He was one of the most influential people in Broward County for nearly two decades.
But Scott Cowan was largely forgotten by the time he died last week at age 79 in a fast-changing county that reinvents itself every generation or so.
He was a county commissioner in the 1980s and 1990s, a time of unparalleled growth, progress and upheaval when “the county” was a greater political presence than it is now.
Mike Stocker/Sun Sentinel
Steve Bousquet, Sun Sentinel columnist
He helped oversee a major airport expansion, the building of two giant waste-to-energy incinerators, a convention center, performing arts center and Tri-Rail.
He was a shrewd backstage player who was a lot more passionate about politics — and the role of money in it — than policy.
He alone decided the awarding of lucrative bond deals, so it naturally followed that he aggressively solicited campaign money from Wall Street brokers.
On the wall of his county office, next to photos of his daughters, were framed certificates from county bond deals. A booming Broward always had to borrow money.
“He was a wheeler-dealer,” said John Hart, who served with Cowan for eight years on the county commission. “His brain was always working.”
Cowan was in a league by himself in his prolific ability to raise campaign money, and it proved to be the root of his political downfall. He rose quickly and fell very hard, too.
He went to jail for misspending campaign money from his last county campaign in 1998. The scandal shocked local politics, but he had become the symbol of the wretched excesses of campaign fundraising.
“He screwed up his own life, but he made this county a whole lot better,” said Cowan’s lifelong friend and political partner, lawyer Sam Fields.
In his last campaign, Cowan raised $208,000, a huge sum for the time, even though no one challenged him. The money chased away all opposition, which was the whole point.
He lavishly funded a non-existent campaign, made repairs to his Mazda, and paid fictitious people for “contract work,” all recorded in his distinctive handwriting.
Only close friends knew that he needed some of that money to cover gambling losses.
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Scott Cowan, fourth from left, with other former Broward County commissioners at a reunion in 2019.
In recent years, Cowan put his skills to use as a campaign consultant to candidates in Hallandale Beach, Plantation and elsewhere.
Six years ago, he attended a reunion with his former county colleagues, hosted by former Commissioner Lori Parrish.
Parrish and Cowan clashed often, but she remembers him as “a good dad.” At his home in Davie one morning, she saw another side of him as he meticulously arranged his daughters’ hair before they went to school.
She said he once switched his vote from no to yes to pass a tree preservation ordinance after he saw how distraught she was when it first failed.
Few knew Cowan better than Nicki Grossman, also a former county commissioner. They grew up together on Miami Beach and served for years together.
She remembered him as a loyal friend with a “steel trap memory” who quietly removed bigoted antisemitic references from real estate deeds in Davie, where he was mayor.
“He never did anything 85 percent,” she said.
Nothing lasts forever in politics. Well before his legal troubles, he was losing his grip.
Over Cowan’s objections, four colleagues forced out County Administrator Jack Osterholt after a highly controversial land deal in 1997. A year later, Cowan’s staunch ally, Sylvia Poitier, lost her commission seat to Kristin Jacobs.
Cowan, and other pro-development Democrats, thrived under a deeply flawed system in which commissioners ran countywide, not from smaller districts as now. People naturally voted for a familiar name, and the system favored incumbents with plenty of special interest money from developers, engineers and architects.
Election outcomes were decided by fiercely loyal Democrats in retirement condos in cities such as Lauderdale Lakes and Tamarac, dotted with “ghost-like strip shopping centers” as a consequence of mindless growth, as I described it in The Miami Herald back then.
In 1990, Cowan raised $380,000 to defeat Republican Larry Locker, a scientist and environmental activist who railed against Cowan’s lavish fundraising — to no avail.
In its editorial endorsement of Locker, the Sun Sentinel said Cowan showed “astonishing ethical insensitivity in his pursuit of campaign dollars (and) in the way he has disbursed those funds.” It was prescient — a full decade before he pleaded guilty to breaking campaign finance laws.
But Cowan was so sure of his re-election that he opened a consulting firm to help developers navigate changes in growth laws, a decision he later said was a “mistake.”
His campaign slogan: “Promises kept.” When he passed out little fans featuring the slogan at a midsummer event, U.S. Rep. Harry Johnston, also campaigning, marveled at Cowan’s “political genius.”
Steve Bousquet is the Opinion Editor of the South Florida Sun Sentinel, and a columnist in Tallahassee and Fort Lauderdale. Contact him at sbousquet@sunsentinel.com or (850) 567-2240, and follow him on X @stevebousquet.