Word: mecham
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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Arizona had previously observed the national Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday but had rescinded the holiday in 1986 under Governor Evan Mecham. Then-Governor J. Fife Symington III ’68, when he came into office in 1991, refused to bring the holiday back to the state despite passionate appeals from a small, but determined, group of activists within the state. Initially, Senator John S. McCain supported and defended Symington in his refusal, but as the political winds changed due to boycotts and public outcry so did McCain, especially once it became clear that Arizona stood to lose...
...honored the holiday. Most famously, all three Arizona House Republicans including current Senator and former presidential candidate John McCain, voted against the bill in '83. The state did not vote in favor of recognizing the holiday until 1992, not only rejecting pleas from Reagan and then Arizona governor Evan Mecham but also losing the NFL's support when the league moved Super Bowl XXVII from Sun Devil Stadium, in Tempe, to California in protest. Arizona was not the only state openly contemptuous of federal law. In 2000, 17 years after the law's official passage and the same year...