Jack Taylor (Arizona politician)

Jerald Jackson Taylor, known as Jack Taylor (May 23, 1907 – March 31, 1995), was an educator and Republican politician from Mesa, Arizona. He was the mayor of Mesa and served in both houses, consecutively, of the Arizona State Legislature.

Background

Taylor was born in Sonora in Sutton County in southern Central Texas,^[1] the second of seven children of Walter William Taylor (1882–1972), a Southern Baptist pastor and insurance agent,^[2] and the former Ida Brigham Page (1886–1938), a native of Blanco County northwest of San Antonio. Texas. Walter and Ida, a stenographer, relocated in 1927 from Brownwood in Brown County southeast of Abilene to Phoenix, Arizona.

Jack Taylor married in Brownwood the former Eda Sarah Jane Staton (April 21, 1911 – November 11, 1995). They too followed his parents in relocating to Arizona. The Taylors' two children were born in Phoenix, Thomas Jackson Taylor, who wed the former Tommye Jean Bledsoe, and Glenda Jane Taylor (August 23, 1937 – July 18, 1979), who died at the age of forty-one.^[1] In August 1958, Glenda Taylor married Roger L. Worsley at the First Baptist Church of Mesa.^[3] Worsley became a college administrator and from 1985 to 1995 was the president of Laredo Community College in Laredo, Texas, and thereafter the chancellor of the then Southern Arkansas Technical College in Camden, Arkansas.^[4] The Worsleys subsequently divorced. Roger Worsley retired in 2011 to Sumter County, Florida.^[5]

Career

Jack Taylor was like his father an insurance agent early in life and later a schoolteacher and principal and served for eight years on the governing board of the Mesa Unified School District. He was the mayor of Mesa from 1966 to 1972, when he was elected to the Arizona House of Representatives as a Republican. In 1974, he was elected to the Arizona State Senate, of which he became chairman of the Appropriations Committee. As he was entering the Senate Sandra Day O'Connor would soon vacate the chamber for a seat on the Maricopa County Superior Court. In 1988, Taylor was unseated in the Republican primary election by Lester Pearce, a businessman and his former campaign manager and the brother of fellow conservative Russell Pearce, later president of the Arizona State Senate in 2011. Taylor lost much intraparty support when he voted to convict impeached Governor Evan Mecham. Taylor then gathered signatures with the expectation of running as an Independent for a state House seat but soon withdrew from contention following the illness of his wife, Eda.^[6]

Jack and Eda Taylor died eight months apart in 1995, he in March and she in November.

References