Page "Ron Dermer" Paragraph 1

Ron Dermer was born and raised in Miami Beach, Florida, as the younger son of Yaffa Rosenthal, who was born in Mandate Palestine and moved to Florida with her parents shortly after Israel won its independence, and Jay Dermer, a trial lawyer from New York, who became Mayor of Miami Beach in the late 1960s.

Dermer went to a Jewish day school.

In 1984, two weeks before his bar mitzvah, his father died of a heart attack.

His brother David Dermer, a Democrat like his father, also served as Mayor of Miami Beach, and helped reelect Republican President George W. Bush in Florida.