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What I’ve Learned ... Ron Book ABOUT LOBBYING AND PROFESSIONALISM: There are people who come in here all the time and they want to do what I do. Or be what I am. I give all of them the same basic advice: Do what I did. The problem today is that every Tom, Dick, and Harry; Mary, Sue, and Jane, who goes out and runs a campaign thinks they can just come up here and be a lobbyist and understand what the system is about. Term limits, to some extent, have facilitated not just that thought process, but the ability to work your way in, without years of experience, without the knowledge and experience that you gain by working in the process. I started in the process working as a legislative aide, got an opportunity to work for a subcommittee. Happened to be in the right place at the right time. And I did that in between undergraduate school and going to law school. And I tell people all the time, what you’ve got to do is understand how the process works. How does it all connect? If you don’t work in government, you can’t understand it. You can’t advise your clients correctly, you can’t advise them ethically, honestly, thoroughly, completely, if you don’t really understand. And while you can gain experience in some other ways, it’s 142 | INFLUENCE WINTER 2016 certainly not what you learn in a textbook. You can go down to the Graham Center at the University of Florida and get some experience. You can come over here to Florida State and there are a lot of people that do what I do and they lecture over there, (they’re) adjunct professors. But some people think that by going through some course study, that gets them ready for this business. And I don’t think it does. I think part of the problem today, when you think about some of the transformational things that have happened over the 40-plus years I’ve been doing this, is that the system has changed dramatically. Different things have precipitated different kinds of change. Sam Bell was going to be speaker of the House. The voters turned him out of office over some tax measures that had passed. After that, the system began to change. Why? Because what the system learned — what the process learned — was that lawmakers needed to be fully educated. And just because something came up from leadership didn’t mean that that was what was best for the people. I think that the greatest level of change ... well, let me go backwards. First we got the Sunshine Law and the public records law, this is back in the Gov. Reubin Askew days. Then we later got financial disclosure. And the Jack Gordons, the Dempsey Barrons, the George Kirkpatricks, names of the past, litigated that to the Supreme Court — and they lost. And financial disclosure came about. Well, a lot of people like Ken Plante, certainly an institutional lobbyist around here till he got sick, left the process over it. Principle mattered. And they didn’t like that principle. Now, some stayed, but some left … it drove people out. People didn’t want to disclose. That was a prerogative of a citizen Legislature. But that began a change. I think another set of changes, the most dramatic changes, came with term limits. People have forgotten the rules; people have forgotten the respect. Come here, I want to show you something. He starts looking through a coatrack, then calls out to an assistant, “Hey, where are the ties?” There were ties here. The point is, I keep ties hanging here. But the reason they’re there isn’t for me. They’re for other lobbyists. I wear a tie to work every day. But lobbyists have forgotten the rules. They’re not written anywhere. Part of the rules is how you conduct yourself. Lawyers don’t go into courtrooms 64, Miami Legendary Lobbyist, Passionate Competitor, Advocate for Abused Children AS TOLD TO JIM ROSICA IN TALLAHASSEE Editor’s note: Lawyer and lobbyist Ron Book has been stalking the corridors of the Capitol for over 40 years. “Book’s relentlessness as a lobbyist is legendary,” Newsweek magazine once wrote of him, calling the 64-year-old “compact and pugnacious.” He’s been chair of the Homeless Trust of Miami-Dade County since 2004, winning a term-limit waiver this year. He’s a prostate cancer survivor. And he’s been a crusader against child abuse after revelations that his daughter Lauren, now a state senator, had been molested and abused by her nanny for years. He sits on the board of Lauren’s Kids, the nonprofit she founded to prevent childhood sexual abuse and help its survivors. Book sat down recently with INFLUENCE’s Jim Rosica for a one-on-one chat.


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