Foyt Ralston has a long political history, serving as legislative aide to former State Senator Bill Bankhead and as campaign manager for U.S. Rep. Ander Crenshaw. He recently traded campaign management for money management, taking a job in the local office of Morgan Stanley.
DO YOU MISS WORKING IN POLITICS?
“I do. But the days are too long and if you’re trying to raise a family then it just doesn’t work.”
HOW DID YOU GET STARTED?
“I was a political science and history major at Florida State so I became active in state politics during college. After I graduated, I went to work for Bill Bankhead since I was from Jacksonville. Then I was tapped to work in the Department of Governmental Affairs for the Florida Hospital Association. I worked as a lobbyist representing 300 hospitals all over the state.”
HOW DID YOU LIKE BEING A LOBBYIST?
“It can be very rewarding if you believe in what you are doing, which I did. I traveled all over the state except during the legislative session when I stayed in Tallahassee. I was either advocating legislation that benefited the hospitals or trying to stop legislation that didn’t. There was a lot to do considering proposed budget cuts effecting Medicare and Medicaid in the early 1990s.”
THEN WHAT
“I worked for a while in the governmental affairs office of the law firm Akerman Senterfitt before going back to the capital to work as staff director for Senate Majority Leader Jack Latvala, from Palm Harbor.”
SO HOW DID YOU END UP WORKING FOR ANDER CRENSHAW?
“Ander was serving in the Senate when I was in the majority office, and we had known each other from my days with Bankhead as well. One day he came into my office and told me he wanted to run for the seat vacated by Tillie Fowler and asked if I wanted to run his campaign.”
SO YOU SAID YES?
“This was in May 2000. I went home, walked up to my wife, who was very pregnant at the time and said, ‘Honey, how would you like to sell the 1885 Victorian farmhouse in downtown Tallahassee we have been restoring and move to Jacksonville so that I can take a job that will last until November?’”
AND SHE SAID . . .
“Yes. That was the first victory of
the campaign.”
life on the THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL.
“Well obviously the high point was election night. We won in a landslide. Everybody was a little caught off guard by the presidential election that year but the mood was still high in our offices.”
LOW POINT?
“Our opponent sent out some pretty misleading campaign literature once or twice but that’s all part of the game.”
FUNNY STORIES?
“The funniest point came the night before the election when we all showed up at headquarters at three in the morning. We were there to get signs to place all over Jacksonville until we discovered that someone had super glued the locks to the office shut. The perfect irony is that one of our volunteers had forgotten to lock the back door, so we got right in. There was a higher power at play that night. I still keep that lock on my desk as a paperweight was a reminder of who’s in charge.”
DO YOU STILL KEEP IN TOUCH WITH ANDER?
“Of course. The best part about the whole thing is when you read about all of the great stuff he’s doing in Congress. That’s the icing on the cake.”
SO WHAT BROUGHT YOU TO MORGAN STANLEY?
“I was out of a job after the election so I did some private consulting for a while. I had started building a book of business when I was working for the Florida Hospital Association and Akerman Senterfitt. I met a lot of people all over the state and it seemed like it made sense to get into financial advisory, being that my wife and I are relatively new parents.”
WHERE DID YOU MEET YOUR WIFE?
“I met Kellie at Lee High School and we moved to Tallahassee together. She’s the brains in the family, with a master’s degree in marine biology. She was working for the Department of Environmental Protection when I was at the capital. I never quite mastered desalination and water reclamation.”
HOW DID THE DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION THING MESH WITH THE REPUBLICANS IN THE SENATE?
“It’s a myth that conservatives don’t care about the environment. One of my biggest activities is working with the Florida Trust for Public Land to try to preserve what we’ve got here.”
HOW OLD IS YOUR SON?
Tip is almost two.
DO YOU PLAY MUCH GOLF?
“Not as much as I’d like. I hope to teach Tip how to play one day.”
WHAT ARE YOUR FAVORITE RESTAURANTS?
“For lunch, the White Way Deli on Riverside. Dinner has got to be Biscottis.”
ARE YOU EVER GOING TO GET BACK INTO POLITICS?
“Members of my family tend to live a long time. I’ve got a grandmother who is 100, so if that’s any indication for me, then I’ve got time to think about it.”
— by Sean McManus