'He faithfully served': Former Florida Comptroller Gerald Lewis dies at 87
Former state Comptroller Gerald A. Lewis, who rose to prominence in an era when Florida government was changing but lost his Cabinet post when it swung back the other way, has died at age 87.
“He faithfully served our country in the U.S. Army and the great state of Florida in the House of Representatives,” Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis said in a statement issued Tuesday. “Lewis was a devoted public servant and his hard work as the state’s chief fiscal officer paved the way for the office I’m so very honored to serve in today. He will be missed.”
Lewis was a Miami lawyer, forming a firm with the late U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno. He was an Army paratrooper 1955-57 and served as a captain in the special forces in the Army Reserve and Florida National Guard 1960-69.
He was elected to the Legislature in 1966, when the old rural “Pork Chop Gang” was being supplanted in Tallahassee by urban lawmakers. He won a seat in the state Senate in 1970 but lost a race in 1972 for the Public Service Commission — then a statewide elected board regulating utilities — to Republican Paula Hawkins.
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Gerald Lewis won state's comptroller seat in 1974 and held it for 20 years
He was an assistant state attorney and county attorney in Miami-Dade, then succeeded state Comptroller Fred “Bud” Dickinson in 1974. Lewis headed the Department of Banking and Finance for 20 years.
Lewis lost his Cabinet seat to former Comptroller Bob Milligan, a retired Marine Corps lieutenant general from Panama City, in the GOP wave election of 1994. Former Gov. Jeb Bush almost beat Gov. Lawton Chiles in that year of the “Gingrich Revolution,” and Republicans also won the education commissioner’s office on the state Cabinet — which then consisted of six statewide elected officers.
It was the start of Florida’s political shift to the Republican Party, which now holds all but one statewide elected office.
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A 1998 constitutional amendment merged the offices of comptroller and treasurer/insurance commissioner into the CFO post that Patronis now holds.
Born in Birmingham, Ala., March 31, 1934, Lewis graduated from Harvard in 1955 and earned his law degree there in 1960. During his tenure as comptroller, Lewis served a stint as chairman of the National Conference of State Banking Supervisors and traveled internationally to encourage foreign banks to open offices in Florida. He also served as a state member of Miami’s Downtown Development Authority during his 20 years as comptroller.
After leaving state politics, Lewis worked with the Tallahassee law firm of Levine & Stivers.
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This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Gerald A. Lewis, former Florida Comptroller, dies at 87
