Tech Topics - Spring 2009 - (Page 24) BURDELL & FRIENDS only three issues remained before them, compared to 150 bills the year before. “Nobody believed that it could end at 6 on the last day, nobody. The gallery was packed. The rotunda was packed. Thousands of people came just to see if it would happen,” Webster said. The people cheered, Webster said, when he and the Senate leader brought down their gavels simultaneously at 5:59 p.m. “That’s probably what most people will remember me for. The little plaque outside Webster Hall spells out the things that happened and how they happened. And here’s the amazing thing: We did the same thing the next session,” he said. Lawmakers around the country have sought Webster’s advice on how they can change the process in their states. Webster also serves as a political role model because he has lost only one race — for a freshman seat in student government at Georgia Tech. “I didn’t see myself as a destined leader. I didn’t come to campus ready to run for student government. It just seemed like a good opportunity to learn. I thought it would enhance my experience at Tech — and it did,” said Webster, who won as a sophomore and junior, then ran a peer’s campaign for student body president his senior year. After graduation, he returned to Orlando to join his father’s business. Today, he is president of that business, Webster Air Conditioning & Heating, and the father of six and grandfather of five. Webster and his wife had just two of those children when he was asked to head his church building committee in 1980. He was “Nobody gave me a chance. I would go places and they’d say, ‘Wow, you’re a nice guy, but you’re going to lose.’” flabbergasted when an application for a zoning exemption he filed on behalf of the church was denied. “They said it was adverse to public policy. I asked around. ‘Who would be crazy enough to set that kind of public policy?’ Somebody said, ‘The Legislature.’ I said, ‘OK, I’m running for the Legislature.’ I’d never been to Tallahassee, never seen the Capitol. I didn’t even know where the districts were. I called my mom up and said, ‘I’m going to run for the Legislature.’ She said, ‘Don’t you think you should start a little smaller?’” Webster spent a total of $16,000 on the primary, a runoff and the general election; $6,000 of that came from his parents. He couldn’t afford radio and TV advertising, so Webster and a cast of volunteers passed out fliers door-to-door. “Nobody gave me a chance,” he said. “I would go places and they’d say, ‘Wow, you’re a nice guy, but you’re going to lose.’” Ronald Reagan was declared the winner of the presidential race fairly early on election night. Precinct returns were showing that Webster was losing. The campaign volunteers went home. Webster went alone to the election supervisor’s office, where he discovered he was tied with his opponent with one precinct left to count — the one in which he had grown up and from which he drew his most support. Webster was one of the few who knew he had the election in the bag. The newspaper the next morning erroneously reported that Webster’s opponent had won. He again defeated his opponents in 1982 and ’84, then ran unopposed for the remainder of his tenure in the House and his entire career in the Senate. “That had never happened in our state — ever. No one has even come close,” he said. For now, Webster, named to the Georgia Tech College of Engineering Hall of Fame in 1998, is taking a sabbatical from politics, despite encouragement from colleagues and citizens to run for Congress. Webster may, he conceded, consider running for mayor of Orange County, which includes Orlando. When asked if he thought sharing a name with a famed 19th century Massachusetts senator and U.S. secretary of state had helped him in his political career, Webster chuckled as he recalled then-Gov. Jimmy Carter’s words when he handed him his Tech diploma in 1971. “He said, ‘Daniel Webster, that’s a political name. I’m going to have to watch out for you.’” Ironically, Carter lost his presidential re-election bid the night Webster was first elected. And strangely, also serving in the Florida House were Andrew Johnson and John Adams. 24 TechTopics | Spring 2009 http://gtalumni.org/pages/merchandise
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