A few days ago I woke to the news that Jane Dee Hull, former governor of Arizona, had died, and I was shocked.
Not shocked that she had died—she was in her eighties, and had reportedly been in poor health for some time—but rather shocked to find that I felt a sense of regret and even loss over her death, and that beyond that I actually felt compassion for and kindness towards her surviving children. You see, Jane Hull was a Republican.
What’s wrong with me? I thought. Have I watched so many “We’re all in this together” Toyota truck and Campbell soup commercials that my sense of outrage has been worn down to nothing?
But then I started to remember—really remember—former Governor Hull. And that’s when I also remembered that, prior to the last decade, Republicans weren’t always the living, breathing reincarnation of Voldemort. I mean, sure, they were still pretty awful. I wouldn’t have voted for one. Or dated one. Or even failed to think, “What the fuck is wrong with you?” when I met one. But, for the most part, they were just people: people who had different ideas about how our world should be run socially and fiscally, but people, nonetheless.
True, there were some nutjobs and crooks mixed in there, but the other, saner and fairer Republicans kept those guys on a shorter leash. The list of Arizona governors in my lifetime is an excellent illustration of that: the first gubernatorial election I was old enough to vote in was won by actual used car salesman and Republican Evan Meachem, who was impeached and removed the next year by a Republican majority legislature after having been found guilty of, among other things, loaning his business $80,000 of public funds. The next two elections were won by Richie Rich impersonator (and Republican) J. Fife Symington III, who was forced to resign because the Arizona constitution specifically forbids elected officials form serving while in jail (yet another example of how our pioneer ancestors had a firmer grasp on reality than we do).
And then came Jane Hull. Another Republican. And yet, she was different. A former rightwing firebrand who had once infamously suggested that the state could save money by allowing the prisoners at Perryville to die in the heat, she softened once she succeeded Symington into office. She fought her own party not only to increase education spending, but also to spend any money at all on children’s healthcare. Hell, she even changed her position on that bastion of Republicanism—the so-called “Right to Life”—when the experiences of a close family member revealed all the gray that existed between the two sides.
As a former teacher from Kansas—a state that used to lead the nation in education—it is hard to imagine Governor Hull running a state which would have allowed education funding to lapse so badly that teachers walked off of the job in protest, much less one in which 50,000 of them showed up at the state capitol to protest. And as someone who stood up to her own party—and their threats to support a primary opponent over her for her successful effort to provide healthcare for 60,000 children of the working poor—it is hard to imagine her fighting to keep golf courses and massage parlors open during a worldwide pandemic.
In other words, it is hard to imagine her as a sociopath. Which is not something I have found myself saying about many Republicans lately.
When I heard that Jane Hull had passed away I felt sad. Sad for her family, but more so sad for the passing of the Arizona I was born in, a state that produced strong and moral politicians of both parties. Politicians who, even when I didn’t agree with them politically, I at least believed were operating based on their own idea of public service, rather than their own private interests. When it comes to the current Arizona Republican party I haven’t been able to say that for some time now.
I think that when Jane Hull died she took the last of that part of the party with her. If only she could reach back from beyond the veil and take the rest of this part with her, too.