Daily Record staff writer Glenn Tschimpke recently spent a day in Tallahassee with Sen. Jim King of Jacksonville. He was allowed to follow King through the day. Here is his account of one day in the life of the next Senate president.
Tallahassee — It’s five minutes to 11 a.m. in Jim King’s third floor senate office in Tallahassee. The Senate majority leader’s chief of staff and press secretary mill about in anticipation of his arrival; he’s been in legislative session since 9. It’s scheduled to run until noon, but King plans to leave early to meet with the media at 11 to discuss a health care access bill.
But Senate majority leader Jim King’s office is relatively quiet while he’s gone. A legislative assistant quietly types an e-mail on a corner desk. The phone rings in a far office. Suits pass through at a relaxed pace.
The innocuous white louvered Florida Senate building, which seems more of an architectural tribute to air conditioning units than the passage of laws, is the center of the Sunshine State’s governing universe every year during legislative session. Florida’s 40 senators and 120 representatives converge on Tallahassee to wrestle with the issues of the moment, sorting out priorities, deciphering bills and letting their rhetoric fly. With them they each bring their own complement of staff from their home offices. Beyond them are the thousands of lobbyists, media personnel and other hangers-on that gravitate to the state’s capital during session. Suddenly, “The Leader,” as King’s staff call him, arrives and the show starts. Press Secretary Sarah Bascom and Chief of Staff Agustin “Gus” Corbella surround the senator like a pit crew on a race car.
“You’ve got that press conference downstairs in five minutes on the HC Access Bill,” reminds Bascom. “Did you get the brief?”
“Brief?” counters King, looking surprised. “No, I didn’t get it.”
Bascom’s face contorts to a look of controlled hysteria. Who knows what scenarios went through her head — a stammering King blabbering nonsense to a pack of discerning reporters, King droning on about the memories of childhood, maybe nothing? King cuts in, “No, I’m just kidding.”
A defining moment for the Florida Senate majority leader, soon to be the Senate president — the second most powerful elected man in Florida? No. It’s business as usual. King can always find time to break the tension with a bit of humor, be it at the expense of his staff, the media, his dog or himself. His staff love him. The office livens with his presence.
“You can see when he walks in the door,” said Bascom. “He does his hello call and his good night call and everybody says, ‘Hey.’ It’s not like you’re running to kiss the ring. But he’s a great guy and he makes you laugh. He’s kind of like a father figure to almost all of us. He’ll never chew you out. It’s kind of like hanging with your father.”
King and his contingent shuffle one floor down to meet the press in the Capitol’s rotunda. Walking anywhere in Tallahassee for King is never unimpeded. Every 15 feet or so, well-wishers approach him from all angles with outstretched hands and smiling faces, offering him congratulations for his impending ascension to Senate president. Some gush enthusiastically while shaking his hand. Others put a hand on his shoulder and lean in slightly while speaking quietly and deliberately. Some simply wave from a distance.
“It’s funny,” comments King. “People wave at you like you’re life-long friends.”
In the elevator, the handshaking continues.
“Sen. King, these are people from your Ocala district,” announces a man standing toward the rear of the elevator.
“Then blessed, they shall be known as constituents,” retorts King, shaking their hands as the elevator erupts in laughter.
A group of reporters with note pads and cameras has arranged themselves in a semi-circle around a podium waiting for someone to say something. King, the man of the hour, approaches. The outstretched hands multiply the closer he gets to the rotunda.
“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said, ‘Thank you. Thank you very much,’” King said. “The line that prompted that was, ‘Congratulations.’ Pretty soon, you start laughing at yourself. I don’t want to sound shallow because I know the congratulations are heart-felt.”
King remains cordial to everyone, though, as he weaves his way behind the podium. He leaves the dirty work of ushering him around to his staff. Corbella and Bascom keep the senator moving through crowds at a fair pace — not too fast to whisk him from office to office in a blur of suits and suspenders, but not too slow to let him mingle all day.
King’s contingent takes a breather in a small cluster behind the media as the press conference ensues.
“It’s especially hectic,” said Corbella. “The first week of session, everyone is trying to garner attention.”
Corbella is one of six of King’s staffers who reside in Tallahassee (King brings an additional three or four from Jacksonville). While 16- to 18-hour work days are common when the senator is in town — he jokes that he brings a recent picture of his wife to work when session starts to help remember — Corbella said he relishes the busy season.
“It’s an adrenaline rush,” he said. “Politics is kind of like a drug. Once it gets into you system, you look forward to coming to work.”
The press conference ends, and once again King is inundated with outstretched hands and grins. Corbella and Bascom marshal him into the elevator so he can go downstairs to make an appearance at Ocala/Marion County Day in the Capitol courtyard.
King mingles with his constituents as he walks along a long folding table where barbecue ribs and chicken are being served.
“Senator, you can’t slash money for prisons. Crime is out of control,” pleads one constituent.
“Congratulations, senator,” offers yet another.
“Thank you. Thank you very much,” replies King, doing his best not to let his voice slip into the cliched voice of another King — Elvis Presley. King has a lot of friends in the capital, many of them new-found since he was recently elected to be the next Senate president, succeeding John McKay. In the hallways, in the courtyard and on the street, all of them want to reaffirm their relationship face to face with him like long forgotten relatives who heard he’d won the lottery. A savvy politician, King knows the score.
“You get all the people who would like you to believe that all of their life, their quest was to make you important,” he said. “And now that you’re there, they want to take part or full credit for the ascendancy. I never knew that I had so many good friends. I’ve gotten people who have come to me and said, ‘I may not have looked like I was supportive of your presidency, but I always was.’ I go, ‘Oh, yes.’
“The other side of that is the people who have been with you and have helped you and really are committed. I’ve got some folks out there that have jeopardized their political careers. This was a three-way, locked, arm-wrestling-to-the-death event [the Senate presidency]. I have people who have said, ‘We don’t care what they do to us. You’re the guy that should lead us. We’re going to stay right here with you. We are your folks and that’s the way it is.’
“That’s a pleasurable thing. They say you’re very lucky if you have one good friend in life. I’m blessed. I can name maybe 10 or 12 that I know, even if I weren’t elected or whatever the circumstance, I could count on.”
King weaves through the gauntlet of handshakes through the courtyard and off the legislative campus to the Governor’s Club, a private club for politicians and Tallahassee bigwigs, for a luncheon with FCCJ’s trustees and school president Dr. Steven Wallace. The smiling faces and outstretched hands never let up along the 200-yard walk to the club.
All members of the Duval County delegation have been invited to the luncheon, where FCCJ leaders will update the local legislators on the state of their school — what’s new, what’s in the works, what’s the fiscal situation. In short, it’s passive lobbying. While reviled by some as special interest demons, King embraces lobbyists as an integral part of the political machine.
“When someone says ‘lobbyist’ up here, people think of these green eye shade, evil people who are getting humpbacked going to the bank with their ill-gotten gains,” he said. “And that’s not the truth. This isn’t shared by all political people, but the third house, which is the lobbying corps, really have fonts of reliable information. We file 3,000 bills a year. We pass 300. Between the 3,000 we file and the 300 that get passed, there’s a whole lot of stuff that doesn’t get through the pipeline. A lot of reasons is that it’s not well thought out. It’s not well-crafted. Or it has unanticipated consequences that when we drafted it we never knew it would have.
“They get paid to look after the special interests of their clients. They’ll come in and say, ‘We have to oppose this bill.’ Many times, you get an opportunity to see the bill through the eyes of the person who’s going to be living under it. It may not be what you wanted at all.
“I’ve had some lobbyists who have lied to me,” he continues. “I’ve had some lobbyists who have been dishonest, but they never had an opportunity to do it twice. But they are part of the political process. They are information. People say, ‘Oh, they’re lobbyists. They’re lobbyists for General Motors or they’re lobbyists for the railroads.’ Well, there are also lobbyists for Hospice, the Boy Scouts and the school systems.”
King has to cut the luncheon short to get back to the office in time for short meetings with different senators and constituents. As the Senate majority leader and soon to be president, King’s profile has raised tenfold from his comparatively sleepy days as a representative from Duval County. Expectations are high on the First Coast for King to produce in Tallahassee for the home team. Add to that, reapportionment and a controversial tax reform bill. Does he feel the pressure?
“Yes, I feel the pressure,” he said. “There are a lot of folks in Duval County, business owners and the movers and shakers, who don’t like the tax reform plan for whatever reason. And they’ve been pretty vocal on the fact that they don’t like it. They get pretty upset over the fact that I’m on the bill. I keep on trying to explain to them that I’m the Senate majority leader. My job is to implement the Senate president’s agenda as best I can. My job is to get this bill out of the Senate. Once it gets out of the Senate, my obligation to him wanes. But it’s a very real expectation that you have that you have to do your boss’s bidding up to that point. I tried to explain to the people that all we’re asking for is a hearing. All we need is for some people to spend some time to apply the ins and outs of this bill to their own businesses and to their own households.”
Back in the office, King holds court with a couple of reporters. He prides himself on the open relationship he has cultivated with the media. Despite a jammed schedule — he only has a scant few minutes until the Regulated Industries Committee meeting begins — he chats freely with them as they jot down notes. Bascom sits quietly in the corner, observing. Legislative assistant Kay Rousseau sneaks in after a few minutes and quietly sits down. King, known for his candor, can speak off the cuff on virtually anything he is involved with. Occasionally, he stumbles over an awkward phrase while explaining his point.
“I don’t know what the heck that just meant,” he says to the reporters mid-sentence, pausing momentarily to realign his thoughts. He resumes his answer until he stops abruptly and turns to Rousseau.
“Why are you hovering?”
“Because you need to go to committee,” she replies.
“Well, we have a few minutes,” he defends.
Not really. A few minutes go by and Corbella appears.
“Quorum call?” asks King.
“Yes, sir.”
“OK,” King continues his conversation without a flinch.
Minutes go by. Bascom gives Rousseau a knowing glance. Finally, King puts the final period on the interview and darts to the committee meeting.
Rousseau has known King since 1975 and has been by his side since his early days as a representative in 1986. These days, she handles his schedule, which keeps her almost as busy as the senator.
“I get 50 to 60 calls a day that want to be returned,” says Rousseau. “Everybody comes in and says, ‘Just five minutes.’”
On her desk is an inch-high pile of miscellaneous-shaped messages in a rainbow of colors.
“These are notes that people come in and drop off,” she explains. Next to the pile is a short stack of e-mails that also need attention. Some messages are addressed by staff since the senator simply can’t see everyone. “We try not to hurt anyone’s feelings. People that do want to see Jim, we try to divvy them up between the staff people. But if we had 10 people, they would all be busy.”
The clock reads 5:15 in the break room adjacent to King’s office. King is sprawled out on one of three reclining massage chairs with a worn look on his face. A reapportionment meeting looms at 5:30. The 15 minutes in between are virtually the only time he can fully relax at the office today. Staffers eat a birthday cake in celebration of Corbella’s 30th.
Another “Ax the Tax” commercial, which aims at King and others behind the tax reform bill, is due out shortly, likely with King’s picture in it. King perks up and soon has the room in stitches as he makes silly gestures and pokes fun at his physique.
“They always use the worst pictures for those,” he laughs.
King looks tired. The long hours, the tedious committees and the constant politicking wears on the 62-year-old. His eyes are glossy and a little bloodshot. But it’s time to go to the reapportionment meeting. Bascom helps him out of the recliner and straightens his hair before he goes. King admits he’s no spring chicken around the capitol anymore.
“My wife will tell me that come Friday afternoon, my derriere is dragging on the ground,” he says. “In the evenings, I start to run down, too. But I get a second wind. But do I feel it now more so than I was 32? Oh, hell yes. But the demands of the job require that you maintain the pace because there are some things you have to do.”
Despite the fatigue that sets in from time to time, King always exudes a lively spirit. Few in the office can point to a time when The Leader has lost his cool.
“I’ve lost my cool sometimes,” he admits. “I try never to lose my cool publicly. Sometimes I’ve gone home and the dog knows it’s not a good thing to be around. I try not to do that because it doesn’t accomplish anything.”
King is up for reelection this year. Because he assumed Bill Bankhead’s unexpired term, he still has eight years left of eligibility before term limits see him to the door. Nevertheless, he doesn’t expect to stick around until 2010.
“Probably one more four-year term,” he says. “Two years as president and two years as lame duck if everything goes OK and then out. At that point, I’m 66. The options start to get less when you get that old. I will have served, at that point, 20 years. Twenty years in government is enough. The constituents probably need somebody else after that.”
With that, King heads off to a reapportionment meeting, which is scheduled to run until redistricting is complete. If he gets out in time, he has a basketball game to attend with the president of Florida State University. It’s a long day for Sen. King, whose day begins around 8 a.m. and often runs well into the night.
“I get tired, I get run down, there’s pettiness and you have to deal with friends who turn against you and things like that. But that’s politics,” he explains. “I love this job. I love being a legislator. I can’t imagine anything that I’d rather be doing.”