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Martinez Makes His Announcement

Posted Dec 2, 2008 by William March

Updated Dec 2, 2008 at 11:33 AM

Republican Sen. Mel Martinez, the nation’s first Cuban-American senator and Florida’s highest-ranking Cuban-American elected official, has just announced he won’t seek re-election and will leave office at the end of his first term in 2010.

Martinez was somewhat vague about the reasons but said it was not because of the expected difficulty of a re-election battle. He said he has never wanted a lifelong career as an elected official and simply wants to go back to private life.

“The inescapable truth for me is that the call to public service is strong but the call to home is even stronger,” he said. “I decided it was really the best thing for me, for [his wife] Kitty, for our family. The next eight years, which would have been two of candidacy and six serving, I wanted to do something else with my life.”

Martinez, a longtime Orlando trial lawyer, began his political career as mayor of Orange County. In 2000, he was tapped by then incoming President George Bush as secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. In 2004, at the urging of Bush, Martinez ran for his Senate seat—even though he previously said he would prefer to stay in Florida and run for governor.

In the Senate, Martinez also served briefly as chairman of the National Republican Party, again at Bush’s urging.