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PRODUCER PROFILE
Double duty From his niche insuring beekeepers to his seat in the Florida House of Representatives, Kevin Rader of CKP Insurance has no trouble staying busy
IT WAS late April, and Florida’s legislature had just collapsed into chaos due to a bitter impasse between House and Senate Republicans over Medicaid expansion. The State House Republicans had pulled the plug on the 2015 legislative session three days shy of its conclusion, leaving dozens of major bills dead, and Kevin Rader, a Democratic member of the Florida House of Representatives, suddenly found himself with time on his hands to chat. “We are just kind of taking a deep breath here,” Rader said the day after the fiasco. “We are done – we are allowed to go home now. Well, we are not really done, because we didn’t pass a budget. We’ll be back here probably in June.” In the meantime, he would be heading home to his wife, his four kids and his insurance agency in Boca Raton, Fla. Rader is one of a handful of Florida legislators juggling a second career as an active insurance agent. His agency, CKP Insurance, focuses on commercial business and residential insurance, with a niche specialty in commercial beekeeping. This may seem like an odd mix, but for Rader, it makes perfect sense. After all, Florida legislators only come to Tallahassee for three or so months out of the year, and most of them hold other jobs outside of the
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legislative session. “There are so many different issues and different facets that insurance agents touch,” he says. “I think the more insurance agents you have in elected office, the better it is for the citizens of that state.”
A phenomenal ride Rader’s dual career paths first intersected in 2000 when he made his original bid for the Florida State House. At the time, he was a computer consultant who had recently moved to Boca Raton when his wife, a rabbi, found a synagogue there. While he was running for office, he met an insurance broker/owner who suggested Rader would make a great insurance agent. “After I lost the election, I looked into it, and I agreed with him,” he says. “It’s not the way a lot of people find insurance, but it was the way I found it. And it’s been just a phenomenal ride.” Rader worked his way up the ladder – “hustling on the phone, going to all different types of meetings, building my book of business” – and eventually made partner before starting his own agency. Today, CKP insurance employs about 20 people, with Rader and his partner owner at the helm. Rader is active in the Florida Association of Insurance Agents (which presented him with the Outstanding
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