There's an obvious problem when you're known as "the iron lady." Everyone wants to see if you're really as tough as you seem. Or if the title is more about bluster than guts.
So far, the first woman speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives has shown she doesn't blink very often in face-to-face political combat. Jane Dee Hull clearly loves the job, even though she spends as much time holding together her badly fractured Republican majority as she does battling Democrats. She's shown she's in charge and isn't shy about using all the powers of her office. But she's stumbled badly in trying to outwit Democrats and still faces the final crucial days of the session when leading her Republican troops will demand both bluster and guts.
She had to fight to get the job in the first place.
Hull should have been the logical candidate for speaker when the Republicans found their leadership decimated last fall. Speaker Joe Lane was defeated for re-election; Majority Leader Jim Ratliff died. And that left Jane Dee Hull, who held the No. 3 spot as majority whip. But moving up was far from automatic.
First, she had to do some fancy maneuvering. A Goldwater conservative, she aligned herself with the moderates who survived the fall election by forging an alliance with former foe Chris Herstam--the guy she'd beat two years earlier for the whip job. Meanwhile, the more conservative branch of the family tree had coalesced around Jim Meredith, who thought he'd make a better speaker, even though he'd never held a leadership position. Hull knew Meredith didn't have the votes, but she couldn't just stomp him without risking ideological war with his supporters. With Republicans holding the thinnest majority in two decades, Hull wanted as little family fighting as possible.
So she cut a new deal to give everyone something: Meredith would have the No. 2 job of majority leader and Herstam would settle for her old job as whip.
A group of women lobbyists, ecstatic that someone finally beat the good ol' boys at their game in their own playground, marked her formal swearing-in January 9 by giving her a special gavel as the symbol of her new power.
But controlling the gavel and presiding over House sessions is just the public part of her duties. Hull's real power rules in her office behind the House chambers where the deals are cut. As speaker, Hull also controls committee assignments, handing out political plums to the faithful and stacking each panel any way she wants. She even determines which bills go to which committees, allowing her to send unfavored legislation where she knows no sun could shine.
Her attempts to use that power have not always been successful.
Early this session she went toe-to-toe with the Democrats over a funding measure. But the more seasoned leader of the minority party simply outwitted and outwaited her and eventually she had to back down.
Hull has chosen some strange battles to fight. She has set herself up against virtually the entire House by blocking an insurance bill most want to approve, and her favorite "going home" bill--as in, "you aren't going home unless I get this"--has already been killed once.
But Hull's also shown she knows how to win. One committee chairman who refused to go along with her game plan found himself slapped down. Both Republicans and Democrats admired her forcefulness in handling the situation, and the finesse she used that allowed the rebuked chairman to save face.
As a result, even those who may secretly wish to see her fail have nothing but accolades for the woman many thought lacked the demeanor to do the job.
Senate Majority Leader John Mawhinney wasn't sure Hull would focus on the business at hand. He recalls that several years ago he needed two-thirds approval for an emergency clause on a bill so it would become law immediately on the governor's signature. But he lost by a hair--or, more specifically, some red hair. "I wound up one vote short because Jane was getting her hair done," Mawhinney recalls.
Many had feared Hull's sharp tongue. A few years ago, she shocked everyone by suggesting the state could stop spending so much on prisons if it just turned off the air conditioning system and let inmates suffocate.
They also worried about her progress-at-any-cost attitude. Last year, she became impatient when Scottsdale Republican Jim Skelly insisted on asking questions during a caucus meeting about a bill ready to go to the floor for a vote. She kept banging the gavel, over and over, demanding that Skelly keep quiet. Skelly, unwilling to be silenced just to suit Hull's desire to keep the caucus moving, told her to stick the gavel in her ear.
And now that she's speaker? "Thus far she's done an excellent job," says the man who suggested Hull perform the surgical procedure on herself.
"She exhibits strength at the right time and patience at the right time," says her whip, Chris Herstam.
Even House Minority Leader Art Hamilton--who would like to be speaker someday himself if the Democrats ever wrest control of the House--expresses admiration. "I expected the speaker to be a good speaker," he says. "I have not been disappointed."
That's easy for Hamilton to say. He forced Hull to back down early this session when she was trying to push through an emergency measure to get additional federal funds for the state's indigent health care program. But with only 34 Republicans, she needed Democratic help to get the 40 votes necessary for an emergency clause. Democrats favored the bill but had a price for their cooperation: Additional state funds on another measure to provide care for more pregnant women, a proposal pushed by Tucson Democrat Cindy Resnick.
Hull had other ideas and told Hamilton so in a closed-door meeting. He returned to his caucus and said the speaker bluntly told him she wasn't going to give into "that bitch" Resnick. While Resnick and all her ideas may not be favored by the 26-member caucus, they were not about to let some Republican take potshots at one of their own. So the Democrats voted en masse against the bill as the Republicans approved it--without the emergency clause.
But Hull's victory in this game of legislative "chicken" was short-lived. The speaker figured the Democrats would eventually have to go along and support the original bill because, without the emergency clause, the state would lose $400,000 a month. But Hamilton, who has been playing this game far longer than Hull, simply waited for the new speaker to blink. She did. The additional funding for pregnant women was approved, and the Democrats provided the necessary votes for the emergency clause.
Hull defends her opposition to Resnick's proposal as just a matter of money. "Yes, it's right that we add the women [to the program]," she says. "Is it right when we raise taxes every year?"
But there's more to it than that. Hull and Resnick have been at each other's throats for years. Hull, the wife of an obstetrician, has been a key drum-beater for legislation to limit the liability of physicians when a patient is injured. Resnick, the ranking Democrat on the House Health Committee, has led the opposition.
The spat with Resnick reflects the Jane Hull that sometimes comes out when she is angry at not getting her way. The same thing occurred when she suggested turning off the air conditioning system in the state prisons. "This was when we were being told how much more money [running the prisons] was going to cost," recalls Hull. Nor was she bemused by the attitude of then-corrections chief Ellis MacDougall, who blithely admitted he found it easier to do what he wanted and then ask for forgiveness from the legislature than to ask for permission in the first place. Her infamous quote, she insists, was said in jest. "I was just so frustrated it just came out," she says.
The 53-year-old Hull is typical of the Republican women of her generation. Dad was a newspaper reporter and a good Republican, too. "Politics were all that we talked about in the house," she remembers. Hull started college as a journalism major ("I'd never have made it," she says. "I don't write that well.") but ended up as a teacher.
She helped husband Terry through medical school and then quit working to raise a family. As her four children became more self-sufficient she joined GOP women's groups. And when Stan Akers decided to run for the Arizona Corporation Commission in 1978, she used her contacts to win his seat in the House from her slightly right-of-center and mostly affluent north central Phoenix district.
For much of her legislative career she lived in the shadow of her more visible running mate, House Majority Leader Burton Barr. Hull says there wasn't much need to take the spotlight or ramrod bills through the House. "The folks in District 18 didn't want much," she says, "other than chasing off the occasional effort to locate a prison there."
Hull watched and waited quietly, all the time taking notes on how Barr functioned as the real skipper of the ship, even though he had the No. 2 position. It's a role she understands, like when she goes sailing on the family boat in Lake Pleasant. "I'm a marvelous crew," she says. "I open the beer, I prepare hors d'oeuvres and I take down the sails."
But as Hull learned, she wanted to use that knowledge. By now a grandmother, Hull fought Speaker Frank Kelley's efforts to typecast women lawmakers. "Frank had a tendency to want to keep women where they belong, on the education, human resources and health committees," Hull says. She finally succeeded in Kelley's last stint as speaker and got herself appointed to chair the Government Operations Committee. (It was during this period she picked up the reputation as "the iron lady," borrowed from the name given by the press to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. "She is strong-willed, a disciplinarian," says Senator Pat Wright, who served with Hull in the House. "She likes order around her. But she's ladylike.")
But it was Barr's decision to run for governor in 1986 that really opened up the opportunities. "All of a sudden there were certain places for everyone to move," Hull says. Months before the position was even available, Hull acted to secure the job as majority whip, a job Herstam also wanted. Hull won by playing off conservative resentment of Herstam for his support of a bill to fund family-planning services.
As whip, Hull didn't flex her muscles often, getting involved heavily in only a handful of pet issues like the medical liability question. But she didn't forget her District 18 constituents and why they put her there.
Last year Hull's well-heeled North Central Avenue homeowners were fighting efforts to locate a group home in the neighborhood for people recovering from head injuries. The firm, NeuroCare, managed to obtain the necessary permit from the Phoenix Board of Adjustment. The only option left for the neighbors was to take the case to court, an expensive and time- consuming proposition that still might leave the group home in place.
Hull had a better idea. She shoved a bill through the legislature to allow disgruntled homeowners to petition the city council for review. And she made the measure retroactive so it would apply to the NeuroCare decision. With Hull's new law in place, the Phoenix City Council, led by Howard Adams (who represents the same area), then voted 5-4 to deny the necessary permit.
While she was taking care of district business, Hull also was watching out for herself at the legislative level. She mended fences with Herstam, a move that paid dividends. The night of last year's primary election, Hull watched as Speaker Joe Lane lost his southeast Arizona seat to candidates backed by ousted Governor Evan Mecham in retaliation for Lane's role in the impeachment. By 6 a.m. the following day she was on the phone to the Willcox Republican, saying she didn't want to be disrespectful before the body was cold, but she was going to campaign for his now-available leadership slot.
But Hull first had to beat out Jim Meredith, who had lined up some votes from conservatives and promised them key positions. Conservative Don Aldridge of Lake Havasu City also figured that with Meredith as speaker he would be a shoo-in for majority leader.
Hull, however, proved herself a better political strategist. She formed an alliance with Herstam, which not only solidified her own conservative support but got her backing from Herstam's moderate friends. They'd run as a ticket: She'd be speaker, he'd be majority leader.
Outflanked, it became obvious to Meredith that he couldn't line up the necessary votes to defeat Hull for the top job. So Meredith cut his own deal with Hull, supporting her for speaker if he could become majority leader. To keep peace with the right wing, Herstam agreed to slide back to the whip position. Meredith conveniently forgot his friend Don Aldridge was already seeking the majority leader's job. Nor did Meredith secure any special committee assignments or chairmanships for others who had backed him in the first place. That left him without any power base, not supported by those who backed Hull, and not respected by those who had backed him. As a result, he has the title but little more. Herstam, meanwhile, has far expanded the helpmate role of the whip into an actual policy-making position. Insiders note that was to be expected; some think that's what Hull and Herstam planned all along.
Hull's ability to function without a majority leader is the one area where she gets universal praise. By tradition, the speaker, for the most part, remains above day-to-day partisan politics, leaving that to the majority leader and the whip. But many times, Hull acts as though she holds both the No. 1 and No. 2 jobs.
For example, under normal circumstances, it would have been the majority leader negotiating with Minority Leader Hamilton over funding for pregnant women. Instead, Hull did it herself, making enemies in the process.
Hull is clearly uncomfortable when asked about Meredith's role. "There are things we ask him to do," she says, trying to show that he is part of the team. Associates say she doesn't want to publicly acknowledge what everyone in and around government seems to know. Nor does she want to embarrass Meredith, particularly this close to the end of the session when she will need a united GOP caucus.
Only Aldridge, still bitter, is willing to talk on the record about Meredith. "He's not really highly thought of," Aldridge says.
The only person who thinks Meredith is really a part of what is going on is Meredith. "It's been a dual-team leadership," he says of working with Hull. "She depends on me for a number of things as I depend on her." And the fact that his colleagues think he's not a player? "I haven't heard that."
The speaker's problems go beyond not having a majority leader. There's always someone who wants to see just how far she can be pushed.
One of the key issues this session is tightening up the tax breaks now given to owners of farmland that is set for development. State law grants dirt-cheap property tax rates to owners of farmland, a vestige of the days when rural interests held sway at the legislature. What fired up some legislators was that land which hadn't been farmed for years was still getting the tax breaks. And when state revenue officials started questioning the owners, some simply went out and borrowed a few head of cattle to show the property was being used for grazing. This "rent-a-cow" scam didn't fool anyone, particularly when the land already had been rezoned for high- density development.
With a public outcry over the scam, the time was right to close the loopholes, Hull announced. But standing in the way was Mesa Republican Mark Killian, who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee which reviews all changes to state tax laws. Killian, who runs a company which sells off farmland for development, said he didn't think there really were any loopholes that needed to be closed.
Unwilling to provoke a crisis, Hull agreed to assign the bill to Killian's panel anyway. But she warned him not to use his influence to kill the measure or gut its provisions.
Killian scheduled a hearing for the bill, but it didn't come up for a vote. So Hull simply yanked it from his committee and sent it straight to the floor. Both Killian and Hull minimize the issue, with Killian saying that he really did intend to hear the bill the following week and just "failed to communicate that" to Hull. "Maybe it was a misunderstanding," she responds. "But it was time to talk."
That "talk" with Killian defused what might otherwise have been an explosive political situation. Hull made her point that she, not Killian, was in charge without publicly upbraiding him. And Killian, having avoided public embarrassment, didn't attack Hull for short-circuiting the process.
Others are still testing.
Hull has very few "pet" issues. One is her vehement opposition to a bill that would stop Blue Cross and Blue Shield from limiting what it pays for chiropractic services.
The insurance industry has a long history of discriminating against chiropractors. Insurers have argued that chiropractic care costs more than traditional medical treatment. Anyway, they say, it is a private matter between the insurance company and the policyholder--usually an employer who buys a group plan for workers--about what services will be covered.
Lawmakers didn't buy that logic and, several years ago, passed an anti- discrimination bill. The law provides that if a medical procedure is covered by an insurance policy, the insurer can't refuse to pay the bill simply because the services were not rendered by a medical doctor. In other words, an x-ray is an x-ray, whether it is shot by a doctor, a radiologist or a chiropractor.
But Blue Cross found a way around the law by rewriting its policies. That didn't sit well with Sierra Vista Republican Bill English. He crafted a bill to close the gap. The measure was approved by a House committee. And even Hull admits that 46 of the 60 House members support it. But it sits in her bottom drawer gathering dust.
Hull insists it's not a question of the traditional enmity between M.D.'s like her husband and chiropractors, but simply a matter of money. "If it costs the insurance company more to cover these services they're going to raise everyone's rates," she argues.
But English is every bit as stubborn as Hull. He noticed that the House was about to consider another anti- discrimination bill, this one forbidding insurers from denying health coverage for children with Down's syndrome. So he just tacked the chiropractic provisions onto this measure.
Hull likes the Down's syndrome bill, but not enough to accept the chiropractic measure. So she killed it. Hull now has to find another bill for the Down's syndrome provisions--and keep it from going anywhere where English can get his hands on it.
There is no rule that lawmakers may not try to bypass the speaker. But no such deed goes unpunished. "When something like that happened I just crushed them right quick," recalls former speaker Joe Lane.
But sometimes the best use of power is not to use it. While English may be making a pest of himself on the insurance issue, Hull also recognizes how he helps her save face on other bills.
English heads the House Rules Committee, through which all bills must pass. That gives him a lot of power to kill measures, though he has a "working agreement" with Hull that if she wants a bill approved it will happen.
When Hull shoved the bill through last year to block NeuroCare and protect her well-to-do neighbors, she promised that if the law proved unworkable she would introduce legislation to rescind it. Howard Adams, who led the city council's charge against the residential care facility, now admits that the new law has created a great deal of work for him and his colleagues. So Hull, true to her word, sponsored legislation to allow each city council to decide if it will hear appeals from its board of adjustment. But the bill is languishing in English's Rules Committee. And Hull has not demanded that the bill be released.
Jim Skelly also is threatening to test Hull's resolve. He has readied an amendment to outlaw abortion and challenge the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized the practice nationwide. Hull doesn't want that divisive issue before lawmakers so close to the end of the session, particularly because Skelly has yet to prove he can muster the necessary 31 votes for final passage. Skelly, however, seems bent on getting lawmakers on record about their stance on legalized abortion.
Hull also will get a chance to prove what power she has in trying to push her own "going home" bill through the House. She supports legislation to allow students to attend whatever public school they want anywhere in the state without paying tuition. The measure, already approved by the Senate, was defeated earlier this month in the House Education Committee. With most House Democrats and a few Republicans opposed to the "open enrollment" concept, Hull has an uphill battle ahead of her.
Whether she--and the methods she uses--is successful will tell how much she learned from watching those who have wielded the speaker's gavel before her.
Stan Akers was the first speaker she knew, representing her district when she was involved at the party level. Akers took her under his wing and was, in many ways, a mentor.
"He was strong and he meant what he said," Hull recalls. "He would not put up with a lot of the crap that goes on around here these days." But, in admitting she does not try to rule with the same kind of iron hand, she also remembers that a lot of lawmakers felt he was too harsh and did not like him. Hull also shares Akers' impatience with the slow-moving nature of the legislative process. It was not unusual for Akers to work lawmakers eighteen hours at a stretch. And, perhaps to rub it in that he thought they were working so slow, during one session Akers went home, had a swim and took a shower, leaving his colleagues sweating on the House floor. (Akers, who relished his son- of-a-bitch reputation, embellished the story years later, saying that he locked everyone in.)
Akers was followed by Frank Kelley. Kelley lacked personal warmth but was a master at the tiny details of keeping the process moving. Hull tries to emulate that, but it drives some of her Republican colleagues crazy.
"It seems we're just processing bills," says Jack Jewett of Tucson, who chairs the House Transportation Committee. Other committee chiefs complain that Hull is so busy trying to expedite the process by pushing bills along that she simply churns everything up rather than accomplishing anything. In fact, until two weeks ago, the legislature had managed to send only a half-dozen bills on to the governor for her signature despite being in session for more than three months. And the major items on the agenda for this session, including water transfers from rural areas, the budget, auto insurance regulations and medical malpractice premiums for doctors, have yet to be resolved.
Hull acknowledges their sentiments. "It's in my personality to try to expedite everything," says Hull. "I never can figure out why we're around here 115 days."
But others say Hull misses the point. "The process isn't supposed to be expedited," English says. "It's supposed to be cumbersome," with the weaker measures falling by the wayside and only the best measures--or those with the most support--actually making their way into the lawbooks.
Patience also is important. Lane says he learned even with his power as speaker, he couldn't force an issue. Hull is slowly figuring that out. "I'm learning that you cannot focus [lawmakers] on the big issues too early in the session. You have to wait until the time comes."
She could take a lesson from Kelley on how to get an unpopular "going home" bill approved. One year, Kelley's going-home bill would have allowed optometrists to use eyedrops on patients being tested for glasses. That bill drew the wrath of ophthalmologists, who marshaled intense opposition to anything that would allow the use of a drug by a non-medical person. Kelley was unfazed: He simply brought the entire legislative process to a halt until he got his way.
But there was a price for all this, too. Kelley subsequently was unceremoniously ushered out of power by his colleagues, who grew tired of his imperious way of handling things.
Kelley was followed by James Sossaman. "Jamie had a certain grace," Hull recalls, which won him friends in the House.
But Hull also recognizes where Sossaman went wrong. He was, in her opinion, a weak speaker because he announced up-front he wanted the job for only one term. "Legislators figured he'd be gone and they could stall long enough to get their way," she says. Hull has made no such declaration about how long she wants the job, though it won't be for the eight years Kelley was speaker. "Frank was an excellent speaker for the first couple of years," she remembers. That changed toward the end. "He really was never here, he got uninvolved in programs." And, as he became distant and bored but still demanded unflagging loyalty, he lost the respect of his GOP colleagues. Hull learned that lesson. "Don't ever stay too long. The process will catch up with you."
Hull's unwillingness to publicly humiliate Meredith or Killian comes from the lessons she learned from Lane, her immediate predecessor. He lost his seat because of his overt political dispute with another Republican, Evan Mecham. Mecham supporters successfully challenged him in the GOP primary; they, however, lost the general election to a Democrat.
Hull's main job between now and the end of the session--probably three weeks away--is to keep those intra-party spats to a minimum. She needs to put together a budget that won't cause nuclear meltdown in her ideologically split caucus and yet won't be vetoed by the governor. "I'm pleased we've been able to hold it together so far," she says. Hull doesn't doubt that others have their own idea about just how this session should end. But she's determined to have the last word.
After all, everybody knows it ain't over till the red-haired lady sings.
