When It Comes to Arizona Officeholders, It’s a Woman’s World

One has a transition team operating from kitchen tables. Another has been on safari in Africa. A third is called “Grammie governor” by her eight grandchildren.

Admirers dubbed them the Fabulous Five after their election last month when, for the first time anywhere, voters put women in a state’s top five offices. The Girls, as some of them call themselves, couldn’t be more delighted by their success. But for the most part, the quintet is oblivious to the acclamation, and adamant: We just want to do the job.

Gov. Jane Dee Hull slid open the doors leading to the balcony of her spacious office and surveyed her panoramic view of downtown Phoenix. Construction cranes glinted in the winter sun, creating a skyline of progress.

“We are five women, but we have a range of political philosophies, we come from different parties, we have a range of experience and a range of interests,” said Hull, a Republican who was still basking in the afterglow of a huge election victory. It made her the state’s first elected woman governor.

Taking their place alongside her when their terms begin next month are, in order of succession, Secretary of State Betsy Bayless, Atty. Gen. Janet Napolitano (the lone Democrat), Treasurer Carol Springer and Supt. of Public Instruction Lisa Graham Keegan.

“I think it’s great,” said Keegan, who calls the election results the “Babe Thing.” “These are great people to work with; they are smart, they push hard. They are not quiet women. People think we are going to be catty and gossip about each other’s hair and clothes. Of course we are going to do that, ha-ha, but we are all women who have public records that, apparently, the voters thought made us good candidates.”

Despite its image as a stronghold for big-haired conservative Republican women, Arizona has a surprisingly progressive history regarding women in government. Frontier women served in Arizona’s territorial legislature and were voting eight years before national suffrage for women was granted in 1920. Two women were elected in 1915 to the state Legislature, where Sandra Day O’Connor later served before being named a U.S. Supreme Court justice.

“There is a concerted effort in Arizona to get women to run for office,” said Keegan, a pro-choice conservative. “Women’s political groups are organized here, and they don’t just make coffee for the events, they set policy.”

Pollsters say that Arizonans by and large were not thinking about gender when they voted. In the case of the governor, polls indicate voters were seeking a reassuring presence after years of tumult in the governor’s office.

Hull, one of only three women governors in the country, is actually the second woman to serve as Arizona’s chief executive but the first to be elected in her own right. She was serving as secretary of state when, in September 1997, then-Gov. Fife Symington was convicted of bank fraud. When Symington was removed from office, Hull served out the remainder of his term.

Another secretary of state, Democrat Rose Mofford, succeeded Republican Gov. Evan Mecham when he was impeached in 1988 for misuse of public funds and obstruction of justice.

Hull was the first female speaker of the Arizona House.

The state currently ranks No. 4 nationally for the number of women in elected office, according to a weighted scale compiled by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research in Washington.

“Arizona is a populist state,” said Bayless, a third-generation Arizonan. “Since statehood, women have been involved in government. So I don’t think there’s a glass ceiling. I think there will be some others as we go down the road.”

During their campaigns, none of the women emphasized traditional women’s issues. Indeed, in interviews none was able to identify what that meant.

“The idea that all of a sudden we are all going to go out and put forth a so-called women’s agenda makes no sense at all,” said Hull, a mother of four. “What they call women’s issues--education, child support--are on the forefront of the issues now.”

As elsewhere, education and children were identified as priorities among voters here. Hull’s campaign focused on education issues. Springer, a real estate agent who went on safari, promised to manage the state’s money carefully. Keegan vowed to improve public schools and supported a standardized skill test for schoolchildren.

“They are quite right that those issues of concern to women have moved to the center of the political agenda,” said Heidi Hartmann, director of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. “Nevertheless, women are more strongly interested in them [than men]; this is reflected in survey results.”

Women in government, in numbers, do make a difference. According to a study conducted by the Center for American Women in Politics at Rutgers University, when there are more women in a state legislature, so-called women’s issues are more likely to be raised and legislation is more likely to get passed.

Still, the Arizona women are all quick to dispel any notion that they represent a monolithic “women’s” point of view.

“I don’t think you are going to see the five of us fighting in the press,” Hull said. “It doesn’t mean we are not going to disagree. We are going to fight, but we are going to fight in these rooms.”

The sense that the five women will somehow arrange themselves into a kaffeeklatsch, taking turns bringing baked goods into the office, is belied by both the logistics of their jobs, which do not generally bring them together, and by pressing business.

“I’ve got a department that has a broad range of responsibilities and I supervise some 900 employees,” said Napolitano, one of the attorneys who represented Anita Faye Hill during the Supreme Court nomination hearings for Clarence Thomas. “Who has time to chitchat?

“I think the most salient fact is that a Democrat got elected,” she said, laughing. She is the first female elected as attorney general in Arizona. “The fact that I am a woman never came up in the election. It wasn’t an issue. The fact that I’ve spent four-plus years as U.S. attorney and supervised the prosecution of some 6,000 people--it’s hard to be defined as ‘cute.’ It drops ‘cute’ right out of the equation. Maybe what it says is that gender can be a nonissue.”