Bob Martinez - WikiHQ

Robert Martinez (born December 25, 1934) is an American retired politician who served as the 40th governor of Florida from 1987 to 1991. A member of the Republican Party, Martinez was the first Hispanic American governor since colonial Florida.

Martinez was born and raised in Tampa, Florida, attended the University of Tampa, and began his career as an educator in the local public school system and then the University of Tampa. In 1965, he was named the director of the local teachers' union, a position he held during the Florida statewide teachers' strike of 1968. He first entered politics with an unsuccessful run for mayor of Tampa in 1974, then won the office in Tampa's next mayoral election in 1979 and was reelected in 1983. During his second term as mayor, Martinez switched his party affiliation from Democrat to Republican, upsetting some supporters in heavily Democratic Tampa. Bob Martinez's mother was a seamstress and his father was a waiter at the Columbia Restaurant in Ybor City, and the family lived in Ybor City and West Tampa during his youth. Martinez graduated from Jefferson High School in 1953 and earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Tampa in 1957.

For several years, he taught civics at local high schools. He taught at Oak Grove Junior High for three & half years, starting in 1957.

He then went back to college and earned a master's degree in labor and industrial relations at the University of Illinois in 1964 and returned to Tampa, working as a business labor consultant. He also taught as an economics instructor at the University of Tampa, in the summer of 1965.

In 1968, the HCTA joined the Florida Education Association's statewide teacher strike in support of more education funding and collective bargaining rights for teachers. Though the labor action was seemingly unsuccessful in the short term, its goals were gradually met over the following few years through court and legislative actions. In 1971, Martinez and the HCTA negotiated the first union contract for Hillsborough County teachers.

Political career

In 1974, Martinez unsuccessfully ran for mayor of Tampa against William "Bill" Poe. He resigned as executive director of the HCTA in 1975 and was appointed vice-chairman of the Southwest Florida Water Management District by Florida Governor Reubin Askew. He also ran Cafe Sevilla, his family's restaurant in West Tampa.

Mayor of Tampa

thumb|right|Martinez with [[Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush in 1983]]

Martinez campaigned for mayor against Poe again in 1979 and won. Martinez's national profile increased in 1984, when he delivered a speech at the Republican National Convention, and in 1985, when he was elected to the board of directors of the National League of Cities. In July 1986, he resigned as mayor of Tampa to devote all of his time to the gubernatorial campaign.

Martinez defeated former U.S. Representative Louis Frey Jr., of Winter Park in the Republican gubernatorial primary election and Democratic state representative Steve Pajcic in the 1986 Florida gubernatorial election. With the election victory, Martinez became the second Republican governor of Florida since Reconstruction and the first Hispanic governor in Florida history. He was inaugurated on January 6, 1987.

Tenure

thumb|Martinez gives his inauguration speech on January 6, 1987.

As governor, Martinez initiated America's largest environmental land acquisition program, Preservation 2000. He proposed the Surface Water Improvement Management Act that protects Florida's surface waters, including Lake Okeechobee, Tampa Bay, Lake Jackson, the Kissimmee River, and other areas. He helped get Florida's first solid waste management law passed and implemented Florida's Growth Management Act. He was an advocate of laws and rules that protected manatees and dolphins. He aggressively sought to eliminate wasteful spending projects sponsored by members of the legislature and increased spending on the state's drug control programs. For a time, Martinez was regarded as a "rising star" in Republican politics.

In 1987, following the destruction of the Space Shuttle Challenger the previous year, Martinez appointed a number of the aerospace industry and community leaders to the "Florida Governor's Commission on Space." This concept was undertaken by Stephen Lee Morgan, vice chairman and executive director of the Florida Space Business Roundtable, Inc., a non-profit organization of Central Florida aerospace industry executives. Martinez appointed Martin Marietta executive A. Thomas Young as chairman of the commission, with then-Florida Secretary of Commerce Jeb Bush (later Governor of Florida himself), as vice-chairman. The commission was widely hailed as a leader in the arena of state-sponsored economic development initiatives in the aerospace industry, and led to the establishment of the Spaceport Florida Authority, following the release of its formal report, "Steps to the Stars" in 1988 (drafted under the direction of the Florida Department of Commerce's Dr. Chris Shove). While now defunct, the Florida Spaceport Authority did orchestrate several commercial launches from unused launch facilities at Cape Canaveral, Florida, including America's return to the Moon with an unmanned orbiting vehicle aboard a Lockheed Martin rocket, the Athena (then called the "Lockheed Launch Vehicle" or "LLV"). The Authority was succeeded by an organization known as "Space Florida." The purpose of the commission was to identify approaches and specific actions which the State might take to mitigate Florida's reliance on the Space Shuttle program as an employer in the space industry. Results were mixed, with some successes and a number of programs that bore little fruit.

In order to raise more revenue for the state, the Florida legislature passed a sales tax on services with Martinez's support. The response from Floridians was strongly negative, so only two months after the tax went into effect, Martinez called the legislature back for a special session to repeal it. Though the tax was repealed and replaced by a traditional sales tax on goods, the perceived flip-flop on the issue seriously hurt the governor's credibility among Floridians and reduced his ability to get his initiatives enacted. with only nine of them being successful, including the warrant signed for Ted Bundy. That same year Martinez ordered state prosecutors to determine whether Miami-area rappers 2 Live Crew's album As Nasty as They Wanna Be violated Florida obscenity laws. As a result, record store owners were arrested for selling the album, and members of the group were arrested after a concert. All arrested parties were eventually acquitted. On Banned in the USA, their follow-up album, 2 Live Crew included a song entitled "Fuck Martinez".

In the fall of 1989, after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling allowed states greater flexibility to restrict abortions, Martinez promptly called the Florida Legislature into special session in an effort to pass anti-abortion laws. The special session was a debacle as none of the governor's proposals made it out of committee and his approval ratings sank to around 24%.

1990 election

In 1990, Time magazine referred to Martinez as "embattled" as he authorized a statewide television advertisement campaign boasting about his deeds, which were largely unpopular. and is a political analyst for Bay News 9 television. He is a trustee of the University of Tampa, and a director of the Hillsborough Education Foundation, Tampa's Lowry Park Zoo and the Tampa Bay History Center, all local nonprofit groups involved in some way with education.

Personal life

Bob Martinez married the former Mary Jane Marino in 1954, soon after they graduated from Tampa Jefferson High School. They have two children, Robert Alan Martinez and Sharon Martinez.

References

External links

Official Governor's portrait and biography from the State of Florida
Biography from the City of Tampa