Arizona lost a former governor and three former lawmakers who left their marks on state government as leaders and pioneers.

Raul Castro

Flags flew at half-staff April 10 to honor the passing of the former governor, the only Latino elected to the state’s highest office. He was 98.

Castro, a Democrat, was the party’s nominee for governor in 1970, but he lost the general election to incumbent Jack Williams.

Castro’s second campaign for governor four years later ended in victory. He resigned in 1977 to become the U.S. ambassador to Argentina.

Castro was born in Sonora, Mexico, to a poor family and came to epitomize the American Dream.

He earned his teaching degree from Arizona State Teachers College of Flagstaff (now NAU), law degree from the UofA College of Law, and went on to serve as the Pima County attorney in 1954, the U.S. ambassador to Argentina, El Salvador, and later, Bolivia.

Lloyd House

The former Navajo Code Talker was the first Native American elected to the Arizona Legislature, serving in the House from 1967 to 1968.

House, a Democrat from Window Rock when he was elected, died Jan. 2 in Surprise. He was 83.

His election came a year after passage of the Federal Voting Rights Act, which prohibited racial discrimination in elections. House said in an oral history interview in 2008 that he won the primary by a sliver of a margin, and very few residents of the Navajo Nation, the largest voting bloc in his district, voted for him in the general election.

“I won with non-Indian votes, by golly,” House said. “I told them that up there, I said, ‘You know the white man wanted me in there because no Indian had been in there before.’ That’s why I won. I said, ’You guys didn’t even vote, my brothers.’”

Jim Skelly

Skelly was a long-time chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and presided over an impeachment hearing of then-Gov. Evan Mecham in 1988. He voted for impeachment.

Skelly, a Scottsdale Republican, was elected in 1970 to the House and retired in 1990. He died Nov. 3 at the age of 81.

He was a staunch conservative and ardent opponent of abortion and relished heated floor debates, but he didn’t hold grudges and could be found kidding around with his ultra-liberal colleagues afterward.

He had a large map on the wall behind his desk. Pasted over Phoenix, where he and fellow lawmakers convened, was a mug of Bozo the Clown.

Jack Brown

The St. Johns lawmaker spent 36 years advocating for rural Arizona. Brown died Oct. 28 in St. Johns at the age of 86.

He was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1962 and served until 1974. He returned to the House in 1987, then moved to the Senate in 1997, then back to the House in 2005. His two stints as Democratic leader came decades apart – first from 1969 to 1972 in the House, then from 1997 to 2004 in the Senate – and he served in the Legislature over parts of five decades.

Brown’s commitment to the rural parts of the state drove him, said Art Hamilton, the longtime former House minority leader. Brown served as assistant leader under Hamilton for two terms.

—   Don Harris and Jim Small contributed to this report.