Grant Woods, an appreciation

The spontaneous outpouring of grief on news of Grant Woods' death at 67, too too young, is a measure of the man. We'll never see the same for Doug Ducey or Kyrsten Sinema or almost any Arizona pol you can name. Something similar might happen for Janet Napolitano or Terry Goddard, but this is an elite club.

Woods and I became friends when I returned to Phoenix in 2000 as a columnist for the Arizona Republic. A graduate of Mesa's Westwood High, we had long-running jokes because I had graduated from rival Coronado High in Scottsdale. He was a valuable off-the-record source and I knew the score. He'd already been ridden out of the Republican Party as a RINO. The state party had been radicalized since he was Attorney General from 1990 to 1999.

He was an outlier from the start, forcing the eccentric Bob Corbin from the primary and emphasizing civil rights, including a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. Gov. Evan Mecham had repealed his predecessor, Bruce Babbitt's holiday proclamation in 1987. The holiday didn't become state law until 1992.

Although he was a John McCain protege and an advisor to Jan Brewer, he was never constrained by party lines. Woods campaigned for Napolitano as governor in 2002. The same year he endorsed Terry Goddard for Attorney General. They were, in his view, the most qualified candidates.

Lately, he had been on the cable news circuit as a never-Trump Republican-turned-Democrat. I kept nudging him to run for governor or challenge Sinema in the Senate primary. I did it in our last communication.

It might have happened.

Woods was ensnared in the Fiesta Bowl scandal of 2009, where he investigated whether bowl employees gave illegal campaign contributions. He cleared them — prematurely. Another investigation found widespread illegalities and financial mismanagement. CEO John Junker and five other employees were convicted of crimes. Woods admitted he had failed in a Republic op-ed: “I should have worked harder to live up to the standards I set for myself, if for no other reason than to protect my reputation. But I didn’t get the job done this time, and I regret greatly that I let my client down.”

This failed to dent his reputation and he remained in demand as a lawyer for prominent clients and was appointed special prosecutor on three occasions. Woods moved on when his craven law firm fired him for criticizing Diamondbacks owner Ken Kendrick, a man much deserving of criticism. Woods was among the very few former Arizona politicians who remained popular after he left office.

As E.J. Montini wrote:

Over time, and particularly in the past couple of years, Woods evolved into one of those iconic Arizona figures very much like his one-time boss and lifelong friend, the late Sen. John McCain.

He’d been a Republican most of his life but, like McCain, wasn’t one to put party over country. 

I learned that about him in the 1990s, when he was Arizona’s Republican attorney general and more than a few times tangled with Arizona’s Republican Gov. Fife Symington.

I wrote about him often in those days. Spoke with him often. Argued with him often. But so, too, did everybody. Or so it seemed. He liked to laugh. He liked bumping heads. He didn’t take himself too seriously.

Contingency can be tragic in history. I think of my friend Carolyn Warner, who should have been governor instead of the vile Mecham. Or Terry Goddard, who should have followed in the footsteps of his father and been governor instead of the second-rate Brewer or Ducey. Or Grant Woods and what might have been. The result might have been a very different and much better Arizona.

Every day's a gift. Tell your friends how much you love them.

 

 

 

 

 

Comments

[Colleen]

He was my hero for many reasons, but most of all for foiling Trump in AZ. Yes, a lot of people contributed to that effort, but Cindy McCain and Grant Woods put their shoulders to the wheel in a big way. I joked at the election that I could hear the ghost of John McCain laughing, but what I really heard was Grant and Cindy doing what they knew he would want them to do and what he would do if he were still alive.

No "May" about it. His memory IS a blessing.

[Rodney L Iverson]

I was honored to meet this great man once. I begged him to run for senate, governor or president. He would have been great at any of them. We really have lost one of the best.

[soleri]

“I should have worked harder to live up to the standards I set for myself, if for no other reason than to protect my reputation. But I didn’t get the job done this time, and I regret greatly that I let my client down.”

We all fail in one thing or another. What was once great about politics and social reality overall, is that we could balance that perspective so wrong turns didn't always result in career decapitation or public humiliation. Today's zealotry, both on the right and left, is a reminder how screwy our lives get when we forget this. The puritanical strain today is not only cruel to ourselves, it's virtually insane. Anyone who could apologize like Grant Woods is a reminder what we're losing in the current climate. Democracy cannot survive when we hate so profligately that we compulsively make mountains out of every molehill.

35 years ago, Ev Mecham showed what happens when the siren song of purity bulldozes reality-based politics. In retrospect, we can see how he anticipated our present-day madness. Yet politics used to work. Think of conservatives like Bob Usdane, Jim Skelly or Burton Barr. On the other side, Democrats were sensible and pragmatic. There were no grand schemes to reinvent society so no one's feelings ever get hurt. Now it's a shambles and the best we can hope for is maybe a political division so stark that nothing good or bad ever gets done. That said, democracy is now whistling past its own graveyard.

[Stephanie Oliver]

The cockeyed optimist in me was enlivened by your column, Jon. Thank you.

Redhead

[Bill Pearson]

I've quit posting here, still read with interest. This one got me off the snide. I once wrote a poem, "If Only". Your tribute to Grant brought an addition to my long lost thoughts: If only there were 100 US Senators like Grant Woods; If Only there were 435 House of Representative members of Grant Woods ilk, this country would have no problems; none. RIP Grant, you done good.

[Gary]

It's a shame the items you stated aren't 100% accurate.

[Cal Lash]

100%
Perfectionism is a common factor in mental disorders.
Grant Woods was certainly not perfect. And there are those that would disagree with this column and its opinions.
Now that Woods has left seems best to try and be as kind and generous as humanly possible to all species on this Star we call Earth.
One among galaxies of never ending wonders.

[Joe Schallan]

Robert Robb has a heart-felt -- and nonpolitical -- appreciation on AzCentral:

https://www.azcentral.com/viewpoints/robertrobb/

[B. Franklin]

Grant Woods' greatest political accomplishment was realizing that the Republican Party was rapidly slipping into a seemingly irreversible form of madness and getting out while sounding the alarm.