Florida. Dept. of State.

Jim Smith, the twenty-first Secretary of State, was born in Jacksonville, Florida on May 25, 1940. In 1967, he was appointed executive assistant to the Secretary of State. In 1969, he was named Deputy Secretary of Commerce and subsequently became senior staff assistant to the Governor. In 1972, he left government to become a founding partner in a Tallahassee law firm.

In 1977, Smith was appointed a member of the Board of Regents. He resigned this post in November 1978, when he was elected to the first of two four-year terms as Florida's Attorney General. In 1986, after an unsuccessful bid for Governor, he became Chief of Staff to Governor Bob Martinez. On August 5, 1987, he was appointed to fill the unexpired term of Secretary of State George Firestone, who had resigned. He was elected Secretary of State on November 8, 1988.