Gwen Graham

Early life and career

Graham was born in Miami Lakes, Florida to Bob and Adele (née Khoury) Graham. She has lived in Tallahassee since 1978, when her father became governor. Graham graduated from Leon High School in 1980.

Graham received her bachelor's degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1984 and her law degree from American University's Washington College of Law in 1988. After law school, she worked as an associate at the law firm Andrews & Kurth in Washington, D.C..

In 2003, Graham joined her father's 2004 presidential campaign. When he dropped out of the race following a heart attack, Graham joined Howard Dean's presidential campaign, before ultimately helping coordinate John Kerry's campaign efforts in Florida.

Graham worked for Leon County Schools as an administrator, including as director of employee relations.

U.S. House of Representatives

In 2013, Graham announced her candidacy against incumbent Republican Congressman Steve Southerland in 2014. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee announced they would target the race and provide support to Graham. Graham defeated Southerland in the November election by just over 2,800 votes.

Prior to her swearing in, Graham said that she would oppose Nancy Pelosi for the top Democratic leadership position. Graham voted for Rep. Jim Cooper of Tennessee instead. Graham voted for Cooper again when the House voted on the new Speaker after John Boehner announced his resignation.

Graham scores an 8 lifetime rating on the American Conservative Union's scale of 0 to 100. Her score is 1 point more liberal than Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders'. Graham was ranked as the 9th most bipartisan member of the U.S. House of Representatives during the 114th United States Congress (and the second most bipartisan member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Florida) in the Bipartisan Index created by The Lugar Center and the McCourt School of Public Policy that ranks members of the United States Congress by their degree of bipartisanship (by measuring the frequency each member's bills attract co-sponsors from the opposite party and each member's co-sponsorship of bills by members of the opposite party). She voted to stop accepting Syrian refugees until more stringent safeguards are in place. Graham introduced a bill to help Israel develop an anti-tunneling defense system to detect, map, and destroy underground tunnels between the Gaza Strip and Israel. Graham introduced a bill to prohibit members of Congress from using federal funds to pay for first-class airfare.

Graham was one of 25 Democrats to vote against the Iran nuclear deal. Graham voted to keep the military detention camp open at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. Graham voted against enforcement of an Environmental Protection Agency clean-water rule saying that it would hurt farmers. Graham says that the problems with the Affordable Care Act must be fixed, She supports the legalization of medical marijuana without FDA testing but not recreational marijuana. Graham is pro-choice, supports same-sex marriage, and opposes gun control. She has voted for the Keystone XL pipeline.

Committee assignments

Reaction to redistricting

A court-ordered redistricting shifted most of Tallahassee, which had anchored the 2nd and its predecessors for almost half a century, to the 5th district. Most of Graham's black constituents were drawn into the 5th as well. To make up for the loss in population, the 2nd was pushed to the south to take in territory from the heavily Republican 3rd and 11th districts. Although Graham retained almost 68 percent of her former territory, she found herself in what was, on paper, one of the most Republican districts in the nation. Had it existed under the redrawn lines in 2012, the 2nd would have given Mitt Romney 64 percent of the vote in 2012, making it on paper the third-most Republican district in the state. The new 2nd was over 12 points more Republican than its predecessor; Romney carried the old 2nd in 2012 with 52 percent of the vote. In order to continue representing at least some of her previous constituents as a member of Congress, Graham would have either had to campaign in the new 2nd district, or to run in the Democratic primary for the heavily Democratic, black-majority 5th District against that district's 24-year incumbent, Corinne Brown.

In a YouTube video emailed to her fundraising list, Graham that she would not run for reelection to the House in 2016, denouncing a process that resulted in Tallahassee being split into "two partisan districts." She said that she was considering running for Governor of Florida in the 2018 election.

2018 gubernatorial election

On May 2, 2017, Graham announced her intention to seek the Democratic Party nomination in the 2018 election to serve as Governor of Florida.

Personal life

Graham lives in Tallahassee. She married Mark Logan in 1985, and they had three children together. While raising her children, Graham worked for 13 years as a self-described "stay-at-home mom." Graham and Logan divorced, and Graham is now married to Stephen Hurm.