Karan English won election to the U.S. House as
an environmental reformer from one of the nation’s
largest mining districts, an expansive area covering
northeastern Arizona. Congresswoman English’s single
term in the House centered on her effort to balance strong
mineral development interests among her constituency
with her own convictions about the necessity of
environmental protections.
Karan English was born in Berkeley, California, on
March 23, 1949. She attended Shasta Junior College
and the University of California at Santa Barbara, before
earning a BA from the University of Arizona in 1973. She
then worked as a conservation program director. In 1980
English was elected to the Coconino County board of
supervisors, serving from 1981 to 1987. She also raised
two children, Stacy and David, after divorcing her husband
in 1984. She won election to the Arizona state legislature,
serving from 1987 to 1991. By 1990 she had risen to the
state senate, where she served a two-year term, chairing the
environment committee and serving on the education and
transportation panels. One of her legislative achievements
in the state senate was to craft a bill that imposed a “cradle-to-grave” system for transporting, treating, and disposing of
hazardous waste material.1
In 1992 she married Rob Elliott,
a rafting business owner and Flagstaff politician, with three
children from a previous marriage.
English entered the 1992 race for a newly apportioned
U.S. House district that stretched from the suburbs of
Phoenix and Scottsdale in central Arizona to the sprawling
counties of Apache, Gila, and Navajo in the northeastern
corner of the state. She captured 44 percent of the vote,
defeating two challengers in the Democratic primary,
including her colleague in the state senate, minority leader
Alan Stephens. In the general election, she faced Doug
Wead, a minister who had been the George H. W. Bush
administration’s liaison with religious leaders. She ran on a
platform that reflected her experience in the state legislature:
environmental cleanup, more funding for AIDS research
and relief, and cutting the budget deficit.2
English secured
support from two key national groups: EMILY’s List and
the Women’s Campaign Fund. But the endorsement that
propelled her in the polls came from an unlikely source.
As her campaign got underway, her son, David, took an
unexpected phone call at their Flagstaff home. The caller
was Barry Morris Goldwater, the conservative godfather
of Arizona politics, former U.S. Senator, and one-time presidential candidate. He wanted to speak to English. When
her son replied she wasn’t at home, Goldwater said, “Well,
tell your mother, if I lived in the Sixth District, I’d vote for
her.” The endorsement made its way into the media, with
Goldwater stating that he was concerned with Republican
candidate Doug Wead’s “connection to the religious right”
and with the fact that Wead, having lived in the state for just
two years, was something of a political carpetbagger.3
English
became only the second woman elected to Congress from
Arizona (the first was Isabella Greenway in the 1930s) by
defeating Wead, 53 to 41 percent.4
When English took her seat in the 103rd Congress
(1993–1995), she was appointed to the Natural Resources
and the Education and Labor Committees. Following
her work in the Arizona legislature, she used the Natural
Resources seat to focus on environmental issues, despite
the fact that her district encompassed large ranching and
mining interests. In 1992 nearly half of all copper mining
in the U.S. took place in English’s district and the industry
was the largest employer in the district, providing jobs for
nearly 30,000 people, both directly and in support trades.
English spoke out in favor of the Mineral Exploration and
Development Act of 1993, a bill that the mining industry
and environmental groups roundly criticized. It represented
Congress’s effort to reform the General Mining Law of 1872
by eliminating a patenting system that priced public lands
for as little as $2.50 per acre, raising operations standards,
and creating a federal land reclamation fund to deal with
the restoration of mined lands. Placing herself in the “pro-responsible mining camp” English declared that mining
must “be accompanied by a fair return to the owners of
the land: the American taxpayer… . Clearly what is needed
here—what is always needed—is balance. Let us realize
that the old acrimonious debate pitting jobs versus the
environment is ultimately self-defeating. Arizonans at least
know that in the long-term, we must maintain a healthy
partnership between extractive uses of the public lands and
environmental protection.”5
Mining interests objected that
the bill would prohibit any new mining on public lands.
Environmentalists believed that English had given away
too much to the industry. Adding to English’s difficulties
with district industries, ranching and farm interests chafed
at her support for a tax hike on gasoline and an increase in
grazing fees.
Some of English’s personal experiences shaped her
legislative initiatives. In the early 1990s, she had a scare
with breast cancer which led her to push for the Access to
Rural Health Information Act in 1994. Her bill called for
the establishment of a toll-free hotline for rural residents
to receive information ranging from medical services and
physician referrals to where to go for domestic violence
counseling. “Rural America faces a tough challenge in
providing health care to its residents,” English noted.
“Primarily, these problems can be attributed to the lack of
primary care providers, physical and economic barriers,
and the fragile nature of rural health care delivery systems
dependent on a sparse population base. When a rural area
loses its doctor, it often loses its health care.”6
English faced a tough re-election campaign in the fall
of 1994. Many of her votes had not resonated well with
her conservative-leaning constituents. In addition to the
controversial mining and ranching reforms she supported,
English also had voted in favor of abortion rights, the
William J. (Bill) Clinton administration’s 1993 budget,
the Brady Handgun Bill, and the 1994 ban on assault
weapons. Even Goldwater retracted his support for her.
She lost to Republican John D. Hayworth Jr., a former
television sportscaster, by a 55-to-42 percent margin. After
the election, she recalled, “I didn’t lose to J. D. I lost to the
Christian Coalition. And they didn’t beat me, they beat
this image that had been created over the past two years
and I couldn’t turn it around.” She was not alone. Sixteen
of the 1992 freshman class—all Democrats—were turned
out of office in the 1994 “Republican Revolution,” which
gave control of the House to the GOP for the first time in
40 years. In a late November meeting of the Democratic
Caucus, recriminations flew over the election defeat for
House Democrats, with at least one lawmaker observing
that some of the damage could have been mitigated if some
of the freshmen Members had not voted the way they
did on politically sensitive issues. English offered a direct
retort: “To suggest that we shouldn’t have taken these tough
votes to save our careers … [is] exactly what the problem
is in Congress. I came here to do something, not to be
somebody.” The Caucus gave her a standing ovation.7
After Congress, English returned to Flagstaff, Arizona,
where she worked with the National Democratic Institute
of International Affairs as a consultant for countries
developing democratic institutions. Since 1997, English
has worked at Northern Arizona University, where
she currently directs its ecological monitoring and
assessment program.
View Record in the Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress
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