Mecham: Worst Governor Ever? (1990)

This Day in Esoteric Political History

Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia

History

4.6 • 982 Ratings

🗓️ 4 April 2023

⏱️ 20 minutes

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Summary

It’s April 3rd. This day in 1990, the Arizona Senate votes to remove Governor Evan Mecham from office — for all sorts of reasons.

Jody, Niki, and Kellie discuss Mecham’s very sketchy track record on race, corruption, abuse of power and more; and how he ended up in office to begin with.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from radiotopia.
0:07.0	My name is Jody Abergen.
0:10.0	This day April 4th, 1990, the Arizona Senate votes to impeach Governor Evan Mikum.
0:18.2	And if I can characterize the reaction of the people in Arizona, actually kind of across
0:22.2	the political spectrum in that
0:23.9	moment it was probably like it's about freaking time that we got rid of this guy.
0:27.8	So let's get right into it because this meekum story is wild the first governor to be
0:32.2	removed from office at that point in about
0:33.6	60 years and only one has been removed since and his resume as it were of
0:38.2	impeachable offenses was a real hit list of shady behavior. We've gotten a bunch of emails about him and all of them
0:45.3	mentioned another piece of shady behaviors. They're stuck on this thing and this thing and
0:48.8	this thing and they're all different and equally shady so it is quite remarkable.
0:52.2	Thank you to everyone who is written in and I'm
0:55.0	here to everyone who is written in and I'm here to discuss Meekham's removal as always are
0:57.2	Nicole Hemmer of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley. Hello
1:01.2	there. Hello Jody. Hey there. You know how in baseball they talk about
1:04.9	hitting for the cycle? You know you just kind of do everything in one game? This guy
1:07.9	hit for the political cycle of bad behavior. So I don't know where you want to start. Do you want to start with the racism
1:16.2	with the corruption or the abuse of power? I was like racism for 200? Or do we want to start about why he got into office in the first place, which is its own kind of crazy scandal?
1:28.0	What do we think here?
1:29.0	Well, let's start with how he got into office, because I do think that this is going to be a key theme in his
1:35.2	removal as well and I think it's important to set the stage that not that many people
	...

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