In most Congressional offices, the Member’s chief of staff also served as a campaign manager. For me, that was the least demanding responsibility included with the AA/CoS position. Charlie had held office for so long and was so well respected and liked, that he faced many campaigns unopposed. Even then he took nothing for granted and went “all out,” grumbling over spending even a few hundred dollars for the cards that he handed out.

His idea of campaigning was to spend virtually the entire period “in the District” on his feet meeting people, shaking hands and handing out his cards. When the early shift at Jacksonville Shipyards arrived for work on many mornings, Charlie was already at the gate with a smile and a card. Sometimes there were debates or speeches. Placing a few ads in the paper rounded out the campaign. It pained him greatly to spend the money, even from supporters and not taxpayers, when it could be doing more good somewhere else.

He always won handily, even overwhelmingly. After the 1982 campaign in which four out of five voters supported continuing him in office, he called me in to talk about how he do better as their Congressman. If I was doing everything right, he reasoned, every one would vote for me. It wasn’t enough that he would win consistently somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of the popular vote when other Congressional races were decided by less than half of one percent. He thought he should do better.

He certainly kept trying.

Once in a while, usually when the House was adjourned, the usual brisk to flat out pace in the office would slow to a crawl.

While his staff cleaned out files, ordered new supplies or attended training sessions, Charlie would reach for the battered old shoe box he kept beneath his desk. It contained cards, hundreds of reference cards noting important events or personalities in Florida history.

Time for historical research for him was quite limited, but I never saw him happier than on those rare afternoons when he was thumbing through some dusty tome that chronicled some phase of north Florida’s often chaotic history that had been sent over by a researcher in the Library of Congress. By using small scraps of time for research and writing accumulated over months and years, he was able to publish numerous books on Florida history.

As he did with his disability pay, he returned the royalty money to the national Treasury. Over the years, it amounted to many hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Charlie was very devout in his religious beliefs. He didn’t wear them on his sleeve, but lived by them and used his faith as a tool to help guide his decision making. He was especially proud of his leadership role in placing “In God We Trust,” on America’s currency.

If there is any room for improvement in Heaven, I suspect that Charlie has already been asked to create an Ethics Committee or to improve heavenly defense.

I just hope that when he needs his assistant that he calls for John and not Tracy—at least for now.

© Copyright 2015 Tracy D. Connors

Suggested Citation:

Connors, T. D. (2015, February 19). Congressman Charles E. Bennett: A Great American Statesman and Patriot [Dr. Tracy Connors, former Chief of Staff to Congressman Charles E. Bennett (D-FL 3rd Dist.), recalls his memories of the legendary Congressman.]. In Log Entries. Retrieved from BelleAire Press: http://www.belleairepress.com/tracy-connors/tdc-log-entries/congressman-charles-e-bennett-a-great-american-statesman-and-patriot/