Businessman governor politician statesmnan
Hunt was born in Huntsville, Missouri, in 1859. He was the second of the four sons of George Washington Hunt and Sarah Elizabeth (Yates) Hunt. The family, one-time wealthy Missouri landowners, were of Virginia and North Carolina ancestry, and the father had been a California gold-seeker in 1849. The mother, a regular contributor to Godey's Lady's Book and other publications, was known as "the Phoebe Cary of the W. "
According to his own account, George received an ordinary common-school education.
He ran away from home on March 3, 1878, and secured rides on railways to Colorado, where he worked at odd jobs and as a prospector and miner in and near the mining towns of Pueblo, Denver, Golden, Leadville, and Gunnison. Wandering into New Mexico by way of Taos and Santa Fe, he worked for a time as a construction hand on the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad but presently joined a party of adventurous spirits in floating down the Rio Grande on a flatboat. From El Paso he drifted westward through Deming and Lordsburg into eastern Arizona Territory, perhaps accompanying a prospecting party. Tradition says that Hunt, nearly penniless, in July of 1881 came driving a pack-burro into the raw, five-year-old silver-mining town of Globe, in the upper Gila River Valley of Arizona, which was his home for thirty years. He worked there for the Old Dominion Commercial Company, of which he became secretary in 1890, and president in 1900, acquired a ranch on the Salt River, and was Globe's first mayor and treasurer of Gila County.
A professed friend of organized labor, Hunt, largely through the workingmen of Globe (where the territory's first and strongest miners' union was organized), got his start in politics. He was elected a member of the territorial legislature from Gila County in 1892, and served in the legislature continuously for eight years, four years in each chamber. He was out of politics in the period 1900-03, but by that time he had achieved enough prestige in Democratic circles to be chosen a delegate to the Democratic National Convention at Kansas City in 1900.
Again Hunt was elected from Gila County to the council or upper house of the territorial legislature in 1904 and continued a member until 1910, being president of the council in the sessions of 1905 and 1909. In both sessions he proved himself a friend of organized labor. The movement for Arizona's statehood brought still more political opportunities. He was loyally devoted to the powerful organization in and near Globe which backed him. He seems to have persuaded the aggressive unions of the territory that they could share in the making of a constitution for the new state only by throwing their vote to the Democratic party.
As soon as President William H. Taft signed Arizona's enabling act on June 20, 1910, there was a lively campaign for the election of a constitutional convention, and on September 12 Hunt was among the fifty-two delegates chosen. He was promptly elected president of the convention when it opened at Phoenix on October 10. During the two-month session, party lines gave way to divisions on economic and political theories between laborites and conservative groups, but both were much influenced by Hunt and by the current national Progressive movement, as the constitution which the voters ratified on February 9, 1911, reveals. The most notable achievement of the labor group was the inclusion of the usual features of direct legislation, although some of them had to be temporarily stricken out in a special election of December 12, 1911, in order to secure President Taft's approval of the Congressional joint resolution admitting Arizona as a state.
Hunt had seemed to favor both factions in the convention, but the voters apparently believed him to be a friend of labor, for on December 12, 1911, he was elected the first governor by a Democratic vote of 11, 123 over his Republican opponent's 9, 166. At noon on February 14, 1912, Hunt, very much bewildered according to Richard E. Sloan, the outgoing Republican territorial governor, was inaugurated amid a wildly excited crowd of his friends. He was safely reelected in 1914, but in 1916 the gubernatorial race was exceedingly close, and the Republican candidate, Thomas E. Campbell, was declared elected on the basis of first returns. Hunt's friends obtained a recount, which disclosed that Hunt had won by a margin of forty-three votes, and on Decemeber 25, 1917, he replaced Campbell as governor. In 1917 he was United States commissioner of conciliation to negotiate settlement of the Arizona miners' strike.
After his third term ended on January 6, 1919, he retired from active politics for a year, residing quietly at his home in Phoenix, to which he had moved from Globe in 1912. He kept a close watch on the political situation, however, during the two Republican administrations of Campbell. On May 18, 1920. President Woodrow Wilson appointed him United States minister to Siam (Thailand), and in that capacity he served until his resignation on October 1, 1921. Upon his return to Arizona he reentered politics, decisively winning the governorship away from Campbell in November 1922. Twice reelected in 1924 and 1926 for his fifth and sixth terms, he carefully rebuilt his old political organization.
According to his own testimony, party candidates were assessed five percent of their prospective official salaries and told that another five percent might be required from them in the future, for the good of the party. He seems to have been quite sincerely devoted to legislation in behalf of labor and prison reform and in 1914 was president of the Anti-Capital Punishment League. His belief that Arizona's interests were neglected may have had much to do with the refusal of the state to accept the socalled Santa Fe compact signed by the six other basin states in 1922 for the control and utilization of the Colorado River. During Hunt's sixth term he was frequently at odds with the legislature.
The election of November 6, 1928, brought defeat to Hunt and the election of the Republican candidate, John C. Phillips, but, partly because of national political trends during the economic crises of the times, Hunt was able to defeat Phillips in November 1930 and so become governor for his seventh and last term. The opposition, however, was now becoming too strong for the sturdy old political veteran, and the death of his wife in 1931 was a serious blow to him. He failed to qualify in the party primaries of 1932 and thereupon retired almost completely from politics. He had been a bitterly hated as well as popular political character, and his record as a masterful politician had made him a legendary figure, not only in Arizona but throughout the inland Southwest. He died of heart disease in his Phoenix home.
Politically, he took on aspects from the populist, and later progressive, movements who supported reforms such as women's suffrage, secret ballots, income tax, free silver coinage, and compulsory education. Hunt was also an opponent of capital punishment and a supporter of organized labor.
Hunt was a dignified, solidly-built man of middle height, with a flowing mustache and a firm, determined manner.
On February 24, 1904, he married Helen Duett Ellison; they had one child, Virginia.
