"SHAKING UP FLORIDA POLITICS
For Willie Logan, the future promises plenty of new opportunities"

July 5, 1998

by Tom Fiedler, Political Editor

To Willie Logan, who had worked so hard to get there, the decision seemed terribly unfair. He trained for two years to win the quarterback slot at Hialeah-Miami Lakes High. At six-feet-four, he could throw over most defenders. His teenage arm was a cannon.

But at the end of his junior year, the coach announced a switch. The offense would be built around the coach’s son, a runner, not Logan, a thrower.

When Logan threatened to quit the team, the coach cautioned against it. Sports, the coach told him, was the only way out of poverty for black youths.

"I was so angry about that, I dropped out of school," Logan said in an interview. "It was like he was saying that the only way blacks could get ahead was by learning to entertain people. I wouldn’t accept that.

Some contend that history runs in cycles, that there is nothing really new in the world. So perhaps it was fated that on the morning of Jan. 7, 1998, Logan again found himself bounced from his place as his team’s upcoming quarterback.

This time, the 16-year legislative veteran was in line to become the Democratic leader in the Florida House of Representatives—the first black to hold that post this century. But secretly, other Democrats plotted to block his way. Like that high school coach a generation before. They wanted to build an offense around a different leader, one who happened to be white.

"I feel betrayed," a stunned Logan said in the aftermath of the vote to oust him, which nearly paralleled racial lines.

This time, though, Logan didn’t quit his team—he has gone on to create his own after declaring "free agency" from the Democratic Party and urged all blacks to follow. In the six months since his ouster as his party’s speaker-designate, a case could be made that the Opa-locka legislator—an accountant turned community builder—has become the most important Democrat in the state.

Long-term effect
"In the beginning, a lot of people thought this issue was going to go away," said former state Rep. Mike Abrams, a longtime friend of Logan’s. "It won’t. This isn’t going to be an asterisk on our history books. Nobody knows where this will end up, but Willie is going to make a lasting difference."

Sensing the chance for electoral advantage, Florida Republicans have courted him in ways large and small. During the recent legislative session, the Republican leadership showered Logan and other black Democrats with pork-barrel projects and supported causes dear to that constituency.

Seldom does a week pass that Jeb Bush, the likely GOP nominee for governor, doesn’t call to either talk politics or propose lunch. Last month, Logan was an honored guest at the Republican Party’s annual banquet in Orlando and a no-show at the Democrats’ version a week later.

More ramifications
Logan’s ouster also injected some passion into such nearly dormant civil rights organizations like the NAACP, which honored him. Most of all, it triggered upheaval within the Democratic Party’s own ranks and serious soul-searching over the future role of blacks.

Earlier this month, during a visit to Miami’s Liberty City, Lt. Gov. Buddy MacKay—whose future aspirations to become governor may be most directly affected by the controversy—chastised himself for not intervening with House Democrats to stop the ouster.

"We know now that this issue was much bigger than the House Democrats," MacKay said. Friends said Logan remains baffled that his ouster has exploded into such controversy. And he’s an unlikely warrior. Despite his imposing height, Logan evokes a gentle manner, sometimes speaking so softly he’s difficult to hear. But, as he demonstrated in high school, he will throw himself against perceived injustice, giving little regard to where the outcome may lead.

"He sees this as a legitimate opportunity to do something for minorities, and he’s grabbed it," Abrams said. "Right now, he has the tiger by the tail, and he’s determined to hold on."

Seizing opportunity without knowing the consequences has been a way of life for Logan. Born on Feb. 16, 1957, in Miami, the only child of doting parents, Frank "Willie" Logan Jr. grew up in a new, neat bungalow in Rainbow Park, a subdivision just northeast of Opa-locka, one of the suburban developments built after World War II primarily for black veterans. In the 41 years since, he has never lived more than five miles away from that house, where his mother still lives.

His childhood came during a time of great change, when the barriers of segregation tumbled and opportunities opened for talented and ambitious black people. Logan was both, and he recalls a youth organized around the church, sports and neighborhood schools.

"I grew up not really knowing or feeling the effects of segregation in my life. I was sheltered pretty well," he said. "Prejudice wasn’t a factor, which is why I’m reluctant to this day to say that actions against me may be motivated by that."

The family never talked politics or civil rights. But among Logan’s earliest memories is sitting for days at his father’s side before a TV set carrying reports of John F. Kennedy’s assassination and funeral. The Kennedy family, as well as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., held honored places in his father’s heart.

On the rebound
Athletics and academics were equally valued—the former by his father and the latter by his mother—and Logan excelled at both. Even after he quit high school after the confrontation with the coach, Logan (nicknamed "Lucky" by friends) rebounded ever higher. He enrolled simultaneously at Miami-Dade Community College and in a high school diploma program.

After finishing both, he transferred to the University of Miami and earned an accounting degree shortly after his 20^th birthday.

"I went to work as an accountant, and after one week, I hated it, just hated it," Logan said. So he quit, hooked up with an insurance agency and occupied his mind with activities at church, in the NAACP and on the edges of some local political campaigns.

Then, in early 1979, Logan got a call from an up-and-coming political activist, Mike Abrams, who had made a name for himself as a student politician at the University of Miami and for helping run Jimmy Carter’s Florida campaign in 1976.

This time, however, Abrams had broken with Carter, and he was organizing a new crusade: drafting Ted Kennedy into the 1980 presidential race against the incumbent president. Abrams asked if Logan would want to help.

New enthusiasm
"The idea that I could work for a Kennedy was overwhelming," Logan recalled. So overwhelming that he quit his job, moved back home and began working full time for the Massachusetts senator at no salary.

The Kennedy campaign lasted barely a year before Carter crushed it in the 1980 Florida primary. But the bug had gotten hold of Logan. One afternoon in late winter, Logan sat with the survivors of the Kennedy team and complained loudly about the state of politics in his hometown of Opa-locka, a city going through traumatic racial change.

During the diatribe, Abrams cut him short: If you’re so unhappy with the way things are run in Opa-locka, why don’t you run for mayor?

Logan replied: "If you’ll help me pay the qualifying fee, I’ll do it." He ran and won by nine votes, defeating a former deputy police chief who was white. In April 1980, at age 22, Logan took the oath as the "boy mayor" of a city known mostly for its Arabian Nights architecture and grinding poverty. To make ends meet, he took a job sweeping U-Tot-‘Em stores at night so he could be in City Hall during the day.

Trial by fire
His trial by fire came barely four weeks later, when riots erupted in Miami’s Liberty City, barely two miles south. Eighteen people would die, and entire blocks were consumed in flames.

Yet Opa-locka, with its black mayor, black police chief and black city manager, wasn’t touched. But the riots slammed home the need for investment in the inner cities, and when the Carter administration pledged millions in aid, Logan again seized the moment.

With help from former U.S. Rep. William Lehman, Logan submitted an application to create the Opa-locka Community Development Corp., with him as its director. The application was approved, enabling Logan to quit his night job and still work to better the city he led.

In 1982, he jumped higher still, winning a seat in the Florida House, where he could better angle for Opa-locka. It’s a dual role that some critics have found questionable to lodge legal complaints.

"I know that it has bothered some people," Logan conceded. But investigations by the Florida Ethics Commission, the Dade state attorney’s office and Miami-Dade County about Logan’s role have found nothing to prosecute.

Agency unchallenged
The Opa-locka CDC, which has redeveloped the town’s major office building (now named for Logan) as well as apartments and housing developments, has drawn no legal complaints in recent years, according to county records.

"If there is anything wrong, nobody has told me about it," said Logan, who now serves only as a consultant.

His personal life seems remarkably unaffected by the unfolding controversy. Almost every day that he’s in town, Logan has lunch with his widowed mother, who has turned one room in the house into a museum about her son. He and his wife, Lyra, a Harvard-trained lawyer, fill free time with church and Logan’s two godchildren, now both teenagers, whom he has raised.

Until his ouster, Logan said he was slowly turning his attention away from public life. He earned a master’s degree in health planning a year ago and had started work on a doctorate when he was chosen to lead the House Democrats.

Completing that course remains a goal, he said. But for now, he wants to keep hold of that tiger’s tail, urging blacks to take advantage of "free agency" and see what comes out of the bidding war between Democrats and Republicans.

Democrat dissenters
Not all agree. Many black Democrats complain that Logan has succumbed to Republican flattery and, for the sake of his own ambition or to exact personal revenge, is threatening the Democratic Party’s future.

Elizabeth Judd, a member of the Miami-Dade Democratic Executive Committee, singled him out during a meeting earlier this month intended to address the racial rift within the party. If Logan wanted to resolve the dispute, Judd said, he need only "sit down at the table" with party leaders and list his concerns so they can be met.

"What we have is elected officials who are using this for their own gain. There is no way that Willie Logan wants to come to the table. This is just a bunch of foolishness, and enough is enough."

Logan demurs. He has in recent weeks met with Democrats, including MacKay. But he also believes that, having been cut from his team’s quarterback slot, he can savor a newfound freedom previously known by few black politicians.

"Jeb Bush, [Republican Party Chairman] Tom Slade and others are no longer ignoring us. They are reaching out. In the best interests of my district, I am reaching back," Logan said.

"I have no illusions that they could turn out to be temporary allies. But if they’re not, a change in the political landscape could be under way."