Bob Martinez
Director of theOffice of National Drug Control Policy
In office March 28, 1991 – January 20, 1993
President	George H. W. Bush
Preceded by	Bill Bennett
Succeeded by	John Walters (acting)
40thGovernor of Florida
In office January 6, 1987 – January 8, 1991
Lieutenant	Bobby Brantley
Preceded by	Wayne Mixson
Succeeded by	Lawton Chiles
54thMayor of Tampa
In office October 1, 1979 – July 16, 1986
Preceded by	Bill Poe
Succeeded by	Sandra Freedman
Personal details
Born	(1934-12-25)December 25, 1934 (age 90) Tampa,Florida, U.S.
Political party	Democratic (before 1983) Republican (1983–present)
Spouse	Mary Jane Marino ​ (m. 1954)​
Children	2
Education	University of Tampa (BS) University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (MS)

Robert Martinez (born December 25, 1934) is an American retired politician who served as the 40thgovernor of Florida from 1987 to 1991.^[1] A member of theRepublican Party, Martinez was the first person ofSpanish descent to be elected governor of Florida.

Martinez was born and raised inTampa, Florida, attended theUniversity of Tampa, and began his career as an educator in the localpublic school system and then theUniversity of Tampa. In 1965, he was named the director of the local teachers' union, a position he held during theFlorida statewide teachers' strike of 1968. He first entered politics with an unsuccessful run formayor of Tampa in 1974, then won the office in Tampa's next mayoral election in 1979 and was reelected in 1983. During his second term as mayor, Martinez switched hisparty affiliation fromDemocrat toRepublican, upsetting some supporters in heavily Democratic Tampa.^[2] He resigned the position in 1986 to focus on his ultimately successful campaign for the governorship of Florida. His single term as governor was controversial due to the passage and repeal of an unpopular statesales tax on services and an anti-obscenity campaign targeting Miami rappers2 Live Crew, who later recorded a derogatory song attacking Martinez. He lost his reelection campaign to U.S. SenatorLawton Chiles in 1990.

After his time as governor, Martinez was appointedDirector of the Office of National Drug Control Policy by PresidentGeorge H. W. Bush. Martinez held that position from 1991 until 1993 when he returned to Tampa and became a business consultant and a board member of several local educational organizations.

Bob Martinez was born inTampa, Florida on December 25, 1934, the only child of Serafín Martínez and Ida Carreño Martínez. His grandparents wereSpanish immigrants who had come to Tampa from the province ofAsturias to find work in the Spanish/Cuban/Italian neighborhood ofYbor City.^[3] Bob Martinez's mother was a seamstress and his father was a waiter at theColumbia Restaurant in Ybor City, and the family lived in Ybor City andWest Tampa during his youth.^[4] Martinez graduated fromJefferson High School in 1953 and earned abachelor's degree from theUniversity of Tampa in 1957.

For several years, he taughtcivics at localhigh schools. He taught at Oak Grove Junior High for three & half years, starting in 1957.^[5]

He then went back to college and earned amaster's degree inlabor and industrial relations at theUniversity of Illinois in 1964 and returned to Tampa, working as a business labor consultant. He also taught as an economics instructor at the University of Tampa, in the summer of 1965.^[3]

Shortly after graduating, he taught atChamberlain High School for three & half years. During his time as a teacher there he became involved with the Hillsborough Classroom Teachers Association.^[5]

In 1965, Martinez was named the executive director of theHillsborough Classroom Teachers Association (HCTA), the local teachers' union inHillsborough County.^[6]

In 1968, the HCTA joined theFlorida Education Association'sstatewide teacher strike in support of more education funding andcollective bargaining rights for teachers. Though the labor action was seemingly unsuccessful in the short term, its goals were gradually met over the following few years through court and legislative actions. In 1971, Martinez and the HCTA negotiated the first union contract for Hillsborough County teachers.^[7]

In 1974, Martinez unsuccessfully ran for mayor of Tampa againstWilliam "Bill" Poe. He resigned as executive director of the HCTA in 1975 and was appointed vice-chairman of theSouthwest Florida Water Management District by Florida GovernorReubin Askew. He also ran Cafe Sevilla, his family's restaurant in West Tampa.^[8]

Martinez campaigned for mayor against Poe again in 1979 and won.^[8] During Martinez's term of office, the city built one of America's firstwaste-to-energy plants, opened a largeperforming arts center and a modernconvention center, completely reconstructedLowry Park Zoo, restored the 1915 City Hall building, and annexed thousands of acres of unincorporated land northeast of town that would become the neighborhood ofNew Tampa.

Although the mayor's office is nonpartisan, Martinez was known to be aDemocrat. However, in 1983, he changed his party affiliation to Republican after meeting withRonald Reagan when the president was in Tampa to give a speech, causing some dismay among local supporters and leading to speculation that he may eventually run for higher office.^[2] Martinez's national profile increased in 1984, when he delivered a speech at theRepublican National Convention, and in 1985, when he was elected to the board of directors of theNational League of Cities.^[4]

In early 1985, Martinez began actively exploring the possibility of running for governor of Florida, and he formally announced his candidacy in November of that year.^[9] In July 1986, he resigned as mayor of Tampa to devote all of his time to the gubernatorial campaign.

Martinez defeated formerU.S. RepresentativeLouis Frey Jr., ofWinter Park in the Republican gubernatorialprimary election and Democratic state representativeSteve Pajcic in the1986 Florida gubernatorial election. With the election victory, Martinez became the second Republican governor of Florida sinceReconstruction and the firstHispanic governor in Florida history. He was inaugurated on January 6, 1987.

As governor, Martinez initiated America's largest environmental land acquisition program, Preservation 2000. He proposed the Surface Water Improvement Management Act that protects Florida's surface waters, includingLake Okeechobee,Tampa Bay,Lake Jackson, theKissimmee River, and other areas. He helped get Florida's first solid waste management law passed and implemented Florida's Growth Management Act. He was an advocate of laws and rules that protectedmanatees and dolphins. He aggressively sought to eliminate wasteful spending projects sponsored by members of the legislature and increased spending on the state's drug control programs. For a time, Martinez was regarded as a "rising star" in Republican politics.

In 1987, following the destruction of theSpace ShuttleChallenger the previous year, Martinez appointed a number of the aerospace industry and community leaders to the "Florida Governor's Commission on Space." This concept was undertaken by Stephen Lee Morgan, vice chairman and executive director of the Florida Space Business Roundtable, Inc., a non-profit organization of Central Florida aerospace industry executives. Martinez appointed Martin Marietta executive A. Thomas Young as chairman of the commission, with then-Florida Secretary of CommerceJeb Bush (later Governor of Florida himself), as vice-chairman. The commission was widely hailed as a leader in the arena of state-sponsored economic development initiatives in the aerospace industry, and led to the establishment of the Spaceport Florida Authority, following the release of its formal report, "Steps to the Stars" in 1988 (drafted under the direction of the Florida Department of Commerce's Dr. Chris Shove). While now defunct, the Florida Spaceport Authority did orchestrate several commercial launches from unused launch facilities at Cape Canaveral, Florida, including America's return to the Moon with an unmanned orbiting vehicle aboard a Lockheed Martin rocket, the Athena (then called the "Lockheed Launch Vehicle" or "LLV"). The Authority was succeeded by an organization known as "Space Florida." The purpose of the commission was to identify approaches and specific actions which the State might take to mitigate Florida's reliance on the Space Shuttle program as an employer in the space industry. Results were mixed, with some successes and a number of programs that bore little fruit.

In order to raise more revenue for the state, theFlorida legislature passed asales tax onservices with Martinez's support.^[10] The response from Floridians was strongly negative, so only two months after the tax went into effect, Martinez called the legislature back for a special session to repeal it.^[11] Though the tax was repealed^[12] and replaced by a traditional sales tax on goods, the perceived flip-flop on the issue seriously hurt the governor's credibility among Floridians and reduced his ability to get his initiatives enacted.^[10]

In 1989, Martinez vowed to "clear Death Row" and signed over 90 death warrants,^[13] with only nine of them being successful, including the warrant signed forTed Bundy. That same year Martinez ordered state prosecutors to determine whether Miami-arearappers2 Live Crew's albumNasty as They Wanna Be violated Florida obscenity laws. As a result, record store owners were arrested for selling the album, and members of the group were arrested after a concert.^[14] All arrested parties were eventually acquitted. OnBanned in the USA, their follow-up album, 2 Live Crew included a song entitled "Fuck Martinez".^[15]

In the fall of 1989, after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling allowed states greater flexibility to restrict abortions, Martinez promptly called the Florida Legislature into special session in an effort to pass anti-abortion laws. The special session was a debacle as none of the governor's proposals made it out of committee and his approval ratings sank to around 24%.

In 1990,Time magazine referred to Martinez as "embattled" as he authorized a statewide television advertisement campaign boasting about his deeds, which were largely unpopular.^[13] Martinez was unpopular within his own party by the time of the1990 gubernatorial election, in which he suffered a landslide defeat against Democratic nominee, formerUnited States SenatorLawton Chiles. As of 2025, Martinez is the last Florida governor to lose reelection.

After leaving the governor's office on January 8, 1991, Martinez was appointed byPresidentGeorge H. W. Bush to the cabinet rank position of Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (or "Drug Czar") where he served until January 20, 1993.

Since then, Martinez has served as a consultant to Florida-based businesses and law firms^[16] and is a political analyst forBay News 9 television. He is a trustee of theUniversity of Tampa, and a director of the Hillsborough Education Foundation, Tampa'sLowry Park Zoo and the Tampa Bay History Center, all local nonprofit groups involved in some way with education.

Bob Martinez married the former Mary Jane Marino in 1954, soon after they graduated fromTampa Jefferson High School. They have two children, Robert Alan Martinez and Sharon Martinez.^[17]

• List of American politicians who switched parties in office
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• 20th-century mayors of places in Florida
• American people of Asturian descent
• American people of Spanish descent
• Directors of the Office of National Drug Control Policy
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