Biography
Born Jane Dee Bowersock in Kansas City, Missouri, Hull graduated from the University of Kansas with a degree in education. She taught elementary school in Kansas and, while her husband was a public health physician there, in Navajo Nation schools at Chinle, Arizona.
She moved to Arizona in 1962, after hearing a Barry Goldwater speech. She campaigned for Goldwater in the United States presidential election in 1964.
Hull entered politics in 1978 by being elected to the Arizona House of Representatives as a Republican. She served for seven terms, including two as Speaker of the House, the first female Speaker in Arizona history.
In 1991, while she was Speaker, the Arizona legislature experienced a major political scandal called AZSCAM, which resulted in the resignation or removal of ten members of the House and Senate. As a result, Speaker Hull instituted a number of ethics reforms to reestablish public confidence in the legislature.
Hull was elected Arizona Secretary of State in 1994. After Governor Fife Symington was forced to resign due to a felony conviction, Hull became governor on September 5, 1997. She was sworn in by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, herself a former Arizona legislator. Arizona has no lieutenant governor, so the secretary of state, if holding office by election, stands first in the line of succession.
Hull was elected governor in her own right in 1998. This election was particularly significant because it was the first time in the history of the United States that all five of the top elected executive offices in one state were held by women: Hull; Betsey Bayless, secretary of state; Janet Napolitano, attorney general; Carol Springer, treasurer; and Lisa Graham Keegan, Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction. Hull was constitutionally barred from running for a second full term in 2002 (the Arizona constitution limits the Governor to eight consecutive years in office), and she was succeeded by Janet Napolitano, who defeated Matt Salmon.
While she was governor, Hull's relations with home state U.S. Senator John McCain were strained. During the 2000 primary season she endorsed his opponent, Texas Governor George W. Bush, in the Arizona primary. In return, Hull was touted as a possible nominee for U.S. Ambassador to Mexico.
After leaving office, she spent three months in New York City, as a public delegate from the United States to the United Nations General Assembly (2004).
Read more about this topic: Jane Dee Hull
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