Elected 1986, seat up 2004 Born: Nov. 9, 1936, Coral Gables Home: Miami Lakes Education: U. of FL, B.A. 1959, Harvard, J.D. 1962 Religion: United Church of Christ Marital Status: married (Adele)

Career:

• Political: FL House of Reps., 1966-70; FL Senate, 1970-78; FL Gov., 1978-1986.
• Professional: The Graham Cos., Sengra Development Corp., 1962-66.

DC Office: 524 HSOB 20510, 202-224-3041; Fax: 202-224-2237; Web site: www.senate.gov/~graham

State Offices: Miami, 305-536-7293; Tallahassee,850-907-1100; Tampa,813-228-2476.

Committees:

• Energy & Natural Resources: Energy (Chmn.); National Parks; Water & Power.
• Environment & Public Works: Fisheries, Wildlife & Water (Chmn.); Transportation, Infrastructure & Nuclear Safety.
• Finance: Health Care; International Trade; Long-Term Growth & Debt Reduction (Chmn.).
• Intelligence (Select) (Chmn.).
• Veterans' Affairs.

Bob Graham was first elected in 1986. He is careful, methodical, thorough, hard-working, reliable--always wearing his Florida ties, recording every meeting and meal in notebooks, scheduling meetings with every member of the Florida House delegation and with lobbyists on both sides of important issues. He comes from a prominent Florida family. His father started out with a Miami-area dairy farm and developed the planned mini-city of Miami Lakes; his half-brother Philip Graham was publisher of The Washington Post. He has been in politics almost all his adult life; he was elected to the state House in 1966, at 30, and to the state Senate in 1970. In 1978 he ran for governor. After a come-from-behind win in the Democratic runoff, he won the general with a solid 56%. He was highly popular and easily won reelection in 1982. In 1986 he ran against Republican Senator Paula Hawkins, and after a spirited campaign won 55%-45%. His trademark campaign device since 1978 has been work days (invented by Senator Tom Harkin for his 1974 House race): Graham worked one day a week at some local job, from bagging groceries to construction. He keeps it up still, once a month, and in January 2001 logged his 365th work day--a full year of work days--as an airline gate attendant and flight attendant in Tallahassee, Tampa and Miami.

Graham's voting record in the Senate has been moderate and he is part of the New Democrat Coalition. He has been a hardliner on crime legislation, supporting capital punishment, seeking federal reimbursement to states which jail criminal aliens. A staunch opponent of Fidel Castro, Graham has strongly backed the embargo on Cuba. He wanted to stem the flow of Haitian refugees to Florida, and backed the dispatch of U.S. troops to Haiti. In late 2000 and early 2001 he argued that the Elian Gonzalez case should be settled in state court: "Elian and every child like him should have access to the same values of justice and due process that have sustained our democracy for more than two centuries." He co-sponsored the bill to make the boy a U.S. citizen. He got a commitment from Bill Clinton not to seize Elian at night, arguing that otherwise his Miami relatives would be deprived of sleep and might be more difficult to deal with. When Clinton reneged, and the boy was seized at gunpoint in the middle of the night, Graham was outraged: "There was an insensitivity and crudeness to this. To do this at one of the most deeply religious periods of the year, to do it at a time when families are reflecting on spiritual values, to do it in the middle of the night, … to do it under all of those circumstances was absolutely intolerable, unnecessary, outrageous and has left a scar on this community." Later, he introduced a bill to bar the INS from sending immigrant children who arrive in the U.S. without their parents to juvenile detention centers and giving the attorney general discretion to grant permanent residency status to 500 such children a year. He also sponsored a bill curtailing indefinite detention for immigrants whose countries won't take them back and tried to negotiate a compromise on guest workers, to allow 1 million temporary visas for farm workers and grant amnesty to 570,000 currently illegal workers.

On national issues, Graham often supports Democratic policy but is sometimes willing to buck both party and constituency. He voted unhesitatingly for the Gulf war resolution. He supports the balanced budget amendment and the McCain-Feingold campaign finance legislation. He has called for means-testing Medicare and reducing cost-of-living increases in Social Security--not Democratic orthodoxy and risky in Florida. In 1998 he sponsored with Republican John Chafee an HMO regulation bill requiring an internal appeal process, but without the right-to-sue favored by many Democrats or the medical savings accounts favored by many Republicans. In 1999 he helped pass a law prohibiting nursing homes from evicting Medicaid patients. He called for Medicare to use managed care techniques, like negotiating contracts with competitive bidding, to hold down costs. In 2000 he proposed a tax credit for long-term care expenses and for deductibility of premiums for long-term care insurance. He pushed for Medicare coverage of hypertension and glaucoma screenings and preventive medications. He sponsored the Senate Democrats' prescription drug bill in June 2000, with premiums of $40 a month and a deductible of $250 and full payment of costs over $4,000 for those below a certain income level; it was rejected on party lines. Graham sits on the Finance Committee, which he sees as a "laboratory for bipartisanship," and says, ''I don't think being a centrist is necessarily a cautious position. It's a position that tries to get something accomplished.'' In the closely divided Senate he may be a key maker of bipartisan compromise. On tobacco he backed Florida's law, passed under Governor Lawton Chiles, to eliminate the defense of contributory negligence--a law that made the national tobacco cases possible.

As a former governor, Graham has kept a close eye on Florida issues. In 1997 he and John McCain succeeded in getting changes in the veterans' health funding formula, to recognize the needs in rapidly growing states like Florida and Arizona. In 1998 he worked for a highway funding formula more favorable to Florida. He has sponsored bills to exempt pre-paid college tuition programs, like Florida's, from taxation and to allow schools to be built by private corporations with tax-exempt private activity bonds. He passed a bill in March 2000 to reduce the cost of crop insurance to citrus growers. He hailed the signing of the bill reducing tariffs on textiles, apparels and other exports from the Caribbean, Central America and sub-Saharan Africa. He has worked hard on restoring the Everglades, starting with returning to its natural state the Kissimmee River and culminating in the November 2000 Everglades Act, which authorized $1.4 billion toward an eventual $7.8 billion for the dozens of projects to restore the natural flow of water through the Everglades.

Graham was re-elected by wide margins in 1992 and 1998. He was clearly disturbed by the Lewinsky affair and was one of the Senate Democrats who seemed to be wavering for a while on the impeachment of Bill Clinton. In 2000 Graham was on the short list of vice presidential nominees. Polls showed that he would have improved Al Gore's showing in Florida: Joe Lieberman surely had a positive effect on the ticket in Broward and Palm Beach Counties on the Gold Coast, but Graham has run far ahead of party lines not only there but in the I-4 corridor and in the rest of the state--he carried 63 of 67 counties in 1998. After the 2000 election, Graham headed for a vacation in the Galapagos, but returned to defend local Democratic election officials from charges of partisanship. He has worked with, but has also been sharply critical of, Governor Jeb Bush. In early 2001 he was angered when Governor Bush signed legislation to replace the state Board of Regents with a new board appointed by the governor. In February 2001 state Republican Chairman Al Cardenas challenged Graham to run for governor, and Democrats hoped he would do so; but within a week he said he would not run, and later was pushing for Ambassador to Vietnam and former Congressman Pete Peterson to be the candidate.

Group Ratings
	ADA	ACLU	AFS	LCV	CON	ITIC	NTU	COC	ACU	NTLC	CHC
2000	80	57	85	86	95	93	20	60	16	3	15
1999	100	--	100	78	98	--	16	35	4	--	--

National Journal Ratings
	1999 LIB	--	1999 CONS		2000 LIB	--	2000 CONS
Economic	87%	--	10%		76%	--	22%
Social	75%	--	20%		66%	--	21%
Foreign	56%	--	40%		58%	--	38%

Key Votes of the 106th Congress
1. Educ. Savings Accts. N 2. Prescrip. Drug Benefit Y 3. Delay Ergonomic Standards N 4. Phase Out Estate Tax N 5. Review Movie Violence N 6. Gun Show Bckgrnd. Checks Y		7. Ban Part.-Birth Abortion N  8. Broaden Hate Crimes List Y  9. NATO War in Serbia Y 10. Table Cuba Travel Ban Y 11. Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty Y 12. Perm. Trade with China Y

Election Results
1998 general	Bob Graham (D)	2,436,402	(62%)
	Charlie Crist (R)	1,463,749	(38%)
1998 primary	Bob Graham (D)	unopposed
1992 general	Bob Graham (D)	3,245,565	(65%)
	Bill Grant (R)	1,716,505	(35%)

Campaign Finance
1998	Receipts	Receipts from PACs	Expenditures
Bob Graham (D)	$4,341,972	$1,164,317	$5,094,581
Charlie Crist (R)	$1,337,307	$94,841	$1,487,498