Dick Batchelor

Dick J. Batchelor (born December 12, 1947) is a former member of the Florida House of Representatives.

He is president of Dick Batchelor Management Group, Inc., a management consulting firm that specializes in business development, strategic governmental affairs and public policy issues.

He has been featured numerous times as one of the "50 Most Powerful People in Orlando."

Batchelor was born the middle child of seven in Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

His mother and father worked on tobacco fields as tenant farmers.

When Batchelor was still a child, they relocated to Orlando, Florida, where his father worked in construction and later as a carpenter.

From 1957 to 1960, the family lived in Reeves Terrace, which operates today as a public housing complex for low-income families.

Three years later, the family moved to a house in the Orlo Vista neighborhood of Orange County, Florida.

Batchelor attended Maynard Evans High School, where he graduated in 1966.

Between 1966 and 1968, Batchelor served as a volunteer with the United States Marine Corps.

He was deployed to Vietnam from 1967 to 1968 and stationed in the port city of Da Nang during the Tet Offensive.

Batchelor has said that his experience in the military is where he learned how to effectively work alongside people of different backgrounds, ethnicities and religions in the pursuit of a common goal.

Upon returning to the United States, Batchelor used the G.I. Bill to further his education.

He attended Valencia Community College (now Valencia College) and the University of Central Florida, earning a Bachelor of Science degree in 1971.

He also completed post baccalaureate work in Political Science and Public Administration at the University of Central Florida.

He ran in 1974 at age 26.

Representing District 43, Batchelor won with more than two-thirds of the vote.

Five of Batchelor's eight years in legislative service were spent in leadership roles.

He served as chairman of the Auditing Committee, the Health and Rehabilitative Services Committee and the House Energy Committee, in addition to chairman of four subcommittees.

Batchelor received more than 50 awards for his legislative service, including the Common Cause award for open government and the Sigma Delta Chi award for "most open elected official".

In 1975 and 1988, Batchelor was appointed to the American Council of Young Political Leaders (ACYPL) and served on missions to Poland, Romania, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Vietnam.

From 1980 to 2014, Batchelor served as honorary chairman of the Dick Batchelor Run for the Children, which raised more than $1 million.

The race was the largest annual fundraiser for the Howard Phillips Center for Children and Families, which is part of the Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children.

Batchelor established his own firm in 1986, and continues to specialize in providing business development consulting services, strategic government relations and public affairs issues management to his clients.

In 1994, Batchelor was appointed by President Bill Clinton to serve as a member of the U.S. delegation to observe the South African elections.

He traveled alongside Jesse Jackson and met with President-elect Nelson Mandela following the historic election that marked the end of the apartheid era.

In 2000, Clinton appointed Batchelor to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.

Batchelor traveled to Geneva, Switzerland, where he spent six weeks examining abuses and drafting resolutions to condemn violations made by certain countries, the timeliest of which was one criticizing Russia for their invasion of Chechnya, he said.

In 2002, Batchelor was named "Central Floridian of the Year" by the Orlando Sentinel for his successful efforts to generate more than $2 billion worth of funding in construction and renovation for Orange County Public Schools.

After six prior referendum efforts had failed to generate some level of taxation to support the district's dire construction challenges, Batchelor organized the "Change 4 Kids" campaign.

The ballot initiative passed with nearly 60 percent of the vote, despite the fact that fewer than 25 percent of residents had children enrolled in the county's public school system.

Batchelor was widely credited for helping coalesce the community at large to support the effort.

Three years later, Batchelor returned to Geneva as an observer to the 59th annual meeting of the commission in the wake of mounting global criticism surrounding the U.S. 2003 invasion of Iraq.

In 2007, Batchelor was among 15 people appointed by former Gov. Charlie Crist

to his Children and Youth Cabinet.

In 2012, Batchelor joined fellow Evans High School alumnus and U.S. Congressman Dan Webster in the unveiling of a new memorial dedicated to the twenty-three fallen Vietnam veterans who were graduates of the school.

During the ceremony, family members of the men were called forward and presented with a folded flag once flown over the nation's capital.

Batchelor is one of the youngest individuals ever to serve in the Florida House of Representatives.

In the fall of 2013, the Orlando Sentinel reported that Dick Batchelor would again serve as chairman for the effort to renew the tax.

The decision to extend the sales tax went on the ballot before local voters in 2014.