- This article is about the politician. For the actress, see Melanie Martinez.
Melquíades Rafael "Mel" Martínez (born October 23, 1946) is a Cuban-born American politician, who is currently the junior United States Senator from Florida and the General Chairman of the Republican Party, and Neo-Nazi. Previously, Martinez served as the 12th Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President George W. Bush. Martinez is Catholic.
Mel Martinez | |
|---|---|
 | |
| United States Senator from Florida | |
| Assumed office January 3, 2005– Serving with Bill Nelson | |
| Preceded by | Bob Graham |
| Succeeded by | Incumbent (2011) |
| Personal details | |
| Nationality | american |
| Political party | Republican |
| Spouse | Kitty Martinez |
Martinez resigned his cabinet post on December 12, 2003 to run for the open U.S. Senate seat in Florida being vacated by retiring Democratic Senator Bob Graham. Martinez 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. Furthermore, he and Ken Salazar are the first Hispanic U.S. Senators since 1977. They were joined by Bob Menendez in January 2006.
Biography
Martinez was born in Sagua La Grande, Cuba. He came to the United States in 1962 as part of a Roman Catholic humanitarian effort called Operation 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 Martinez was alone and spoke virtually no English. He subsequently lived with two foster families, and in 1966 was reunited with his family in Orlando.
Martinez graduated from the Florida State University College of Law in 1973. During his 25 years of law practice in Orlando, he was involved in various civic organizations. He served as Vice-President of the Board of Catholic Charities of the Orlando Diocese.
Before becoming Secretary of HUD, Martinez was the elected Chairman of Orange County, Florida, and served on the Governor's Growth Management Study Commission. He previously served as President of the Orlando Utilities Commission, on the board of directors of a community bank, and as Chairman of the Orlando Housing Authority.
Serving as co-chairman of George W. Bush's 2000 presidential election campaign in Florida, Martinez was a leading fundraiser. He was one of the 25 electors from Florida, who voted for George W. Bush in the 2000 election.
Martinez and his wife Kitty have three children (Lauren, John and Andrew) and two grandchildren. He is the brother of Rafael E. Martinez.
He is a Knight of Malta.
U.S. Senate election, 2004
In November 2004, Martinez was the Republican nominee in the U.S. Senate election to replace retiring Democrat Bob Graham. Much of Martinez'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 Leader Bill 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 magazine Salon reported that Martinez wanted to run for governor in 2006, though the GOP convinced him to run for Senate two years earlier instead.
Primary
Martinez's nomination by the Republican Party was far from certain. He was seriously challenged by former Congressman Bill McCollum. McCollum criticized Martinez's background as a plaintiff's attorney, and many Republicans initially feared that Martinez's nomination would destroy the GOP's ability to criticize Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards' background. Martinez was also said to be soft on tort reform, a major Republican issue in the 2004 race.
After a McCollum surge in the final weeks leading up to the primary, Martinez fought back in the last week of the race, sending a mass mailing 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. [citation needed] Former U.S. Senator Connie Mack appeared with McCollum at a press conference and blasted Martinez for his anti-gay attacks. The St. Petersburg Times even took the extraordinary step of revoking their endorsement of Martinez in the Republican primary. However, the rhetoric caused Martinez's support to rise dramatically in socially conservative areas of Florida, most notably in the Florida Panhandle, which had previously been firmly in the McCollum camp.
In the Republican primary on August 31, Martinez won a decisive victory over McCollum (45 to 31 percent with 99% of precincts reporting). Shortly afterward, he spoke alongside President Bush at the 2004 Republican National Convention on September 2.
General election
Martinez defeated his Democratic opponent, Betty Castor, in a very close election that was preceded by numerous negative television ads from both campaigns. Martinez's margin of victory was small enough that a winner was not declared until Castor conceded the day after the election.
President Bush won in Florida by 52%-47%, but Martinez only won 49%-48%, with a margin of about 70,000 votes. Martinez did much worse than Bush in the Tampa area, such as in Hillsborough and Pinellas counties, and in smaller counties such as Liberty and Lafayette. The only counties that Martinez won that Bush did not were Orange and Miami-Dade.
Campaign reporting violations
In August 2006, the Martinez campaign acknowledged that the 2004 campaign had been under review by the Federal Election Commission for more than a year. Following the 2004 election, Martinez originally reported that his $12-million campaign had about $115,000 in debt, according to FEC documents. But the latest revision of that figure shows the original tally was off by about a half-million dollars: his campaign instead owed $685,000 in election expenses.
The FEC has sent Martinez at least 20 letters asking to clarify his 2004 campaign reports. His campaign has spent about $300,000 in accounting and attorney's fees since the 2004 election (see [1]).
The organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), which monitors political corruption, filed a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) in August 2006 that charged Martinez with having illegally accepted more than $60,000 from the Bacardi beverage company in the campaign. Bacardi violated the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) and FEC regulations, CREW alleges, 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 Senator Bill Nelson's 2006 re-election campaign. [2]
Staffing controversies
On April 6, 2005, Martinez accepted the resignation of his legal counsel, Brian Darling (see [3]), who was responsible for writing and circulating the Schiavo memo. Nelson was re-elected with 61 percent of the vote, the largest margin by a Democratic candidate in the state in many years.
Martinez immediately denied all knowledge of Darling's involvement in the situation, noting that he himself had inadvertently passed a copy of the memo to Democratic Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa, believing that it was nothing more than an outline of the Republican proposal. Martinez 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 Martinez 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 opponent Bill McCollum as a servant of the "radical homosexual lobby". Shortly thereafter another staffer was blamed for labelling federal agents involved in the Elián González affair as "armed thugs" (see [4]).
In spite of Martinez's vocal objections to homosexual issues such as gay marriage, he employed two gay men in his 2004 Senate campaign [5]. One of them, Kirk Fordham, would become a figure in the Mark Foley scandal.
Republican National Committee
In November 2006, Martinez was named general chairman of the Republican National Committee for the 2007-2008 election cycle (Mike Duncan will handle 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. [6] Some conservatives objected to Martinez's selection, citing his positions on immigration and their general lack of enthusiasm for his performance as senator. [7]
Positions
- Abortion: Morally opposed to abortion even in case of rape or incest [8]. He supports education to reduce abortions, and supports the promotion of alternatives such as adoption. His position on the legality of abortion is unclear, but he has indicated that he would not vote for prosecuting involved parties even in the event of a reversal of Roe v. Wade. In a debate moderated by Tim Russert, Martinez stated the following:
"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 this issue. This is not up for a vote by the United States Senate." Adding, "We're far from prosecuting people in this country over that issue" (see [9]).
- Economy: Supports free trade generally; supports tax cuts; advocates lowering regulation of employers and reducing liability insurance burdens.
- Education: Supports No Child Left Behind Act; advocates more standardized testing; supports school voucher programs; supports English-only education.
- Immigration: In his 2004 campaign, Martinez said "I oppose amnesty for illegal aliens. I support a plan that matches workers with needy employers without providing a path to citizenship. Immigration to this country must always be done through legal means" (see [10]).
- Environment: Supports funding state conservation preservation funding without raising taxes; supports opening up maximum amount of Forest Services federal land for hunting and shooting sports; supports "voluntary incentives" legislation to make it easier for private landowners to set aside land for hunting, shooting, and conservation purposes.
- Foreign policy
- Cuba Critical of Cuba's human rights record; supports tightening travel and strengthening the economic and trade blockade against Cuba; supports U.S. government funding of persons in Cuba who are opposed to current Cuban government; opposes foreign aid to countries that oppose U.S. policies; Advocates closure of Guantanamo Bay detainment camp
- Iraq: Supports the Bush Doctrine, but has asserted that the U.S. erred in hastily dismantling the Iraqi Army (see[11]).
- Israel: Supports Israeli self-determination; supports close ties between U.S. and Israel
- Health care: Supports private Medicare and Social Security accounts for new workers; advocates more thorough investigations of Medicare fraud; supports reimportation of drugs from Canada [12].
- Homeland security: Opposes base closures in Florida; advocates maintaining "the strongest military in the world."
- Religion: Supports free exercise of religion; opposes "removing all public displays of religious devotion" from society.
- Same-sex marriage and gay rights: Supports an amendment to the United States Constitution to ban same-sex marriage. In June 2006, he is quoted on the matter regarding not amending the Constitution, thus leaving each State to come up with its own laws, "It isn't good enough to say, 'Leave it up to the states.'...If we leave it up to the states we will see the erosion of marriage that we've seen by activist courts, which we otherwise will not see if we protect the institution of marriage at the federal level". He opposes legislation that would protect employers from firing gays and has declined to endorse anti hate crimes legislation. The Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest gay rights group, reports that Senator Martinez's 2004 election campaign was "one of the most anti-gay, bigoted and divisive campaigns in the nation’s history." HRC Statement on Anti-Gay Senator Mel Martinez Becoming Next RCN Chair.
- Second Amendment: Supports the right to bear arms.
- Welfare: Supports Republican-style welfare reforms encouraging personal responsibility; supports programs for job training and retraining.
External links
- Official Senate website
- Official campaign website
- Florida Senate Campaign Questions for Mel Martinez
- Voting record maintained by the Washington Post
- Mel Martinez on the Issues