Photo courtesy McClintock Collection, Arizona Room, Phoenix Public Library

As a new, anklebiting legislative session begins, politicians wistfully remember Burton Barr, Arizona’s great unifier.

Drive south down Central Avenue past Park Central Mall, the Heard Museum and Honey Bears BBQ, and on your left is the main branch of the Phoenix Public Library. Its full title is the Burton Barr Central Library, named after another monument of Arizona history, once known as “the most powerful man in Arizona.”
Barr’s name tends to come up every January among lawmakers, lobbyists and political railbirds who remember how things used to be – when there was a unifying person at the Capitol whose biggest mission was to get things done.
Burton Barr was born and raised in Portland, Oregon. He earned two Silver Stars and two Bronze Stars in World War II before settling in the Valley. Not long after, he ran for the state Legislature and began serving north-central Phoenix in 1964. Just two years later, he became the majority leader as Republicans took control.
Living up to his nickname, “Mister Magic” aimed to practice a bit of prestidigitation on the state’s problems. To do that, he crossed the aisle and encouraged Democratic leaders. Art Hamilton served 26 years in the state House, 18 of those as minority leader, and was renowned as the master of legislative rules. Hamilton credits Barr for forcing his hand.
“He said to me, ‘Look, Hamilton, I don’t need the rules. I’ve got the votes, but you need to know these rules better than anyone else in the building. That’s how you’ll make your mark and make others better,’” Hamilton recalls. “It was the best advice anyone ever gave me.”
Of course, in today’s political world of Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, Barr would be labeled a moderate for deigning to value the ideas of the other party. Yet Barr was anything but a wishy-washy flip-flopper. He came by his methods honestly.
“He’d lived through the Depression. He also had the formative experience of being in the U.S. Army before, during and after World War II,” explains lobbyist Don Isaacson, who served as Barr’s house attorney for six years. “Those life experiences formed his outlook.  As a politician, he was a card-carrying, fiscally conservative Republican. But as a leader, he recognized the need to reach out and meet in the middle to solve problems.”
That helped make Barr the most influential of state lawmakers and the man to see about getting things done. Like House Minority Leader Hamilton did, Senate Minority Leader Alfredo Gutierrez and Governor Bruce Babbitt looked to Barr for help in enacting changes to benefit Arizona’s future.
“He was a man of incredible hope and optimism,” Hamilton says. And, Isaacson adds, “On issues of infrastructure or prisons or Medicaid, there wasn’t a Republican or Democrat or liberal or conservative approach for him. It was about pragmatic problem-solving.”
So what else was there for Barr to do after controlling the state Legislature for two decades? The governorship had a nice ring to it, especially considering the ninth-floor Capitol office would be empty once Babbitt decided to make his quixotic attempt at the White House. To many, Barr’s ascension seemed obvious.