Pam Bondi's road to the Attorney General's Office began with a phone call from Baltimore.

Adam Goodman, a Tampa-based political consultant, had known the Hillsborough County state prosecutor for a decade. And in the summer of 2009, as he surveyed Florida's electoral landscape during a trip up North, he saw an opening in Tallahassee.

"I figured the attorney general race could be a wide-open affair. I called Pam to discuss the idea," Goodman recounted.

"Her response was classic Bondi. She said, 'Me?'" Goodman chuckled.

With Lt. Gov. Jeff Kottkamp already announced and former state administrator Holly Benson ready to jump into the race, Bondi's self-effacing reaction was understandable. Although she had spent 18 years trying high-profile criminal cases, she had no statewide name recognition and had never run for office.

But Goodman was undaunted and, as their 90-minute phone conversation ensued, Bondi began warming to his political instincts. What followed would make history.

Goodman -- along with Tampa Bay businesswoman Kathleen Shanahan and attorney Martin Garcia -- would form the nucleus of a leadership team that helped Bondi win the GOP primary and blow away Democrat Dan Gelber in the 2011 general election.

Each of the three brought specific skill sets to the task.

Garcia, founder of Pinehill Capital Partners in Tampa, had known Bondi professionally for 15 years. That lawyerly connection grew more personal when Bondi started dating a good friend of his, Greg Henderson.

As the only attorney on the team, Garcia said he played a "minor role" as it pertained to legal policy.

"We were seeking to elect an honest and qualified candidate," he said.

In October 2009, Garcia introduced Bondi to Shanahan, a former chief of staff for Gov. Jeb Bush and a well-connected Republican businesswoman who is CEO of WRScompass, an environmental construction and remediation firm.

Shanahan immediately saw the possibilities in Bondi.

"In the macro political world, people wanted new voices and resented insiders making decisions that only benefited themselves," said Shanahan.

Where Shanahan saw Kottkamp vulnerable to charges of excess travel expenses and Benson as a job-hopping bureaucrat, she viewed Bondi as a fresh face with no baggage.

"She wasn't some fly-by-night attorney. She was trying death-penalty cases and was the No. 2 lawyer in the state attorney's office," Shanahan noted.

Eventually, the Garcia-Goodman-Shanahan team, along with policy and communications specialist Kim Kirtley, another Tampa player, began meeting more than once a week to discuss policy, strategy, governance and management of the campaign.

"There was significant debate and disagreement, which led to very good decisions that ultimately were reached most of the time through consensus," Garcia recalled.

Bondi's kitchen cabinet helped guide her through a tough campaign, that included a scorching public letter from pro-life attorney John Stemberger, who impugned Bondi for living out of wedlock with Henderson and for being -- gasp! -- a former Democrat.

"The Stemberger letter rocked everyone back. Pam created a steel resolve to weather this kind of nonsense," Goodman recalled.

"Her normal attitude would have been to fight back. But the thinking was that a backlash would set in. She learned restraint."

Meantime -- as Shanahan predicted -- Bondi emerged as a grass-roots and tea party favorite. Brett Doster, a Tallahassee-based GOP strategist who had signed on to the campaign as political director, noted the significance of Bondi winning a straw poll at the RPOF Convention in February.

"We went on a march from there, winning 95 percent of the straw polls that followed," Doster said.