He’d served in the House with great distinction, raised a lot of money and was comfortable with the media. Plus, his GOP primary opponent in 1986 was Valley car salesman and oft-time political loser Evan Mecham, who’d come up short repeatedly in challenges to other heavyweights – including Arizona’s first senator, Carl Hayden.
Reporters prepared their stories, and campaign assistants polished Barr’s victory speech, but no one ever got the chance to hear it.
For former state lawmaker and current political consultant Stan Barnes, the Barr campaign’s hotel suite seemed like the only place to be that September night.
“I went there for two reasons. One, I knew Barr would win. Two, they had free food and booze because Barr had lots of money,” Barnes says with a laugh. “But the first results had Barr losing to Mecham. Until that moment, the room was one big party. When those numbers came down, it was as if someone had flown over the party with mustard gas. And Barr never came out that night.”
Dallas Morning News Editor Keven Willey was a reporter for The Arizona Republic at the time. She was just as shocked as the political establishment was, but she says the Barr campaign – and the press, for that matter – hadn’t taken Mecham seriously.
“People who’d been in Arizona for a long time discounted Evan Mecham,” Willey says. “But Burton Barr did not run a good campaign. He’d never run for statewide office before.”
And, political railbirds say, the Barr campaign had more than $700,000 in leftover funds – a large sum in a 1986 election – but Barr’s camp didn’t see the need to spend it in the primary when the general election was just two months away.
His friend and colleague, Democrat Art Hamilton, says that voting down Barr remains one of the biggest mistakes Arizona voters have ever made.
“Burton Barr would have made a great governor. I think many of the problems we still grapple with today would have had a more gentle time had Mr. Barr been governor,” Hamilton says.
Barr’s primary loss and Mecham’s subsequent general election win over Democrat Carolyn Warner and Independent Bill Schulz also signaled a sea change in Arizona’s political waters. Stan Barnes began serving in the House two years after Barr’s defeat, and he knew the drastic shift had already occurred.
“Politics moved from ‘fight like hell for things you believe in during the day, and go out and eat and drink with your political enemy at night,’” Barnes says. “Disagreements started becoming personal. It’s resulted in a lot less camaraderie today and a loss of the simple fun of self-governance.”
Arizona voters did their part to change the atmosphere, too, by approving term limits in 1992. Now lawmakers are kept from serving more than eight years in the House and eight years in the Senate. State Representative Pete Rios was a freshman during the days of Barr’s power. He served before and after term limits were created and sees the stark difference.
“Now legislators don’t have the ability to build long-term relationships and trust,” Rios says. “What helped forge Barr’s great work with Art Hamilton and Alfredo Gutierrez were longevity and seniority. They had time to work together and trust each other.”
Hamilton believes that the Burton Barr who became the state’s most powerful legislator couldn’t exist at today’s Capitol.
“I clearly believe that Mr. Barr would have difficulty functioning in that place,” Hamilton says, “because of term limits and the ideological intractability that seems to be resonant in the body politic.”
Burton Barr passed away on January 13, 1997, at the age of 79. His name lives on at the Capitol through his daughter. Suzie Barr says she inherited her dad’s expressive eyebrows. (“It was like he had an extra muscle in his forehead,” lobbyist Don Isaacson says.) She also inherited his pragmatic political outlook, working as a legislative adviser to Governor Janet Napolitano.
“I’m a Republican working for a Democratic governor,” Suzie says with a throaty laugh. “For me, the letter after the name, D or R, doesn’t mean nearly as much to me as it does to a lot of other people. I’m more for good policy, people and decision-making.”
She’s proud of her last name, adding that she doesn’t go more than a week without hearing an appreciative story about her father from across the state. And while she’s glad that people remember Barr for his political and legislative accomplishments, she still thinks of him as “Dad.”
“Now that I know how the Legislature works, I can’t imagine the majority leader just getting up and leaving for his kid’s soccer game,” she says. “Here he was, considered one of the most powerful people in the state, but he never missed one of my games, which was just amazing.”