Arizona House OKs King Day; Senate Balks

The Arizona House voted 35 to 25 on Thursday to create a state holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

A Senate committee defeated an identical measure earlier in the day on a 6-3 vote, but supporters said they expected another vote later this year.

The question of a state holiday honoring the slain civil rights leader has been controversial since the new Republican governor, Evan Mecham, last month canceled such a holiday for executive branch employees that had been proclaimed last year by his Democratic predecessor, Bruce Babbitt.

Mecham contended that only the Legislature, which had narrowly defeated the bill last year, could designate a holiday.

A holiday “will have a healing effect on divisions in this state,” Minority Leader Art Hamilton said on the House floor.

GOP Support for Bill

Opponents did not respond, and 11 Republicans joined all 24 House Democrats in approving the holiday.

Hamilton thanked the GOP leaders for letting the bill come to a vote despite their opposition to it and thanked the members for their “extreme courage and great dignity” in voting on the measure.

The language had been less restrained in the Senate earlier Thursday.

“Are we going to be part of the United States or are we going to go off with Forsyth County somewhere?” Senate Minority Leader Alan Stephens, a Democrat, said after the Government Committee vote. He referred to a Georgia county with no black residents where Ku Klux Klansmen disrupted a civil rights march last month.

In the Senate committee discussions, opponents said that, among other things, they objected to a provision in the bill that would combine the state’s Washington and Lincoln holidays into one day to make room for a King day at no additional cost.