Mel Martínez | |
|---|---|
 | |
| United States Senator fromFlorida | |
| In office January 3, 2005 – September 9, 2009 | |
| Preceded by | Bob Graham |
| Succeeded by | George LeMieux |
| General Chair of theRepublican National Committee | |
| In office January 19, 2007 – October 19, 2007 Served withMike Duncan (National Chair) | |
| Preceded by | Ken Mehlman (chair) |
| Succeeded by | Mike Duncan (chair) |
| 12thUnited States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development | |
| In office January 24, 2001 – August 13, 2004 | |
| President | George W. Bush |
| Deputy | Alphonso Jackson |
| Preceded by | Andrew Cuomo |
| Succeeded by | Alphonso Jackson |
| 2ndMayor of Orange County | |
| In office January 3, 1998 – January 3, 2001 | |
| Preceded by | Linda Chapin |
| Succeeded by | Richard Crotty |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Melquíades Rafael Ruiz Martínez (1946-10-23)October 23, 1946 (age 78) Sagua La Grande,Cuba |
| Political party | Democratic (before 1979)[1] Republican (1979–present) |
| Spouse | Kitty Martínez |
| Children | 3 |
| Education | Orlando Junior College (AA) Florida State University (BA,JD) |
Melquíades Rafael Ruiz Martínez (born October 23, 1946) is aCuban-American lobbyist and former politician who served as aUnited States senator fromFlorida from 2005 to 2009 and as general chairman of theRepublican Party from November 2006 until October 19, 2007. Previously, Martínez served as the 12thsecretary of housing and urban development from 2001 to 2004 underPresidentGeorge W. Bush. Martínez is aCuban-American andRoman Catholic. He announced he was resigning as general chairman of theRepublican National Committee on October 19, 2007.[2]
Martínez resigned hisUnited States Cabinet post on August 12, 2004, to run for the open U.S. Senate seat in Florida being vacated by retiringDemocratic SenatorBob Graham. Martínez secured the Republican nomination and narrowly defeated the Democratic nominee,Betty Castor. His election made him the first Cuban-American to serve in the U.S. Senate. On December 2, 2008, Martínez announced he would not be running for re-election to the Senate in 2010.
On August 7, 2009,CNN and theOrlando Sentinel reported that Martínez would be resigning from his Senate seat.[3][4] Later that month, GovernorCharlie Crist announced that he would appointGeorge LeMieux as the successor to Martínez for the remaining year and a half of the Senate term.[5]
Two weeks after Martínez resigned his Senate seat,The Hill reported that he would become alobbyist and partner at international firmDLA Piper.[6] He left DLA Piper in August 2010 to become chairman ofChase Bank Florida and its operations in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.[7] Martinez is currently chairman of the Southeast and Latin America forJPMorgan, Chase & Co.[8] Martínez also serves as a co-chair of the Housing Commission at theBipartisan Policy Center.[9]
Martínez was born inSagua La Grande,Cuba, the son of Gladys V. (Ruíz) and Melquíades C. Martínez.[10] He came to the United States in 1962 as part of aRoman Catholichumanitarian effort calledOperation Peter Pan, which brought into the U.S. more than 14,000 children. Catholic charitable groups provided Martinez a temporary home at two youth facilities. At the time Martínez was alone and spoke virtually noEnglish. He graduated fromBishop Moore High School in 1964. He subsequently lived with twofoster families, and in 1966 was reunited with his family inOrlando.
Martínez received an associate degree fromOrlando Junior College in 1967, a bachelor's degree in international affairs fromFlorida State University, and hisJuris Doctor degree fromFlorida State University College of Law in 1973. He began his legal career working at the Orlando personal injury law firm Wooten Kimbrough,[11] where he became a partner and worked for more than a decade. During his 25 years of law practice in Orlando, he was involved in various civic organizations. He served as vice-president of the board ofCatholic Charities of theOrlando Diocese.
In 1994, Martínez ran forLieutenant Governor of Florida. He teamed up with futureFamily Research Council President Ken Connor, the gubernatorial candidate. The Connor/Martínez ticket was defeated in the Republicanprimary, finishing fifth with 83,945 votes, or 9.31% of the vote.
On November 3, 1998, Martínez was electedOrange County Chairman (during Martínez's tenure the position was relabeled mayor). While in office, Martínez implemented what became known as the "Martínez doctrine" which prohibits development from taking place unless adequate public infrastructure, specifically school capacity, is able to support such development. The doctrine was challenged in court, but its legality was upheld when theFlorida Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal to a lower court's ruling.[12] Martínez served as mayor through the end of 2000.
Before becomingSecretary of HUD, Martínez served on the Governor's Growth Management Study Commission. He previously served as president of theOrlando Utilities Commission, on the board of directors of a community bank, and as chairman of the Orlando Housing Authority.
Serving as co-chairman of then-Texas Gov.George W. Bush's2000 presidential election campaign inFlorida, Martínez was a leading fundraiser. He was one of the 25electors from Florida, who voted for Bush in the2000 election. While serving as HUD Secretary, Martínez sat as anex officio member of thePresident's Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans.
In November 2004, Martínez was the Republican nominee in theU.S. Senate election to replace retiring DemocratBob Graham. Much of Martínez's support came from Washington: he was endorsed early by many prominent Republican groups, and publicly supported by key national Republican figures such as Senate Majority LeaderBill Frist. His Cuban background and his popularity in the battleground Orlando, Florida, region both contributed to his appeal to the statewide GOP in Florida. But Internet magazineSalon reported that Martínez wanted to run for governor in 2006, though the GOP convinced him to run for the Senate two years earlier instead.
Martínez's nomination by the Republican Party was far from certain. He was seriously challenged by former CongressmanBill McCollum. McCollum criticized Martínez's background as a plaintiff's attorney, and many Republicans initially feared that Martínez's nomination would destroy the GOP's ability to criticize Democratic vice presidential nomineeJohn Edwards' background. Martínez was also said to be soft ontort reform, a major Republican issue in the 2004 race.
After a McCollum surge in the final weeks leading up to the primary, Martínez fought back in the last week of the race, putting out mass mailings and television ads that called McCollum "the new darling of homosexual extremists," pointing out that McCollum had sponsored hate crimes legislation while a member of the House of Representatives. Martínez pulled some of the more offensive ads from the air after a personal appeal fromGovernorJeb Bush, but never disavowed them. TheSt. Petersburg Times took the extraordinary step of revoking its endorsement of Martínez in the Republican primary and endorsing McCollum.[13]
In theRepublican primary on August 31, Martínez won a decisive victory over McCollum (45 to 31 percent). Shortly afterward, he spoke alongside President Bush at the2004 Republican National Convention on September 2.
During part of his tenure in the Senate, Martínez sat at theCandy desk.
Martínez defeated his Democratic opponent,Betty Castor, in a very close election that was preceded by numerous negative television ads from both campaigns. Martínez's margin of victory was small enough that a winner was not declared until Castor conceded the day after the election.
Twelve of Martinez's 25 stops on taxpayer-funded domestic trips as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in 2003 were to Florida cities, at the same time that he was also campaigning for Senate in Florida.[14]
President Bush won in Florida by 52%-47%,[15] but Martínez only won 49.5%-48.4%,[15][16] with a margin of about 70,000 votes. Martínez did much worse than Bush in the Tampa area, such as inHillsborough, andPinellas counties, and in smaller counties such as Liberty and Lafayette. The only counties that Martínez won that Bush did not were Orange andMiami-Dade.
In August 2006, the Martínez campaign acknowledged that the 2004 campaign had been under review by theFederal Election Commission for more than a year. Following the 2004 election, Martínez originally reported that his $12-million campaign had about $115,000 in debt, according to FEC documents. But a revision showed his campaign instead owed $685,000 in election expenses. The campaign spent about $300,000 in accounting and attorney's fees related to the 2004 campaign.[17] On October 28, 2008, Republican Sen. Mel Martínez agreed to pay $99,000 in fines for his campaign's failure to comply with federal election laws, including its acceptance of excess contributions, records show. An FEC audit found Martínez's campaign accepted a total of $313,235 in contributions that exceeded limits from 186 donors. The fine was agreed to by the FEC on Sep 10 and was posted a month later in its database.
The organizationCitizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed a complaint with theFederal Election Commission (FEC) in August 2006 that alleged Martínez illegally accepted more than $60,000 from theBacardi beverage company in the campaign. CREW alleged Bacardi violated theFederal Election Campaign Act (FECA) and FEC regulations by soliciting contributions from a list of the corporation's vendors for these campaigns, and by using corporate funds to pay for food and beverages at campaign events held in the company's corporate headquarters on May 11, 2004. An amended complaint by CREW in October 2006 alleged similar behavior by Bacardi for Democratic SenatorBill Nelson's 2006 re-election campaign.[18] In April 2007, the FEC notified CREW it had reviewed the allegations against Bacardi, the Martínez campaign and the Nelson campaign, found no reason to believe any of the alleged violations occurred, and closed the matter.[19]
On April 6, 2005, Martínez accepted the resignation of his legal counsel,Brian Darling,[20] who was responsible for writing and circulating theSchiavo memo related to the Terry Schiavo case.
Martínez immediately denied all knowledge of Darling's involvement in the situation, noting that he himself had inadvertently passed a copy of the memo toDemocratic SenatorTom Harkin ofIowa, believing that it was nothing more than an outline of the Republican proposal. Martínez asserted that the memo "was intended to be a working draft," stating that Darling "doesn't really know how I got it."
The Schiavo memo is the third incident in which Martínez accepted broad responsibility while laying blame upon a staffer for the underlying deed. During the Republican primary, a staffer was blamed for a passage in a campaign flyer painting his opponentBill McCollum as a servant of the "radical homosexual lobby." Shortly thereafter another staffer was blamed for labeling federal agents involved in theElián González affair as "armed thugs."[21]
In spite of Martínez's vocal objections to homosexual issues such as gay marriage, he employed two gay men in his 2004 Senate campaign.[22]
In November 2006, Martínez was named general chairman of theRepublican Party for the 2007–2008 election cycle (Mike Duncan handled the day-to-day operations). Some felt the choice was made in part due to the dip in support for Republicans among Latino voters in the 2006 midterm elections.[23] Some conservatives objected to Martínez's selection, citing his positions on immigration and their general lack of enthusiasm for his performance as senator. Martínez stepped down from this position on October 19, 2007.
In August 2008, Martínez released an autobiography titledA Sense of Belonging; From Castro's Cuba to the U.S. Senate, One Man's Pursuit of the American Dream. The book was written by Martínez with Ed Breslin (Crown Publishing, August 2008)ISBN 978-0-307-40540-1.
The bookImmigrant Prince is a biography about Martínez written by Richard E. Foglesong, the George and Harriet Cornell Professor of Politics at Rollins College (University Press of Florida, April 2011)ISBN 978-0813035796.
Three months intoBarack Obama's presidential term, the administration tapped Senator Mel Martínez to deliver a private message to Spanish government officials in order to thwart a probe into former Bush administration officials for rendition and torture of Guantanamo detainees which the U.S. was failing to investigate. According toCarol Rosenberg, "The cause for alarm at the U.S. Embassy was what a U.S. diplomat called a 'well documented' 12-inch-tall dossier compiled by a Spanish human rights group. In the name of five Guantánamo captives with ties to Spain, it accused the Bush legal insiders of laying the foundation for abuse of detainees in the months following the September 11, 2001, attacks.[24]
The six accused are: former Attorney GeneralAlberto Gonzales;David Addington, former chief of staff and legal adviser to the Vice President;William Haynes, former DOD General Counsel;Douglas Feith, former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy;Jay Bybee, former head of the DOJ Office of Legal Counsel; andJohn Yoo, a former member of Bybee's staff.
On April 15, 2009, Martínez met with Acting Foreign Minister Angel Losada on a visit to the Spanish foreign ministry, where he warned that an investigation would have consequences, and "that prosecutions would not be understood or accepted in the U.S. and would have an enormous impact on the bilateral relationship." Lossada told Martínez that he understood the complications but "the independence of the judiciary and the process must be respected", and "that the executive branch of government could not close any judicial investigation and urged that this case does not affect the overall relationship, adding that our interests were much broader, and that the universal jurisdiction case should not be viewed as a reflection of the Spanish Government's position."
Following the outreach, the Spanish Attorney GeneralCándido Conde-Pumpido's press chief told the media that the Prosecutor's office will deliver the AG's recommendation to the National Court, where it will be up to investigating judgeBaltasar Garzon to decide whether to pursue the case or not.Baltasar Garzon has been an outspoken critic of theGuantanamo Bay detention facility and has publicly stated that former PresidentGeorge W. Bush should be tried for war crimes.[citation needed]
In April 2010, on the advice of the Spanish Attorney GeneralCándido Conde-Pumpido, who believes that an American tribunal should judge the case (or dismiss it) before a Spanish Court ever thinks about becoming involved, prosecutors recommended that Judge Garzon should drop his investigation. As CNN reported, Mr. Conde-Pumpido told reporters that Judge Garzon's plan threatened to turn the court "into a toy in the hands of people who are trying to do a political action."
"The bottom line is I don't plan on prosecuting anyone. When I go to the United States Senate, I'm going to be confirming judges who will go to the courts, and the courts will deal with the issue. This is not up for a vote by the United States Senate." He added, "We're far from prosecuting people in this country over that issue"[26]
On January 25, 2008, Martínez endorsed Sen.John McCain in theFlorida Republican primary of the2008 presidential election, citing McCain's understanding of national security and economic and foreign policy.[31] McCain subsequently won the primary.
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republican | Mel Martínez | 3,672,864 | 49.5% | ||
| Democratic | Betty Castor | 3,590,201 | 48.4% | ||
 | Thisbiography of a living personrelies largely or entirely on asingle source. You can help by adding reliable sources to this article. Contentious material about living people that is unsourced or poorly sourcedmust be removed immediately.(November 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Mel Martínez and his wife Kitty have three children and five grandchildren.[32] He is the brother ofRafael E. Martínez. Mel Martínez resides in Orlando.
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| Political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development 2001–2003 | Succeeded by |
| Party political offices | ||
| Preceded by | Republican nominee forU.S. Senator from Florida (Class 3) 2004 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded byas Chair of the Republican National Committee | General Chair of theRepublican National Committee 2007 Served alongside:Mike Duncan (National Chair) | Succeeded byas Chair of the Republican National Committee |
| U.S. Senate | ||
| Preceded by | U.S. Senator (Class 3) from Florida 2005–2009 Served alongside:Bill Nelson | Succeeded by |
| U.S. order of precedence (ceremonial) | ||
| Preceded byas Former US Cabinet Member | Order of precedence of the United States as Former US Cabinet Member | Succeeded byas Former US Cabinet Member |
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| Class 3 | ||
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| International | |
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| National | |
| People | |
