Chris Cate: Welcome to the Fluent in Floridian podcast, featuring the Sunshine State’s brightest leaders talking about the issues most important to the people of Florida and its millions of weekly visitors. In this episode recorded live at a Leadership FPRA special event, April Salter, the CEO of Salter Mitchell PR talks to entrepreneur and Capital Alliance group managing partner, Dr. Jeff Sharkey.

April Salter: Well, good afternoon Jeff. I’m so glad that you could be on Fluent in Floridian. We’re really happy to have you here.

Jeff Sharkey: Well thank you, April, for inviting me. I’m really excited about this program and look forward to the conversation.

April Salter: Great. Well we are here today with the the Florida Public Relations Association, our leadership FPRA group. So they will be in the audience. You may hear laughter or applause or who knows what from our group, but we’re glad to have you with us. So Jeff, you have such an interesting history, and I don’t know that everybody sort of knows your story, the international man of mystery. Jeff, you’ve been in the capitol for many, many years, but unlike most lawyers or lobbyists that I know, you have many, many diverse business interests. You do low-income housing. You have a lot of private interests that you’re involved in all the time. How do you keep up with all this?

Jeff Sharkey: I’m not sure I do, but thank you. So, I’ve been in the government relations lobbying business for about 30 years. The short story is I’m a former high school English teacher, did my student teaching overseas in London, got very interested in international policy and those dynamics and the role that education played in that. So kind of a short story on a long trajectory. From Minnesota, teaching school, I wanted to get into the international education business, worked for the World Bank in developing countries. Found a great Ph.D. program down here at Florida State, packed up my dog and my car and came down here. I worked for the University and then got recruited to work for the Commissioner of Education and then eventually the governor to be his international affairs advisor.

April Salter: Which governor?

Jeff Sharkey: Governor Graham. So that segued into getting involved in legislative policy advocacy and working on a variety of issues. And then as much as I tried to leave town to pursue my international interests, I found the issue advocacy, policy advocacy, lobbying business fascinating. I’m kind of multitasking. So I’ve been here doing that ever since. But I’m a policy entrepreneur, and I’m a business entrepreneur as well. And my interests are certainly representing… I have a really interesting list of clients that I have sought after and found and worked for, as well as other businesses. So I’m very passionate about affordable housing and have been in that space for 20 years, actually developing. I have some tech businesses, I have some restaurants as you know. And so I multitask. My wife tells me I’m maybe a little oversubscribed, but I try to keep it all under focus. It keeps life interesting, and it educates me about kind of the dynamics in the capitol and the issues that legislators are dealing with and policymakers. So it’s good so far.

April Salter: So going back to your background then, you were at the World Bank, which is very interesting for a lot of people. What exactly were you doing? You were right out of college, right? What were you doing and how did that affect your-

Jeff Sharkey: I wanted to work in developing countries in education to empower people and help develop countries, manpower, women power. So I came to Florida State University to a very interesting program that attracted educators from all over the world, ministries of education. And that program was really focused on providing those skill sets that worked to go out and work with NGOs and UNESCO and various international organizations.

Jeff Sharkey: So while I was in graduate school, I got hired to be a consultant in Southeast Asia, in Thailand, by the World Bank, to work with hill tribes in northern Thailand on empowering them with maintaining their culture but learning certain basic skills to really… This is a longer story, but to keep modernization from ruining their culture was a fascinating experience for me. So I wrote curriculums. And then came back and then certainly got involved with migrant education in Florida for the State Board of Education here. And then just segued into a lot of international education policy with the legislature and the Department of Education. So we created some legislation, and I created an Office of International Education for the state, I became the director. We did that. I created the International Hemispheric Policy Study Center in Miami and ran that for a while. So I’ve always had that interest in really what Florida’s role is in the Caribbean, Central American, Latin America. That was Bob Graham’s vision when he was governor.

Jeff Sharkey: And that’s continued. As you know, Miami is closer to about 24 countries than it is to Pensacola. And Pensacola is closer to Chicago than it is to Miami. So Miami has a real role to play in this region. So at that particular point in time, there was a big interest in expanding educational relationships and research relationships. But I was always big on public/private partnerships. So as you know, I represent Jimmy Buffet for Margaritaville. And Jimmy’s been a longtime friend of mine. But it really stemmed from the initiation of the legislature creating a Latin American-Caribbean scholarship program many years ago. Hearts and Minds, Nicaragua was happening, there was a lot of political conflict in the region. It was designed to bring students from the Caribbean, Central America to study in Florida and go home, kind of build Florida’s future leaders in the region. And so once again, I got tasked with running that program or asked to run it or whatever.

Jeff Sharkey: So I built a huge coalition of multinational corporations based in Miami, Coral Gables, and that’s how I met Jimmy Buffet, through the governor, and we put on rock-n-roll concerts. And so we raised money for the scholarship program. So I traveled for a number of years all over the region kind of developing these educational programs, scholarship programs, etc. So it was a good run. It was a lot of fun. I come back to the Department of Education and the governor’s office, and they’d go, “Jeff, you just came back from Rio, and you’re here for a week, and you have no travel expenses. Can you just tell me what’s going on here?”

Jeff Sharkey: So a short anecdote with… Governor Graham was very interested in policy entrepreneurs. So if you work in state government, to avoid the bureaucracy and identify new initiatives and be able to work inside that policy arena and be an entrepreneur, sometimes it’s hard because there are real rigid requirements. So there were a couple of thought leaders at the time, we went to a conference, and we really need to get state government to be efficient. And I said, “Let me tell you something, I’ve been there. It’s really hard to get out of that mold or let people…” Get out of that, expectations. But I think it’s been a lot of fun. And I still have a huge interest in good public policy. I know that sounds like a cliche. So having worked in government and understanding how important state workers are and policy makers are, I think it’s important as we enter the legislative session on Monday.

April Salter: And one of the things that I’ve always been amazed at with you is how diverse your interests are, but also how you are, as Wayne Gretzky said, you want to skate to where the puck is going. And you have been very successful at skating to where the puck is going. How do you do that? How do you see those opportunities that put you in the middle of that?

Jeff Sharkey: For those who have experienced the legislative process, it’s this huge crucible of issues being bounced around and ripped apart and discussed. If you’re in that process long enough, which I have been, you can see the trending issue lines of where certain things are moving along. Who would’ve thought that electric vehicles, who would have thought that e-scooters, who would’ve thought that a variety of different issues are trending now, marijuana, hemp, that you couldn’t have talked about seven years ago. So one of the skill sets when people ask me is I’m pretty good at identifying the intersection of confusion and opportunity about 18 months out. If there’s confusion over an issue, people are trying to figure out what it is, what is this translate into, not only in terms of legislative policy, but for potential clients of mine or future clients of mine, I can see, I’m actually doing that this morning, I think I can see, I can anticipate where I think a policy issue is going and where a business opportunity might be. So whether I’m the business or whether I can say… In fact, I had a call with Segway, Segway Company.

April Salter: We won’t release it to their other lobby until you make sure you’re hired.

Jeff Sharkey: There’s a couple pieces of legislation on motorized scooters, e-bikes, etc., etc. And there are people who are in that space who are just not here. I cold-called SpaceX seven years ago, eight years ago, and I said, “Listen, I think Florida…” The shuttle had gone away, there were tumbleweeds blowing across the shuttle launch pad. They were launching out of Vandenberg. Here’s crazy Elon Musk with these brilliant ideas. I said, “I’ll represent you for free. And you can tell me if I provide you with some value. Let’s do it for six months.” And he said, “Are you sure?” I said, “Yeah.” So that has translated into an excellent relationship, obviously a great client, fascinating, changing the face of Florida. They’re going to launch a starship to Mars in three years out of the Cape that’ll make Florida the global hub in the universe, I mean of the world, for commercial space launch.

Jeff Sharkey: So sometimes it doesn’t play out. But if you get into that mindset about being an idea entrepreneur with policies and where the Florida landscape is, and other people do it too. But a, it’s fun, it’s intellectually stimulating. You meet great people. You can sometimes pick your clients instead of having to kind of compete.

April Salter: Well, and you certainly were that way with medical marijuana. And we’re beginning to see hemp. And we’ll talk about that in just a minute. But let’s step back a minute and talk a little bit about your growing up years. You’re not from Florida. You grew up in Pennsylvania? Tell us a little bit about that.

Jeff Sharkey: Yeah, so I was born in Syracuse, New York, a good Irish family. I’m a second-generation Irishman. My grandfather came over on the boat many years ago. Born in Syracuse, lived in Newark, lived in Detroit by the time I was five, and then ended up in Minneapolis. My dad was an insurance salesman for a company. And so we grew up in Minneapolis in the snow.

April Salter: Who did he sell for?

Jeff Sharkey: Prudential.

April Salter: Prudential, okay.

Jeff Sharkey: Prudential. And five kids, my dad was always traveling, so my mom was a fabulous artist. That’s where some of this comes from. My mother is a fabulous watercolor artist, raised five kids really on her own for the most part. So I did that and then went to high school in Philadelphia, played hockey, had a tryout with the Philadelphia Flyers for one week. Then I realized I’m too small, I’m going to lose all my teeth. And then went to the University in Minnesota, State Cloud State University. And then got the student teaching opportunity. This is how things change your life. Cold winter nights, walking across campus, cutting through a building to stay warm, this little sign says student teach abroad. I said, “I’m a poor college student.” Stopped in, and the guy talked me into it, “Where would you like to go?” So nine months later, I borrowed some money from my sister and ended up in London. And that changed my life. I was there for a year and a half teaching school. And I saw the world and saw the opportunities and saw the unique cultures and said, “That’s kind of what I want to do.”

Jeff Sharkey: Came back, went to graduate school at the University of Minnesota. And then taught school for a while and found this program down here.

April Salter: Awesome. So right now medical marijuana, marijuana, CBD, hemp, it’s really changing Florida in very unexpected ways. I think 10 years ago, no one would have believed the changes that we’re seeing now. So give us a little bit, it’s January 2020, what’s the current state of medical marijuana? I know there’s a couple of legal cases. Give us the download on that.

Jeff Sharkey: So the short summary is that from the initial 2015 low-THC legislation, passed by very conservative legislators, initiated, remarkable that that happened, through the 2016 ballot initiative, Amendment Two, through legislature creating several pieces of legislation, today we have a medical marijuana program which is very robust. It’s a big state. We have 22 licensees, they’re called medical marijuana treatment center licensees. The first one in it was awarded in 2015. Several more were awarded last spring by the governor. We have 22 licensees right now. And it’s a vertically integrated system, which means that if you have a license, you’ve got to crow it, cultivate it, process it, produce it, sell it. You have to run the retail operations as well to control the chain of control of the product. So it’s a complicated business. It’s not just growing a plant. It’s growing a plant, it’s testing, it’s processing it. And then it’s running a huge state-wide retail operation. It’s very challenging.

Jeff Sharkey: It’s probably the most complicated market in the country. There are a number of states that have either medical or adult-use recreational marijuana programs. Florida is unique in the sense that you have to do the whole thing yourself. Other states do that. But if you’re a company here based in the Tallahassee area, you’ve got 50 retail dispensaries, it’s just like being CVS. You’ve got supply chain management, product management, quality control. It’s really challenging. It’s also a great market.

Jeff Sharkey: So what’s happened over the last three or four years is these licenses have been awarded, because it’s a restricted market, only 22 licenses, Colorado has 1,000 licenses, Oregon’s got 750, etc., etc. You can probably buy a license in Oregon for the price of that computer. In Florida, over the last year and a half, they’ve sold an average of $50 million per license. So between $42 million and $67 million, just for the license, just for the ability to grow. People are investing in that. It’s still illegal at the federal level. You can’t transport across state lines. You can’t bank it, really. We have some banks in Florida that are doing it legally by Treasury rules. But it’s a risk proposition for banks. And so you’ve got Canadian companies, other companies, families, who are investing in these licenses. And so you couple $50 million with another $25 million to be operational, it’s an expensive business.

April Salter: Right.

Jeff Sharkey: …has seven more licenses to issue, once the Supreme Court decision, which is pending right now. So as you can imagine, there’s a lot of people who want to be in this business. It’s vertically integrated, so it doesn’t mean you can have your own retail shop or your own processing shop or your own cultivation shop. You’ve got to do it all. So we have 300,000 eligible patients, 11 medical conditions. And that number could go from 800,000 to a million. We’ve got a big population here. So the market is big in Florida. It’s got potential.

Jeff Sharkey: So my involvement was in 2014. There’s a lot of interest in scrambling to see where this medical marijuana thing was going to happen. And from a public relations perspective, I wanted to do a documentary back then as a matter of fact. The ability to paradigm shift on a narrative that’s been in place for 70 years, and kind of a cultural acceptance, social acceptance of a concept, marijuana, weed, reefer madness, you name it, whatever the case may be, and to watch mothers with epileptic children convince very conservative Panhandle legislators this was an appropriate way to go to help with their kids, and then to transition from there. But as you can imagine, those first committee meetings, there are all these voices, it’s one of those great concept issues where there’s a bell curve, the bell curve of interests, stakeholders. You’ve got some really interesting people on the left, I don’t mean left politically, but left, whether it’s normal, evangelical, historical marijuana people. They’ve been beating this drum for 30 years and finally somebody’s listening to them. All the way to sheriffs and police officers and public safety people saying, “We don’t want this.”

Jeff Sharkey: And so to try to drive this policy through that continuum, with all those voices, once again, it was a great opportunity to see this confusion, and knowing that this was going to be a real business, so I created the medical marijuana business association in Florida. Other states have done this in the past, and I said, “There needs to be some entity that facilitates rational policy input into this debate, these discussions.” And we created it, there were a couple other things floating around. And it became a very important facilitating entity to have these roundtable discussions on legislation. But it was also great for business. We attracted a number of people who needed information on what was going on in Florida, and we were at the forefront. So we’ve run that for five, six years. And it’s been informational.

Jeff Sharkey: I’m shoulder-deep in the medical marijuana space. And we proposed a ballot initiative for adult use, they call it, not recreational use, adult use, in 2020, struggling to get all the signatures. I’m not going to necessarily talk about it. They may make it. But the narrative and the acceptance of marijuana has changed. I get people coming up to me the last three or four years you would never expect to talk about marijuana. My grandmother’s knee hurts, her back, she’s in chronic pain, I get veterans who are PTSD who say it really helps, whisper, it really helps me. Where can I get a patient card? How do I go through this? So it’s now conventional.

April Salter: And you know, the interesting thing is it’s conventional but it lacks full authority because we don’t have testing, we don’t know exactly what it is that’s working for what conditions. So how do you end up… That has to happen. We have to begin to prove, right?

Jeff Sharkey: Research on efficacy. Yes. We have these companies making… Well, it was never tested in Florida or in the country because it was illegal. The Israelis have done a lot of testing over the years, Canadians have done some. Under the law that was passed in 2017, there is a coordinated research council, advisory council, that’s supposed to be doing it, Moffitt was starting that. But we just started, so really in the last two or three years patients are using it. And you have to self-report. So you’ve got a limited number of doctors prescribing, and you want to capture that data. The conversation I had last year in the committee room and with the Department of Health is three years from now, how do you know if this program’s effective, accomplishes your goals? We’ve got people out there selling products, we’ve got lots of money flowing. But how are you going to know if all these medical conditions, if this really has an impact, efficacy? And so they’re working on that. There are some companies around the country and Canada that have big data self-reporting, some of the Yelp-like stuff for cannabis. And then doctors got to get involved.

Jeff Sharkey: But it’s still taking… It’s an adolescent industry with a lot of money. And it’s maturing. And it needs the federal level… I think the numbers that I see, 76% of the people actually have voted affirmatively for medical marijuana in some states, those are big states, California. And here still you have Congress going, “Well, we don’t want to do it.” Now, that tipping point is coming, you can feel it. But until people say I’m not sure that we’re all ready for this. Go to Colorado, walk down the streets of Denver, and is this what you want? But those are all-

April Salter: What does that look like?

Jeff Sharkey: Well, there’s a lot of young kids that are stoners, that are hanging out. Not that they’re not doing it in their own bedrooms now, but they’re doing it in public. But in Colorado, drug use among teens is down. There’s a lot of positive evidence that it’s not going to be abused. But at the same time, as you know, the House of Representatives over the last year has been certainly throwing up caution signs about THC use and psychotic episodes and maybe we need to be a little more careful. I think that’s probably in anticipation of a potential recreational ballot. So again, it’s like starting a whole new industry. You all know people who have medical marijuana cards I’m sure. It’s reasonably easy to get one. We’ve got 300,000 qualified patients, there’s still a huge black market in Florida. But it’s not going away.

April Salter: So the other part of the equation then is hemp. So first, kind of help us define the difference between hemp and marijuana, and what does that opportunity look like for the state of Florida?

Jeff Sharkey: I’ll mention one little thing. I’ve got young kids, so I’m on the television a lot because I just happen to be here in town, the Florida Press Corps wants a statement about marijuana, they come and see me. So my 11-year-old daughter and her friends call me the weed dad. I go, “I’m not the weed dad. Don’t say that. I could be the Tesla dad.” So hemp is a cannabis plant that is genetically different in the fact that it has a trace amount of THC, tetrahydrocannabinol, which is the stuff that gets you high. It’s got CBDs and cannabinoids and everything else, but it doesn’t have the levels of THC in it. And frankly, in 2014… So it’s on a Schedule One list as well. It’s illegal at the federal level along with marijuana, it’s all considered cannabis.

Jeff Sharkey: But in 2014, Senator McConnell from Kentucky, I think in an attempt to salvage the tobacco industry, passed some legislation in the Federal Farm Bill that said industrial hemp, that qualifies at .3% THC and below, that’s minimal, if you go down to … and buy some, it’s got 25 milligrams of THC in it, so this is really low, states who create little research programs can research and commercialize industrial hemp. So Kentucky was the first to take advantage of it. They built a huge industry of industrial hemp. And 30 other states passed legislation to create these industrial hemp programs. This was between 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017.

Jeff Sharkey: I kept getting these calls about CBD at our medical marijuana business association from big CBD online retailers. It’s this kind of gray area. It wasn’t quite marijuana, but it was kind of legal because of the 2014 law. So I recognized that Florida needed to pursue this, the same thing that other states and Kentucky had done. So 2017, I talked a couple of legislators into drafting up a Florida law, drafted up a law, and spent some time explaining it, and we passed that law, and that allowed for universities with colleges of agriculture, FAMU and UF, to develop these research programs. So I worked on the rules, worked with the Department of Ag. At that time the commissioner was not as excited about this topic as the current one. So we created that. I actually have some partners who when the first permit for this industrial hemp research project, and they’re really researching strains and genetics that will survive and do well in Florida. But the CBD industry in 2018, beginning this year, President Trump signed new federal legislation that McConnell put in the Farm Bill that made it legal. Hemp is now legal at the federal level, unlike marijuana. It’s got to have that .3% THC count. So there has been an explosion of interest around the country in hemp.

Jeff Sharkey: Florida then also responded, we have a bill that we passed last year in the spring, that creates the state hemp program. As a matter of fact, I met with the Department of Ag this morning, and they expect at the end of January to have 3,000 people apply for permits to grow, cultivate it. Up until January 1st, if there was CBD product on the shelf in any store anywhere, it was illegal. It was just never enforced. As of January 1st, the Department of Ag, with the passage of this new law, if you find a product out there, you go to these popup CBD stores, vape stores, or you go to CVS and buy hemp cream, it now has to be, to your point, labeled, quality controlled, it’s got to be stamped with approval from Florida. So going forward, these products will be much more consumer friendly and quality controlled.

April Salter: So in regards to that, are there limitations as to who can get a medical marijuana card? For example, if you have concealed weapons, does that-

Jeff Sharkey: Yes.

April Salter: Okay. And that’s one of the questions that one of our leadership FPRA members had is is there any change to that practice that requires them to give up a concealed weapon?

Jeff Sharkey: A great example of the efficiency and consistency in government. If you have a concealed weapons permit, you can get a medical marijuana card. If you have a medical marijuana card, you cannot get a concealed weapons permit.

April Salter: That makes perfect sense.

Jeff Sharkey: There’s a box you’ve got to check, do you at any time use a federally illegal substance? So there is that friction between the federal and the state governments. So that’s the answer.

April Salter: Okay, that’s very interesting. Did not know that. Another question that we got, with medical marijuana still against federal law, how can local agencies that operate with federal funding abide by Florida law without losing that federal funding?

Jeff Sharkey: That’s a great question. It’s very difficult. For example, on the research question you asked, you can go to, whether it’s Moffitt or any of these universities, everybody wants to do research, it could be research on agriculture, it could be research on product development, it could be research on preparing pharmaceuticals. The opioid epidemic in Florida is huge. It’s huge around the country. People are dying every day from opioid overdose. There is a real belief that CBD and/or medical marijuana can alleviate some of the use of those painkillers. So there’s a lot of interest in research. But if you get an NIH grant or a grant from the federal government on something else, you could compromise that funding. And the funding for research in Florida for medical marijuana is minuscule by comparison. So most universities go, “We don’t want to touch it.” So there’s some obstacles here for moving forward on the research on efficacy.

April Salter: So as we wrap up the specific questions on medical marijuana, can you share any specific cases, and this is a question from one of our folks here, or personal stories of medical marijuana’s success that you have heard? Like this has had a dramatic effect on someone’s life.

Jeff Sharkey: I think some of you will soon realize, April was nice enough to let me provide you with edibles with the lunch you had today, so at about an hour you’re all going to be very relaxed.

April Salter: Just in time for the Supreme Court.

Jeff Sharkey: Cool. Far out. On the medical marijuana side, the products that you get include some what they call an entourage of THC and CBD, and the plant has various terpenes. As much as I’m involved, I’m not evangelical about the curative effects. But I believe it has real value for people who have used it and tried it and it makes a difference for pain relief and a variety of things, anxiety for example. And then CBD products don’t have the THC in it, but have the CBD and other compounds. But I have heard from… We get calls in our office on the medical marijuana business line, 10 a week, from people who want to get a card, are using it on their own, how do I get a card? My uncle needs it, he’s got X, Y, Z. But I was at my wife’s doctor’s office, she has a little back pain, whatever, and in the seating room with 30 people, I’m just waiting. And it was one of those rare moments, the TVs on, it’s the news, and my interview comes up. And all these people are looking at me and they look back. They’re truck drivers and farmers and this is in town, and nurses and elderly people and canes. And 10 of them came over and said, “I’ve got to tell you how much I’ve found it helps me. My brother gave me some.” This whole story. It’s my twin, it wasn’t me.

Jeff Sharkey: So there’s that. I had someone you’ll know, a general, who is a high ranking state official here, three-star general, wonderful guy, one of the people I really respected most in state government, who after her retired, came to see me one day and said, “I need to talk to you.” I said, “Okay.” He pulled me aside and whispering he said, “My son, who’s a colonel, has severe, seven tours of duty, severe PTSD. I need to know how to help him out with marijuana.” The last guy I would’ve thought to ask that question.

Jeff Sharkey: On the medical marijuana side, listen, if you had to do an assessment of 100 people who go in to get their medical marijuana cards, how many people are doing it really because, “I got the card, I’ve got a little back pain, but I really like smoking marijuana, really like using marijuana, really like eating edibles,” that’s happening. There’s no doubt about it. I would say actually it’s probably 50% of the people who get cards, or finding that once they do, they’re really enjoying it. And again, capturing that data on is it helping you, yeah, well, I’m enjoying… On the CBD side, which has been really publicly available online, 30% of the country’s largest CBD sellers are from Florida, and they’ve been operating. But I hear from people, and that’s legal and you can buy it and you can use it, probably 60% of the people talk to me and say, “It really helps.” It helps them sleep, it helps anxiety, it helps pain. Is it oxycontin? No. So there’s a lot of anecdotal evidence.

April Salter: Well, Jeff, as we wrap up then, we have four questions that we always ask folks. First, what is your favorite place to visit in Florida? When you want to get away with your family, what’s someplace that’s really special to you?

Jeff Sharkey: For personal travel and business, I think St. Pete is the hottest town in Florida right now. I spend a lot of time in Key West and Miami. But I love the vibe in St. Pete, hip and beautiful and everything else. So there’s that. We like to go to the Panhandle, to the beach. My wife’s from that part of the world, so Panama City, it’s a little crowded, but it brings back memories and it’s good family time. So anywhere in the Panhandle with the beaches with an umbrella for me. It’s great.

April Salter: And then tell us about a Florida leader that you admire. This could be somebody that’s still practicing their profession.

Jeff Sharkey: I read that. And let me lead up to this a little bit. I’m a transplant like many of you probably to Florida, many years ago, 30 years ago. And when I had a chance to work for Governor Graham, his whole vision was, there were 1,000 people a day moving to Florida, we’re a state that is growing so fast and we have no sense of identity. What makes a Floridian? So when I was working with him, that was a real issue of how do you capture or create a sense of Florida? Is it professional sports teams? Is it a sense of history? Well, if you’re not from here, you just moved here from Cincinnati, do you know who Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings is? Any of that history.

Jeff Sharkey: So I had an opportunity when Governor Chiles ran for governor, he won and I worked on his campaign. And he asked me to run his inaugurals. I probably told you this story. So putting on the inauguration is a very big deal. I’m a big events guy anyways, I did these rock concerts with Jimmy Buffet. Anyway, it was a real challenge because for 45 days leading up to the inauguration, you get to run the state. We had a team of 50-60 people, and everybody wanted to come to the inauguration. It was a street parade and everything else, very cool. But if you’ve never been to one, you’ve watched it, in front of the old capitol, big podium, lots of dignitaries, taking the oath of office. And Senator Chiles had been chairman of the budget committee and had a lot of friends. The King of Spain wanted to come. So I was in charge of making sure the right people were on the podium there. And he’s a Florida icon legend.

Jeff Sharkey: So, long story short, it’s a very intense time. It’s all got to go on time. There’s a lot of details. It really was really intense. So we’re about to start the inauguration. We’ve got generals and jets going to fly over and all these cabinet officials, high powered, thousands of people out there, rockets going to go off. And I’m ready to go, we’re 10 minutes out from the start, and they’re all listening to me, you go now, you go next, you go next. So I’m running the show. I’ve got a big workbook. And an FDLE agent comes down the steps, taps me on the shoulder, and said, “There’s somebody at the back door on the courtyard side who says she was invited and wants to come.” I said, “Listen, I’m a little busy right now.” He goes, “No, you need to come.” I said, “Really, can you just tell her no more people here?” So he said, “You need to come.”

Jeff Sharkey: So I rush up the stairs, through the old capitol, open the door, and it’s… I’m spacing out now… Marjory Stoneman Douglas. Now, if you don’t know who Marjory Stoneman Douglas is, Marjory Stoneman Douglas is about this big. And she had to wear these huge hats. She was 100 years old. And she is living in Miami. She wrote River of Grass, and she was the first person that really created the environmental movement about the Everglades in Florida, a legend. I’d never met her before. …bespectacled, looking up to me, and she said, “I saw this on the TV last night in Miami and I said we had to come.” Because we sent her an invitation. And I said, “Well, absolutely.” And so Janet Reno was with her, had come with her. And of course I said, “Absolutely.” So we wheeled her in on her wheelchair, down the steps.

Jeff Sharkey: And so lots of pomp and circumstance, the governor takes the thing, it’s a fabulous day. And she wheels up to me afterwards, and I’m putting on the event, and says to me, “Thank you, young man, you have just made history. And I’m so proud to be here. And to go up when Lawton Chiles is governor, but don’t you ever forget that this history is important for Florida.” I went, “Absolutely.”

April Salter: Great story.

Jeff Sharkey: I would say that Marjory is, my one little encounter with her. And my little quip here is, I’m sure you all do, but understanding that history and live her and you want to be fluent in Florida, all those little issues of who’s helped make it Florida the way it is, good, bad, indifferent.

April Salter: Very important. Thank you for sharing that. Another question, what issue do you think deserves more attention than it currently gets? What should we be thinking about?

Jeff Sharkey: Is this the last question?

April Salter: We’ve got one more and that’s what’s your favorite sports team.

Jeff Sharkey: Okay. Well, let me answer the favorite sports team first, and then I’ll come back. Probably Florida State women’s softball team.

April Salter: Awesome. That’s great. They’re doing great.

Jeff Sharkey: Yeah, they’re doing fabulous, yeah.

April Salter: Great team, great coach.

Jeff Sharkey: Going back to the other issue.

April Salter: An issue that deserves more attention.

Jeff Sharkey: I hate to use the lobbyist. I’m an issue advocate. That’s what I call myself. And just so you remember, lobbyists are the people you hire to protect you from the people you elect. Lobbyists are the people you hire to protect you from the people you elect. It’s the world’s second oldest profession, asking for things. In watching this, $92 billion gets decided over there, a lot of power, a lot of influence, a lot of players. But probably what’s not addressed much is really poverty in Florida, income inequality. And 70% of the people in Florida work at a minimum wage. John Morgan certainly sees that, but others. So I’m not saying there are simple solutions to that. But if there isn’t some attention given to it… Now the Chamber did the … report, but when you walk the halls of the capitol like I do and see who speaks for those who have no voice, they’re working class people, these are people going to work every day, as Jesse Jackson said, they take the early bus to go to work. And they’re all sorts of blended… We’re a state of majority minorities probably soon.

Jeff Sharkey: And I think without that the fabric of this state will not heal. We’ve got a lot of people making a lot of money, which is fine, they should, I’m an entrepreneur. But I think through education, through healthcare, Medicaid for kids, you don’t start that kid out, by seven, if they’re in a foster home or they don’t have the right healthcare, we’ve got a problem brewing that’s going to cost us all a lot of money. So I think that just needs its day in the sunshine a little bit. I think the first lady’s spending some time on that.

April Salter: Absolutely.

Jeff Sharkey: People like Karen Woodall.

April Salter: Amazing. Well, thank you so much, Jeff, really enjoyed our time together. And appreciate you being on Fluent in Floridian.

Jeff Sharkey: Absolutely. Hope I didn’t talk too much.

Chris Cate: Thanks for listening to the Fluent in Floridian podcast. This show is executive produced by April Salter with additional support provided by Heidi Otway and the team at SalterMitchell PR. If you need help telling your Florida story, SalterMitchell PR has you covered by offering issues management, crisis communications, social media, advocacy, and media relations assistance. You can learn more about SalterMitchell PR at SalterMitchellpr.com. You can also learn more about the Fluent in Floridian podcast and listen to every episode of the show at fluentinfloridian.com or by searching for the show using your favorite podcast app. Have a great day.