With 55 years of experience lobbying at the state Capitol, Barry Aarons, with his signature bow tie, is one of the most recognizable lobbyists in Arizona. From starting as a page after graduating from Arizona State University, to working for the Arizona Corporation Commission to former Gov. Fife Symington’s office and finally starting his own lobbying firm, Aarons’ impact on Arizona history and intimate knowledge of public policy make him distinct among the state’s highest ranking politicos. 

The questions and answers have been edited lightly for style and clarity.

Take me back to when you first started working in this field. What got you interested in it?

You know, nobody says “I want to be a lobbyist” when I grow up. When I came out of college, I had worked for the Republican legislative campaign committee, and I remember after I was about to graduate from college — I was just short of my 20th birthday — and I went to the fellow who would become the Arizona speaker of the House, a fellow named Tim Barrow, and said, “I need a job.” He said, “Well, I can make you a page in the House.” They paid me $102.49 a week and I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. I was actually going to be paid to be in the center of politics. I had been a page and then the legislative liaison for a couple of agencies, and I had gotten to know the people at what was then Mountain Bell Telephone, which was before the breakup of the Bell system. And they hired me, sent me up to Colorado, where I had all eight states that we had in the old Mountain Bell company. I was there for about a year and a half, and then the fellow who had been the lobbyist for Mountain Bell retired. Shortly thereafter, they asked me to come back and be the “Number Two” here in Arizona, and I’ve been doing it ever since. So I’ve been doing this for 55 years.

You’ve spoken before about growing up in the Bronx and your father. What did your dad do when you were a kid?

He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1932, and he went to work for Warner Brothers Pictures, where he handled negotiations and contracts with the movie stars. They dragged him out of his office kicking and screaming at age 75. I’ll be 75 next month. There’s a message there. He was always interested in politics. We were the kind of family that all sat around the dinner table and he would talk about politics and he’d make me read at least one story from the front page of The New York Times before I could read the sports pages. New York Times front page stories go on forever. 

Who is the biggest star your dad worked with? 

He signed Humphrey Bogart to his Warner Brothers contract. He signed the Three Stooges to their Warner Brothers’ contract. There was a rule in the contract that they all had to be present and sign at the same time, so they got on a train from New York to Chicago and they played (with) him overnight. They’d get two of them in a compartment. You go out to find the third one, you bring him back and one was missing. He said, “I’m going to get fired. I couldn’t get them all in the room.” He trudged back to the compartment about an hour before they were supposed to get into Chicago station, and he opens the door and they’re all there.

What was it like working as Gov. Symington’s legislative director?

Oh, a lot of highlights and then a lot of lowlights, too. For somebody in my position as a lobbyist and relatively young at the time, it was great. You always want to be able to work at the seat of power. You get in the morning at 7:00-7:30, and there’s a pile of stuff waiting for you. Everybody’s always your best friend when you’re on the Ninth Floor. And, at the end of the day, the pile is still there and you don’t know where the day went. You know, and it’s 7:30-8:00 at night, you’re saying, “Jesus Christ, what did I get done today?” I mean, I was busy the whole day running, running, running. He had a very successful legislative program and got charter schools passed. We were one of the first states to do charter schools. He was very proud of that. He made reductions in the personal income tax. He would have liked to have eliminated it completely, but every year we got a little bit. Of course, we had the luxury of having, except for that first session, really solid Republican majorities with really strong young people in leadership. And because of that, you’re able to work with them and negotiate with them, and everybody gets what they want and so on. 

Do you have a particular legislative session that stands out to you as a lobbyist?

Back in 1983, we did not have statewide 911. You were risking your life if you were in a place that didn’t have 911. Mountain Bell had some money at the Corporation Commission that was left over from a refund — about $25 million. So we decided that if we got that $25 million and could get it away from the commission’s hands, we could use it to develop the system. And then, if we had an ongoing revenue stream, we’d be able to keep it going forever. We decided the best thing to do was to put a small tax — I think we put a nickel on every local exchange line. I’ll never forget we decided we were going to do a little survey research to see how the public would react to having to pay an extra nickel so they could have 911 and what we found was the public was overwhelmingly supportive of paying an extra nickel for statewide 911. 

What’s something you think people don’t realize about lobbying?

I don’t think people realize how much goes into building relationships with legislators. Some people believe that lobbying is all about wining and dining. When I was at Mountain Bell, they kind of discouraged “overdoing it,” so we say. They would say, “Look, the rule is, if you can’t write his name down, don’t take him to lunch.” In other words, we are going to report anything. I’ll never forget I went to a state chamber for golf tournaments and the drink cart came around and I bought a member of the House a beer for $4. I reported it, and one of you guys called and said, “Hey, did you really report this?” I said yeah, we have a rule that if I spend money, then I’m required to report it. So, because of that we were kind of disincentivized to do a lot of heavy duty wining and dining, if you will.

What’s the most rewarding part of the job for you?

There’s obviously this good feeling that you get when a bill is passed and you see the governor signs it. You can say, “We did that.” It’s also a rewarding part when we’re fighting like hell against something and we finally see it defeated. But I think the most rewarding thing is when a group of people who have disparate interests are able to come around a table and talk about what their wants and needs are and they throw out ideas for each other and they do one of three things. The things that we know we’re never going to agree with, we throw them out. The things that we know we’re going to agree on, we say, OK, we’re all going to agree with that. The stuff that’s in the middle, we negotiate out. And there’s much more legislation that happens that way than gets rammed through by a powerful lobbying organization against an underrepresented organization. 

What advice do you have for lawmakers this upcoming session as they face a tight money outlook?

Well, the money issue is relatively simple. Life is easier when you don’t have any money because then it’s just easier to just say no to everybody. It means you’ll have to make some tough decisions. It means that they’re going to have to maybe find some new revenue sources. I’m not advocating for a tax increase or anything like that, but they’ve got to start thinking about how they grapple with some of the issues that are taking more money. This year’s going to be a challenge. I think with water it’s going to be a challenge. Every year is different. The scariest years I’ve ever seen were the COVID years. From a standpoint of being a lobbyist and trying to get anything done, it was horrible. And then in ‘21, we did it all over again, but they had these rules. You waited outside, you got ushered in so you could speak, and then you got ushered out of the building — the craziness that went on that year. 

I want to ask about the bowtie, your signature look. What do you like about it?

There’s three reasons to wear a bow tie. Number one, I’m asthmatic. You don’t have to tie a bow tie as tight around your neck. Number two, you never spill soup on a bowtie. You can wash your shirt but once you spill on a tie, it’s gone. You can dry clean it, but it’ll never look the same. The third reason is it has become my signature, and I kind of like it.