Walking the Line

n 1988, Ray Judah resigned his position as principal land-use planner for Lee County and went home to tell his pregnant wife that he was unemployed. Furthermore, he told her, he was going to run for a seat on the county commission and his odds of winning weren't good.

"I didn't have any illusions about the likelihood of being elected. All I knew was that it was important to have a voice on the board that understood the value of our environment," says Judah.

He petitioned for his spot on the ballot instead of simply paying the filing fee. "Collecting the petitions was like an election in itself," says Judah, who spent many days at Edison Mall or walking through neighborhoods to generate support. "I went through a lot of tennis shoes."

He won the election, beating the incumbent by fewer than 1,100 votes.

He has been representing Lee County's District Three for 18 years since then, and continues his self-imposed policy to never accept more than $100 in campaign contributions from any individual or corporation.

The first narrow win and a couple of close calls in subsequent elections keep Judah from taking his incumbency for granted. "I'm a marked man," says Judah. He knows that, in an area that's developing more rapidly than almost anywhere else in the country, his focus on protecting Southwest Florida's natural resources makes him a target.

Judah was opposed in the 2004 election-which he handily won-by a candidate financed by members of the development industry. More recently, he has drawn fire from farmers and the sugar industry over his position that farm fields should be flooded to alleviate Caloosahatchee and estuary damage from Lake Okeechobee freshwater releases. And his opposition to a road study that supporters hope would relieve congestion in Bonita Springs has raised not only ire, but suspicion that his position is more political

than practical.

With Judah still in office, several people declined to comment for this report. Others say that while they don't agree with all of Judah's positions, he is a man of principle.

"He has a certain set of beliefs that I think is actually the main reason he has been re-elected several times," says Dennis Gilkey, president and CEO of The Bonita Bay Group, which has supported Judah's re-elections.

"He's a person with high values," Gilkey says. "He can be intense when he really believes in something. I think some of the controversial issues come out of his passion. I don't always agree with him, but you've got to respect someone with his passion."

Bonita Springs councilman Ben Nelson, a marine contractor by profession, remembers working with Judah when he was a county planner and Nelson was among those applying for permits. "He was fair with me. He was very passionate about the environment and still is, and that's a good thing," says Nelson.

Florida bound

At 17, Judah's father went to sea in the Merchant Marine and served in the Pacific during World War II, where he fell in love with the Philippine Islands. After the war, he found work and started his family there. Judah was born in Cebu Island, Philippines, in 1953. In 1964, the family moved to California so Ray and his brother and sister could be educated in the United States. Judah attended California State University, Humboldt, where he met his wife, Kristen, and earned a Bachelor of Arts in zoology and a Master of Science in natural resources.

His education led him to work with the Florida Department of Environmental Regulation (now the Florida Department of Environmental Protection) in Charlotte and Lee counties. In 1983, after giving up the pursuit of an environmental law degree at Lewis and Clark Law School in Portland, Ore., Judah returned to Southwest Florida for good and began his career with Lee County as a planner.

The Judahs have been married 21 years and have a 17-year-old son, Kallen. "He recently got his private pilot's license," Ray says. "Most parents of 16- or 17-year-olds have concerns about their children driving; we have the added pressure of, literally, letting our son spread his wings." Clearly proud of his son, Judah emphasizes the importance of his family, saying that any further political ambition he might have will have to wait until Kallen leaves the nest.

But when that time comes, Judah might consider giving up his seat on the Board of County Commissioners. "We'll just have to look at the conditions and see where I might best play a roll in representing our community," he says. Wherever the political tide may take him, Judah says he has no plans to uproot. "Lee County is my home," he says.

a natural calling

In the late 1980s, Judah saw a growing need to conserve natural systems, and he began his push for acquiring lands to protect the area's water quality. He became a founding member of the Corkscrew Regional Ecosystem Watershed (CREW) Land and Water Trust, a public/private partnership formed to acquire and manage a 50,000-acre watershed area in southern Lee County.

"It was very visionary on his part," says Ellen Lindblad, CREW's former executive director and currently long-range planner for the Lee County School District. "This was the late '80s and early '90s, and there was nothing there. It was before the development of the [Florida Gulf Coast] university, but he saw the need to look ahead and protect the water quality for the future."

Reminiscent of his early work with the CREW Trust, Judah is once again focusing his attention on water quality.

"We're already in an ecological crisis," says Judah of the greater Lake Okeechobee-Everglades ecosystem, which extends from Orlando to the Florida Keys and includes the Caloosahatchee. "It no longer functions as a healthy and productive natural system."

Like many others, he believes that excessive and unhealthy freshwater from the lake is being released through the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee rivers, causing destruction of local marine habitat and fisheries. Judah believes one answer is to use sugarcane fields south of Lake Okeechobee for storage of excess freshwater.

His suggestion to flood farm fields has not been well received by agriculture advocates, residents in those areas or the region's sugar industry. A spokeswoman with U.S. Sugar says the company won't comment on Judah or his positions.

Lindblad believes Judah will reach his goal.

"When he believes in something, he educates himself and he really dedicates himself to seeing the project through," says Lindblad. "He did it with CREW, and he'll do it with Lake Okeechobee."

in the line of fire

Judah maintains his aim is responsible development to allow for growth. Balance between conservation and development is what drives Lee County's economy and lures people to the area, whether to visit, work or retire, he says. As examples, he points to his advocacy of such major infrastructure projects as the expansion of the Southwest Florida International Airport, development of a solid-waste-management system that allows for disposal of solid waste 40 years into the future, and expansion of area roads.

Not everyone agrees that his approach has been responsible. He has drawn fire for opposing a proposal to extend C.R. 951 through environmentally sensitive lands, in spite of a need for additional north-south routes. More recently, he has residents and officials in Bonita Springs hopping mad because he is against a study to extend Coconut Road east of I-75.

"You only have to have lived or worked or passed through Bonita Springs in the past two or three years to understand the frustration everyone in Bonita feels about traffic," says real estate attorney John Spear, chairman of the transportation task force for the Greater Bonita Springs Chamber of Commerce. "We're only talking about a study. If it's going to be an environmental disaster, the study will tell us that."

Spear describes Judah as "a good friend," who has earned his political support for years, but on this issue, Spear is furious. "In the past I've always tempered my criticism with, 'At least the guy stands up for what he believes in.' This one just seems different," he says.

Judah has argued that the extension of the road east of I-75 would damage environmentally sensitive lands and open that area to unwanted development. It also might benefit landowners who helped finance his opposition in the last election, which Spear believes has a lot to do with Judah's stance.

"The suggestion that [the proposed study] came out of the blue due to a conspiracy between landowners and politicians is absurd," Spear retorts. "He's got every right to be angry, but he ought not throw the driving public under the bus."

Judah's positions also have angered some in the development community. Several people who were contacted declined to comment. Others failed to return phone calls.

"I actually like him. I just vehemently disagree with his philosophy and position," says Michael Reitmann, executive director of the Lee Building Industry Association, who reluctantly agreed to comment. "Ray has come from a perspective as a planner, he worked for the county and as a Democrat." (Judah was elected in 1988 as a Democrat and switched to the GOP the following year.)