Chuck Brannan’s journey to the Legislature brought him from humble origins to great power

Rep. Chuck Brannan is wrapping eight years in Tallahassee representing House District 10, which includes Baker, Columbia, Hamilton, Suwannee and part of Alachua County.

Tuesday’s House Session found the “son of a state trooper,” who himself became a member of law enforcement, telling stories of his time before the Legislature and in Tallahassee in his familiar cadence.

“I’m the first legislator for my county in over half a century. And you believe that. In over 50 years, there had been no one from Baker County. But here I am, and how did I get here?” Brannan asked rhetorically.

He went on to explain just that.

Brannan described his humble roots, from working for the Florida Farm Bureau to attending Lake City Community College before transferring to the University of Florida before moving into police work.

“I went to work for the U.S. Marshal Service in Jacksonville, worked on the big first Colombian drug kingpin that was ever extradited in the United States, Carlos Lehder,” Brannan said.

“If you’ve ever seen the movie “Blow” with Johnny Depp, that’s the story of the group that we extradited from when they brought them into MacDill Air Force Base and prosecuted them and had that case in Jacksonville many years ago. But I was bored to death. The marshal service was nothing like the Tommy Lee Jones movies.”

He ended up in the Baker County Sheriff’s Office for three decades, “most of the time as the chief investigator,” before retiring in 2014.

Then politics called.

“I always had in the back of my mind that I wanted to be in the Legislature. So the stars sort of lined up. My predecessor was terming out, as I am now, and I started knocking doors in 2017 for an open seat. I fed my cows in the morning, I knocked on doors,” Brannan explained.

“Now, knocking on doors, in my district — which is Baker, Columbia, at that time, Suwanee, Hamilton, and part of Alachua County, the rural part, and eventually Bradford, Union County — it is a little different than Miami. In Miami, you knock on a door, you knock on a door. And Baker County and Union, you knock on our door, you get in your truck, you drive 2 miles. And you knock on another door. You can get in the gate, and the dog don’t bite you.”

He also thanked House Speaker Daniel Perez for entrusting him, a non-lawyer, to chair the Judiciary Committee.

“We’ve always got along so well. But I never could figure out why, and I finally figured it out yesterday. I can’t understand a damn thing he says, and he can’t understand nothing I say. A Cuban from Miami, and a country boy from North Florida. It works out good,” Brannan said.