Arizona Senate Ousts Mecham : Convicted of ‘High Crimes,’ He’s First Governor Removed Since ’29

The Arizona Senate convicted Gov. Evan Mecham of “high crimes, misdemeanors or malfeasance in office” Monday in the nation’s first ouster of a governor on impeachment charges since 1929.

The feisty former Pontiac dealer listened tight-lipped as the 30 senators cast ballots on the first count against him--a vote that took 43 minutes and stripped him of the office he had pursued for 22 years.

“Well, they don’t like my politics, so we’ve finished a political trial,” a smiling Mecham told a crowd of supporters who cheered--some of them with tears in their eyes--as he left the Capitol after the vote. He said he would spend the next couple of days thinking about his future.

Obstruction of Justice

The Senate decided, 21 to 9, that the first-term Republican was guilty of obstruction of justice. Ten Republicans and 11 Democrats voted to convict. All the acquittal votes were cast by Republicans. The Senate then voted, 26 to 4, that he had misused public funds. A two-thirds vote was needed to convict.

“Evan Mecham is convicted of high crimes, misdemeanors or malfeasance in office,” State Supreme Court Justice Frank Gordon Jr., the presiding officer, said after the voting that ended the five-week trial.

But by a narrow margin, the Senate left Mecham the option of seeking office again, rejecting, 17 to 13, the so-called “Dracula clause” that would have prevented him from running in an election again.

The Arizona House also had voted an impeachment charge of concealing a $350,000 campaign loan but in a surprise move last week, the Senate dismissed this charge to avoid running the risk of double jeopardy or prejudicing a jury when Mecham stands trial April 21 in criminal court. If convicted on a six-count felony indictment, he could be sent to prison for as much as 22 years.

Cheers from scores of Mecham supporters waiting outside the Capitol could be heard when votes were cast in the governor’s favor.

“This is perhaps the most difficult decision I have ever had to make in my life,” Sen. Lela Alston, a Phoenix Democrat, said in casting the first vote--guilty.

Even some senators voting to acquit the governor acknowledged that he had made serious mistakes during his first tumultuous year in office.

Not ‘a Good Model’

“I certainly would not want to hold his Administration up as a good model for the future,” said Sen. James Sossaman, a Higley Republican who voted in Mecham’s favor.

Argues for Voter Preference

But Sossaman argued that Mecham’s fate should be left to voters in the recall election scheduled for May 17. Whether Mecham can run is likely to be decided in court, Atty. Gen. Bob Corbin said.

Sen. Tony West, a Phoenix Republican, quoted extensively from a book describing schizophrenic behavior as he voted against Mecham. “Your veracity and ethics particularly in government are in a state of bankruptcy,” West told Mecham.

Majority Leader Robert Usdane, a Scottsdale Republican, voted Mecham innocent on the first charge and guilty on the second.

He compared his approach to “high-risk major surgery to be resorted to only when the rightness of the diagnosis and the treatment was sure.”

Jan Brewer, a Republican from Glendale, where Mecham lives, delivered the first vote in Mecham’s favor.

“I believe that the charges before us are not arrogance. They’re not incompetence and they are not insensitivity, all of which I believe the Administration is guilty of,” Brewer said.

“The charges are simply the obstruction of justice and I don’t find that that particular case has been sufficiently made, and I vote no.” She also found Mecham innocent of the second charge.

Mecham was impeached Feb. 5 by the Arizona House of Representatives in an emotional session that stripped him of power--but not his title--pending the Senate trial and verdict.

Mecham is the first Arizona governor to be impeached and the eighth in U.S. history to be removed from office. The last governor to be ousted was Henry Johnston of Oklahoma in 1929.

Mofford Is Governor

Rose Mofford, the Democratic secretary of state, automatically became governor after the vote, pending next month’s special election.

Mofford, in a statement, declared “the end of some difficult times in Arizona,” and urged residents to purge “our hearts of suspicion and hate.”

“Today none of us are Republicans, none of us are Democrats,” she said. “We are all Arizonans. Let us go forward together as Arizonans.”

In closing arguments, prosecutor Paul Eckstein told the Senate that Mecham “has puffed, has exaggerated, has misremembered, dissembled and out and out lied.”

“This whole course of conduct . . . was not just offensive,” Eckstein said, “it was grossly offensive.”

‘Sleaze Factor’

Chief defense attorney Jerris Leonard angrily deplored “the sleaze factor” used against Mecham. “In nicer places, it’s called character assassination,” Leonard said, “but in gut politics, it’s called McCarthyism.”

Leonard acknowledged that the governor may have done things that were “embarrassing, but it wasn’t evil.”

The Senate first took up the obstruction of justice charge, which accused the governor of ordering Arizona’s top police official, Department of Public Safety Director Ralph Milstead, not to cooperate with the attorney general’s investigation of a reported death threat by one Mecham aide against another.

Lee Watkins, an ex-convict and top campaign fund-raiser who held three jobs in the Mecham Administration, allegedly threatened to send legislative liaison Donna Carlson “on a long boat ride” if she did not “shut her mouth” when subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury investigating the disputed $350,000 campaign loan, which Watkins had arranged. Watkins publicly denied threatening Carlson but took the Fifth Amendment before the Senate.

Mecham admitted telling Milstead that he did not have “permission” to cooperate when the attorney general investigated the alleged threat.

Loan to Dealership

On the charge of misusing public money, prosecutors argued that Mecham loaned $80,000 in state protocol funds to the family Pontiac dealership because it was in dire financial straits and desperately needed the cash. They said that the money had been earmarked to promote Arizona through such things as gifts to visiting dignitaries.

The defense contended that the money, which represented proceeds from Mecham’s inaugural ball, was private, not public funds, and had been invested in Mecham Pontiac merely to earn higher interest--9% rather than 4.5% in a bank.

But the family blamed negative publicity for slumping business and sold the dealership to a competitor for $4 million last month.

Campaign Loan

The $350,000 campaign loan, from Tempe developer Barry Wolfson, was lumped with other campaign sums instead of being reported separately, as required on financial disclosure statements. Mecham contends that was the result of an honest mistake by his brother, Willard, the campaign treasurer.

Mecham had won the governor’s office on his fifth try in a three-way race 15 months ago that divided Democrats and riled the Republican Establishment, whose candidate lost the primary to him in a stunning upset.

The new governor seemed to head straight for the hornets’ nest.

King Holiday

A week after taking office, Mecham drew national criticism by rescinding the state’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday on grounds that outgoing Democratic Gov. Bruce Babbitt never had the power to declare it in the first place.

Although Mecham boasted that he was the first governor to appoint a black and an American Indian to top Cabinet posts, he gained national notoriety for a series of remarks that offended minority groups.

He defended the use of the word pickaninny to describe black children in a history book, joked about Japanese becoming “round-eyed” in surprise, and told a Jewish group that the United States is a Christian nation.

Although the majority of his appointments were approved by the Legislature without difficulty, a handful were ridiculed, among them an education official who said that teachers had no right to correct children if their parents told them the Earth is flat.

Groups Boycott State

Within months of taking office, Mecham was being lampooned by “Doonesbury” and grilled by “60 Minutes.” Rock groups and conventioneers were boycotting the state to protest his recision of the King holiday, causing tourism officials to complain that he was costing Arizona business.

When a recall movement was born, Mecham dismissed his detractors as “a band of homosexuals and a few dissident Democrats.” Throughout his troubles he continued to flash his trademark grin and to insist that the truth and plenty of Arizonans were on his side. When booed at a ball game, he smiled and waved.

An hour after the impeachment vote, only a handful of sad Mecham supporters remained outside the Capitol building. An orange sign was planted in the grass. “Death to Tyranny. Let the Constitution Live,” it said. And on the wall of the Senate building, someone had taped a small, red-letter banner. “Thank Heaven for Evan,” it read.