When Karan English was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1992, she was only the second woman from Arizona to serve in Congress, and it had been 60 years since the first one, Isabella Greenway. English, a Democrat from northern Arizona, was a one-term congresswoman, however, losing to Republican J.D. Hayworth in 1994. Before her stint in Congress, she had already served three terms as a state lawmaker, and during that time, she was falsely accused of accepting a bribe and voted to impeach then-Gov. Evan Mecham. English recounts those stories and one about an “arrogant” lobbyist in the excerpts below, which come from an interview she did for the Arizona State Library’s Arizona Memory Project. This is the first of an occasional series called “In Their Words,”  using these oral interviews.

On AZScam

It was set up by, I think, the Maricopa County attorney, and, at first, I thought it was just targeted towards Democrats, but both Democrats and Republicans were targeted in this scam, and I was accused of taking a bribe. I was accused, and I had to hire an attorney to prove that I didn’t take this bribe, and he apparently had Stedino (Undercover informant Joe Stedino), I’m not sure if that’s his real name or his scam name.

He apparently was at this fundraiser for five Democratic women, we were raising some money. I don’t think I ever met him, and he came to this fundraiser and apparently gave me a contribution. I had missed the fundraiser because I was in the hospital, and I had come, I was, I had come up here. In fact, I was, it’s in all the newspapers, so I’m not telling you anything new, but … I had a hysterectomy, and I was in the hospital and missed my own fundraiser. Well, apparently, he was at this fundraiser and had given to all five of us, and so I got contributions, and he said that he had bribed me to vote for a casino or something like that, but I wasn’t there, so I had to hire an attorney to prove that I was not part of a bribe, because I didn’t even meet the guy. So, he said some things that were a little out of line.  

So it was just a horrible situation … and then many of my friends went to jail or left the Legislature because they had taken illegal money, and, in some cases, it was considered a bribe. Whether it ever really was, I don’t know. I don’t know for sure, but I knew several of the people that left and went to jail, and … the money it cost to get yourself out of trouble, falsely accused, and I have to tell the whole world I had a hysterectomy, you know? I mean, geez, that’s just, well, it’s not so embarrassing, but you don’t have any private life anymore. It was kind of nasty and it just, it was those times when politics got really nasty and they’re trying to uncover the unethical legislators. In doing so they made them unethical. And I don’t know who, what, who they were trying to target, if it was just kind of a blanket target, but I really, the rumor was they were going after people who were friends of the firemen and labor. That was the rumor.

On Gov. Evan Mecham’s Education Plan and Impeachment

I sat on the Education Committee, and he was trying to lobby people to support his values or his vision for education. And his vision was to defund public education, defund it, and move money to private education and so I had this conversation with him, and it lasted almost two hours. I will never forget this talk I had with Evan Mecham, and he was telling me his vision for education. And I came out of that meeting thinking the governor of Arizona wants to harm the future academic responsibility of this state and thousands and thousands of children, and part of the thinking is to take money out of public education, is to change the liberal conservative value based systems, because public education is too liberal, and so you move it to private education, and you can more easily control the minds and the thinking and the values. And so that was what his premise was based on. And I’m not using his exact words, I’m just telling you what I came out of that meeting feeling. And so the whole idea was to get the liberals out of education, and that had to do with teaching sex education and all those, all the other things you can think of that would be too liberal and evolution, and it just was mind-boggling to me. So the way to make sure those things weren’t taught to our kids is to make sure kids had a private, controlled education, and that was his, that was his thought. And so when I, when I left that meeting, I thought, man. 

Impeachment was started shortly thereafter.  

The Republicans were embarrassed of him, and so the Democrats didn’t have to do too much. The Republicans had to clean up their mess. They elected him, and they had to clean it up. And so, you know, the Democrats are going to, of course, the political strategy is, yeah, if they want him out, let’s, I’ll go for that. The impeachment process was grueling. It was grueling. And then the vote, in fact, I left in tears … I was so exhausted. And, and I think Mecham was maybe this one out of six governors ever impeached in the country, I mean, very rare to have anybody ever impeached, a governor ever impeached, and to leave in that light and to embarrass him and put him through what he went through, and the guy would not step down, and he wouldn’t give up and we had to give him credit for for his stamina. You know, it was very difficult for everybody.  

On a Lobbyist Picking Up the Dinner Tab

They’re so arrogant, and they had gotten away with so much, and they walk into the Legislature, and they’re in the lobby, and they’ve got all these facts and figures, and they just were just incredibly arrogant. One of them, I was at a, I think we were in the final closing hours of the Senate on one year, and we had all gone to a local steakhouse for dinner, and one of these guys picked up our dinner, and I had steak and beer and whatever, you know, and I started to pay my bill, and the waitress says, “No, that guy over there has paid for it,” and there was 12 or 13 of us legislators, and this guy had bought our dinner. So, I was pissed, and I went back to the House, and he had legislation on the, I mean, we were voting on legislation. So I went back to the House and he, of course, he’s, he’s rubbing shoulders and elbows in the lobby where the lobbyists stay. And I made a big stink, and I said, “You didn’t ask me if you could buy my dinner. You have legislation that we’re voting on. It is inappropriate, and here’s 30 bucks for my dinner and take it.” And he was just dumbfounded that anybody would do something like that to him. But that is the arrogance of some of those lobbyists and, to me, that’s an ethical issue, you know. And, he didn’t ask. If he had asked me, I would have said it’s inappropriate to buy us dinner, the whole committee when we’re voting on stuff tonight. You know, it’s just not right. So I wasn’t very well liked because I did those kind of things, and I did them publicly to make a point, and I probably embarrassed myself as much as I embarrassed him, but I did it anyway. So I kind of became known as a little bit of a troublemaker with the lobbyists and then they didn’t like me either. I burnt bridges by doing that kind of stuff.