Tuesday, July 20, 2010

U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson (R-GA)
Floor Statement Honoring Paul Coverdell
Remarks as Delivered on the Senate Floor

Madam President, I am honored and privileged to join Leader McConnell and Senator Chambliss to take a few minutes to talk about one of my great friends, Paul Coverdell, and his lovely wife Nancy. MITCH MCCONNELL has done some great recollections of Paul's service in the Senate. Senator Chambliss told some great stories of his relationship with Senator Coverdell. I wish to share some of mine to certify and document that everything they have said is absolutely correct.

I met Paul Coverdell in 1972, 2 years after he was elected to the Georgia State Senate as the fifth Republican to serve there. I was running for the Georgia House of Representatives. Although I lost in 1974, I won in 1976. A few years later, I became the leader of the Republicans in the Georgia House of Representatives, and Paul was the senate leader. The senate had their caucus elections every January after elections. I always loved the senate election. They had five caucus officers and five Republican Senators. So instead of having an election, they drew straws. They drew straws and they drew Paul Coverdell, to which he was forever reelected as leader of Republicans in the Georgia State Senate.

Paul was the most organized guy I have ever known and was the most goal-oriented guy I have ever known.

His goal--when we were outnumbered 10 to 1 in the senate, Democrat to Republican, and 8 to 1, Democrat to Republican, in the house--he dreamed of the day when we were in the majority. As the Republican leader of the house, he would summon me, by kind invitation, on every Monday morning, to the Buckhead Waffle House or the Buckhead IHOP where we would have coffee and talk about how one day we were going to be the majority party in Georgia.

Now, I am an optimist. I was a salesman all my life. I believed we could get there too. But Paul had a step-by-step plan--a plan that in 1976 seemed tantamount to impossible but a plan that was realized with his election to the Senate in 1992, a congressional majority for Republicans in Georgia in 1994 and, ultimately, the first Republican Governor in the history of our State Post-Reconstruction, in 2002.

Paul meticulously was a partisan, but he was, above that, an American. Paul Coverdell was also a man of ideas. Folks have talked about the Coverdell education savings accounts, which he authored in the Senate and are now law. But I remember, in Georgia, in the 1970s and 1980s, when he championed the mandatory seatbelt law. Believe me, in a State such as Georgia where you have a lot of pickup trucks and a lot of rural communities, wearing a seatbelt was not the most popular thing in the world. But Paul knew it was good for saving lives. He knew it was good for lowering insurance rates because he was an insurance man. He fought against a majority that did not want it, but he prevailed and he won, and today many lives have been saved because of the efforts of Paul Coverdell in the Georgia Legislature.

Senator Chambliss told his story of Paul in his dark suit and his red tie and his white shirt. I want to tell mine.

Back in 1982, I was on the beach at Jekyll Island, GA, following a joint house Republican-senate Republican conference. The late Haskew Brantley--then a Georgia State senator--and I were on the beach under an umbrella enjoying the beautiful coast of Georgia on our great island, Jekyll Island. In the distance we could see this figure coming toward us that looked from a distance as having on a suit, walking on the beach with his shoes in his hand and his pant legs rolled up. The closer he got, the more Haskew and I realized: That is Paul Coverdell.

Paul came in his red tie, his buttoned-down white shirt, his dark pin-striped suit but with his shoes in his hand. He sat in the sand with us, talked, got up, walked back to the parking lot, and drove to Atlanta. In fact, I am not sure I ever saw Paul when he did not have on the dark suit, the red tie, and the white shirt.

He was always dressed to the nines, and he was always ready for whatever challenge came. His wife Nancy, who is a beautiful lady I saw just a few weeks ago on the coast of Georgia, actually had her real estate license in my company. So not only did I know Paul, but I knew Nancy, and for 35 years they were as close of friends as I have ever had. But for 35 years they served Georgia day in and day out in whatever capacity they could to make it a better State.

I think it is a great tribute to tell this story: When Paul was elected to the Georgia State Senate as the fifth Republican in history in 1970, for somebody to think a Republican majority could ever have taken place, they would have laughed. But shortly after Paul's death, the legislative office building where every member of the Georgia House and Senate in downtown Atlanta has an office was named the Paul D. Coverdell Legislative Office Building. He went from the bottom in terms of numbers, and he went to the top, but he climbed it one step at a time; he climbed it one commitment at a time, and he never lost sight of the fact that he was an American first and a Republican second but always committed to the values of Georgia and the values and the conservative principles we shared.

So on this day, just 10 years after his passing, we rise to pay tribute to a great American, a great Member of the Senate, and a leader who made it possible for people such as Senator Chambliss and myself to follow in his footsteps and one day, ultimately, serve in the greatest deliberative body in the world, the U.S. Senate.

I pay tribute to Paul Coverdell and his legacy and his beautiful wife Nancy.