Rocket Man

Florida's senior United States Senator, Bill Nelson.

By Ben Everidge for Thomas I  Posted March 26, 2018 at 3:30 p.m.                                                             Updated June 15, 2018 at 9:45 a.m.

Let me admit right up front that I am biased when it comes to U.S. Senator Bill Nelson of Florida.  Perhaps, I should add that I am a great fan of his, wife, Grace Nelson, too.  In my much younger days, I had the privilege of serving on Mr. Nelson’s legislative and campaign staffs in the U.S. House of Representatives in the late 1970s and early 1980s in a paid capacity.

It is very hard in modern American politics these days to find true public servants.  The Nelson’s, in my personal opinion, epitomize the best of what many of us hope American public life should be.  Unselfish, giving, dedicated, committed, ethical.

Honestly.  So much so, in fact, that a reporter once asked me if it was true that Bill Nelson really drank milk as much as it was rumored that he did.  It was true.

For many years, I have harbored personal ambitions that Bill Nelson would run for president.  It seemed to me that his whole life had prepared him well for this achievement.  I am still waiting for the “Rocket Man” – one of America’s celebrated astronauts - to make his run.

Nelson’s Political Start

Bill Nelson has been practicing public service since before he graduated from high school in the once sleepy hamlet of Melbourne, a coastal Central Florida town that has grown exponentially since Senator Nelson began his career in the 1960s.  By the time Bill graduated from high school, he had given dozen of speeches as president of Key Club International from behind the fabled Iron Curtain of Soviet-U.S. Cold War fame. 

A rare fifth generation Floridian, Bill’s parents homesteaded what is now known as the John F. Kennedy Space Center.  In fact, Bill flew in to space for six days, aboard the space shuttle Columbia, just days before the tragic Challenger accident, only yards from where his family began their own Central Florida odyssey decades before.

A graduate of Yale University, where his roommate was the legendary Bob Woodward of Washington Post and Watergate notoriety, and the University of Virginia Law School where he graduated at the top of his class despite his mother’s death during this time, Bill has long been dedicated to the value of a good education and personal self-sufficiency.

His first campaign for public office took him to Florida’s state capital in Tallahassee as a freshman member of the Florida House of Representatives.  He was re-elected three times before winning his first race for the U.S. House in 1978, winning a seat that had opened up when popular Republican Congressman Lou Frey, Jr., decided to run for governor.  Frey was unsuccessful in his bid.

The First Trip to Congress

In the 1978 election, Mr. Nelson defeated a former United States Senator, Edward Gurney, who had been implicated and then exonerated in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal that brought down the presidency of Richard M. Nixon.  Senator Gurney was making a valiant effort to redeem himself politically by winning back his former U.S. House seat that he had held before advancing to the Senate before loosing it in 1974.

Nelson ran a textbook perfect race that year, walking door-to-door to nearly every neighborhood in his large congressional district.  Rush hour found the articulate, wealthy, and photogenic candidate with the exceptionally handsome young family, standing on the street corners of major Central Florida intersections with a sign saying, “Hi, I’m Bill Nelson, I would appreciate your vote.” 

Mr. Nelson was one of the first politicians in the country to practice this now well adopted form of retail campaigning and seemingly would crawl in to every car that passed him, waving with a dazzling smile and very endearing, “thank you, ma’am,” or “thank you, sir,” to each passersby. 

When I asked him why he did this, he said, “because I want to meet everyone I can.”

Mothers would bring him and his very grateful young, biased campaign aide, Florida’s signature drink, orange juice, Gatorade, or water or whatever cool beverage they might find to help fight of mid-summer’s oppressive Sunshine State heat.

If Mr. Nelson himself could not grab your attention, his beautiful blond wife, Grace, would be standing on the opposite street corner, with her own sign that read:  “Hi!  I’m Grace Nelson.  Please vote for my husband.”  Where Bill failed, Grace prevailed.  With their two very charming children, the Nelson’s were irresistible to most Floridians.

Young state representative Bill Nelson overwhelmed the former U.S. Senator winning every precinct of that election but two – the precinct that Mr. Gurney lived in and the one next door.  The final vote was 61.5% to 38.5% with more than 125,000 people voting in that election.

The freshman Congressman was rewarded for his campaign prowess with an unprecedented seat for a newcomer on the prestigious House Budget Committee where he excelled at balanced budget strategies.

A voracious proponent of America’s space program, Mr. Nelson would also be critical of the space agency NASA when justified, such as when astronaut safety was compromised during the Challenger incident and on occasion in the years following.

A Premature Retirement

In 1990, Bill Nelson announced that he was a candidate for Governor and would be challenging the incumbent, Bob Martinez, a former Republican Tampa Mayor who had won the statehouse in 1986.

Mr. Nelson would eventually be opposed in the Democratic primary by the former U.S. Senator, Lawton Chiles, who had retired two years before.  Mr. Chiles’ surprising last minute entry in to the governor’s race represented a tremendous personal defeat for Mr. Nelson, in that the Congressman considered the legendary Senator to be a political mentor of sorts.

Running against former Senator Chiles was Congressman Nelson’s worst case scenario – that perfect political storm no politician can ever see coming.  Mr. Chiles won the primary, 69.5% to 30.5%, defeating the up-to-then never-before-defeated Bill Nelson and ultimately surprisingly unseating the incumbent Governor Bob Martinez.

Proper disclosure should tell you, too, that I also had the privilege of serving on Senator Chiles’ political and campaign staffs in the early 1980s.  Ironically, I had moved over to the Senator’s staff to gain valuable experience that might help me help Mr. Nelson if he should ever run for the Senate himself, as I suspected he might do one day. 

I never, in my wildest imagination thought that Bill Nelson and Lawton Chiles would ever be challenging one another for a political seat but then again, it is politics.  My surprise was probably matched and surpassed by that for both Mr. Nelson and Mr. Chiles themselves.

United States Senator

With his first ever political loss, Bill Nelson returned to law practice before embarking on a race for state Treasurer and Insurance Commissioner in 1994.  His win then and subsequent re-election in 1998, set the stage for Bill Nelson to launch his long-expected senate bid in 2000 for the seat that was being vacated by Republican Senator Connie Mack.

Nelson defeated former Republican Congressman Bill McCollum, 52.1% to 47.2%.  McCollum served as Florida’s Attorney General and was a candidate for Governor in 2010.  McCollum lost to the now incumbent two-term Governor, Rick Scott.  Re-elected in 2006, against Republican Congresswoman Katherine Harris, who was a highly polarizing political figure at the center of the Bush v. Gore 2000 presidential dispute, Nelson handily defeated his last opponent with 60.4% to 38.2% of the vote.  Bill received the endorsement of all 22 of Florida’s major newspapers.  Florida Republican Governor Jeb Bush, the president’s very popular brother, who at one time also had been rumored to be planning to run against Nelson, refused to endorse the Congresswoman helping lead to her eventual defeat.  Nelson's 2012 race against former Congressman Connie Mack, III, was even more impressive.

Bill and Grace Nelson have long been fixtures at the National Prayer Breakfast and have a very strong faith.  Their personal missionary passion has led them to many corners of the world’s most impoverished nations and humanitarian trips that have been designed to be media attention free.

Bill and Grace Nelson have long been fixtures at the National Prayer Breakfast and have a very strong faith.  Their personal missionary passion has led them to many corners of the world’s most impoverished nations and humanitarian trips that have been designed to be media attention free.

Critics of Senator Nelson have at various times accused him of being an “empty suit politically” or too partisan for modern Florida.  An entertaining Tweet from the national GOP also just recently took the Senator to task for allegedly being an unknown candidate in Florida.  Based on experience, Nelson is almost always underestimated.  A vanquished opposing candidate has said of him that “Running against Bill Nelson is like practicing political bloodletting.”

It is not Thomas’s mission to predict individual races.  However, in this particular case, since our bias on this one is unmistakable, the practical political reality, in our opinion, is that Bill Nelson will be very hard to defeat in the 2018 election, which Thomas predicts will happen.

Nelson has a consistent record of being a political moderate leaning slightly to the liberal side on occasion.  He is fiscally conservative generally, which appeals to many Democrats and some Republicans.  He is socially liberal, which strongly appeals to other Democrats and many of the state’s Independents who have become the second largest political affiliation in Florida.  He is highly realistic and practical, which appeals to those who would otherwise make Bill Nelson political enemy number one.

Senator Nelson opposed the Obama Administration on off shore oil drilling long before British Petroleum operated the Deepwater Horizon platform accident.  Nelson also butted heads with his party on President Obama’s decision to end the space shuttle program while also scrapping the nation’s return to the Moon strategy first proposed by President George H. W. Bush in 1988.  He also opposed his political party on limiting the estate tax and against limiting the Bush Administration’s harsh interrogation measures by withholding CIA funding, but voted in favor of health care reform and financial services reform in the most recent sessions of Congress.

In other words, Bill Nelson consistently finds middle ground with a majority of Florida’s voters and appeals to their sense of fairness and moderation without being overtly partisan from the state’s perspective.

Senator Nelson’s Thomas rating is 85.

Founding principles from Thomas Jefferson which apply to Bill Nelson

Freedom of Religion  ✓

Living Within Our Means  ✓

Strong Military  ✓

Empowering Individuals  ✓

Innovation & Entrepreneurship  ✓

Diplomacy & Statesmanship  ✓

Political Participation  ✓

Managing Government  ✓ 1/2

Strict Constitutional Interpretations  ✓

Wildcard Florida

The election outlook in Florida is very much a wildcard scenario for 2018.  President Trump barely won the state of Florida against Hillary Clinton by 1.5%, even though he maintains a second home at the famed Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach County, knows the Sunshine State well, and visits regularly arrived on the always impressive Air Force One.

Senator Nelson’s opponent for the 2018 election is current Governor Rick Scott.  Nelson is calling the re-election contest with the Governor, the "race of my life."

Time will tell if Governor Scott can overcome Nelson’s 13-1 record at winning Florida political elections, even in Republican-favorable years.

We will keep you posted.

Editor's Note:  This story is evolving and will be updated.