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.

Leo Corbet
My name is Leo Corbet, L-E-O C-O-R-B-E-T. Today is February 9, 2015. That I am of sane mind and...

O'Connor House
(Laughs). That's great, we know you are. Alright so, to get the ball rolling, tell us about the first time you met Sandra Day O'Connor.

Leo Corbet
I'm trying, I'm having--

O'Connor House
How did you meet her?

Leo Corbet
Well, I had known the family, her mother had played bridge with my aunt, as I've told you before, for a long, long time. I had gone to dinner with Alan and his girlfriend, later wife, and my aunt, but I never met Sandy.

And I met her the first day I was in the Senate, elected to the Senate. And I didn't even, it didn't dawn on me that she was part of that Harry Day group for I don't know how long, probably a day or so until I got around and saw her. And then we get, we get, talked about things. I was born in Lordsburg, which is a town that's close to her heart. And, you know, I don't know. We just got started. She got, she was appointed to take a Senate seat, the, about six months before I first came down there.

O'Connor House
And what year was that?

Leo Corbet
That was 19...she was appointed in '69 sometime, and I was elected in '69 but I did, I took office in '70, January of 1970. And so then, we, I met her at the first meeting, I suppose, of the legislature, of the caucus of the Republicans. And then, even then, we started having some people that were a little different network trend. They weren't trying to do the job. They were trying to have the job and things like that. And Sandra's not that kind of a person. She's businesslike, and she wants it done properly and on and on. As matter of fact, when they were calling around and asking us what we thought about her being appointed as Supreme Court Justice, Burton Barr said, "Well, with Sandra, there was never any Miller time." (laughs)

And that's the way she was, you know, she was serious about the--but she had it, and like I said in my statement to, to, to the Senate at the time, she was able to turn switches from mother to Senator to majority leader to mother to hostess to this and do it real quickly and very well. And that was what I thought about her a lot, when we found that we had mutual enemies and mutual friends about different things. And we sort of got on the same side so that when she was Majority Leader, I was Chairman of Judiciary. And I was able to deflect some of the things that were, that were going on around there, and keep her from, you know, because I never thought I was ever going to run for governor or do anything like that. I, it's like my, my wife says, I'm sweet, but I'm rough around the edges.

O'Connor House
Tell us about those early years in the Senate. When you first joined the Senate, what was it like working with Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, and what sorts of legislation, what, you know, what was going on in the legislature?

Leo Corbet
We came in 19...1950...1956, I think, or '57 was when they had the one man, one vote. I may be wrong on that. It may have been a little later than that. But that's when the Republicans took over, and they took over the Senate, but they had a coalition in the House. And that's when Sandra came in after that first year, I believe, and she, the lady that was, had her seat, was Chairman of Appropriations in this Senate, moved to Washington DC to be a part of the Nixon administration. And so Sandra took that place. But it was, it was a lot different initially.

When I got there, if you had a bill you had, you know, it was your bill and nobody else could sign on it, you couldn't sign on it, the senator couldn't sign and the House couldn't sign on it, and you pretty much had control of the thing. And I had been a lawyer. I had just had a case where a woman was, wanted to divorce and her husband sold the house out from under her, because all of the statutes said "he." And there was no room in there for that, even, which was rather strange to me because it's a joint tenancy state and everything, but the wife could not sell a house without her husband's knowledge, but the wife, husband could sell it out from under her. And I thought that was wrong, and I introduced a bill to do so. Well Sandra helped me get that passed, and it was a natural thing. And I don't know why people hadn't done it before. Because there was hardly any opposition to it.

What turned out, eventually, was that this lady from the house, they couldn't do anything if I didn't say they could. And so that, she called me and asked me if she could open up and say, well, I'll get it out of the House and we'll set it up and it'll be fine and on and on, you know. Well I was fat, dumb and happy, and I didn't know any better. And so what happened was, when she got it up there, she talked the leadership into the, into believing that it was better for the Republican Party to, for, have a woman pa--get this bill passed, than to have a man. But they still couldn't do anything about it unless I OK'ed it. So I withheld my approval until they promised me that the next year they would change the rules and let the House and Senate members sign on bills and relax some of those stringent, and I thought dumb, rules that they had. And so they, that was my, that's what I, they paid, they let her do that. Then she ran several times and used that as her, her main thing that she'd done was how she freed the slaves.

So with that, Sandra and I worked together. Arizona was at that time known as a state that had a lot of, had a lot of thef--not theft, but a lot of fraud in land sales. And a lot of this was promulgated pretty much by the fact that we had what they call blind trusts, so that people couldn't know who owned those trusts. They own land in our state but we're not entail--titled to hear that. So that was one of the things that Sandra and I got changed was to do that. And I remember working on that and showing some, some of the problems and everything that we worked together. When they wanted to change the grand jury law, the people that were trying to push it, we thought were, were not doing it, you know, in a, in a proper way and in a way that it wouldn't have a lot of comment sense. There's no sense in doing that. And it had gotten where the grand juries were, in my opinion, at least, a situation where their jurors were expected to be cheerleaders. And the prosecutor could just have his way with it. Well, that was a waste of time and money for a lot of people. So we inserted the part, and I think it's still there today, that allowed, that forced them to, to have a written, written thing that shows what happened in the, in the grand jury room. And what the prosecutor presented, what he didn't present, what was testified to and what wasn't, hadn't presented and given to the defense attorney. We did that.

I remember in particular, because Sandra was making cookies for her kids' school. And she's in the kitchen and the county attorney from Tucson and I are in, right next to the kitchen on the kitchen table and we're trying to work this thing out, and Sandra's telling us from in there when she's flopping cookies. (laughs) And it was, there was nothing funny about it, but it was funny, and, when you look back at it. And that's how it got done, and a lot of things, you know, she, she, she was not going to let her children go, but she was going to do her job. And that's, that's what she did.

And John, John O'Connor was one of the nicest guys and fine men that you ever wanted to see. And that, and they made a great couple and they worked at, worked, they worked together. I used to tease him and call him the, the delegate for, what, the president of the male contingent to the legislature. Of course there was not very many of them, there were only two or three of them. (laughs) But anyway.

O'Connor House
Did you ever have, go to any of the dinners, which, she'd have like a potluck dinner or something like that with the legislators, that...?

Leo Corbet
Sure.

O'Connor House
Tell us about those. Who went, and what took place?

Leo Corbet
Well, everybody went, I mean, every, all of the senators and their wives, Democrat and Republican, were there, pretty much. And we had a roast, pretty much every time and, got, and that got people loosened up and whatnot, sometimes too loose. And Jim McNulty, who was a Democratic senator from Bisbee, and I were the, were the MCs. And we were pretty harsh on some of them and talking about some of the things that they had, did, and some of their, their things, but we got through it. And it was, to me, it was a situation where, that's when you got to know the other people and got to know them as human beings and it wasn't, you didn't have to make acquaintances with them over a bill. It was just a, in those days, it seems to me that we were all about getting the job done.

And there was a lot to do with Arizona at that time. There was no land use planning bill, there was, the, the freeways hadn't even been thought of, the, all kinds of different things that occurred. Today, the last year I was President of the Senate, the budget was, turned over a billion dollars. Today it's something like 11 or 12 billion, you know, with, with the same amount of problems that are, with an exponential amount of problems for that 12 to one ratio, seems to me. They have done some things down there that are not too sensible or...You know, one thing about Sandra is she has a lot of common sense. And, and she, there were "isms." The only "ism" we had was realism. And today, there's a lot of that other stuff going on, you know. But anyway, that's, and that's pretty much how it was, it, the caucuses were closed.

O'Connor House
What else did you work on where you had to work across the aisle? Are there any bills that you recalled, that, all your dinners and working together and having dinners at the, Sandra Day O'Connor's home, anything that helped you create more collaboration?

Leo Corbet
Well...

O'Connor House
Was it all of them?

Leo Corbet
Pretty much, most of them were fairly, if they were of any stature in nature, then we pretty well worked with the Democrats. The tax code was a lot simpler in those days. At the end of the year, the bipartisan committee would sit down and set a tax rate for the, for homes and for land and whatnot that would help, that, and, and other things that would make, give the legislature and the government funding for working the next year. But then when proposition--see, Sandra left after the first or second term I was around her.

We were still friends. We saw each other and whatnot, but it, she was gone when all of the things like doing the land use bill, doing the, we did the freeway bills, we did, changed the probate code, we print--and the four years I was President of the Senate we did a bunch of that stuff. But Burton Barr and I worked very closely together and we were able to push all that stuff through.

O'Connor House
What about the Department of Economic Security, was that done when...?

Leo Corbet
That was, that was something that she and Ray Rottas did, pretty much, I think, if I recall right. They wanted to put some form to how we built buildings in the state and how we did, how our agencies reacted and acted, and, so that there would be some uniformity, which was the right thing to do. And they got that through. And that was, but that was her and, and Ray, I think, that, that did that. I don't recall other than the fact that I helped when it came time to vote.

You know, but that, I don't think there's much that you can say about my efforts with, with that. She was, we had a fellow who was the majority leader my second year there, David Kret, and he was a curmudgeon of the first order. He wanted to be the majority leader, but he didn't want to help, and he would vote against majority packages and things like that. Well, that just isn't the way that, that that game is played. And so he was dismissed in the middle of the session and Sandra was placed there. And so she served there and then the last, rest of the time until she left. Because she wanted to be a judge, she didn't want to be a senator. She always wanted to be a judge.

O'Connor House
Who was it that left to go to the Nixon administration that created the seat for her to be appointed, do you recall?

Leo Corbet
I'm trying, I was trying to think of that last night. She was a fairly well-known lady in the Republican Party. She was, had served Paradise Valley as their legislator for some time. And that's, that's who it was, but...I'm trying to think, it's hard for me to remember this.

O'Connor House
Tell us about one man, one vote.

Leo Corbet
Well, one man one vote was a theme, idea that a guy named Gary Peter Klar had here. And, and he filed a lawsuit and took it all the way to the Supreme Court. And it, up until that time there had been two senators for every, every district and, two legis—two Congress...people, House members. But from then on, they had to change it so that it was more in line with the number of people that were in that. So for Maricopa County then, who had been real short, really short-changed by, their representation was, it was taken into 100 people to a, you know, or one person and moving it down. So that if we had 200,000 people in Maricopa County, which may have been about the number we had at that, there, and they only have, in Cochise County, which is where Sandra was raised and I was raised to some degree, you know, they would, that disparity would not allow the out-counties and the small counties to run everything around over there.

The average age of the Senate when that, one man, one vote was passed was 75 years old. That doesn't sound too bad for me now, but at the time when I was 33, and going into the Senate, I thought, "What are those old goats doing over there?" But they were all defeated, pretty much, after that changed and shifted power to the cities and towns that had the greatest population. And that's, that's pretty much all that was. But it did create a problem for the, the small counties, and they had to have some people helping them. And I think for the most part, most of the legislatures, legislators were a lot less worried about those kind of things than the people in, in the different counties where, you know, power.

The guy who had been the majority leader in the Senate for 25 years, I think it was Harold Giss, was one of the nicest, kindest guys in the world. And he in fact when I started, I grew up in the Yuma, so he, he was sort of my mentor when I got started through all of this stuff. And he, he would tell you, whose ox is being gored on what bill. And, of course, even though I had been a lawyer, I didn't have any ideas about who was doing what where it came to Arizona Public Service and SRP, different big state organizations like that. So I used him as a, you know, as a resource. And it was a very good resource.

O'Connor House
So tell us, who was governor when there was this "Sandra for Governor" idea that had popped up? What was the scoop on that?

Leo Corbet
(Laughs) This was in 19...76. Yeah. '76. Bruce Babbitt had been appointed governor to replace the governor who died. Wes Bolin. Bruce was the governor, and he had never run to be governor. The Republicans wanted to be, get a uniform candidate to go, and they invited all of the leaders. At that time I was the Minority Leader of the Senate. And I was invited to this thing that had the county party, the state party chairmen. Had, someone represented the, John Rhodes. Barry Goldwater was there, I believe. And, well I know Barry was there. Anyway. So their, their idea was that we would come together on a, coalesce on a candidate. And the guy who was chairman of the, the party was—

O'Connor House
Was it Burton Kruglick?

Leo Corbet
No, no. Burton Kruglick was in diapers then, or whatever he was in. Yeah, that, I was, it was a guy named Jim [Colter], I can't think of Jim's last name, but he was LDS. And he wanted us to nominate the guy, Meacham. And nobody else had any ideas. And well, I said, "Well, it's time for a woman. And I think Sandra O'Connor's the kind, the one." And we talked about it and argued about it for a few minutes, and then Sandra won.

I suggested it, and then we had a, had a vote. And then as, the vote was something like five to one in favor of her. And, but he wasn't adamant, you know, about that. There was no, nobody was upset or anything like that. They all recognized that she had talent and that she would be a good candidate and probably would have beaten Bruce. Bruce thought so. Because after the, that day I—Goldwater always called me "kid"—he said, "It's your idea, kid, you have to go over and talk to her." And she was a judge in the Superior Court at that time. And so I went over, and she was not too busy to see me. And I, so I went in and talked to her about that, told her that she'd have the support of all these people if she would run. And she thought that was an interesting idea, and thought she'd talk to John. And that was on a Wednesday. Thursday, she thought it was a good idea and was still going full ahead on it, we thought. And Friday. And then over the, on Monday, she called and said that she couldn't do it.

It turns out that Bruce Babbitt was very afr—scared of her. And he sent an emissary, and I ha—and I don't know that, to this day who that emissary was, but I'll bet I could find out who it was. Because some of the people are still alive. That's the problem with some of this stuff. I'm one of the few people that's still alive. But anyway.

He sent an emissary to talk to her and offer her a court on the, a position on the Court of Appeals. Well, of course, she'd always wanted to be a judge. And she was a judge, but she, you know, she might never have gotten where she wanted to be. So she accepted that offer. And declined our offer. Which, you know, I think, probably in the long run was better for her and better for the United States than had she been governor of a little town and little place like this. [O'Connor Institute note: Leo Corbet himself would become the Republican nominee for Arizona governor in 1982.]

Bill Rehnquist, when Reagan was looking for someone to run, Bill Rehnquist who is a good guy and a friend of Sandra's and a friend of mine, a friend--and John, in fact Sandra and John and Bill were 1, 2, 3 in the, Stanford Law standings at one time. I, and I'm, anyway, he was, he was a great guy. And he said, so when Reagan called the Chief Justice and said, "We need a woman to be this," well the Chief Justice...I'm getting behind things, what, what happened with Rehnquist was, he was...The Chief Justice [Warren Burger] wanted to come to Arizona, to Lake Powell, and needed some people to be, to be more or less, hosts to that. And he asked Rehnquist, who was an Arizona guy, if he knew anyone. And he said John and Sandra O'Connor.

Well, of course she was a gracious hostess, and John's a great guy, tells wonderful jokes, they're used to...he had just...so that, that two weeks solidified things, so that when Reagan asked the Chief Justice what, if he knew a good judge who might be considered, who were female, who might be considered for that office, and he recommended, he recommended Sandra. They got Barry to call up Reagan, and they were, they owed each other from different ways and whatnot. I don't think they ever considered anyone else. And then when Sandra got back there, it's been, it's a sort of a, an unusual thing, what they do, how they vet, or not vet, but vet some of these people that are going to be the, on the Supreme Court or wherever.

And Barry's, Barry's office was not as active in some of the things that other people were. While he was a national figure and a great guy and I loved him to death, he was, it was Dennis DeConcini, who was also a senator, and he and Barry were close friends, and...He was the one that really pushed Sandra when it came time to go back to Congress and get everything, at least from my standpoint, what I thought it was, going on. So when they got there, Sandra, being Sandra, wanted to get 100% of the vote, which is almost unheard of, you know, for, especially in these days. They don't, they're lucky if they get 51 percent. So she, was she was going to get it. So she went and saw each and every senator and talked to them about the Constitution of the United States, about whatever questions they had in mind. And
made such a good impression that she got, I think it was 90 votes, 99 votes. And the only one that she didn't get was some guy that was sick. So (laughs) and it's a daunting thing to be, set up there in front of Senator...what's-his-face that was the head of the Judiciary Committee at that time, Strom Thurmond, and all of the things. But she wasn't bothered. I, I learned more about constitutional law watching her on TV than I did through the, the, law school and through all of the things that we'd gone through in the legislature.

O'Connor House
Did you go back to Washington for her hearings?

Leo Corbet
I did.

O'Connor House
And tell us about that.

Leo Corbet
Well, it was quite a, quite a deal. She had a function for all of the people that were back there from Arizona, at her apartment where she and John were staying. And that's when I first met her father, who was quite a guy, Harry Day. Harry was just this, a great guy, just a, and he and I got along real well. In fact, he sent me some lawsuit, some law cases afterwards, you know. But he was, and my dad had herded cattle for him, brought the herd out of the mountains down into, on the lower lands where, they were--they summer in the upper regions and then the lower regions in the, in the, in the winter.

And then the, and, I was driving, we were driving down through Duncan and passed Duncan, down there where Sandra went to school for a while. And my dad, I was taking him to see my aunt in New Mexico. And I said, "Dad, that's really pretty up there." And he said, "Yep," he said, "Cad and I," that was his brother, "we're driving 300 head of cattle for Harry Day." And that was the day that Roosevelt got elected. And I said, I, waited up at the, I don't, I can't even remember that, that was when Roosevelt was elected. He said, "Well, we had just put our fire down, and we had put, we were sitting having coffee. And some guy came up from Duncan and said he'd just heard on the radio that Franklin Roosevelt had been elected." And that's how I remembered that it was November of 1932 when that occurred. But anyway.

O'Connor House
So you met Harry Day in Washington, then.

Leo Corbet
Yeah, I met him in Washington at that thing, and we were having a great time, and he was a good guy. And then the next day, we had to testify, which we did. And that's when I, I gave you the, pretty much the to--the general tone and gist of what I said. I think I said something else, too, but I can't remember what it was. It was, but I, she was always prepared. She, for every, every job. And she wanted it done right, and she didn't, you know, and she thought we could have other times in our lives when we could pay attention to other things, and you know, we had to get the job at hand taken care of. And that, I think, pretty much a part of her mantra for, for anything is, "We get everything done, we get it all worked out, and then we'll have time for play."

And that's why Burton Barr called, said (laughs) that, "There was no Miller time when she was on duty."

O'Connor House
So, when you wrote the grand jury bill on her kitchen table, how would you describe the, what was the content, the point of the grand jury bill? What did it accomplish?

Leo Corbet
Well, Arizona had always, had never had a grand jury before. And they, if you had someone charged with a felony, you had to go into the Justice Court. And they had to have, made, and you had to present a prima facie case if you were the prosecutor, that, that that should go to the, the Superior Court. This is a, it's a prosecutor's method, a short, shortening the matter of time they have to put up on it. And it, and it's been, I think, good in some, in a lot of respects and saved public money. The, and that's pretty much why, why it was done. It was, it had never been done in Arizona, that was the first one that we were going to have, as, and that's why it was so important, of course, to, to get it right if we could. And, you know, that's, that's a, that's a very volatile issue. I know it doesn't seem like that compared to the abortion, or you might say, the gay rights and all that stuff that we have today. But at that time, we were changing a big, big way that we run our criminal court process and, and so there were a lot of hurt feelings and a lot of things said.

The other thing that we did that I had forgotten about, and I think Sandra was still there at the time, was the, we wrote the farm bill. And that was in the height of the Cesar Chavez and everything. And we wanted to make it fair. I met with the Chavez people, I met with one, exactly, to see what we could do to make it right. I was late getting there at this, at the restaurant. And he had already ordered. And so the lady says to me, and she turns around and says, "Well, what do you want?" I said, "I'd like a head of lettuce and some grapes." And this guy looks, looks at me and he says, "Oh, I've heard about you!" (laughs) And I sat down, and we found out that they weren't interested in Arizona having a bill, it was perfect. They were, they were going to appeal it anyway, and they were, thought that they could get to the Supreme Court quicker. But it turned out that, and I was head of drafting the bill for the Senate, and it turned out that it was held constitutional by the state and then a federal later and everything, and then, I don't know what happened in the, after that. I sort of left all of the farm labor stuff, because we clearly do not have a farm labor program in Arizona, and we don't have a lot of things that could have eased the immigration problem that we ended up with, but...

I think one of the things that talks about, that tells, told me and, a great deal about how practical Sandra is and how she also, with that practicality, can do good deeds. One of the, I had a, I had an ethanol plant that I owned a third of up in Nebraska. And it had turned into a lawsuit, like all, a lot of things do. And one of my lawyers was the president of the bar in Nebraska, and he asked me if I could get Sandra O'Connor to speak. And I called Sandra and talked to her girl there, and she called me back, and I called her, and it was one of those things, you know, you can't get 'em. And finally I got her, and I got on the phone and said, can, can you come to the deal? At the time I was on the heart transplant list. And she knew that, and she said, "Well come down and talk to me at the federal court building" that had just opened up. And call, call Steve McNamee and see if, and tell him to give you a good seat. And so I said, "Okay, I will." And so I called Steve, who was also friend of mine, and I've known him for a long time. In fact, I interceded on his behalf to help him get to be the head guy at the government, the federal attorney's office in, in Arizona. And now, and then he was a judge.

And I said to Steve, I said, well, "Senator, er, Judge O'Connor said for me to check and make sure," well I also, I asked, I said, "Well, are you going to say a few words?" And she said, I'll say, she said, "I might." And so I talked, I said, "What's this deal that you've got going on down there?" And he said, "Well, you dummy! They're naming it after her!" (laughs) I said, "Well I've been sick for a long time, and I didn't, I'm not watching," you know, I felt, I can't, my eyes had gotten so bad I couldn't read, it, and it was just, you know, that's the darndest thing. So she did give us seats, and that's when it, Sandra told my wife that that she and the two of them were the only ones that could appreciate my sense of humor. I have one answer that, that I could tell you about, but I don't think you'd want me to do it on this, but I'll tell you after we're off the air because it's a...

But she was, that was Sandra. She, and she, and she, she knew, well, she said, finally, she said, "I will do it, but you have to get your heart and be there to introduce me." And that's the part that, you know, how many people would, I mean, be that considerate and thoughtful about everything? And it was, you know, it was a heck of an incentive for me. And I was out, I broke records down there. I was on a mechanical heart for three and a half months. And then they put the human heart in me and I got out for a few days and stuff. After I, after they gave me the mechanical heart, I'm in the ICU and I get, I had a nurse that was a real, real hard-nosed person and had a language problem. In other words, they were all four-letter words. She was like, and she comes in and she says, blah blah blah, "Leo, tell your friends not to try and put it over on me. I had one just call me a few minutes ago and said she was Sandra O'Connor." And I said, "Well, it probably was." "You know--you know Sandra O'Connor?"

And so, and then I never hear from her. She knows the time that we're going to be up there and everything. I get the heart, and she knows that that's going to happen. And my lawsuit in the meantime had come out in my favor, and I got a big judgment. And so we, but Sandra, I haven't been able to get hold of Sandra's office, and I'm thinking, "Now, she'll be there." So we're standing there, I'm standing in the hallway waiting for something to happen and talking to this judge who had tried the case of my lawsuit and was one of those guys that found in favor of it. And, and here she comes. She and John walk, walking along with the--

O'Connor House
Was that in Omaha?

Leo Corbet
No, that was, that was in--

O'Connor House
Lincoln?

Leo Corbet
Lincoln, yeah. And that's where they had the thing. And that guy in that picture that, with me is, was, was Bob Mullen, who was the president of the Nebraska Bar. And they just loved it. And Sandra, that night we're at a dinner. We're at a dinner and, so that's, all the plates are set. And Sandra comes and looks at it and sees that her plate isn't next to mine. So she just changes it and and she moves the Supreme Court Justice from, from Nebraska's wife over someplace else. But nobody said a word. The queen could sit where she wanted to sit.

O'Connor House
And she wanted to sit by you.

Leo Corbet
Yeah. So I don't know, were you there the night that they had the thing with Alfredo [Gutierrez] and I and Art [Hamilton] and all that kind of stuff? And she and I are sitting there holding hands like two old ladies? Have you ever been around someone like that, that when the two old ladies just sit there and, almost like hugging all the time and they're...? That's what we were doing that day. You know, but we had been, we were through some, some fights that, you know, that aren't really something I'd like to talk about right now in terms of, well I was always on her side. Some of the things we did, I'll tell you a couple of things. If you want 'em on faith after I tell 'em to you, fine, but I don't want to leave 'em with a--

O'Connor House
Well I'd like to know an example of how, when you look at the dysfunction sometimes today of legislatures, not just here but beyond, you know, in other places, too. You know that, there are contentious issues. There are things that come up. How did, are there any stories of how--you mentioned Alfredo and Art Hamilton and some of those others? Were there any circumstances where you had to work together to get the job done?

Leo Corbet
Oh, I don't think, I think that we had 16 votes in the Senate. And 16 votes to get anything out at the time I was there. When Sandra was there, we had one or two more than that. But we were always, never had a great majority. We were fairly considerate of what happened. You know, when, when Reagan people called me to talk about the immigration bill, I brought Alfredo in because he knew more about it than I did and I trusted him. When it came time later to get the Martin Luther King bill. When it came along, well, I told Art to just sit over there--Art Hamilton. I said, you got, don't worry about it, don't talk about it, don't do anything. I'll get it out of the Senate. And I did. And I ended up losing my seat by, for doing it. But, and I'd do it again. I'm just that kind of mean son of a gun, I guess, I don't know.

But, I don't know, there were times, I'm sure, that we, that we had a problem like that. Most of my recollection is, is more or less takes place back when I was running the Senate. After Sandra had, had been, gone. We all had, we all had to do things, you know, like the bingo bill we had trouble with. And Sandra and I worked on getting that, you know, because it, you know, in a fit of anger the attorney, county attorney in our county told the Catholic churches they couldn't do that. Well, that was not something that went down too well with a lot of people, nor should it have. So we got that through, and that was what--

O'Connor House
What did the Bingo Bill allow?

Leo Corbet
Bingo. The Bingo Bell allowed the playing of bingo in the, in the churches. And that's what they wanted, and that's what, that's what they had been doing for a long time. And so, but it was a, it was a big deal at the time because the, the county attorney had thrown that into some question and some doubt. And so, we had to, to make sure that that couldn't, wouldn't happen. I'm not a Catholic, I don't know, you know, but I don't think--the money you get from that kind of an activity goes directly to children. And so it'd be awful hard to, not to go along with a thing like that.

One time, well, I'll tell you one story about Sandra and then...She had said that the chairman of appropriations was a drunk. And (laughs) and we had a bill in the, in the House to, to allow for Bilingual Education. My mother had taught bilingual education in Douglas in 1940 and '41. And I knew that it was very important to get those kids talking English and whatnot for their future. I thought, at least, that was the case, and I think it is. And so I went to the Speaker, the House was holding up that bill. And I went to the Speaker. And in those days, the rules were that the Senate couldn't speak in front of them. And there was a Mormon friend of mine at the, in the legislature at that time named Delos Ellsworth, and it was his bill. And so we went to the Speaker and, to ask about it, and the speaker said, he had, Tom, this guy named, it was Tom that was the Speaker, was the head of the Appropriations Committee in the House. And he said that he had heard that Sandra had called him a drunk. And so, he wanted to have a face-to-face sit down with her.

So I got, I said, and the Speaker at that time was Tim Barrow. And Tim told me that, and I said, "Okay, I'll talk to her." And she, Sandra said, "Sure, I will." So we went over there, and we had a meeting. And there were, I'll never forget, Bob Stump was then a Democrat and was the minority leader of the Democrats. And Alfredo was there and a couple other people. Didn't matter, I guess. Anyway, Sandra's sitting across from this guy, and he says, he says, "I heard you call me a drunk." And she said, "I did." He said, "Well, if you were a man, I'd hit you." And Sandra said, "Well, if you were a man, you probably could." (laughs) I thought, I thought, "We've had it, there goes our bill!" Well, we kept them seated, and they talked it out eventually. And, and I think what a lot of, a lot of being in the legislature is working with people, again, and talking things out like that. And so we got that bill.

Another bill that she and I were trying to get. I don't remember what it was, exactly, but it was a bill, and this one guy was, was holding it up, sort of. He wouldn't give us the vote for it. And so Sandra looks at him with her, puts her steely blues on him and said, looks him in the eye and says, "Now you know, the only thing you get from sitting on the fence is a sore crotch." (laughs) Now, how much of this Sandra would like to have out, I don't know, but she would know that it came from me because I was there. And, and I thought that was very appropriate. And the, I've used, I used it many times, except my, the way I handled things was a lot cruder than what Sandra would have done.

I, I had a majority leader, that same guy who was, who had hidden the budget, you know, there's a rite of passage at the end of every legislature, sort of it's an act that you have to do. And they are taking the written budget--and in those days we didn't have computers, we didn't have texts, we didn't have faxes, we didn't have all of the stuff we have today that, for immediate gratification. If some jerk made a motion to change the bill, not only did you consider a, consider the, what that entailed, but you also, entailed how much time it was going to take with the women that were doing the typing and everything. So, but anyway, this guy, I get a call from Barr, and we're all ready to quit. And at the end of the, and usually we've been in session like mad dogs for about a day or day and a half trying to get everything worked around and put it together. And I get a call from Barr and he says that, that his, his chairman of appropriations, the guy that Sandra called a drunk, had said he would not bring us the budget until we gave his town another 750,000 dollars.

So I went and got on the phone. And I called him, I said, "Tom, what's going on over there?" And he says, "Well, Tucson needs 750,000 more dollars." And it just hit me, the wrong at the time. Although sometimes there's no right way. And I just flew all over him. I said, "Tom, Tucson's had every blank blank dollar they're going to get from me this year. And if that isn't over here in 20 s--minutes, I'm coming over to kick your butt." (laughs) And he, and I slammed the thing--I'm on my desk in the ga--, in the, in the, in the main room there. And I slam the thing back on the cradle. And I hear this clapping. There's this one guy in there, and it happens to be the most religious, conservative guy in the Senate, a guy named Wayne Stump, who was a chiropractor. And he's clapping in spite of the fact I've spewed a lot of language that he wouldn't normally tolerate. He liked the idea that I told him we weren't gonna give Tucson any more money. And we were--and, and he, he was quite a good guy, too. He is, you know, he's dead now, but he was one of the good, good guys that would...He had some far out, right-wing thoughts about different things. And I was considered at one time--you know, I was a Goldwater guy, and they all thought that we were going to take, go out and do something strange, like get a witch's brew or do all, whatever, I'm not too sure.