Dexter Lehtinen | |
---|---|
United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida | |
In office June 1988 –January 1992 | |
President | Ronald Reagan George H. W. Bush |
Preceded by | Leon Kellner |
Succeeded by | James McAdams (Acting),Roberto Martinez |
Member of the Florida Senate from the 40th district | |
In office November 4,1986 –June 11,1988 | |
Preceded by | Roberta Fox |
Succeeded by | Javier Souto |
Member of the Florida House of Representatives | |
In office November 4,1980 –November 4,1986 | |
Preceded by | Charlie Hall [1] |
Succeeded by | Robert J. Starks |
Constituency | 116th district (1980–1982) 118th district (1982–1986) |
Personal details | |
Born | Dexter Wayne Lehtinen March 23,1946 Homestead,Florida,U.S. [2] |
Political party | Republican (1985–present) |
Other political affiliations | Democratic (1980–1985) |
Spouse(s) | Donna L. Stevenson (divorced) |
Children | 4, including Rodrigo Lehtinen |
Alma mater | University of Miami (B.A., 1968) Columbia University (MA; MBA, 1974) Stanford Law School (1975) |
Profession | Attorney |
Dexter Wayne Lehtinen (born March 23, 1946) is an American attorney, former politician, interim U.S. Attorney for south Florida, and a law instructor. He is the husband of former U.S. Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.
Lehtinen is of Finnish ancestry. He graduated from the University of Miami in 1968 magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree. He then graduated with an MA from Columbia University and an MBA in 1974. In 1975, he graduated first in his class from Stanford Law School. At the University of Miami, he was the Commander of the Corps of Cadets, president of the Florida Federation of College Republicans, and was inducted into the Iron Arrow Honor Society, the highest owner bestowed at the university. [3]
He joined the United States Army as an officer. He received a Purple Heart in 1971 for severe facial injuries during the Vietnam War. [2] [4]
In 1980, Lehtinen ran against incumbent Democratic State Representative Gene Flinn in a multi-member southwest Dade County district. Lehtinen came in first in the Democratic primary, garnering 44% of the vote against Flinn and another candidate. [5] In the September primary runoff, Lehtinen defeated Flinn, 64 to 36%. [5] In the general election, he narrowly defeated Republican nominee Chris Ferrer with 51.3% of the vote. [6] In 1982, he won reelection in the newly redrawn 118th district—encompassing parts of rural southwestern Dade and areas stretching from Homestead to Richmond Heights—with 65%. [7] In 1984, he won reelection unopposed.
In February 1985, he left the Democratic Party to become a Republican. This was only a few months before he married Republican State Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. Lehtinen and his wife were both elected in 1986 to the Florida Senate; he was elected in District 40—which included large parts of western and southwestern Dade, including parts of Coral Gables—and she was elected in neighboring District 34. [2] [8]
In June 1988, Lehtinen resigned his Florida Senate seat after U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese took a "high-risk gamble" [9] in naming him to succeed Leon Kellner as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida. [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] His three biggest cases during his 3 ½ year tenure were the cases of former Panama leader Manuel Noriega, [16] [17] [18] religious sect leader Yahweh ben Yahweh, [19] and Hialeah Mayor Raúl L. Martínez. [20]
The U.S. Senate refused to act on his nomination and Lehtinen on January 13, 1992, called a news conference to announce his resignation. [21] Lehtinen said his departure had nothing to do with a well-publicized internal Justice Department investigation of him because of the Martinez case. [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] The Justice Department opened a case against Lehtinen on charges of misconduct and potential conflicts of interest for investigating "a potential political rival of his wife." [27] [28] [29] [30] [31]
Lehtinen served as the general counsel for the Miccosukee Tribe of Florida Indians [32] until May 2010. [33] In November 2011, the same tribe filed a lawsuit against Lehtinen for alleged malpractice regarding tax advice. [34] He also served as an adjunct instructor at University of Miami School of Law and at Florida International University.
Lehtinen married then-Florida State Representative Ileana Ros on June 9, 1984, while they were both serving in the Florida House of Representatives. They have two children, Rodrigo and Patricia Marie. He was previously married to Donna L. Stevenson and had two children with her, Katharine Natasha and Douglas Hooper. [2]
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is a politician and lobbyist from Miami, Florida, who represented Florida's 27th congressional district from 1989 to 2019. By the end of her tenure, she was the most senior U.S. Representative from Florida. She was Chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee from 2011–2013. In 1989, Ros-Lehtinen won a special election and became the first Cuban American elected to Congress. She was also the first Republican woman elected to the House from Florida. Ros-Lehtinen gave the first Republican response to the State of the Union address in Spanish in 2011, and gave the third in 2014.
The United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida is the federal United States district court with territorial jurisdiction over the southern part of the state of Florida.
Raúl L. Martínez is a former mayor of Hialeah, Florida, United States. He is a Democrat and was mayor for 24 years, first elected in 1981 and was the Democratic congressional candidate for Florida's 21st congressional district in 2008.
The Southside School is a historic school in Brickell in Downtown Miami, Florida. It is located at 45 Southwest 13th Street. On January 4, 1989, it was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.
Frank Angones is the first Cuban-born head of the Florida Bar. Mr. Angones is also the first Hispanic to be elected president of the Dade County Bar Association and the youngest attorney to be elected president of the Cuban-American Bar Association.
The 2008 United States House of Representatives Elections in Florida were held on November 4, 2008 to determine who would represent the state of Florida in the United States House of Representatives. Representatives are elected for two-year terms; those elected served in the 111th Congress from January 4, 2009 until January 3, 2011. The election coincided with the 2008 U.S. presidential election.
The Federal Correctional Institution, Miami is a low-security United States federal prison for male inmates in Florida. It is operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), a division of the United States Department of Justice. The institution also has an adjacent satellite prison camp that houses minimum-security male offenders.
Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen is an American LGBT rights advocate.
Florida's 27th congressional district is an electoral district for the U.S. Congress and was first created in South Florida during 2012, effective January 2013, as a result of the 2010 Census. The first candidates ran in the 2012 House elections, and the winner was seated for the 113th Congress on January 3, 2013.
Demetrio Alberto Pérez Jr. was a Cuban-American educator, politician, radio commentator, entrepreneur and publisher of LIBRE, a bilingual weekly newspaper, and the founder of the Lincoln-Marti private educational group. Demetrio also gave daily educational commentaries which were broadcast on WAQI 710-AM where he also hosted a talk-show each Saturday afternoon at 3:00 p.m.
Mary Barzee Flores is a Florida attorney in private practice and a former Democratic candidate for Florida's 25th congressional district in the 2018 election. From 2003 to 2011, she served as a judge on Florida's Eleventh Judicial Circuit Court. President Barack Obama nominated her to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida in 2015, but her nomination expired without being voted on by the United States Senate.
The following is a timeline of the history of the city of Hialeah, Florida, USA.
Molly Turner was an American television news anchor and Emmy Award-winning television reporter in Florida.
The 2018 United States House of Representatives elections in Florida were held on Tuesday, November 6, 2018, to elect the 27 U.S. representatives from the state of Florida, one from each of the state's 27 congressional districts. The elections coincided with the elections of other offices, including a gubernatorial election, other elections to the House of Representatives, elections to the United States Senate, and various state and local elections. The party primaries were held on August 28, 2018.
Bruno Arthur Barreiro is a Republican politician from Florida. He served on the Miami-Dade County Commission from 1998 to 2018, representing part of Miami Beach and the Miami neighborhoods of Brickell, Little Havana, Coral Way, and West Flagler. He resigned on March 31, 2018, to run for Florida's 27th congressional district in the 2018 elections.
A special election to determine the member of the United States House of Representatives for Florida's 18th congressional district was held on August 29, 1989. Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen defeated Democrat Gerald Richman in the runoff vote, 53.14% to 46.85%. Ros-Lehtinen replaced Claude Pepper, who died in office from stomach cancer.
Jesús A. Permuy is a Cuban-American architect, urban planner, human rights activist, art collector, and businessman. He is known for an extensive career of community projects and initiatives in Florida, Washington, D.C., and Latin America.
Michael Christopher Grieco is an American attorney and politician. A Democrat, Grieco served in the Florida House of Representatives from 2018 to 2022, representing the 113th district.
Ken Joseph Russell is an American politician and yo-yo champion from the state of Florida. A member of the Democratic Party, he served on the Miami City Commission from 2015 to 2022.