Friday, February 23rd, 2007...3:00 pm
Bolo Ties
An article in the Tucson Citizen this week talked about the retreat of the bolo tie from our legislature. There was a time that our legislature was full of them, but the reporter was only able to find one, some goofball from Barrio Viejo.
The reporter missed out on a big part of the bolo tie story: the fact that Arizonans brought them to congress. In Mo Udall’s early years, he wore them on the floor of the US House. He had to put up a little bit of a fight to make sure that these would be considered acceptable neckwear. Later, Colorado Representative and Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell was able to wear his own non-standard neckwear because of Udall’s trailblazing.
After Mo married his second wife, Ella, she demanded that he ditch the bolo ties and turquoise belt buckles and dress more like a “real congressman.”
Barry Goldwater was also a proponent of the bolo tie. I don’t think he ever wore one on the floor of the Senate, but he worked with the Bolo Tie Society to help declare the bolo tie our official state neckwear here back in the early 1970’s.
When Raúl Grijalva made his speech on the Iraq resolution last week, he chose to wear his home state’s neckwear. Would have helped if he took care of that top button though…
3 Comments
February 23rd, 2007 at 5:56 pm
Bolo ties are real AZ. Cool photo of our rep Tom.
February 24th, 2007 at 12:24 am
I’m a proud wearer of the bola tie (come on, you of all people should know that it’s a bola tie not a bolo tie). I wish more people would wear them and I make sure that I wear them when I’m in DC visiting Congress. I’ve seen State Senator Flake wearing one every now and again.
February 25th, 2007 at 3:54 pm
Teej:
Then I’m on the wrong side of this debate because I worked as hard as I could for Phil Cobb, a veteran who wears a traditional tie with a big American flag on it, to get rid of Jake Flake. And I intend to work for Phil again this next time.
As far as bola ties, when I lived in New Mexico, there was a humorous story. The Santa Fe police got upset that some of their undercover and plainclothes detectives were wearing them so they issued a directive (very publically, mind you) that prohibited them from wearing bola ties. So then all the drug dealers started wearing them. So then they had to revoke the directive.
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