David R. Berman

If the state of Arizona has a founding father, that person is George Wylie Paul Hunt. Born in Missouri, he emigrated to the west as a young man, traveling through a number of states before settling in Globe, Arizona. After a series of odd jobs, he became a successful businessman. This soon led to service in the territorial legislature, followed by selection as one of the delegates elected to the constitutional convention called to draft a constitution for the new state. Once the constitution was approved by Congress, Hunt was elected the state’s first governor, an office he won seven times over the following eighteen years, before losing in the Democratic party primary in 1932 and dying after a final, failed attempt to return to the office two years later.

As a legislator, a participant in the writing of the state constitution, and as governor, Hunt did much to determine the shape of the nascent state. One of the strengths of David Berman’s biography is to show how Hunt accomplished this, despite a lack of an education and a deficit in many personal skills. He shows Hunt to be a determined politician, one who waged numerous political battles not out of a passion for the process but a determination to do what was right. Berman stresses Hunt’s pro-labor position, presenting it as central to both his political success and his vision for the state. And while generally sympathetic to Hunt, he is not uncritical, noting Hunt’s endorsement of often blatantly racist measures that discriminated against Asians and Hispanics. While cursory in covering the non-political aspects of Hunt’s life, his book is nonetheless a good survey of Hunt’s political career, one that shows how he came to cast such a long shadow in the history of the young state.… (meer)