<nbsp/> Cooperation can help get things done

On the morning of Dec. 8, 1984, Arizona native John R. Norton III entered the West Wing of the White House and was greeted by Robert "Bob" Tuttle, President Ronald Reagan's director of personnel. Reagan had asked the Arizona agribusiness titan to serve as deputy secretary of Agriculture.

Norton III, a Republican, accepted the president's offer, and his name was placed before the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry. The Senate, at the time, was controlled by

the Democrats, and Norton III expressed trepidation about his potential "grilling."

Significantly, Arizona's entire congressional delegation rallied around its native son. Junior Sen. Dennis DeConcini, a Democrat, hosted a reception at his McLean, Va., home, where he introduced Norton III and his wife, Doris, to Democratic senators on the committee. DeConcini's wife's family, the Hurleys, were long acquainted with the Nortons through their family enterprises and their political affiliation with Arizona's growing and increasingly influential Republican Party. Of course, senior Sen. Barry Goldwater supported Norton III's confirmation.

From the House of Representatives, Arizona's delegation -- Morris Udall, a Democrat, and Republicans John McCain, Eldon Rudd and Jim Kolbe -- prepared statements in Norton III's behalf.

Udall, in characteristic fashion, offered an amusing comment but left no doubt about his support for his fellow Arizonan: "John is an unusually well-qualified person, and he is superior to everyone I know. I do not know why anyone in his right mind would want to take on this job, but the country is lucky that he is, and you will make no mistake if you confirm his nomination."

That snapshot in my new book, "The Norton Trilogy," represents another Arizona and another time, when the public's interest and civility were part and parcel of the political process.

Though contrasting ideologies and partisanship existed in the 1980s, the political atmosphere was less toxic. Differences were noted, respected, and after 5 p.m., ideological fealty remained at work. Congressmen and senators from differing parties socialized and dined together. The bipartisanship exemplified in Norton III's successful nomination in 1985 has receded into history.

Two political giants who respected each other and their respective pioneer families, Democrat Carl Hayden and Goldwater, set the tone for the bipartisan support reflected in Norton III's confirmation hearings. Shortly before his retirement from the Senate, Goldwater spoke of Hayden.

"Let me put it this simple way," he stated flatly, "whenever my service in the Senate is terminated, I hope that my service to the country and my state equals a small fraction of what Carl Hayden has provided in both areas," adding, "Carl Hayden outgrew party personality early in his political career."

Though bipartisanship is one of several themes that runs through "The Norton Trilogy," the book is also a study of the roles that federal reclamation, law, politics and individual initiative played in the settlement and growth of this often unforgiving region of the country. In short, this volume is a rumination on the history of water and agribusiness in the American Southwest through the lives

of three generations of John R. Nortons.

The work details the earliest efforts at irrigated agriculture in the 19th century through the monumental Arizona vs. California Supreme Court case that helped determine where the life-giving waters of the Colorado River would be divided and into the critical events that have shaped the late 20th century and early 21st. The Nortons were at the center of these and other developments that made Arizona into a vital population and agricultural center.

Pioneers such as John R. Norton (1854-1923), who was one of three members of the legendary Breakenridge Survey of 1889 that located the site of what became Roosevelt Dam, and John R. Norton Jr. (1901-87), who, by the 1930s emerged as one of Arizona's leading agriculture producers and livestock growers, shaped the very landscape of the western United States.

And John R. Norton III built upon the accomplishments of his father and grandfather to become one of the region's major agribusiness entrepreneurs, deputy secretary of the Department of Agriculture in the Reagan administration, and one of the West's leading philanthropists in education, health care and the arts.

The Nortons, moreover, reflected the region's evolution in politics from the late 19th century to the early 21st. Norton Sr., a Kentucky native who moved West, was a southern Democrat who won election to the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors and sought to rival Hayden in turn-of-the-century Democratic Party caucuses.

Norton Jr., not as politically active as father or son, nevertheless expressed his "Pinto Democrat" leanings when he chaired the "Democrats for Wilkie" effort in the 1940 presidential election. He was well on his way to Republican registration.

And Norton III, perhaps the most active and astute of the three in political affairs, continues to champion conservative causes.

As former Sen. DeConcini stated recently, "The Norton family reaches back in the history of Arizona as far as the Udalls, Goldwaters, Babbitts and DeConcinis, and this family and its accomplishments serve as an historical metaphor for the growth and development of Arizona and the Greater Southwest for the past 150 years."

Bruce Babbitt, former Arizona governor and secretary of the Interior Department, added a more personal observation: "During my years as governor, John R. Norton III was my go-to Republican. Working together, we discovered a lot of common ground for making water policy and promoting agriculture. The remarkable history of three Norton generations should help us understand and renew bipartisan cooperation."

Beyond the Nortons serving as exemplars of a more civil and dignified political culture, former Republican Sen. Jon Kyl, who penned a robust foreword to "The Norton Trilogy," correctly asserts that "the Nortons have made Arizona and the nation a better place," and their intergenerational legacy "is as much an American story as it is an Arizona one."

In contrast to current political vitriol and divisiveness, Arizona residents can look back upon a long history of political evolution and change, vigorous and productive political debate, and, in several significant instances, bipartisan cooperation and support from its political leaders.

Reaching across the aisle to find common ground has been a part of Arizona's political history, and, in the best of all worlds, its future.

Jack August Jr. is a visiting scholar in legal history at Snell & Wilmer. His new book, "The Norton Trilogy," is the latest of several books he has written about the American West.

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