Tony West believed in public service. As a Republican, he served five terms in the House and three in the Senate from 1973 until 1988. A concurrent resolution to honor his life said: “Tony was well-known for his tough anticrime bills and fiscal conservatism during his tenure in the Arizona Legislature, but his legislative career also reflects his social conscience.” He championed legislation to establish programs for the hearing impaired, county sports authorities, and funding for crime victim compensation. 

He moved on to be the state treasurer from 1991 to 1998, where he was instrumental in passing Proposition 102 in 1998, a measure that allowed the State Permanent Land Trust to invest in equity securities, which drove up the fund’s balance by billions of dollars. 

West’s political career came to an end in 1999 when the Arizona Supreme Court stripped him of his seat on the Arizona Corporation Commission because during his campaign and during the election process he sold securities, a conflict of interest for someone serving on the commission, which regulated securities. 

West, a rancher whose family “were pioneers in the cotton industry in Arizona and California,” died on Jan. 14, 2016, at the age of 78. 

The following interview is part of the Arizona State Library Oral History Project, which started in 2006, and is printed here as an occasional feature called In Their Words. Below are excerpts from West’s undated interview with the project in which he discusses a vote that haunted him, getting elected to the Legislature, and the struggle to attain funding parity between Arizona State University and the University of Arizona. 

Capital Punishment

I have only one vote out of the thousands and thousands of votes that I cast, that I look back and circumspect, that I made the right vote. And that was my freshman year on the Judiciary Committee. I had promised everybody — in those days capital punishment was a big deal — and I had promised everybody in my district that I would support capital punishment for those people guilty of heinous crimes. Well, remember, I said earlier that I’m a pro-lifer, so there’s a conflict between the sanctity of human life in the womb.

I rationalized that people have forfeited their right to live by some heinous crime, taking somebody else’s life. And I supported the capital punishment bill, but that’s always haunted me whether I made the right decision or not.  

Running for the Legislature

In 1972 I had a friend who was a speaker of the House by the name of Tim Barrow call me and say that he wasn’t going to run again, and he wanted to know if I was interested in running for his seat in the House. I told Tim that, yeah, I did have an interest, particularly as I could, you know, be of some service to the public. I believe in public service, but it would depend on his two running mates. One was Ray Rottas, who was the state senator at that time, from our district. Another was Stan Akers, who was Tim’s running mate for the House, the second seat, and Stanley was a whip of the House. So the three of us met somewhere, probably right here in this office, and we talked about it. I said, well, the only way I’m really interested is if we team up together, because I’m not going out there in a pack of wolves by myself. And they talked it over and said, “Yeah, okay, kid.” I was kid. “We’ll go as a team.” Rottas says, “I don’t have any opposition, so I’m only going to pay 20% of the cost.” And Akers said, “You know, I got seniority, and I’m only paying 30%. That leaves at least 50% of the cost for you to pick up, kid.” “Alright, you got a deal,” shook hands, and we ran together as a team. We were very successful for either four or five elections, I don’t remember. Rottas, Akers, West, we made a lot of commitments to the public here, and I think we lived up to all of them. 

On why Tim Barrow called him to run

I think, to say it humbly, that they gained a lot of respect for me when I ran (a campaign against someone) who none of them liked. He was a real thorn in all their sides, of those who were serving. So I think I gained not only his respect — he didn’t call me out of the blue alone, obviously, he had talked to Akers and Rottas, and they had somebody else that was gonna, that was running, that they really didn’t prefer. And so it kind of got down to, I guess they selected me. It was a five-man primary when we ran in ’72 and I’ll never forget that five-man primary. I came in first and had a little fun with Akers, because I was organizing the freshman to elect him as the speaker of the House.

On being part of the “Wrecking Crew”

Well, it was originally done by (political writer) John Kolbe, who wrote it in a column because we were out to change the budget and reduce spending. And so there were four of us that were in the original Wrecking Crew in Kolbe’s column. And it was meant to be derogatory, and it was, of course…

Well, it was just his way of writing the column. You know, we had to stop the budget process and hold it up. And John, he liked the system. He was a lot more liberal than we were, and maybe some of his programs were going down. So anyway, he wrote the column, and then (Thomas) Goodwin probably used it somewhere on the floor. 

Tom was the Appropriations chair. He was a very unique individual. Served with him for 10 years, eight on Appropriations. And Tom had a propensity to hit Durant’s at night, in fact, in the daytime. And Tom liked his booze, and one time, couldn’t get the votes for the budget, so he sticks it in the trunk of his car and goes to Tucson. We had to get DPS to go down there and stop him and bring it, get the budget back. Tom was just different. He was a professor at the University of Arizona, and his whole ox was to fund the University of Arizona, and they ought to canonize him, because he over funded them until we got there. When we got there, I organized the freshmen. And in those days, we had a caucus rule that you couldn’t get a budget out unless you had 31 votes. Well, there was 38 of us, and there was about nine or 10 of us that agreed that we weren’t voting for that budget unless ASU got parity. So this goes on, we’re tied up for three days. I mean, we’re not moving. And Goodwin was going crazy because he’s got all this money in there for the University of Arizona. Akers calls him in the office and he had a talk, and come back to caucus — they were closed caucuses in those days  — and then came back to caucus. And (Republican Majority Leader Burton) Barr said something to him, and he says, so just, man, let me go down and talk to Dr. (John) Schwada, who was the president of Arizona State University, and let’s see what he’s going to do with another 10 million. So we got parity that year, and we got parity ever since.