WINTER 2016 INFLUENCE | 145 without ties. Lobbyists shouldn’t go into the halls of the Capitol without them. The public can. Reporters can. But we can’t. The public can go in blue jeans and a T-shirt. It’s their building. But we get a privilege to go there. We may have a right, but, really, it’s a privilege to walk those halls. And you’ve got to respect it. And I think that what has happened is, one of those transformational things, when your word doesn’t mean anything anymore. The integrity of lobbyists, the looseness of information. It used to be said that the only thing you have is your credibility. And the first time you lie, cheat, mislead, that’s the last time you come over here. ... I think that what’s happened now is that people play footloose and fancy free. Alex Villalobos, when he was in the Senate, felt like one of the industries was lying to him on one of the reform measures. So Alex proposed that everybody — I think Jim King was president at the time — that testified for a committee had to raise a right hand and put a left hand on the Bible. And they wouldn’t let it pass as a statute and they wouldn’t let it pass as a rule. You know what? He was right. I tell him that every time I see him. I tell him, “You may not have won that one, but you were right.” Things just have changed. You could tell somebody that it was raining outside. It better be raining outside. Tell somebody that paper’s white, it can’t be off-white. That stuff has changed. The process is one of integrity. People have complained about House Speaker Richard Corcoran’s rules. That’s his prerogative. He’s been in government a long time. Things that he saw along the way he didn’t like, he’s trying to right. It doesn’t matter whether lobbyists agree or disagree with him. Now, by the way, Tom Lee and I are extremely friendly. But I was a named plaintiff in a lawsuit over his statutory lobbyist reform stuff. Why? He passed a statute I didn’t think was constitutional. That’s different than a set of rules. But I sued in my name and I got Guy Spearman — another pillar who believes in the same ethical standards I do, but also believed what was in there was unconstitutional. … I’m a lawyer and I run this place as law firm. The reason I run it as a law firm is I want to be bound by the Code of Professional Responsibility. I want to be bound by a set of rules and regulations, the rules of the Bar. Article 5 of the Constitution says the Supreme Court regulates the profession. So when the Legislature passed a statute to regulate me, I took great exception to that. We lost. I get it. But I felt so strongly about that I went to court over it. There are people who think they know everything about this place. If you went and asked the other lobbyists that work in my office, both of them would say to you, “We learn something new every single session.” We do. You never stop learning. Because the process evolves with new members, with new chairs, with new leadership. Like this: “All appropriation projects must be filed as stand-alone bills.” You got to move with those changes. You got to move with them when they happen. If you don’t learn a better way to get the square peg in the round hole, you’ve cheated your clients; you’ve cheated those you come to advocate for. What lawyers tell prospective clients is, “we can’t take stuff we can’t handle and we’ll be aggressive about our representation on your behalf as we can possibly be.” … I think that part of why I urge people to work in government isn’t just so they understand the inner workings of government. I want them to understand the respect of the institution. I want them to get trained in how to handle themselves and how to carry themselves and how to speak in the process. I think that’s really important. I mean, I don’t like the word “mentor” because it sometimes gets misinterpreted. But I try to be helpful to every young lobbyist. I try to give them advice even when I’m not asked. Because I think sometimes there’s a better way to make a widget than the way they’re making it. You know, a lot of people don’t respect what lobbyists do. I feel just fine about who I am and what I do. But I do believe that’s a special place (pointing at the Capitol) … There’s a dinner tonight. It’s for the Historic Capitol Foundation. I serve on that board for a reason. I don’t need the accolades. I serve on the board because of the historical significance of that place. I started working there when I first came to work here in the 1970s. I worked in that old building; to me, that place is so special. ON WINNING: I kid with people who tell their kids that winning isn’t everything or you shouldn’t teach them that winning is everything. A while ago there was a House member that stopped by. He sat down and we were talking about my cancer. And I told him, I ran track at the University of Florida. My track coach, Jimmy Carnes, died of prostate cancer. When I was diagnosed in July, they had been watching me for a year and half. Half of my brain was about the hundred people I knew that had been survivors of prostate cancer. But this side of my brain, this troubled half of my brain, that put me into “treatment and analysis paralysis” was about my track coach who was one of my two or three best friends. I woke up one day, a couple of years into my track career, and realized I wasn’t going to be All-American. I wasn’t going to be among the top guys. I was always going to be fifth, sixth, seventh man. So I left to go work in the Legislature, finish my last eight months at FIU. Other than my mother or my father, I learned more about life from my old track coach that from anything or anybody else ever. He taught me discipline, taught me focus. And I was having this conversation with this guy, about how (Jimmy) taught me how to give everything. How to win, how to win, how to win, and winning was everything, how to push your body to such a level. But when he got diagnosed, his doctors told him the same three things my doctor told me: “Curable, beatable, we’ll fix you.” And so that part of my brain had this terribly difficult time processing that I wasn’t invincible, processing that maybe I wasn’t going to live to be 120, processing that somehow I was going to have to slow myself down. That stuff had a debilitating psychological impact on me. And so I was describing this to this House member. And I said to him that’s what was the hardest part for me, because to me it is about winning. So this part of me that started to argue that maybe I wasn’t going to win, that there were people like Jimmy Carnes who died. To give you the “ I think that part of why I urge people to work in government isn’t just so they understand the inner workings of government. I want them to understand the respect of the institution.” — Ron Book
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