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Sen. Martinez stumbled on short path

The senator's partial term was marked by frustration and failure, experts say.

Associated Press file photo (2006)

At President George W. Bush's request, Sen. Mel Martinez took over the Republican National Committee from Ken Mehlman.

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By WILLIAM MARCH

wmarch@tampatrib.com

Published: September 5, 2009

TAMPA - Mel Martinez may go down in Florida history as the reluctant senator.

During his short Senate career, from 2005 until this week, Martinez took stands on principle and stuck loyally by his friends, particularly President George W. Bush, even when it hurt him politically.

But circumstances and his own mistakes conspired to mark his partial term with much frustration and little accomplishment, experts in Congress say.

In an interview last week, Martinez acknowledged that frustration.

"It is true," he said. "The Senate works in decades — a very slow process." But he added, "I feel I had some successes, and I feel good about those."

Even some of the successes he cited, however, didn't quite succeed.

One was regulatory reform of the government-sponsored mortgage companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. But he acknowledged the legislation was too little, too late, to prevent the companies' collapse in the economic meltdown.

Another was immigration reform.

The Senate's only immigrant, Martinez worked out a bipartisan compromise with Bush, the late Sen. Ted Kennedy and Sen. John McCain. He became Senate point-man on the issue.

The result: The base of his party pilloried him, saying he promoted amnesty. McCain backed away from the bill under pressure during the presidential campaign, and it failed.

Martinez said he's proud of the effort.

"Whenever this issue comes back, the work will begin with that bill," he said. "I think 85 percent of what passes will be what's in this bill."

Martinez's good intentions went nowhere, or went awry in other instances:

At Bush's request, he took over as national party chairman in an attempt to heal the party's breach with Hispanics, even though he wasn't fond of the job and received public criticism. He quit after less than a year as the president's and the party's poll numbers plummeted.

He fought to have the government intervene to force life support for brain-damaged Terri Schiavo of St. Petersburg. But he embarrassed himself and undercut his principles by passing along a memo — accidentally, he said — that talked about how Republicans could use the case for political gain.

The memo was written by a Martinez staff member and targeted Florida's other senator, Democrat Bill Nelson, whom Martinez needed to work with on state issues such as oil drilling.

Martinez regrets it.

"When I first saw that memo, I thought it was the dumbest, stupidest thing anybody could have done," he said. "Then it turned out it originated in my own office."

Missteps

Martinez announced in December he wouldn't run for re-election to the Senate, but vowed repeatedly to serve out his term.

Last month, with little explanation, he announced he would leave early. Gov. Charlie Crist, who is running for the seat, appointed former aide George LeMieux to serve out the term.

Martinez will make a goodbye speech on the Senate floor Wednesday, the day his resignation takes effect.

Before running for the Senate, Martinez said he didn't want the job; he wanted to run for governor of Florida in 2006. He calls himself "more of an executive than a legislator."

But he jumped into the race, partly at the urging of Bush and political guru Karl Rove, when Democratic Sen. Bob Graham announced he would leave his seat to run for president.

Bush and Rove liked his compelling personal history — a Cuban refugee who came to the United States alone as a child and became a success.

But in the campaign, Martinez added two unsavory characteristics to his previous reputation as a moderate, political "nice guy": blaming his staff for problems and running a slashing, negative campaign, which critics said was inspired by Rove.

In the primary, he attacked his staunch conservative opponent Bill McCollum, now state attorney general, as "anti-family" and "the new darling of the homosexual extremists" because McCollum favored adding gender orientation to anti-discrimination laws.

Jeb Bush, then governor, publicly asked Martinez to pull a TV ad on the subject. Martinez complied, saying staff members approved the ad without his knowledge.

In the general election, he ran ads accusing Democratic opponent Betty Castor, former University of South Florida president, of harboring a terrorist cell at the university, loosely based on former Professor Sami Al-Arian, who was convicted of aiding terrorism.

He later blamed a staff member for a campaign statement referring to federal law officers as "armed thugs" in the case involving repatriated Cuban child Elian Gonzalez.

Martinez beat Castor by half a percentage point. He later had to refund $95,000 in campaign contributions after federal investigators found he had improperly accepted contributions in excess of limits.

In the 2004 election, George Bush won re-election and Republicans won majorities in both houses of Congress. Martinez took office expecting "a season of Republican majorities," he said.

But "that was the peak of GOP fortunes," said Jack Pitney, a Claremont McKenna College political scientist and veteran Congress-watcher. "Election night 2004 was the party's best night in years. It all went downhill from there."

Beset by ethics scandals and public dissatisfaction concerning deficits and two quagmire wars, the GOP lost its majorities in 2006.

Selling him short?

"Frustration" was the word used by Pitney, a former Republican political operative, to sum up Martinez's Senate career. "All in all, it's not real surprising that he decided to call it quits."

As a minority freshman, Martinez had little influence, said Thomas Mann, congressional expert at the Brookings Institution.

"He really wasn't comfortable in the Senate or in the contemporary Republican Party," Mann said. "He's more moderate, less ideological than most — but in a position where it was hard to do anything about it."

Martinez achieved one of the accomplishments he cited — protecting the Florida coast from drilling — by allying with Nelson.

Before the GOP lost its majority, however, Martinez broke with Nelson. He arranged a deal with the Bush administration to vote in favor of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife in return for protections for Florida.

Critics charged that Martinez hadn't won anything because the promised moratorium was no better than an existing one.

Ken Connor, one of his strongest political allies, says the analysts "are selling Mel short."

"He was not often on the winning side, but he was often at the front and center, in the thick of the debate, offering a thoughtful and reasoned approach," Connor said. "He was willing to advance those beliefs notwithstanding the political costs."

Connor praised his friend's genial political style.

"It's like Mike Huckabee said — he's a conservative, but he's not mad about it."

Most other accomplishments Martinez cited were low-profile, nuts-and-bolts congressional work — a U.S. Marshals Service task force to recapture fugitives and a U.S. attorney's office initiative against South Florida's pandemic Medicare fraud.

In 2006, he held up a Vietnam free-trade bill, despite pressure from the Bush administration, until the regime there freed an Orlando woman who had been wrongly arrested on espionage charges and held more than a year.

Asked about his future in electoral politics, Martinez was unenthusiastic.

"I don't think there is one," he said. "I wouldn't rule it out, but I have no plans to be in elected politics any time in the future."

He said he wants to work on issues he considers important, particularly freedom in Cuba.

Martinez also denied that he was a "reluctant senator."

"I thought I could make a difference," he said.

Reporter William March can be reached at (813) 259-7761.

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