12 things about Clay Shaw
1. He was born in Miami in April 1939, with the birth name Eugene Clay Shaw Jr., but he goes by his middle name.
2. Now an avid gardner, Shaw worked on his family's Alabama timberlands during his summer high school vacations and decided to study forestry in college. But he couldn't get a dormitory room at Auburn University and decided to pursue other interests. He went instead to Stetson University for his undergraduate and law school degrees, then received an M.B.A. from the University of Alabama.
3. Married to Emilie, his wife of 46 years, he has four adult children and 15 grandchildren. Emilie and Shaw met and dated as teenagers.
4. His other hobbies include fly-fishing and listening to country and gospel music.
5. Shaw was an attorney, a prosecutor, and a judge before his election as mayor of his hometown, Fort Lauderdale, at the age of 36.
6. He won his first congressional campaign in 1980.
7. Before he decided to run for a national office, he thought being a congressman was the "boringest job."
8. A self-proclaimed introvert, he doesn't like crowds and "hates" fund-raising.
9. He wrote the landmark welfare reform legislation in 1996, "Welfare to Work Reform."
10. A nonsmoker, he has had two lung cancer surgeries in the past four years. Both times a small tumor was removed from the left lung.
11. The longest-serving member of the South Florida delegation, he is a Republican in a heavily Democratic district. Locals like his casual, southern style and consider him a moderate.
12. His district, which includes coastal Palm Beach County, is primarily elderly and affluent, with a large, politically active Jewish population.
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