The last time most people heard about Jack Latvala was when he resigned from the state Senate in 2017 and ended a run for governor amid sexual allegations, most of which turned out to be true.
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Yet when he died last week at age 74, tributes across social media and in news reports described an uncommonly bipartisan and effective legislator who likely would have been an outstanding governor.
That was true, too. The many sides of this complicated man are poignant because there is not likely to be anyone like him in Florida politics again for a long time, if ever.
On issue after issue — prisons, spending, conserving land and water — Latvala was a force to be reckoned with in Tallahassee. As was true of most Tampa Bay lawmakers in both parties, he was strong on the environment. He consistently stood up for public employees when fellow Republicans — notably Rick Scott — didn’t.
He was high-maintenance. He played political hardball. He was gruff and abrasive. He was a leader with strong convictions who cared deeply about Florida.
“He was a champion,” wrote Julie Hauserman, a former journalist and environmental activist, “getting our conservation land program passed in the face of headwinds from those who didn’t want to spend the money … He also danced with corporate benefactors and lobbyists for the dark side when it served his purposes,” she wrote on Facebook.
A tax reform advocate
Hauserman worked for Latvala on a bipartisan initiative led by former Senate President John McKay to require the Legislature to review sales tax exemptions every decade with approval only by supermajority votes.
The Supreme Court kept it off the ballot in 2004, citing a constitutional rule against multiple subjects in initiatives. Its passage would have been a monumental reform in state tax policy.
Former Democratic Sen. Rick Dantzler from Polk County remembered Latvala for protecting inland counties like his from the insatiable water demands of thirsty coastal constituencies like Latvala’s, in Pinellas County.
“We ended up with a policy known as ‘local sources first’ which required coastal counties to make reasonable efforts to provide the water they needed from other means before simply coming inland because it was cheaper and easier,” Dantzler said in an email.
“Jack supported a reasonable compromise we had worked out,” Dantzler said. “But when I kept pushing a stronger version of the policy, he told me if I didn’t back off, he would come out against the compromise and nothing would pass. And he was right, too.”
As a young operative, Latvala helped build the modern Republican Party of Florida, driving around the state in a Ford Country Squire, recruiting candidates at a time when Democrats were dominant.
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‘He could get things done’
“Jack was a complete independent,” former Clearwater Mayor Frank Hibbard told the Tampa Bay Times. “Even if people didn’t like him, they respected him, because of his knowledge, and that he could get things done. He knew how to return a favor.”
The ACLU once honored him for his opposition to legislation now in force requiring doctors to perform ultrasound examinations on women seeking abortions. He had also opposed a homestead exemption amendment for its negative impact on local government. It’s unlikely he would have supported the ruinous one on this year’s ballot.
Latvala helped to institutionalize the practice of flooding voters’ mailboxes with hard-hitting mail pieces in campaigns — a model that persists year after year.
He built a lucrative direct mail and political consulting business before he ran for office in 1994. After an absence due to term limits, he returned in 2010, where he lost a race for Senate president, but got the next-best prize as chairman of the appropriations committee. Yet, over time, his brusque manner wore thin.
As Latvala geared up to run for governor in 2018, six women accused him anonymously of sexual misconduct. He resigned after an investigation essentially confirmed it and a retired judge documented his 20-year relationship with a lobbyist whose agenda he had offered to support. A state attorney’s investigation produced no charges and the Commission on Ethics closed its case six years later.
Foreshadowing his Senate career, Latvala ran as a moderate in a three-way race for an open seat in 1994. He ran second in the primary, beat a more conservative opponent in the runoff, easily won the general election and was never seriously challenged again. If not for the runoff, his career might never have begun.
The system is the problem
After Republicans won the governor’s office and both houses of the Legislature, the runoff was abolished in 2005, as supporters cited poor turnouts and a popular view that runoffs hurt Black candidates.
For Florida again to have more independent thinkers like Latvala requires restoring a form of the runoff — ideally resembling the all-voters-vote open primary initiative that fell three points short of the required 60% six years ago. Unfortunately for the public interest, both major parties opposed it.
Jack Latvala is gone. But he leaves a record of legislative achievement marked by a fierce independence that now seems like a relic of a largely forgotten Florida.
The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board includes Executive Editor Roger Simmons, Opinion Editor Krys Fluker and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant, Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney and editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman. Send letters to [email protected].
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