Rum, Romanism and Rebellion

One of the e-mails I recieved after my post about the hoo-hah the Democrats are trying to raise about the partisan breakdown of committees pointed out to me that back in the 1960’s, when the Democrats had control of both houses of the legislature, that some committees had a 12-3 partisan make up. Well, that makes everything okay then.

I am not sure how many committees had that sort of membership, since it would have been hard to maintain too many fifteen member committees in the 80 member house of the period. So, I’m not sure how many committees were that lopsided. Aside from that though…that was over forty years ago, before a significant number of current legislators were even born. Geez, you have to go back that far to pin some outrage on the Democrats?

No matter, I put my crack research team to work to find out the partisan make-up of the Democratic-majority legislatures of the 1960’s. Here is what they found:

24th Legislature (1959-1960):

• Senate: 27 Democrats, 1 Republican
• House: 55 Democrats, 25 Republicans

25th Legislature (1961-1962):

• Senate: 24 Democrats, 4 Republicans
• House: 52 Democrats, 28 Republicans

26th Legislature (1963-1964):

• Senate: 24 Democrats, 4 Republicans
• House: 48 Democrats, 32 Republicans

27th Legislature (1965-1966):

• Senate: 26 Democrats, 2 Republicans
• House: 45 Democrats, 35 Republicans

So, it looks like through part of this period, there may have been lopsided make-up of committees because, well, the legislature was lopsided.

The House with the closest partisan split was in the 27th Legislature, which occurred during the administration of Democrat Sam Goddard. That House was actually run by a coalition of conservative “Pinto Democrats” and Republicans, with power (presumably including the power to make committee assignments) split between Democratic Speaker Andrew Jackson “Jack” Gilbert of Cochise County and Republican Majority Leader John Haugh of Pima County. This was the epitome of the “copper collar” legislatures of the period, and gave Goddard no end of grief during his too brief administration.

It would be interesting to see if those 12-3 committees were in that legislature.

The 1966 election was dominated by a scandal involving the state liquor department and also was the first conducted electing legislators by districts rather than at-large by county. This brought an end to the domination of both houses by rural Democrats, and brought an end to sustained Democratic control in either house.