An American Son: A Memoir
Page 10
But then the reports became graver and more urgent. We had forty-eight hours to prepare. The storm was coming. It would be massive and devastating. And nothing would change its course. Aunt Lola and Uncle Armando happened to be visiting us that summer, and the storm trapped them in Miami. They helped us prepare the house for the hurricane, although our preparations were woefully inadequate for the magnitude of destruction that might be visited on us. Then we all hunkered down and waited.
Hurricane Andrew made landfall later that night. I had never seen anything like it. I looked outside as the storm ripped trees from the ground and tore tiles off roofs. We lost power almost immediately after the storm hit. Andrew’s winds howled through our attic, and we were certain the storm would blow the roof off the house.
But it didn’t. The winds slowly subsided and the clouds eventually cleared. By early morning the storm had passed, and our house had been spared. In contrast to the historic devastation the storm left behind in the southern part of the county, most of our neighborhood escaped serious damage.
I was worried about Jeanette and tried to drive to her house to make certain she was okay. But the roads were impassible. Immense trees that had stood for decades were uprooted, their massive bulk blocking all traffic. Downed power lines, some of which were still live, were strewn across the streets as well. I got out of the car and walked, and picked my way carefully around the obstacles until I reached her house. She was fine, although her neighborhood seemed a little worse off than mine.
Power wasn’t restored at my house or Jeanette’s for three weeks after the storm. But I escaped the inconvenience when I returned to Gainesville for my last year of college. I was back in Miami a few weeks later to help the Diaz-Balart campaign on Election Day. Lincoln won, and would serve in Congress for eighteen years until December of 2010.
I followed the presidential election closely and with great interest. I had tried to volunteer for the campus effort to help reelect President Bush, but I hadn’t received a callback. Early one cold autumn morning, as I rode my bike to campus, eight men ran up to me at an intersection, where we all waited for the light to change. After a few seconds I realized it was governor and soon to be president Bill Clinton and his Secret Service detail out for his morning jog. I attended his rally on campus later that morning, curious to see what kind of a campaigner he was and what a Democratic rally looked like. I don’t remember it making much of an impression on me.
As I considered what law schools to apply to, I briefly flirted with the idea of applying to schools far from Florida, like Georgetown and New York University. But the costs were prohibitive. I would graduate in the top 10 percent of my class at Florida, but that wouldn’t be good enough to win a scholarship that would pay all my tuition. I would stay in Miami, and live near Jeanette. I couldn’t ask her to put up with another three years of a long-distance relationship, and I was worried I would lose her if I didn’t come home.
I applied to two schools in Miami. The first, St. Thomas University, quickly accepted me and offered a scholarship that would cover half my tuition. My preference, however, was to attend the University of Miami School of Law, which had a more prestigious reputation than St. Thomas. But I had reason to be concerned that Miami wouldn’t accept me. The school prided itself on its national reach. It recruited students from all over the country, which made it more difficult for a Floridian, especially a Miamian, to be admitted, even with good grades. It was also very expensive. If I was accepted there, I would graduate with sizable student loan debt. But I knew if I was accepted, I would borrow the money and go. I worked hard on my application. In my essay, I expressed my intention to use my law degree one day to help construct a new legal and political system for a free Cuba. Lincoln and Ileana wrote recommendations for me. I was accepted.
That summer was a quiet time of transition. The only important event that year was the news Veronica had won a place on the Miami Dolphins cheerleading squad. I had passionately followed the Dolphins my entire life. I had played football in high school and college. I had dreamed of playing in the NFL. And the only person in our family who would ever set foot on an NFL football field was my sister. I wasn’t envious, though. Each cheerleader received two season tickets for Dolphins home games. Veronica gave hers to me.
CHAPTER 10
Law School
THE FIRST YEAR OF LAW SCHOOL IS THE INTELLECTUAL equivalent of boot camp. It’s not designed to impart new information to students as much as it is to teach them a new way to think. Before law school, if someone showed you a chair, you would acknowledge it’s a chair. After your first year in law school, you should be able to present a plausible, if not persuasive, argument for why it’s a stepladder with a backboard to prevent you from falling forward.
I had been an active reader my whole life, but I had never read as much as I had to read that year. It was the first time in my life I felt physically tired from mental exertion. I had little time for anything else. I lived with my parents a few blocks from school. I didn’t have to make my own dinner, shop for groceries or do my laundry. I saw Jeanette every day. And I read.
I set an ambitious goal for myself. I wanted to make the law review, an honor reserved for those who earned the best grades their first year. Law school grades are determined solely by your final exam results. The exams are essay form, and unlike undergraduate exams, your conclusions are less important than your reasoning. I didn’t grasp this difference in my first semester of law school. I prepared for exams as I had in Gainesville, and while my scores were fine, they were nowhere near the top of my class.
After my first semester, I prepared for exams by reviewing the exams my professors had given in the past. Law school professors have a habit of asking the same questions year after year. I was better prepared for my exams in the spring, and my scores improved dramatically. It was too late to make the law review, but I set a new goal for myself: I wanted to graduate with honors.
I had been told if I survived the first year, the rest of law school would be comparatively easier. That year was the most intense academic experience of my life, and a great change from my checkered past as a student. I was glad it was behind me. My second and third years were considerably less intense, and allowed for elective courses and extracurricular activities.
I found a job the summer between first and second year as a law clerk for a personal injury attorney, a sole practitioner, who rented office space in a building owned by a small law firm. After a few weeks I started working for another sole practitioner, who had an office in the same building. I didn’t learn much from the experience. Both lawyers spent most of their time filing personal injury claims against insurance companies. My work mostly involved writing claim letters. But I earned enough to get through the summer and save a little spending money.
I was consumed by my studies and it affected my relationship with Jeanette. In February of 1995, she told me she wanted us to spend time apart for a while. We had had a few fights during our three years of dating. We had even broken up a few times, but quickly made up. Something was different this time. She was no longer certain our relationship was more than a comfortable habit we had both fallen into, and she wanted to find out whether our commitment to each other was genuine.
I know now that I had caused our estrangement. For three years our relationship had been ordered around my life. My school, my schedule, my plans for the future were the center of gravity of every decision we made. Naturally, she had begun to resent it, and this resentment had now reached the boiling point.
At first, I assumed the separation would be another of our brief breakups, but after a few weeks I realized it was more serious than that. She seemed genuinely interested in exploring life without me. She didn’t appear angry. She didn’t treat me rudely. She just had an air about her of someone who was ready to move on with her life.
After weeks of unsuccessfully trying to repair the breach, I had a brilliant idea. I would show her how much better off I was w
ithout her. For the next three months, I abandoned the regular pattern of my days—classes in the morning and studying in the evening—and threw myself headlong into Miami nightlife. I went clubbing, and I liked it.
It was an exciting time in South Florida nightlife, especially the South Beach social scene, where in the company of friends from high school I became a regular. We got to know all the doormen at all the clubs and never had to wait in line. The peak of the South Beach social season runs from early January to the end of April. I don’t think I missed many nights during the season in 1995. I was often exhausted by the time the weekend started.
I was having a grand old time, but I still knew this particular passage in my life was a temporary aberration. The curtain would soon fall and the rest of my life, my real life, would begin. I might have acted the life of the party, but I partied like someone who had something to lose.
In May, Jeanette started calling me again. She wanted to get back together. Now I demurred. Several times she warned me that if we didn’t get back together now, we never would. The breach would be permanent. I told her the breakup had been her idea, and she would have to live with the consequences. I was spiteful, prideful and filled with false bravado. And I was a fool.
One night, near the end of the South Beach season, my friends and I made plans to attend one of our favorite South Beach haunts for a “foam party,” where oceans of white foam are dropped from the ceiling and you find yourself dancing in it up to your waist. Jeanette told me if I went out that night, there would be no turning back. We would be over forever. I went out anyway. She had brought this on herself, I told myself. If we got back together, it would be on my terms, not hers.
That night, near midnight, I looked up and watched the foam descend from the ceiling. It was a sight to behold. Then my beeper buzzed. It was Jeanette’s number. I knew she was calling to see if I had gone out. If I called her back and told her where I was, our relationship would end. If I didn’t return her call, I would have to let her know the next day. I waded out of the foam to find a quieter place to consider my options. As I contemplated my predicament, I looked down at my shoes. They were perfectly white. They had been black when I arrived. The foam had somehow bleached the color out of my cheap and obviously fake leather shoes.
Maybe because I took it as a sign the life I was leading was phony and unsustainable or just that I had suddenly found myself wearing white shoes, a South Beach fashion faux pas, I left the club and found the nearest pay phone. I called Jeanette and told her what I had done. She gave me another chance. Go home now or never see her again. Something told me I was facing an important decision in my life, maybe the most important decision. I hailed a cab and went home. It was the best decision I ever made.
Despite my nightlife adventures, I still managed to make good grades. I was on track to graduate with honors. That summer I worked as a legal intern in the local prosecutor’s office. I went to the courthouse every Monday morning and looked for a courtroom where a long line of people waited to be vetted for jury duty. Then I introduced myself to the lead prosecutor and offered to assist in the case. I worked on several felony prosecutions that summer, including a second-degree murder trial where the prosecutor allowed me to question one of the investigating detectives. During breaks in the trials, I would observe capital cases that were tried in one of the main courtrooms upstairs.
Every aspect of a trial intrigued me: selecting the jury, introducing your case, supporting with evidence and testimony every claim made in opening arguments, summarizing the case persuasively in closing arguments. Years later, I would employ in political campaigns and debates the organization and techniques of arguing a case before a jury. I introduce my hypothesis to my audience, and then use facts and figures to support it. I close by summarizing my argument in a style I hope is memorable and emotionally provocative. By the time my internship ended, I was certain I wanted to be a prosecutor. I loved the action of the courtroom, the drama of criminal cases and witnessing justice being served. The work seemed to suit me.
Florida Republicans were gearing up that fall for the 1996 presidential election. In November, the Florida GOP would host “Presidency 3,” or P3, a three-day state party convention culminating in a presidential preference straw poll. All the major Republican candidates were spending significant time and resources preparing for the event, signing up local volunteers as delegates. David Rivera, a young political operative I had met on the Diaz-Balart campaign, recruited me to the Bob Dole campaign. Despite his youth, David had already had an eventful career in Miami-Dade politics. He had been prominently involved in a factional fight over control of the local Republican executive committee. The same warring factions would use the straw poll as a proxy battle. David had used his Washington connections to help him get an appointment to organize Dole’s P3 effort. His rivals joined the Lamar Alexander and Phil Gramm campaigns. Dole won the straw poll and solidified his standing as the Republican front-runner, and we continued working for his campaign.
I spent as much time working on the Dole campaign that fall as I did on my law school classes. In early January, the campaign chartered a plane and flew some of us to Concord, New Hampshire, where we walked door to door, handing out Florida oranges to voters and asking them to support Senator Dole. I’m not sure how many voters we persuaded, but the trip went well enough and we had a lot of fun. A few of the younger volunteers stopped at a local liquor store and bought bottles of vodka. On the flight home, about ten of us celebrated our successful foray into New Hampshire politics by holding a vodka shot competition. I was one of the few still standing when the contest ended.
Halfway through the flight, I started to feel sick. I knew I had to get to one of the plane’s bathrooms before something unfortunate happened. I made my way to the front of the aircraft clutching a motion sickness bag when I realized I wasn’t going to make it. I was going to throw up in full view of some of the most prominent Republicans in Florida. Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen sat to my right. To my left sat a well-known political operative who had volunteered on the campaign. I could either vomit on a congresswoman or on a fellow volunteer. I chose the latter. I tried to get as much of it into the bag as I could, but most of it ended up on his jacket. I ran to the bathroom, cleaned myself up as best I could and locked myself in there for the rest of the flight.
I was beyond embarrassed. I was convinced my brief career in Republican politics had just come to an abrupt and humiliating end thanks to my own immaturity. When a flight attendant knocked on the bathroom door and informed me the plane wouldn’t land until I took my seat, I refused. She persisted, and eventually I summoned all the courage I could muster and walked back to my seat covered in shame, literally and figuratively. John Thrasher, a future speaker of the Florida House, was on the plane and witnessed my humiliation, which he would playfully remind me of years later when he swore me in as a new member of the legislature.
The year 1996 would bring great changes to my life. I would graduate in the spring, and after I passed the bar exam I would practice law, preferably as a prosecutor in the state attorney’s office. I interviewed for a prosecutor’s job that spring. If all went according to plan, I intended to propose to Jeanette that Christmas. After Senator Dole wrapped up the nomination, David offered me the job of South Florida coordinator for the Dole campaign. I was interested, but I had also landed the prosecutor’s job. I explained my predicament to the state attorney’s office, and they agreed I could start after the November election.
I had skipped my commencement at Florida, but I had no intention of missing my graduation from law school. On Mother’s Day that year, my parents watched with pride as I accepted my diploma. All my life, they had exhausted themselves to give me every opportunity. Through all those years of ceaseless toil and sacrifice, they had made almost every decision with an eye to my future success. Now I had a juris doctor degree. It was the furthest anyone in my family, in the entire history of our family, had ever gone.
CHAPTER 11
The Start of the Rest of My Life
I SPENT THE SUMMER AFTER GRADUATION SETTING UP THE Dole campaign’s South Florida operations and studying for the bar exam. My job in the state attorney’s office was contingent on passing it the first time. I signed up for a review course and spent every free moment studying. I sat for the exam in August, and felt confident I had done well. Over 80 percent of people who take the exam pass it on their first attempt. Still, as I waited for the results, I had occasional bouts of panic that I was deluding myself and had failed.
Later that month, Jeanette and I flew to San Diego for the Republican National Convention. The campaign had asked me to work as a floor manager. In the old days of brokered conventions, the job of a floor manager had real authority. But in the modern era, when nominating conventions are coronations rather than contests, the job mainly entails making sure people cheer at the right time and hold up the right signs. Still, for someone new to the business, the convention was exciting and, for a brief moment, the center of the political universe.