Rep. Connie Mack (R)

The congressman from the 14th District is Connie Mack, a Republican elected in 2004. His father is also Connie Mack; he held the same seat for three terms in the 1980s and then served two terms in the Senate. His great-grandfather and best-known forebear was the owner and manager of baseball’s Philadelphia Athletics for 50 years, Cornelius McGillicuddy, who shortened his name to Connie Mack. Rep. Mack graduated from the University of Florida after seven years and worked as a marketing consultant. In 2000, he was elected to the state House from a district in Broward and Palm Beach counties. In Tallahassee, he formed the anti-tax Freedom Caucus, which was against increased state spending and in favor of lower taxes and limits on attorneys’ fees in personal injury and malpractice cases.

In 2004, after Republican Rep. Porter Goss left the House to become the Central Intelligence Agency’s director, Mack resigned from the state Legislature and moved across the state to Lee County to run for the seat. He raised $1.4 million for the primary, outpacing his nearest Republican rival more than 2-to-1 and blanketing southwestern Florida with television ads. His three GOP opponents, state Rep. Carole Green, Lee County Commissioner Andy Coy, and Naples physician Frank Schwerin, attacked him as a carpetbagger who hadn’t lived in the district since he was a teenager. Mack countered that he was the only candidate born and raised in the district. His opponents claimed that he was an inexperienced lightweight, and editorial writers were dismissive of his business credentials. “What a hoot,” wrote the Palm Beach Post, noting that his marketing consulting included sending scantily clad young women who worked for the Hooters restaurant chain to charity events. The four Republicans differed little on the issues: All of them campaigned as conservatives and all backed President Bush’s policies. While he opposed abortion rights, Mack broke with the Bush administration on federal funding of embryonic-stem-cell research, which uses embryos left over from in vitro fertilization. Mack won the primary with 36% of the vote. Green was his closest competitor with 32%. In the November general election, Mack won easily, 68%-32%. Since then, he has not been seriously challenged.

In the House, he has a conservative voting record. But he is more moderate on environmental issues, especially those that threaten his district’s tourist trade. He parted with other Florida House members to oppose a compromise to permit oil drilling off the state’s coast. Mack sponsored a bill to find the cause of the red tide algae that plagued Gulf Coast beaches, killing dolphins and manatees. He also worked to secure money to widen Interstate 75. But he was drawn into the controversy surrounding Rep. Don Young, an Alaska Republican, who in 2005 included a $10 million earmark for the federal purchase of Fort Myers-area property owned by a campaign contributor to both Young and Mack. Mack angrily said he knew nothing about the deal, which became part of a U.S. Justice Department investigation of Young.

In 2009, Mack became the ranking Republican on the Foreign Affairs Committee’s Western Hemisphere Subcommittee, where he has been an outspoken critic of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. He introduced a bill calling on the administration to designate Venezuela as a state sponsor of terrorism.

In December 2007, Mack married Rep. Mary Bono, a California Republican and the widow of former pop singer and GOP Rep. Sonny Bono. Local Democrats appeared to get little traction with their criticism that Mack was ignoring the district and spending much of his time with Bono in California.