“Televisions were on in Graham’s office. ABC, CBS and NBC all had live coverage of Havana, the Straits, Key West and Miami. Helicopters had television crews on board recording thousands of small boats making the dangerous trip in perilous seas, with dozens of distraught Cubans hanging onto the boats,” McKnight recalled. “Fascell said President Carter was awaiting Florida’s recommendation for action by the United States.”

The mass migration, which Castro announced without warning, created a humanitarian crisis in South Florida, racial tensions, and worries of a crime wave like the one depicted in Brian de Palma’s iconic movie “Scarface,” featuring actor Al Pacino as a Cuban cocaine king pin — a film Graham would later push to keep in Miami as filmmakers faced resistance over the content of the movie. Graham declared a state of emergency on April 28.

Over the coming years, Graham would spar with the administrations of Jimmy Carter and later Ronald Reagan, arguing that the federal government had abdicated its responsibility to address a federal immigration crisis playing out in the state of Florida.

Graham, in a foreword he wrote for the book, “Florida and the Mariel Boatlift: The first 20 Days,” said Castro’s sudden decision to open the floodgates came at a particularly vulnerable time for the United States and for South Florida. Carter, whom Graham supported and would go on to nominate later that year for reelection at the 1980 Democratic National Convention, was wounded by the Iranian hostage crisis and a bungled hostage rescue mission that had just led his secretary of state to resign. And Miami-Dade County, Graham wrote, was “still reeling from floods, fuel and water shortages, and the aftermath of Hurricane David.” But due to Carter’s preoccupation, the state and local governments shouldered the burden of the crisis.

Graham dealt with other crises as governor, including a 1979 truckers’ strike that forced the governor to call out the National Guard.

Graham, a Congregationalist, also signed multiple death warrants as governor, earning him the nicknames “Bloody Bob” and “Governor Death.” Graham set a record during his second term for death warrants signed during a Florida governor’s term with 15, which stood until former Gov. Rick Scott topped it. The number of prisoners executed by Graham has been a point of contention for critics, who speculate that Graham escalated the pace during election years. Less noted, however, is that Graham refused to sign 20 death warrants.

He also left an overcrowded prison system behind that forced his successor, Bob Martinez, to ease the burden by freeing thousands of prisoners.

Senator Graham

In 1986, facing term limits, he ran for the U.S. Senate, defeating Republican incumbent Sen. Paula Hawkins. Graham would go on to win reelection in 1992 and again in 1998, each time by overwhelming margins. In his third and final reelection campaign against then-Republican Charlie Crist, Graham won by 25 percentage points.

As a senator, Graham came to embody the pragmatist, centrist wing of the Democratic Party while taking on a number of important tasks, like serving as co-chair on the National Commission on the 2010 British Petroleum Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico. He also spent a decade on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, a bully pulpit that he used to pressure the U.S. government to release more information about the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, particularly as it pertained to the involvement of a Saudi family living in Sarasota.

In 2004, Graham published “Intelligence Matters: The CIA, the FBI, Saudi Arabia and the Failure of America’s War on Terror,” one of multiple books he authored. The most recent: “Rhoda the Alligator,” a children’s book published in 2020.

Ahead of the 2004 election, Graham launched an exploratory bid to run for president, a post people around him believed he’d always coveted, dating back to his time as governor. He’d already been considered as a likely running mate in repeated presidential cycles, ending up on Bill Clinton’s shortlist in 1992 before Clinton settled on Al Gore. But Graham’s campaign faltered after he had open heart surgery in January 2003 and he withdrew his candidacy at the end of the year, before getting to the Iowa caucuses.

Upon retiring from the Senate in January 2005, Graham had served 38 consecutive years in public office.

He never lost an election.

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(Herald/Times Tallahassee Bureau staff writer Alexandra Glorioso contributed to this report.)

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