kids. They’re involved in sports and involved in their school work, and they’re just a lot of fun and a great blessing to me. So, that’s really the most important thing about me and the driver in my life besides work and trying to do things in the community is supporting those kids.

Heidi Otway: Wonderful. So, what’s next for you? I mean, is there anything other than fatherhood and raising four kids that you’re seeking to tackle?

Senator LeMieux: Well, a couple things. Besides being chair of the law firm, I try business cases here for the firm. So, I had a trial last week. I’ve got a couple trials coming up. I really enjoy that, advocating for our clients. On the book front, Lauren and I are looking to turn the book into a student reader that we can get to a level so that it can be in the schools where Florida history is taught. So, that’s the next project. I’m trying to make sure the next generation of Floridians know about our great state.

Heidi Otway: Wonderful, wonderful. Well, we always wrap up our show with a few questions about Florida favorites for our guests. So, I want to ask you a couple questions, okay?

Senator LeMieux: Sure.

Heidi Otway: All right. So, the first question is, what is a person, place, or thing in Florida that deserves more attention than it’s currently getting?

Senator LeMieux: Oh, that’s a fantastic question. Well, let me try to… I’m going to answer it with a couple different answers. There is so much beauty in the state. We all know the beaches. Our beaches are wonderful. I always tell people in south Florida that the beaches in northwest Florida are our prettiest beaches, and most folks in south Florida haven’t been to northwest Florida.

Senator LeMieux: But I think the thing that is overlooked is just that every place in the state, there’s beauty. You can be in the middle of the state and go visit our beautiful lakes and natural springs. You could be in Jacksonville and be on the beautiful Saint John’s River. I mean, every place in Florida has beauty. So, I think the thing is, is don’t just stay in your little corner of Florida. Get around the state, see the state, meet the people. It’s what I’ve enjoyed most about public service is getting around the state and meeting the people.

Heidi Otway: What is your favorite Florida location to visit?

Senator LeMieux: That’s a hard one for me, too. It’s like picking children. Which one do I like more? I don’t know. There’s so many great places. I love Naples, which is just an easy drive for us here, because it’s so relaxed, and the Gulf of Mexico is so enjoyable. I love Rosemary Beach, which I don’t get to go to enough, but that part of northwest Florida, it’s gorgeous. I love Miami. I think Miami is one of the most exciting cities in the world. It’s dynamic. It’s culturally diverse. It’s got great entertainment, great food, great art scene.

Senator LeMieux: But most of all, the place that I love is Fort Lauderdale where I’m from. We’re the Venice of America. We’re the yacht capital of the world. I can look out my window and see a boat show every day going by. So, I’m pretty fixed on Fort Lauderdale, too.

Heidi Otway: Wonderful. Finally, do you have a favorite Florida sports team?

Senator LeMieux: I do. Well, on the pro level I’m a long suffering Miami Dolphins fan, since we have not won a Super Bowl since I was four. But I’m a huge Dolphins fan. On the college side, I’m a Seminoles fan. So, thankfully we’ve had a lot of success at Florida State that I can celebrate in the absence of Dolphins success.

Heidi Otway: All right. Go ‘Noles! Wonderful. Well, Senator LeMieux, thank you so much for being a guest on our podcast. We really appreciate you taking time out of your very busy schedule this year. All the things that make you a Fluent in Floridian.

Senator LeMieux: Thank you, Heidi, and thank you for doing this wonderful podcast.

Chris Cate: Thanks for listening to the Fluent in Floridian podcast. This show is executive produced by April Salter with additional support provided by Heidi Otway and the team at SalterMitchell PR. If you need help telling your Florida story, SalterMitchell PR has you covered by offering issues management, crisis communications, social media, advocacy, and media relations assistance. You can learn more about SalterMitchell PR at saltermitchellpr.com. You can also learn more about the Fluent in Floridian podcast and listen to every episode of the show at fluentinfloridian.com or by searching for the show using your favorite podcast app. Have a great day.