Rosanne Dunkelberger
When Tom Griffin first encountered Keaton Alexander six years ago, his wingman was a dog.
As Keaton tells it, she was at The Governors Club and someone had brought a dog. “Which is very rare, but I’m a huge dog person. … And it being a Friday, and later in the night, I sat down and started petting the dog on the ground like you do. I think Tom just liked that I was the real me and could just, be at night in a workplace and just enjoy the dog that I was enjoying.”
It made an impression and a couple weeks later, back at the GovClub, he introduced himself — in the strangest way possible. Turns out, Tom had known Keaton’s sister, Britton Grimes, through work for years. So his opening gambit was to talk to her about her sister.
“He didn’t give me his name. So I had to chase down his name. Figure out who he was,” Keaton says. “The group of girls I was with didn’t know. So we all did a little reconnaissance.”
Things got sorted out, and a first date happened (skip to the end of the story for a complete download), and the lobbyists joined their lives — and their business — by getting married in 2022 and starting their own firm, The Griffin Group. Each brought their book of business to the partnership and they have added another team member, Principal Robyn Metcalf Blank.
Just to keep things hopping, they added another member to their family last September, daughter Breit Eleanor Griffin. She surprised her parents by making her appearance a month early but without any complications. “It’s been an adventure, to say the least, but I think she, we’ve gotten into a groove. I think we’ve figured it out. Not figured all of it out, but figured out how to juggle it together,” Keaton explains.
The Griffins split their time between offices and homes in Lakeland and Tallahassee, and the baby travels with them.
Keaton has an impressive political pedigree. Her father is JD Alexander, a former state Senator instrumental in establishing Florida Polytechnic University in Lakeland. Ben Hill Griffin Jr., her great-grandfather, was a member of the Legislature for 12 years. His generosity to his alma mater, the University of Florida, led to the football stadium being named in his honor.
While politics was in her blood, Keaton had a degree in dance. After injuries and deciding “being a starving artist probably wasn’t for me,” she pivoted to The Process. “I liked politics” which, like dance, she says, is “just a bunch of fancy footwork.”
“And so I became a crazy lobbyist. It’s been fun. I still do some community theater work here and there and substitute teach dance classes and stuff like that.”
The fact that Tom’s last name is the same as Keaton’s kinfolk is “pure coincidence,” he says. “Although Keaton’s grandmother, Sarah Jane Alexander (daughter of Ben Hill Griffin) was very concerned about the last name initially. I believe she withheld approval of the relationship until we confirmed the Griffin bloodlines were sufficiently forked.” Tom attended Florida State University but pulls for the Gators every game except that one on Thanksgiving weekend. At one-month-old, Breit attended her first Florida-Florida State game in the Swamp.
Tom was steeped in politics growing up outside Washington, D.C. His parents weren’t involved, but many friends and family were involved in the government. “It’s a company town, just like Tallahassee, just on a larger scale,” he says.
His mother worked in drama her whole life. “So we kind of grew up in that world as well,” he says. “I think Keaton and I bonded over that early on.”
The Griffins’ Sine Die tradition started on their first date at — where else? — The Governors Club. They made their way to the bar — along with half the legislators and lobbyists in Tallahassee.
“If we were looking for a subtle and discreet way to have a first date, that couldn’t have been a more inappropriate approach to that strategy,” Tom says. “The word was out that maybe we were on a date. So every year we have a drink at the Governor’s Club on Sine Die. It doesn’t matter when they gavel out. Last year, for instance, they gaveled out in the morning, so we had a cup of coffee together.”
