Mel Martínez

On August 7, 2009, CNN and the Orlando Sentinel reported that Martínez would be resigning from his Senate seat.^[4][5] Later that month, Governor Charlie Crist announced that he would appoint George LeMieux as the successor to Martínez for the remaining year and a half of the Senate term.^[6]

Two weeks after Martínez resigned his Senate seat, The Hill reported that he would become a

In 1994, Martínez ran for Lieutenant Governor of Florida. He teamed up with future Family Research Council President Ken Connor, the gubernatorial candidate. The Connor/Martínez ticket was defeated in the Republican primary, finishing fifth with 83,945 votes, or 9.31% of the vote.

On November 3, 1998, Martínez was elected

Before becoming Secretary of HUD, Martínez 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 then-Texas Gov.

Personal life

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Mel Martínez and his wife Kitty have three children and five grandchildren.^[14] He is the brother of Rafael E. Martínez. Mel Martínez resides in Orlando.

U.S. Senate election, 2004

In November 2004, Martínez was the Republican nominee in the U.S. Senate election to replace retiring Democrat Bob 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 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 Martínez wanted to run for governor in 2006, though the GOP convinced him to run for the Senate two years earlier instead.

Primary

Martínez's nomination by the Republican Party was far from certain. He was seriously challenged by former Congressman Bill 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 nominee John Edwards' background. Martínez 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, 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 from

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.^[16]

President Bush won in Florida by 52%-47%,

Campaign reporting violation

In August 2006, the Martínez campaign acknowledged that the 2004 campaign had been under review by the Federal 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.^[19] 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 organization

Martínez 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. 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 opponent Bill McCollum as a servant of the "radical homosexual lobby." Shortly thereafter another staffer was blamed for labeling federal agents involved in the Elián González affair as "armed thugs."^[23]

In spite of Martínez's vocal objections to homosexual issues such as gay marriage, he employed two gay men in his 2004 Senate campaign.^[24]

Republican National Committee

In November 2006, Martínez was named general chairman of the Republican 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.^[25] 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.

Published works

In August 2008, Martínez released an autobiography titled A 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)

Three months into Barack 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 to Carol 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.^[26]

The six accused are: former Attorney General

In April 2010, on the advice of the Spanish Attorney General Cándido 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."

Positions

• anti-abortion stance. Morally opposed to abortion even in case of rape or incest, 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
  , Martínez stated:

"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"[28]

• 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, Martínez said "Our immigration policy should first and foremost ensure the security of our great Nation and those individuals posing a terrorist threat should be prevented from entering our country. I strongly oppose amnesty for illegal aliens; our immigration laws should not reward lawlessness" and "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" In a 2006 after election platform reversal, he helped craft the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006 that would be referred to by much of his own party as "amnesty". (See ^[29] On June 28, 2007, he would later vote for the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007 – which he helped form with other Senate leaders – that would allow many illegal immigrants to become citizens. The bill was defeated through being denied cloture on the Senate floor.
• 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
  • Guantanamo Bay detainment camp Senator Martínez is also a member of the Congressional Cuba Democracy Caucus
  • Iraq: Supports the Bush Doctrine, but has asserted that the U.S. erred in hastily dismantling the Iraqi Army.
  • 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.^[28]
• Oliver Hazard Perry class frigates in service even after they have lost their air defense missile capabilities.^[30]
• Religion: Supports free exercise of religion; opposes "removing all public displays of religious devotion" from society.
• United States Constitution to ban same-sex marriage. In June 2006, he was 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 opposed legislation that would prevent employers from firing gays and has declined to endorse anti hate crimes legislation. In 2006, Kansas U.S. Senator Sam Brownback blocked a confirmation vote on a George W. Bush federal appeals court nominee from Michigan, judge Janet T. Neff, objecting to her joining the bench solely for her having attended a same-sex commitment ceremony in Massachusetts in 2002 which involved a next door neighbor who was a close childhood friend of Neff's daughters.^[31] In July 2007, he finally lifted his block that had prevented the vote, and Brownback was joined in opposition by just three other conservatives, including Senator Martinez.^[32]
• Senior Citizens: Lead sponsor of legislation to create a nationwide Silver Alert
  program to help locate missing seniors.
• John Roberts (2005), Samuel Alito (2006), and Sonia Sotomayor
  (2009).
• Welfare
  : Supports Republican-style welfare reforms encouraging personal responsibility; supports programs for job training and retraining.
• Public housing: Supports providing housing for peoples of a needy situation: physically, mentally, as well as financially. When secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Senator Martínez played a large part in the construction of housing and continued to do so as a junior senator.

On January 25, 2008, Martínez endorsed Sen.

See also

• List of foreign-born United States Cabinet members
• List of Hispanic and Latino Americans in the United States Congress
• List of United States senators born outside the United States

Footnotes

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Mel Martinez.

• Biography at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
• Financial information (federal office) at the Federal Election Commission
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Republican Party General Chairman Senator Mel Martínez
• New York Times – Melquíades Rafael Martínez News collected news and commentary
• Profile at
  SourceWatch

Political offices
Preceded by Andrew Cuomo	United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development 2001–2003	Succeeded by Alphonso Jackson
Party political offices
Preceded by Charlie Crist	Republican nominee for U.S. Senator from Florida (Class 3) 2004	Succeeded by Marco Rubio
Preceded by Ken Mehlman as Chair of the Republican National Committee	General Chair of the Republican National Committee 2007 Served alongside: Mike Duncan (National Chair)	Succeeded by Mike Duncan as Chair of the Republican National Committee
U.S. Senate
Preceded by Bob Graham	U.S. Senator (Class 3) from Florida 2005–2009 Served alongside: Bill Nelson	Succeeded by George LeMieux
U.S. order of precedence (ceremonial)
Preceded by Anthony Principi as Former US Cabinet Member	Order of precedence of the United States as Former US Cabinet Member	Succeeded by Elaine Chao as Former US Cabinet Member