Jane Dee Hull

Infobox Governor
name=Jane Dee Hull


order=24^th
office=Governor of Arizona
term_start=September 8, 1997
term_end= January 6, 2003
lieutenant=
predecessor=Fife Symington
successor= Janet Napolitano
birth_date= birth date and age|1935|08|8
birth_place=Kansas City, Missouri
death_date=
death_place=
spouse= Terry Hull
profession= Teacher
party=Republican
religion =Roman Catholic

Jane Dee Hull (born August 8, 1935) was the second woman to serve as governor of Arizona, the first female Republican governor of the state, and the first woman to be elected to the position.

Born Jane Dee Bowersock in Kansas City, Missouri, she graduated from the University of Kansas with a degree in education. She taught elementary school in Kansas and in Navajo Nation schools at Chinle, Arizona. She entered politics in 1978 by being elected to the Arizona House of Representatives as a Republican. She served for seven terms, including two as Speaker, the first female Speaker in Arizona history. In 1991, while she was Speaker, the Arizona legislature experienced a major political scandal called AZSCAM, which resulted in the resignation or removal of ten members of the House and Senate. As a result, Speaker Hull instituted a number of ethics reforms to reestablish public confidence in the legislature.

Hull was elected Arizona Secretary of State in 1994. After Governor Fife Symington was forced to resign due to a felony conviction, Hull became governor on September 8, 1997. She was sworn-in by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, herself a former Arizona legislator. Arizona has no lieutenant governor, so the secretary of state stands first in the line of succession.

She was elected in her own right in 1998. This election was particularly significant because it was the first time in the history of the United States that all five of the top elected executive offices in one state were held by women: Hull; Betsey Bayless, secretary of state; Janet Napolitano, attorney general; Carol Springer, treasurer; and Lisa Graham Keegan, superintendent of public instruction. She was constitutionally barred from running for a second full term in 2002 (The Arizona constitution limits the Governor to eight years), and she was succeeded by current Governor Napolitano, who defeated Matt Salmon.

An elementary school is named for her in Chandler.

She is perhaps best known in her role as governor for signing the death warrants of two foreign nationals, despite international pressure from Germany for a retrial. See Germany v. United States of America.

External links

* [http://www.un.int/usa/ga59-hull-bio.htm Biography of Jane Dee Hull] from the United States Mission to the United Nations