Preliminary Inventory of the Paul Fannin Papers

Paul Jones Fannin was born in Ashland, Kentucky on January 29, 1907. His family moved to Phoenix, Arizona in October of the same year. Fannin attended the University of Arizona before graduating from Stanford University with a degree in business administration in 1930. He went on to distribute a new product, propane gas, until selling his business in 1956.

Fannin was elected Governor of Arizona in 1958 and re-elected in 1960 and 1962. During his terms, Arizona increased sales taxes to support its public school system, established junior colleges, improved state universities, and constructed its first medical school in Tucson. When Barry Goldwater left the Senate to run for President in 1964, Fannin won his seat. In Congress, Fannin served on the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, the Labor and Public Welfare Committee, the Post Office and Civil Service Committee, the Navajo-Hopi Indian Administration Committee, the Aging Committee, the Finance Committee, and the Budget Committee. He was a particular opponent of organized labor, denouncing industrial strikes and fighting to maintain the clause in the Taft-Hartley Act that allowed individual states to decide whether to mandate union membership for workers in unionized shops. He was also involved with environmental issues, supporting increased limitations on strip mining and working to complete the Central Arizona Project.

In 1976, Fannin chose not to run for re-election for personal reasons. He returned to Arizona, where he continued to lobby for energy issues and served on the Central Arizona Water Conservation District Board. Fannin died of a stroke on January 13, 2002.