John L. Sullivan (politician, 1891)

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John L. Sullivan (born July 20, 1891 in Pennsylvania , † October 13, 1949 in Phoenix , Arizona ) was an American officer , lawyer and politician ( Democratic Party ).

Career

John L. Sullivan moved to Arizona at some point. He studied law and then practiced as a lawyer.

During the First and Second World Wars he served as a reservist in the infantry with the rank of captain .

Sullivan was elected Attorney General of Arizona in 1934 . In the Democratic nomination in 1936, he suffered a defeat to the Democrat Joe Conway . Sullivan held the post from 1935 to 1937. He then ran unsuccessfully in 1942 for the Democratic nomination in the first constituency of Arizona for the US Congress . His challenger John Robert Murdock then went out of the running as the winner and was elected to the US Congress in the following elections. After Conway's resignation in January 1944, he was re-elected Attorney General of Arizona and re-elected in 1946. He held the post from 1944 to 1949.

Efforts were made to legalize gambling in Arizona in the early 1940s. There were the following reasons for this: The then Attorney General of California Earl Warren closed all gambling establishments in California in 1939 because, in his opinion, they disrupted public order. Although gambling was legal in Nevada , Las Vegas was very far from major metropolitan areas. The legalization of gambling has generated additional government revenue. During this time, Sullivan was won over to the project by the brothers Russell "Bus" and William "Bill" Sheffler. Petition No. 302, also known as the Sullivan Act, should only allow one casino per county. At that time, what was then Yuma County formed most of the border with California, before the northern part was separated in 1983 and La Paz County was founded. The Shefflers operated the only casino there, in Salome, Arizona. The potential for government revenue and growth was enormous. The referendum that was carried out spoke out against the petition with 70,154 to 43,564 votes. Sullivan was later rumored to have taken bribes from people who operated gambling houses on old Route 66 .

In 1936 he married Ethel M. Fisher (1912-2005), daughter of Effie B. Fisher.

After his death in Phoenix in 1949, he was buried there in the Saint Francis Cemetery .

Individual evidence

  1. a b John L. Sullivan on the ancestry.com web site
  2. a b c John L. Sullivan in the Find a Grave database . Retrieved April 26, 2016.
  3. John L. Sullivan on the Our Campaigns website
  4. Towne, Douglas: Salome, Baby , Phoenix Magazine, February 2012
  5. John Dombrink and William Norman Thompson: The Last Resort: Success and Failure in Campaigns for Casinos , University of Nevada Press, 1990, ISBN 9780874171402 , p 159
  6. Ethel Fisher Sullivan on the legacy.com website