From the carnival circuit to the committee room — a weekly conversation with the representative from Florida's 80th district.
A show about the long road from the carnival circuit to the committee room — with the people who actually built the boats, washed the decks, ran the rides, and wrote the bills.
It started with a bar in Lapeer, Michigan. Adam's grandfather sold it in the fifties, took a job delivering ice cream, and kept running a load to the same county fair — where the guy needed help selling "Nutty Dips" out of a concession stand. One summer of that turned into 20, 30 fairs a year, and eventually the whole family packed up and drove to Florida. They starved for a couple winters. Then they figured it out.
Adam's mom, born in Naples in 1957, grew up in the business. His dad — Omar — came from Cuba in the sixties at 12 years old, didn't know how to open a Coke bottle, and ended up bagging groceries at Sunshine Market in Naples before marrying into it. By the time Adam was 14, he was driving semi trucks in the family convoy. By 16 he was running a NASCAR concession unit with six guys under him. Thirty fairs, thirty races, George Strait concerts, Family Values Tour — the whole road.
Then one afternoon his mom sat on the property, watched a rental boat go by, then another, and thought: that'll pay for groceries in the wintertime. On January 14, 2004, Bay Water opened with two boats. Six months later it had fourteen. Today it's a fleet of 60 and nearly 500 members.
The politics came later, and by accident. A family therapist told Adam he needed a hobby outside the marina. A boat-club member mentioned a state appointment. He got appointed to the Florida Fish & Wildlife Boating Advisory Council by Governor Rick Scott. Water quality in Southwest Florida was front-page national news. Somebody said he should run. He flipped a quarter — heads means stay in — and it landed heads. It's still on his windowsill.
He knocked on 10,237 doors. Lost thirty pounds doing it. Won by 19½ points — grassroots beating main-street money. Six years later he's still in Tallahassee, still running Bay Water, and still rattling cages on behalf of a district that includes Bonita Springs, Estero, Fort Myers Beach, and the water that ties them together. This is the show where he tells that story, at length, and brings on the people he meets along the way.
The first conversation. Who Adam is, where he came from, and what this show is going to be about — starting at the lot and ending up, somehow, in Tallahassee. Dropping soon.
Southwest Florida's most exclusive boat club — and the reason Adam knows a shaft seal from a shift cable. Sixty boats in the fleet, close to 500 members, and zero waiting for a reservation.
No storage. No insurance. No cleaning. No maintenance. Just the keys, the weather, and the Gulf.
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