![\"Florida](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/latvala_anouncement.5994b9bd17663.png\")
Jack Latvala at Clearwater marine Aquarium in Clearwater, Florida on Aug. 16, 2017. Credit: Kimberly DeFalco<\/p>\nJack Latvala at Clearwater marine Aquarium in Clearwater, Florida on Aug. 16, 2017. Credit: Kimberly DeFalco<\/p>\n
Longtime Republican lawmaker Jack Latvala, who defended unions and state employees in the Florida Senate as the Legislature trended more conservative, died Thursday.<\/p>\n
He was 74.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is with profound sadness that our family shared the news of the passing of Jack Latvala. We are grateful for the outpouring of love, prayers and support during this difficult time,\u201d Pinellas County Commissioner and former state Rep. Chris Latvala said in a statement provided to the Phoenix.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cJack dedicated a lifetime to public service and was honored to serve the community he loved. We appreciate everyone\u2019s kindness and respectfully ask for privacy as our family mourns this tremendous loss.\u201d<\/p>\n
During his legislative career, Latvala opposed privatization of state prisons and emerged as a supporter of public employees and state workers. He made an unsuccessful bid to be Senate President, coming up short to Sen. Joe Negron, who ran the chamber between 2016 and 2018.<\/p>\n
Both Republicans and Democrats expressed condolences.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSenator Jack Latvala was a dedicated public servant whose leadership helped shape the Florida GOP,\u201d the Republican Party of Florida\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0in a written statement. \u201cHis legacy lives on not only through his years of service, but through his family. Praying for his loved ones during this difficult time.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou know what I always admired about Jack was, he moved to his own beat and he leaned in on issues, learned both, you know, all sides of the conversation,\u201d Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried told the Phoenix Thursday morning.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201c[He] wasn\u2019t just going to be pushed around by leadership, you know \u2014 he was wanting to debate issues, wanting to understand the impacts of the issues, and, even if you didn\u2019t get his vote at the end of the day, you respected where he came from.\u201d<\/p>\n Pinellas County Democratic Sen. Daryl Rouson worked with Latvala.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was a master politician and a great human being,\u201d Rouson said in a phone interview.\u00a0\u201cHe was the Appropriations chair for a while when I was in the Senate, and l learned that not everything is gained through debate. Sometimes you let your vote be your debate. And I admired his political acumen and the way that he could read human beings.\u201d<\/p>\n Me too<\/p>\n In 2017, Latvala announced his candidacy for the 2018 Republican nomination for governor, but those ambitions ended shortly after he was\u00a0accused by multiple women of sexual harassment<\/a>\u00a0in October 2017, at the height of the Me Too era.<\/p>\n Two months later, a 33-page investigation report found credible evidence of sexual misconduct.\u00a0Latvala announced his retirement that same day.<\/p>\n One of the women who had accused Latvala of harassment, Rachel Perrin Rogers, went public with her allegations, and ultimately settled with the Florida Senate in 2019 with a\u00a0nearly $1 million settlement.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cJack Latvala did a great deal of good for his community and for the causes he believed in,\u201d Perrin Rogers said on\u00a0X\u00a0on Thursday. \u201cThis was a huge part of why myself and others stayed silent for so long about the bad acts. Reminder \u2014 two things can be true. Wishing peace for his family and friends.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI have no firsthand knowledge of any of what went down, but certainly there was a culture in Tallahassee that was not respectful to professional women and to the women in Tallahassee,\u201d Fried, a lobbyist when the accusations went public, said. \u201cCertainly, there was a climate that was in Tallahassee that, for better or for worse, Jack fell into.\u201d<\/p>\n Daryl Paulson, professor emeritus of government at the University of South Florida in St Petersburg, considers it a sad end to a notable career in public service.<\/p>\n \u201cA man who was one of the most effective voices of bipartisan political change in Florida was brought down by his own actions,\u201d he told the Phoenix in an email. \u201cLatvala was his best and worst enemy, a fate that befalls too many politicians.\u201d<\/p>\n Power broker<\/p>\n Long before eyeing a run for governor,\u00a0Latvala was a political power broker in both Pinellas County and Florida GOP politics, beginning with a direct mail\/consulting business he founded in Pinellas more than a decade before he was elected to serve in the Legislature.<\/p>\n He worked with numerous clients who went on to serve in local and state government.\u00a0<\/p>\n Latvala was long considered one of the most powerful Republicans in Pinellas but was also praised for his independent thinking and willingness to buck the party when he thought it necessary.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you hired him [as a consultant], he endorsed you and got everyone else to endorse you,\u201d said longtime Pinellas political consultant Barry Edwards. \u201cIf you wanted to be a judge on the ballot, you used Jack. Probably 95% of the winning judges used him as a consultant.\u201d<\/p>\n Former Clearwater Mayor Frank Hibbard worked with Latvala on three of his campaigns.<\/p>\n \u201cThere were things that you might not associate with a Republican or with a Democrat,\u201d he said. \u201cHe really was independent in his thinking and what he advocated for.\u201d<\/p>\n As an example, Hibbard recounted how one year Latvala procured funding for the Willa Carson Health and Wellness Center in the mostly Black North Greenwood neighborhood in Clearwater.<\/p>\n \u201cThe one thing he said to me was, \u2018I got the money to build that and outfit it. Now you need to find money to keep it running,\u2019\u201d Hibbard said. \u201cBecause at that time, a lot of those residents were not going to the hospital, so they were forgoing having healthcare. That\u2019s something he spearheaded.\u201d<\/p>\n Florida Phoenix<\/a> is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: [email\u00a0protected]<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jack Latvala at Clearwater marine Aquarium in Clearwater, Florida on Aug. 16, 2017. Credit: Kimberly DeFalco Longtime Republican…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":336993,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[71438,202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-336992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-jack-latvala","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=336992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336992\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/336993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=336992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=336992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=336992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}