Mike Hightower had barely announced his August retirement from Florida Blue when he got a call from an old friend at Holland & Knight.
Former Gov. Bob Martinez, who heads the firm’s Florida Government Advocacy Team, asked him to make the drive to Tampa to talk about a job.
It was more than the “Hey, if you ever think about doing something else, I’d like you to consider us” he had gotten a couple of years earlier from another friend at the firm.
When he got to Tampa, it was a full-on recruitment at a level Hightower had never experienced before.
Holland & Knight needed someone with his lobbying background, his political ties in Tallahassee and Washington, D.C., and his strategic skills. They also wanted him involved in the firm’s extensive philanthropic efforts.
He heard the same sentiments at Holland & Knight’s Miami and Jacksonville offices.
The opportunity with the huge international law firm was both unexpected and humbling.
But it came at a time he needed to relax after nearly 34 intense years at Florida Blue. Hightower, 69, had built the company’s government relations program, ultimately retiring as its longest-serving officer.
He also has a wife and son he knew he had not spent enough time with through the years.
And then there was Gracie, his granddaughter who wasn’t even a year old when he left Florida Blue. He vowed then, as he does now, that he will be a big part of her life.
Hightower kept telling himself of a potential new job: “If I do something, it’s going to be later.”
So, he split much of September between two of his loves — little Gracie and a “treehouse” in North Carolina that isn’t really a treehouse — trying not to think about the law firm’s offer.
Gracie steals his heart
For two weekends in September, Hightower and his wife, Sue, kept Gracie while their son, Parker, and his wife, Maggie, were out of town.
It was blissful, Hightower said, of spending time with the baby, who just turned a year old last month. It was the beginning of the commitment he had made to himself and to Gracie that he wasn’t going to be an absentee grandfather.
“I’m going to make sure Gracie has more time than I gave Parker,” Hightower said.
He has apologized to his son for what he missed while Parker was growing up, “but he (Parker) blows it off.”
Right after newborn Gracie was swaddled and before Parker got to hold her, he handed his daughter to his father.
“It was the most emotional moment of my life,” Hightower said.
His son, Hightower said, is a role model for him.
“I’m learning to be a dad watching my son be a dad,” he said.
Away from it all
He spent the other two weekends in September at the family’s place in Highlands, N.C., where he ditches his trademark Donald Trump yellow tie and blue shirt with a white collar and French cuffs for jeans and a Naval Academy sweatshirt.
Hightower goes to the gym and the civic center, he hikes and he reads while in the treehouse he built three years ago. He calls it a treehouse because it is built over the stump of a tree that used to be there and because the building hangs over a trout pond.
But, it’s not really a treehouse. It’s a 678-square-foot building with a wet bar, a gas fireplace with a remote control and a bathroom, which his wife insisted on after the treehouse had grown into a monster project, both in size and in cost.
But, Hightower laughs, “All the cost overruns were in that bathroom.”
September was a tricky month for the newly retired Hightower. Some days he woke up exhilarated. Other times he’d wake up and ask himself, “What am I going to do?”
It helped that he still sits on 19 boards and that he hosted five political fundraisers between his retirement and the Nov. 4 election. So there were few days when he had nothing to do.
But, Hightower didn’t have an office to go to and the room in his house that was supposed to be his office had become the family room. Plus, he didn’t have someone to keep him on track.
His wife, who continues to work as a special education teacher, gave him an “unbelievable amount of space.”
She encouraged him to spend time in North Carolina. ”She’d say, ‘Go and get back to where you are a nice person,’” he said, laughing.
‘Lobbying’ his family
When the family talked about Hightower going back to work, his wife feared he would return to the pace he kept at Florida Blue.
Ever the lobbyist, Hightower worked to convince her otherwise. It wasn’t the same type of job, he said. He wouldn’t be going there to create something new. He would be helping with strategic initiatives, something he had done for years at Florida Blue.
His wife of nearly 48 years gave him an eye roll, then a warning: “You don’t have to spin me.”
Hightower had to answer two questions from his family: “Are you going to be happy?” and “Do you promise you’re going to make sure you’re going to give us time?”
He had talked to Holland & Knight about where he was in his career. “They got it,” he said.
He soon was telling himself, “I can do this.”
After the November election, both the law firm and Hightower were ready to make it happen.
A possible conflict
He filled out the necessary disclosure form, listing his chairmanship of the JEA board of directors among other roles.
That caused a slight hiccup. His attorney, Jack Webb, told him because Holland & Knight does business with the utility, there could be a perceived conflict of interest. Hightower didn’t want that for the law firm or himself.
Getting a ruling from the state Ethics Commission was a possibility, but because of the holidays, it may not come until February. The law firm wanted Hightower in Tallahassee in January for committee meetings before the session starts in March.
Hightower felt obligated to stay with the utility’s board through its meetings with bond rating agencies last week in New York. Holland & Knight understood that commitment and was willing to wait until it was fulfilled.
Once those meetings were done, he submitted his resignation to Mayor Alvin Brown on Friday morning, saying he was leaving before his term expired Feb. 28.
That afternoon, Holland & Knight announced that Hightower had accepted a senior policy adviser’s job.
Back in the office
Hightower began working with Holland & Knight on Friday afternoon. After 105 days with no office to go to, he has one in the Bank of America Tower Downtown. And he’ll have an assistant to keep him on track.
For much of this month, he’ll be visiting the firm’s eight Florida offices to get a sense of their public policy opportunities and needs in preparation for the legislative session.
Then from January through the end of May, he’ll be in Tallahassee full time during the week and coming home on the weekends. “I’m packed,” he said. “Weekend warrior.”
But the pace won’t be like before, he says.
When asked how he knows that, Hightower scrolls through photos on his smartphone until he finds his answer to that question.
It’s a photo of Gracie.
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