Note: At the time this interview was conducted, the Sandra Day O'Connor Institute was known as "O'Connor House." The organization's name was changed in 2015.

Carl Kunasek
My name is Carl, C-A-R-L, and I usually insert my middle initial J, and last name Kunasek, K-U-N-A-S-E-K. Today's date is November 13 2014.

O'Connor House
Terrific. All right. Well, I just want you to know that your granddaughter Elizabeth worked with us to develop some of these questions, so keep that in mind. Tell us, how do you know Sandra Day O'Connor?

Carl Kunasek
Well, she was in the legislature when I was elected. My election was in 1972. She was in the senate, I think she had been there. I don't, I really don't know when she was first elected. But I know she was in the Senate up until about 1976 or 78, something along that line. Then she was appointed to the Superior Court in Arizona. She had been in the Senate all those years and was in Senate leadership. Unfortunately I never got to know her that well while she was in the Senate. I was in the House at that time. And of course, we had separate responsibilities. I don't think the committee she was on in the Senate ever paralleled any of the committees I was on in the House. I, in the House, since I'm a pharmacist, was on the Health Committee and I had worked in the city of Mesa on various committees. So I was on the Government Committee. I was also on the Transportation Committee. And so I was never on Education, Judiciary, and so, if there was any overlap in committee work, I was, I do not recall that.

O'Connor House
Now, what was your impression of then-Senator O'Connor when you started working with her as a colleague?

Carl Kunasek
She was always very proper. And I've always been, probably, a little less formal. But nonetheless, whatever work we had to do, it had, it was respectful and, and we would just go do the work. I, as I came to know, I, you know, got to know her what I thought was a little bit better and, and have this, just developed a very healthy respect for her as a lady, as a person and as a judge, obviously, because she not only has done well in her judge works but has excelled there.

O'Connor House
Were there any pieces of legislation that you can recall working on together, or anything particularly memorable?

Carl Kunasek
I cannot recall any at this time, but you know, that's where you're going back, what, 40 or 50 years? Sometime? Maybe if I looked at some of the old books and records, yeah, I might be able to--and I don't know if she does, then, I wish I could have my memory refreshed.

O'Connor House
Well that's alright. Tell us about what things were like in Arizona back then. When you served in the legislature, what was it like?

Carl Kunasek
It was far more conservative. I served 16 years in the legislature and was never in the minority. And so as, being a person in the majority, usually, the majority was instrumental in getting things done. I mean, if you wanted to have your bill heard you had to make sure it was well received by your majority colleagues. And so it's unfortunate, I think, for me that I, because I never did serve in a divided legislature--again, there may have been a time in there, but I'm not recalling it. Because even back then the Democrat caucus was very conservative, was not like the Democrat caucus of today. The Democratic caucus back then, as matter of fact many of the, for many years, the Democrats controlled Arizona. But it was the out-of-county Democrats, the ranchers and the conservative, very conservative. The Democrat Party of early days, was a very conservative party, it was not like it is today.

O'Connor House
Who were some of those folks that you're talking about that were outside in the rural counties, those ranchers that you, were there any that stood out with you, that, that you found really amenable to working with, it was easy for you to work across?

Carl Kunasek
On the Democrat side?

O'Connor House
Yes

Carl Kunasek
Yeah. Yeah, fella by the name of Boyd Tenney, he was, I think he was from Prescott. I know he was. Then from Globe-Miami, Bill Hart. Polly Rosenbaum. They were all very, very conservative and very easy to work with. Because you could visit with them and didn't worry about what you said. Who, if they said something and they meant it, then you could go to the bank with it. But even, it, I think it's very difficult to work in the legislature or Congress, even, today, for for each other, to depend on a colleague's word. You could always depend on, if you were talking to somebody and you said, "I don't like your bill," that's fine, you don't like my bill. Or you said, "I will vote for your bill," that's fine. Better vote for it. It's not that way now, but the times have changed and perhaps, hopefully, might, you would hope that, for better, but I don't see how the working of the process is any better.

So, yeah, the Democrats back then were far more conservative. I found Alan Stephens to be a little liberal, but he was one you could work with. And so we never had any problem with any of the Democrats we had to work with. But now, keep in mind, I've been gone from the legislature 25 years, too. So I don't know, you know, how it works today. But anyway, I had a, I will say I thoroughly enjoyed my work in the legislature. I felt very proud to have been able to affect some significant laws in Arizona that were difficult to get passed. And as a matter of fact, I really questioned that we would ever get the one passed that we made it with. But nonetheless, I don't know how you go about getting things done today.

O'Connor House
Tell us about some of those laws that you helped get passed, particularly the one that was most difficult?

Carl Kunasek
Perhaps the single most significant law that I was a heavy in, shall we say. I was chairman of their Human Resources Committee during that term. And we had a problem, the, Arizona had a problem with overcrowding in mental retardation facilities. And we had three state-run facilities for mentally retarded people. And now, the mental retardation predates autism, and it predates most other medical conditions. Mental retardation is a condition you're born with. You had nothing to do, you didn't abuse your body, you didn't do anything to cause it. That's unfortunate. A birth. So we were able to get that done. I had customers in the drugstore or, one of which was very outspoken, because what we focused on was taking the, and again, there was a discussion on how you refer to them, clients or patients. And I don't know what we really resolved at that time.

But this lady's daughter was a 20 year old, daughter had been in an institution for probably over half of her life. And these institutions had twice as many as they were designed to contain. And there were three. It was one here on, on the East Van Buren, one in a placed called Coolidge. And another one, where was the other one, down in Tucson at the service center. And today, even though from 1975 or 76, when we did this, Arizona had, what? Two and a half, two and a quarter million people. And today Arizona has what, six or 7 million people? And most of these conditions are all based on the actuarial figures of people per 100,000. Well, we have two or three times as many people in Arizona today than we did then. And today we only have two institutions at designed capacity. So we took the insti--we took away one institution, and the two that survived are at what they were designed to support. Because many of the people that were in these institutions, had no people, no purpose being there, no reason to be there. But families or somebody thought that that's where they belonged, and that's unfortunately that's where they got, got put. It, you know, it destroyed their dignity and destroyed their, their self-worth. And today you see a lot of those people that would have been in an institution, today you see a lot of them working in grocery stores, for example bag people. They're able to go work in factories, garden jobs. And so, what has that done, that has given them dignity in their life. They feeling better about themselves. Many of them do progress much farther than they ever thought they would.

This lady came in and was just very upset because her daughter that, about 20, and she had a fellow traveler or fellow, another lady that had a daughter also, same thing. Well after these girls got out and working in a community in a, in a community-based setting, she came in to me about a year later and said, she wanted to thank me for pursuing and persevering on that law. Her daughter, she didn't know her daughter could live as well as she's doing. So that was through, one that I got psychologically invested in. And really I feel very good about that. A couple of other bills I was heavily involved in, building houses where they shouldn't have been built, like prone to floods, flood-prone areas. That was tough because the cities didn't want to restrict building permits. So we said you can only get a, you can only give a building permit in a place that is not subject to hundred-year flood. They were giving building permits because they got money. So how did we get it? I went to an old friend of, I'm sure of Sandra's, John McGowan. He was an attorney, was working in Washington, but he came back here and was working here. Very conservative. And so I went to John, I said, "John, what would you suggest I could do to get the cities' and counties' attention on this?" He said, "Oh," he said, he looked at what we were doing, he said, the easiest thing to do is withhold their sales tax. Okay. Well, that got their attention darn fast. So now they all issue building permits in flood-prone, areas that are not flood prone or in areas that are not flood prone.

So that was, I was saying, but perhaps the biggest bill, and it was very difficult because we had to not only win in Washington, we had to win--yeah, I mean, not only in Arizona, we got to win in Washington. That was called a bill called the AHCCS program. And I should have brought you a synopsis of what we went through in getting that passed, but Arizona never had Medicare--Medicare? Medicaid, Medicaid. Medicare is what I'm on, I forget that. But we had never had Medicaid, and 49 other states were getting federal money for this, Arizona was not. There came a time when. The further, before that, the Arizona Constitution requires that the counties are responsible for health care of their citizens. Counties in Arizona are very limited as to their resources because 85% of the state is owned by a government source or government entity. So the amount of money to be gleaned from real estate in Arizona is very limited. So we had people from other states that were not able to draw down any funds, because we didn't take Medicaid funds.

And so we pursued this avenue right after Reagan was elected. I was chairman of the Health Committee, and I wrote a letter to him exploring the idea that since Arizona had never had Medicaid, we would be willing to work with the federal government to, to provide the wherewithal so we couldn't draw down some of those Medicaid funds to help us with our health care. But kind of like as, we wrote the book. I mean, we don't want to take it for everything we have to do for it. We need waivers from certain things. Well, that was very difficult. I mean, we had to fight the AMA. We had to fight Henry Waxman, who was a big guru in the House at that time, longtime, in fact just retired this year. He didn't run again, from Los Angeles. And we had to fight the local AMA. So we had to fight a lot, but we were able to get through because of Reagan and his staff. We were able to get the waivers we needed in, sufficient for us to pass it and for them to be able to get the waivers ongoing. So we did that. And it's, that was 30 years ago. Plus now, it's still up and running, it's still making money. Many other states have copied what we wanted to do, because it was working. And so that I consider to be a great success. Yeah.

O'Connor House
What was the most tumultuous time for you when you were in the legislature?

Carl Kunasek
Probably the impeachment.

O'Connor House
Do you want to talk about it?

Carl Kunasek
Sure.

O'Connor House
So tell us about it.

Carl Kunasek
The impeachment is a very difficult procedure to undertake. Not many people understand it. Not many people understand you don't have to be, you don't have to break the law to be impeached. If you violate the law, you can be thrown out of office. But that's not impeachment. Impeachment is, there's a very simple understanding of it, in my opinion. It's misfeasance, malfeasance or nonfeasance. That's misbehavior, not behaving , or behaving badly. Three very simple things.

O'Connor House
What was the circumstance that prompted impeachment consideration?

Carl Kunasek
Well, the House brings articles of impeachment. And the Senate has nothing to do with impeachment process.

O'Connor House
And you're talking about...?

Carl Kunasek
The House.

O'Connor House
But which individual was...?

Carl Kunasek
Evan Meacham, Governor Meacham. Governor Meacham. And unfortunately, the House did bring articles of impeachment because there was a big press, Governor Meacham was not the most friendly to the press and the press didn't care for him. And so they, he had gotten enough negative notoriety. And the people in this, in the House, there was enough agitation going on there that they got the Speaker to bring articles, they introduced articles of impeachment, took them through committee, and got them past. In impeachment, the articles are like an indictment. The Senate does not vote on articles of impeachment. There are two or three things that are very unique to the legislative process. And the Senate does not vote on whether there should be an impeachment or not. The Senate has one job, and that is to conduct the trial. So the Articles of Impeachment are like a grand jury indictment, and then it goes to the court. Well, the court was the Senate.

I had been in that district since 1972, 14 years already. And that particular year, when he got elected governor, I got elected Senate president. The Senate president was then, ultimately, responsible to making sure that we carried out the Constitution. It says, as I recall, the words are, "Shall conduct a trial." And so we proceeded to conduct a trial. We just had to conduct the trial, but we did not, we were the--it's unique because there were 30 judges, five or six as the Supreme Court, but we had 30 judges. It was overseen by the Supreme Court Chief Justice in, in Arizona. And so, we had to set up the judges' quarters in the Senate President's chambers. part--we had two offices there, we had to close the door in one and gave that to the judge--justice. And so then we conducted Senate business in the morning and trial after we did the Senate business. And so the judge would come out then and then he'd put us into the court mode, and we'd conduct a trial.

O'Connor House
Who was chief justice at that time, do you recall?

Carl Kunasek
Yes. I should look that--

O'Connor House
Woman or man?

Carl Kunasek
Man. Man. And it was a good, great experience for him, because we'd visit, you know, his chambers were--and we'd visit, he says, you know, he said, "Carl, I've never dealt with 30 judges before." And so, so it was, it was an experience that I feel great, very grateful that I was able to experience it. Unfortunately, it was not a good experience, because the governor and I were, we were very close. We worked very closely. We had a difference in how government should run. But as far as our philosophy of government and social philosophy, we were, we were together. Fast forward, he was impeached. I was not reelected because I served a part of the Valley that had a lot of his supporters. And they had elected me for seven terms already. And yet I was not returned in the Primary.

Fast forward, the Indian tribe and ___, contacted me wanting to know if I would not be interested in taking over the job of the Indian Relocation Office in Flagstaff. And it happened to be the Hopi Chief that called me. And I said, I said, "Well, Ivan, that's very nice for you to call and think of me that way." I said, "But I would need the Navajos as well." And he said, "Oh, don't worry, the Navajos are going to support you, too." I said, "Well, that's very nice of you to say, I'd like to have the Navajos tell me." So anyway, it all came down to that. And then it was of course, for the President to nominate you. And so my, I did not have the complete support of the entire Arizona delegation, but enough support so the White House did send my name forward.

Some of the delegation wanted other people to have this. Well, this was an Indian, this was an Arizona job. And usually the senior senator of the power, the party in power, gets to call on a job like this. Because it's a very nice job, it was an E-4 level position. This was an under-Cabinet Secretary-level position. Very nice, very prestigious, and my name come out of the White House because of other influences. And so I was confirmed by the Senate, and hence I needed somebody to swear me in, so I called my old friend. She come over and swore me in.

O'Connor House
Your old friend, which friend?

Carl Kunasek
This one, in the picture there. Sandra Day O'Connor.

O'Connor House
And she swore you in?

Carl Kunasek
Yes. That, like I say, the pictures are in the old Executive Office Building, the Indian Treaty Room and all. But we didn't see any vestiges of Indian treaties, but that's the room it was in. So it was nice.

O'Connor House
Can we, can I ask you a couple questions about the impeachment of Governor Meacham?. My recollection, and I'd like you to clarify, is that he opposed the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday?

Carl Kunasek
Yes, he did.

O'Connor House
And it was quite contentious.

Carl Kunasek
It was very contentious. And he was, it, I advised him--because he, he came out with this opposition before he was governor. I told him, I said, "Governor, don't do it. There's a way you can get that done. But you don't do it. You don't have your fingerprints. I should--all you do is turn it over to the Attorney General. Ask the Attorney General if that proclamation was a legal proclamation, let the Attorney General say, 'No.' You know it wasn't." So he wouldn't do it. He wanted to have credit for that. I said, so that's the story, he asked for it.

O'Connor House
Was that the catalyst for his impeachment?

Carl Kunasek
That was probably the first, first catalyst. There were a number of other things, too. You know, he had made a lot of--unfortunately, I learned early on that one thing I'm never going to do is make a promise. I'm not going to promise you, I'm going to deliver impeachment or I'm not going to. I'm going to say, "I'll work hard for it. But we'll have to wait and see how the facts are." And so, yeah, that was probably the catalyst for it.

But there were other issues as it, as the time went on. There were some appointments, and it got down to where I would-- where he had to have Senate confirmation, I would call and I'd tell him, "I don't think you've got the votes for that. I would advise you not to do it." Because, I said, "If you send it over, I'll, I'll put it for a vote, but you don't want to have it go for a vote and have it defeated." I said, "So, you don't--," you know, there were about four individuals, I can remember a couple of them right now but I'd rather go without naming them. I just called him and said, "Governor, these aren't going to make it." I said, "They're, they've got too much, the people in the office now, in that position has got too much support here, your man's not going to make it." So that's, that's what happened. There were some of those.

There were other things that had happened in his staff. The staff would, I know there was one of the advisors, Donna Carlson was one of the staff people that he came, personality. And, you know, I'm forgetting now a lot of the details of all these, these various activities, but he, his main thing was his, and the reason is, and the press never warmed up. Because he was just always antagonistic toward the press. And he didn't set out to be antagonistic, it was just his manner and the way he worked with people. The press became very lazy. And never--would, they'd come down and they'd hang around the Capitol Building until maybe 10 or 11 o'clock in the morning. They'd have a quote from Governor Meacham, and that was their, that was their story for the day. And they'd get the quote, and they were done for the day. They didn't have to go look for a story or a write--but the press just never developed an objective outlook for, with him,

O'Connor House
Which in and of itself was not an impeachable offense.

Carl Kunasek
No, no. There were other things that had happened. One of the things that happened was that, he is, there was a measure on the ballot that pertained to campaign financing. And I'm trying to remember now, specifically that, what that was. But the campaign financing. It was a provision that you couldn't use it for anything personally, or something, and I forget how it was. But the measure on the ballot passed. But for a ballot measure to pass, it has to have the sufficient votes in the ballot box. But it has to be ruled that it is, now, it takes about two to three weeks after election to get it certified, I guess, would be the term, might be the term, but, to make it official. Well, he transferred some money out of a campaign account before that measure, although the measure passed at the ballot box, had not yet been certified. So it wasn't legal yet. He transferred some money out to a company, an automobile dealership, as I recall is what it was. This is going to go, I'm not, I'm not under any oath here, but I'm just working from memory.

O'Connor House
Right

Carl Kunasek
And so, and so that was probably one of the major things that precipitated it.

O'Connor House
So after the, your commission with the Indians, you moved on to the Corporation Commission. And, but at that point, you're, the Justice was already in Washington, D.C. obviously, having sworn you in.

Carl Kunasek
Yeah, she was in, she was sworn in, I believe, well, what's the date on that letter? Because that--

O'Connor House
85

Carl Kunasek
Yeah. And that is, so she was there then, because I had visited her there. And I, for my first visit with her there was with the late Bob Usdane. Bob and I were there on, working on the AHCCS stuff. You know, it had to be for something else. It had to be something with Meacham now, because Usdane was not there working on AHCCS yet.

So we had a, I called her when I was there, and she said, "Well come on down to the Court and I'll show you around." So she did. She was not there, she was, she was still the youngest on the Court then. So that tells us something about dates. So we, she was very, very gracious and showed us around, took us into the robing room. And I'll never forget the robing room where they slip out going to the Court. Well the Court has got visitors all the time, but when the Court's in session, of course, it's a different thing, [inaudible]. And as I recall, she says, "Go on out there and see what it's like out there."

Carl Kunasek
So I go out. And there was visitors there, and they all stand up and think, well, "Oh!" I couldn't get back there fast enough.

O'Connor House
They thought you were--

Carl Kunasek
Yeah, because of the robes and everything. And so, that was it. So I called my son Andy, and ironically enough, Andy and her son collaborated later on in life on some real estate deal. And so I called my son Andy, I said, "Where the hell were you this morning? I was looking for you, I got a tour of the Court, I couldn't find you." Well, he was off someplace. So anyway, he never did, he never did get a tour of the Court.

O'Connor House
What was, during her hearings when she was announced to the Court by President Reagan, I mean, how did that seem to you, here you had served with her in the Senate?

Carl Kunasek
Well, it was, she had a lot of support, and many people signed letters to the President for, I guess, commanding her appointment, or nomination. And so it was, it was a rare, a couple of reason. The first lady on the Court. A former colleague, former judge here in Arizona. And so it was, it was, and of course Reagan had a lot of support here. And, and Goldwater, and Goldwater was instrumental in that also. Goldwater was a fun guy to campaign with. Yes.

O'Connor House
Was there any way that Sandra Day O'Connor influenced you?

Carl Kunasek
Not other than being proper and just being thorough. We just had a respect for each other. And that was, I guess, influence. You know, it's easy to run with good people and work with good people if you feel comfortable. And so, I felt comfortable. And I don't recall any legislation, I don't know if she was there when, I don't think she was there when the Justice, the illegal, the, what do you call the thing we did in the late 80s, late 80s, we rewrote a lot of the laws of Arizona. And I don't think she was, I think she was gone already when that happened. Leo Corbett could answer that much better than I. And, you know, we just had a healthy respect for each other and respect for the work that the, everybody does. And so that was, that was about the only way I could say she influenced me. And I don't mean that in a negative way, I think it was a very positive influence.

O'Connor House
Anything else you'd like to say?

Carl Kunasek
No, it was just a pleasure to serve with people like that and work with people like that. Because, and I don't know if I could go back there today and function. Because you, your experience is pretty well embedded and the, you don't want to face those things again. They were tough, for example the AHCCS thing, to overcome everybody, all the bureaucrats in Washington.