Trading Florida sunshine for the national spotlight

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Feb 13, 1995 | by Lisa Leiter

In 1986, he secured $59 million to link Broward County's western suburbs by highway with its waterfront neighborhoods and to expand a dangerous two-lane highway called Alligator Alley into a superhighway connecting Florida's Atlantic and Gulf shores.

Transportation issues bonded him with Dade County Democrat Bill Lehman, who retired from Congress in 1992 after serving 20 years, some of them as a member of an Appropriations subcommittee with transportation oversight. "I helped him on Appropriations and then he had to support my bill because he had a project in here," Lehman says. "Sometimes, that wasn't easy for him to do."

In 1993, Shaw brought an intensely personal element to a controversial national issue - the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA. He hinged his vote on the extradition of a Mexican farm worker, Serapio Zuniga Rios, accused of abducting a 4-year-old California gift the year before, taking her to a construction site, raping her, tying her to a tree and leaving her to die.

The little gift was a niece of a longtime secretary in Shaw's office. Her family hired detectives who tracked Rios to Mexico. The United States formally requested extradition, but Mexican officials balked, saying Rios would be tried in Mexico.

Shaw said the Mexican intransigence demonstrated a lack of respect for international agreements. No Rios, he warned, no vote for NAFTA.

Eventually, the Mexican government said it would give up Rios, and Shaw supported the trade agreement. (Mexico subsequently reneged; Rios was tried and convicted there and now is in jail.) Shaw doesn't regret his vote but says he'll be wary of the Mexican government while serving on the Ways and Means trade subcommittee. "They didn't honor the commitment that they gave to me," he says. "Now, in dealing with them, we'll have to proceed with caution."

Shaw's personal and political roots run deep in South Florida, one of the country's most transient areas. He was born and reared in Miami and graduated in 1961 from Stetson University in De Land, Fla., along with Emilie, his high-school sweetheart, whom he married while in college. In 1963, he earned his master's degree in business administration from the University of Alabama.

Upon graduation from Stetson University Law School in St. Petersburg in 1966, Shaw moved to Fort Lauderdale. He built his political reputation as a prosecutor and municipal judge, winning a seat on the city commission in 1971.

He was elected mayor of the one-time haven for spring break-bound college students after four years on the commission. While mayor, he enacted a tough 1977 ordinance outlawing rooftop signs and billboards. But he also had to confront more volatile issues, such as conflicts between eastern Fort Lauderdale's wealthy yachtsmen and the working-class folks in neighborhoods to the west.

Carlton Moore, Fort Lauderdale's only black commissioner, was a thorn in the side of Mayor Shaw. Since then, Moore has fiercely opposed some of Shaw's voting record, including his opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1990. "I was very disappointed with the stance he took on that issue.... I wish he had different life experiences that would give him different opinions about things," says Moore, a commissioner for seven years. "But I've found him to be consistent, and there is a certain respect for that."