OAN’s James Meyers
7:45 AM – Wednesday, April 17, 2024
Former U.S. Senator and two-term Florida Governor Bob Graham passed away on Tuesday at the age of 87.
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Graham’s daughter Gwen, announced his death in a statement on X, formerly known as Twitter.
“We are deeply saddened to report the passing of a visionary leader, dedicated public servant, and even more importantly, a loving husband, father, grandfather, and great-grandfather,” the family said.
“As a legislator, Florida’s 38th Governor, and a United States Senator, Bob Graham devoted his life to the betterment of the world around him,” Graham’s daughter’s statement read. “The memorials to that devotion are everywhere – from the Everglades and other natural treasures he was determined to preserve, to the colleges and universities he championed with his commitment to higher education, to the global understanding he helped to foster through his work with the intelligence community, and so many more.”
Graham served three terms in the Senate, while making an unsuccessful bid for the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee. He was also known as a critic of President George W. Bush’s administration for the United States’ involvement in the Iraq war.
The former Florida governor served on the Senate Intelligence Committee for a decade and was in charge of the congressional investigation of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
“The quagmire in Iraq is a distraction that the Bush administration, and the Bush administration alone, has created,” Graham said in 2003.
Additionally, he was one of 23 senators who voted against Bush’s request from Congress to use military force against Iraq.
“I’m afraid I never wavered from my belief that this was a distraction that was going to come to a bad end in Iraq and an even worse end in Afghanistan,” Graham said in an opinion article for the Huffington Post in 2008.
Graham was once considered a top candidate for the Democratic Vice Presidential nominee in 1988, 1992, 2000, and 2004.
After retiring from the Senate in 2005, Graham moved on to the Bob Graham Center for Public Service at the University of Florida.
Five years later in 2010, President Barack Obama appointed him to a special commission to investigate the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico.
“Bob Graham would tell people his favorite title was not Governor or Senator. It was the name his grandchildren gave him: Doodle. ‘When I’m really good, they call me Super Doodle,’ he liked to say,” his daughter’s post read.
“For 87 years, Bob Graham was so much more than really good,” the statement concluded. “He was a rare collection of public accomplishments and personal traits that combined to make him unforgettable. As his family, we will never forget his love for us, the love he had for Florida, the United States, and the world, and the love so many people showed him. We thank God for the gift of his life.”
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