70 Year Magazine Archive

Arizona

by Sam M. Jones

Arizona Republicans, Despondent Six Months ago, are now Showing Fight

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Arizona, the baby state (admitted to the Union in 1912), has growing pains. Not only has there been an unparalleled rise in population; there is also a revolutionary wrench away from original political ties. It is still a small state politically, with perhaps a million and a quarter residents including Indians and naturalized Mexicans. But Arizona is a big state physically, in resources and in its concepts. Its citizens are not content with the old fashioned dependency which once made Arizona an adjunct of the Democratic Deep South.

Full political maturity may be some distance away, but since 1950 Arizona has unquestionably been a two-party state. The old Democratic pattern was fractured in 1950 by the election of Howard Pyle as Governor, and two years later it was smashed when Arizona elected Barry Goldwater to replace Ernest W. McFarland in the United States Senate. Pyle was reelected Governor at the same time, and another non-political newcomer, John Rhodes, won one of the state’s two congressional seats.

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