Gwen Graham

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Gwen Graham (2015)

Gwendolyn "Gwen" Graham (* 31 January 1963 in Miami Lakes , Florida ) is an American politician of the Democrats . From 2015 to 2017, she represented Florida's 2nd Congressional District in the United States House of Representatives . She did not run for re-election in 2016 and instead ran unsuccessfully for the office of governor of her state in 2018 .

Family, education and work

Gwen Graham is the eldest of five daughters of the Democratic politician Bob Graham , who was Governor of Florida from 1979 to 1987 and then represented that state in the United States Senate. The family moved with the father in 1979 to the capital Tallahassee ; in 1980 Gwen Graham graduated from Leon High School there and had no interest in politics. She then studied at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill until 1984 . After studying law at the American University in Washington, DC , she began working as a lawyer after her admission in 1988. She was intermittently Director of Employee Relations for the Leon County School District .

Graham is married and has three children.

Political career

Congressman

Graham stayed out of the public eye for a long time and began becoming politically active in his late forties. After winning the 2014 election , she moved to the United States House of Representatives in Washington for Florida's second congressional electoral district , where she succeeded Republican Steve Southerland , whom she defeated in the election, on January 3, 2015 . She was one of only three Democratic candidates in this difficult mid-term election for the ruling party , which could prevail in districts previously represented by Republicans, and was therefore considered the “darling” of the Democrats and “rising star” in Florida politics. In the House of Representatives, Graham served on the Agriculture Committee and the Armed Forces Committee and four subcommittees.

Within her party, she stood up against the parliamentary group leader Nancy Pelosi . The local newspaper Tallahassee Democrat rated the legislative work of the MPs who had just entered Congress as ineffective; However, with the support of Republican colleagues, she was able to achieve some selective successes in the areas of education, the environment and foreign policy security. The “pragmatist” introduced 13 legislative proposals in 2015 with non-partisan support. In some decisions she sided with the Republicans and thus drew the displeasure of her party colleagues, for example in support of the Keystone XL pipeline, the rejection of President Obama's negotiation result in the nuclear dispute with Iran or the difficult access to the reformed pipeline and extended health insurance . Graham's Congressional constituency, which had previously been largely identical to Leon County , was redesigned by a 2015 ruling by the Florida Supreme Court that rejected the previous constituency division as unfair. A part of the democratically dominated city of Tallahassee was removed from this and assigned to the 5th congressional electoral district. This redesign gave the constituency an even stronger republican tendency (previously R + 6, later R + 18), which severely diminished Graham's prospects for re-election in November 2016. She therefore considered challenging her fellow party member Corrine Brown , the holder of the seat of the 5th Congressional electoral district in Florida, which is mainly populated by ethnic minorities and is moving along Florida's northern border from Jacksonville to Tallahassee, but decided against it and did not stand again in the 2016 election on. Graham therefore resigned from Congress on January 3, 2017.

Application as governor

In mid-June 2016, Graham announced that he would run for Florida gubernatorial candidate in 2018. She wanted to establish a new political leadership, similar to that of her father as governor, in which the administration was no longer politicized. She was considered a favorite to win the hotly contested inner-party Democratic primary on August 28, 2018 against left-wing candidates, and received over $ 1 million in financial support from her father's fortune. In doing so, she, who would have been the state's first female governor, relied on the votes of women and voters from the political center . Against the accusation of not advocating progressive ideas sufficiently , she countered by advocating a ban on the private ownership of partially automated weapons used by the military ("assault weapon") and expanding the Medicaid health insurance program . The planned construction of a shopping center on a property in Miami-Dade County that belongs to her family, despite environmental concerns, was also criticized . Contrary to the polls, Graham lost the party primary with 31.3 percent of the vote (472,735) against the Afro-American Mayor of Tallahassees , Andrew Gillum , who was supported by Bernie Sanders , who received 34.3 percent of the vote (517,417).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Christine Sexton: Gwen Graham Tries To Make History In Her Bid For Governor. In: The News Service of Florida , August 16, 2018.
  2. ↑ a b c Ledyard King: Gwen Graham faces 'tough decision' on political future. In: Tallahassee Democrat , January 17, 2016.
  3. ^ A b Scott Powers: Gwen Graham: I want to run for governor. In: Florida Politics , June 13, 2016.
  4. ↑ Jake Sherman: Graham: 'I am not Nancy Pelosi'. In: Politico , October 15, 2014; Ledyard King: Rep. Gwen Graham votes against Pelosi - again. In: Tallahassee Demcrat , USA Today , October 30, 2015.
  5. ↑ Jeff Burlew: Gwen Graham might run for governor. In: Tallahassee Democrat , April 21, 2016.
  6. ^ Diane Roberts: GOP race for Gwen Graham's CD 2 seat certainly not crazy-free. In: Florida Politics , May 18, 2016.
  7. ^ Drew Wilson: FAU poll: Gwen Graham far out front in Democratic race for governor. In: Florida Politics , August 21, 2018; Lawrence Mower: Gwen Graham gets another half-million from her father in governor's race. In: Tampa Bay Times , August 23, 2018.
  8. ↑ Christine Sexton: Gwen Graham Tries To Make History In Her Bid For Governor. In: The News Service of Florida , August 16, 2018.
  9. ^ Florida Primary Election Results. In: The New York Times , August 29, 2018.
personal data
SURNAME Graham, Gwen
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Graham, Gwendolyn (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American politician
DATE OF BIRTH January 31, 1963
PLACE OF BIRTH Miami Lakes , Florida