FORT LAUDERDALE — Jim Blosser did a lot of things well as a lawyer, lobbyist, civic leader, dealmaker, fund-raiser, husband, father and grandfather.
For decades, he was a consummate mover and shaker in the worlds of politics and civic life. He personified a bygone era in Broward when a well-defined group of insiders made up what was called the “downtown power structure.”
He was proudly a Republican, but he had no time for the personal animosity and destructive hyper-partisanship that drives politics now. Everyone was too busy doing deals and making money, and Blosser was at the center of it all, as the trusted legal advisor to the era’s premier moneymaker, Wayne Huizenga.
Calm, courtly and even-tempered, Blosser seemed to be everywhere at once. He found time for many civic endeavors, from the Broward Workshop to Pine Crest School to Stranahan House to WPBT-Channel 2 to the Homeless Assistance Center.
He nurtured the careers of many young people in politics, such as Justin Sayfie, his former law partner, and was instrumental in bringing the Marlins and Panthers to South Florida, as well as Huizenga’s acquisition of the Dolphins.
When Blosser was starting to lose a battle to leukemia a year ago, the always well-organized lawyer asked his friend and fellow Indiana native Bill Scherer to speak at his funeral.
“Jim accomplished more than any one person I know,” Scherer said. “His shoes are too big. I can’t follow him.”
Blosser, a native of Fort Wayne who came south to attend the University of Miami in the mid-1950s, died on Aug. 11. He was 85.
His political profile rose to a new level when he ran the George H.W. Bush campaign in Broward in 1988. That was the last time a Republican presidential candidate carried the county.
Then he helped to elect Jeb Bush, who was in attendance at Friday’s service, and became an elite fundraiser known as a “pioneer” for George W. Bush in 2000.
Blosser gave money to Democrats, too, such as U.S. Reps. Alcee Hastings, Ron Klein and Larry Smith, and County Commissioner Sylvia Poitier, among others.
It was simply an acknowledgement of the political realities of Broward County, but it would be unheard of in today’s toxic, us-against-them climate.
When a political opponent publicly criticized Blosser in 1988 for making those Democratic donations, he made no apologies.
So what? he told me rhetorically for a Miami Herald article. “I have contributed to one hell of a lot of Republicans.”
Blosser had just defeated a Fort Lauderdale conservative stalwart, Fred Guardabassi, to win a race for a rank-and-file seat on the local Republican Party, representing his neighborhood of Las Olas Isles.
The local GOP was then dominated by right-wing ideologues who every two years put up hopelessly overmatched candidates, unable to break the Democrats’ stranglehold on power. Blosser, as usual, found himself a seat at the table.
Guardabassi was infuriated that neighborhood GOP voters received glossy pictures of President Reagan and Vice President Bush endorsing Blosser.
“I didn’t know I was running against the president,” he said.
Blosser was a moderate who saw virtue in bipartisan cooperation, a strand of politics sadly reviled today in both Tallahassee and Washington.
He mostly avoided controversy, despite having a major role in many important political issues of the time.
Perhaps his grandest venture was his successful navigation in the early 1990s of Blockbuster Park, a massive and Disney-like entertainment complex on the edge of the Everglades in Miramar known as “Wayne’s World.”
He helped guide it through a Democrat-controlled state Capitol where most lawmakers were cheerleaders for the project, despite serious questions about its potential impact on wetlands, water supplies and traffic. This is the same type of autonomous district that Gov. Ron DeSantis so reviled that he abolished it at Disney World.
When the park’s special district became law, with vast powers similar to a city, Blosser was naturally elected to serve as one of its first supervisors.
Blockbuster Park would have put the Panthers hockey team in Miramar. It would have transformed southwest Broward, but it never got built, because Viacom bought Huizenga’s Blockbuster Entertainment and had no interest in it.
When Blosser wasn’t overseeing Huizenga’s empire from his office on Las Olas Boulevard, he spent summers in Vermont, sightseeing, cooking and cooking up projects for his kids and his grandchildren, who called him “Pops.”
The lesson of his life, his daughter Gretchen Parker said, is to stay positive and live each day to the fullest.
“Be there for each other. Love each other,” she said.
Another member of the Old Guard is gone, and a little more history of South Florida is gone with him.
In today’s Florida, there’s really no longer a place for a Jim Blosser, and that’s a serious loss.
Steve Bousquet is Opinion Editor of the Sun Sentinel and a columnist in Tallahassee and Fort Lauderdale. Contact him at sbousquet@sunsentinel.com or (850) 567-2240 and follow him on Twitter @stevebousquet.
