Janice Kay Brewer (née Drinkwine, formerly Warren; born September 26, 1944) is an American politician and author who served as the 22nd governor of Arizona from 2009 to 2015. A member of the Republican Party, Brewer is the fourth woman (and was the third consecutive woman) to be Governor of Arizona. Brewer assumed the governorship as part of the line of succession, as determined by the Arizona Constitution, when Governor Janet Napolitano resigned to become U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security. Brewer had been Secretary of State of Arizona from January 2003 to January 2009.
Born in California, Brewer attended Glendale Community College, from where she received a radiological technologist certificate. She has never earned a college degree. She was a state representative and state senator for Arizona from 1983 to 1996. She was chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors before running for Arizona secretary of state in 2002.
As governor, Brewer signed the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act. The act makes it a state misdemeanor crime for a noncitizen to be in Arizona without carrying registration documents required by federal law, authorizes state and local law enforcement of federal immigration laws and cracks down on those sheltering, hiring and transporting illegal immigrants. Brewer sought and was elected to a full term as governor of Arizona in 2010.
Early life, education and family
Brewer was born Janice Kay Drinkwine on September 26, 1944, in Hollywood, Los Angeles, the daughter of Edna C. (née Bakken) and Perry Wilford Drinkwine, then a civilian supervisor at the Hawthorne Army Depot in Hawthorne, Nevada. Brewer is of English and Norwegian descent. Her maternal grandfather, Emil Theodore Bakken, was from Norway; her maternal grandmother, Carrie Nelson, was from Minnesota, the daughter of Norwegian immigrants. Her paternal grandmother, Sarah Rosina Ford (née Wilford), was an Englishwoman from Buckinghamshire.
Brewer and her older brother, Paul, lived in Hawthorne until she was ten years old, when the family moved to California, seeking "dry desert air and clean ocean breezes". Her father died of lung disease when she was eleven years old, having been ravaged by the constant exposure to chemicals while at the depot. She graduated from Verdugo Hills High School in 1962. Brewer attended Glendale Community College in Glendale, Arizona, where she received a radiological technologist certificate.
She married John Leon Brewer in Nevada and worked briefly in Glendale, California, before moving to her husband's hometown of Phoenix, Arizona, in 1970. The couple later moved to Glendale, Arizona, where he became a successful chiropractor, in addition to finding some real estate success. They settled in the Deer Valley section of Phoenix.
Brewer and her husband had three sons, one of whom died of cancer in 2007. Another son, Ronald Brewer, was declared not guilty by reason of insanity for the rape of a Phoenix woman in 1989; he was a psychiatric patient for many years in the Arizona State Hospital. His case file was sealed by a Phoenix judge shortly before Brewer became governor. Ronald Brewer died in November 2018.
Political career
State legislature
Initially interested in running for school board, Brewer soon saw an opening in her local legislative district, and decided to run for State Representative. Brewer went on to sit in the Arizona House of Representatives for three years, from 1983 to 1987, before deciding to run for the Arizona Senate, where she sat from 1987 to 1996. As state senator, she sought legislation with the intention of creating an office of lieutenant governor in the state, arguing that holding the office of secretary of state does not make a candidate qualified for governor, and that the office should be filled by a member of the same party, should a vacancy arise. During her last three years as a state senator, she held the senior leadership position of majority whip.
In 1996, Brewer ran for chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, defeating the incumbent, Ed King, and was on the board for six years. She inherited a debt of $165 million.
Secretary of State of Arizona
In early 2002, Brewer created a campaign committee to run for the office of Secretary of State of Arizona, to replace outgoing secretary of state Betsey Bayless. Brewer ran against the Phoenix councilman Sal DiCiccio in the primary race and won by a narrow margin of just 23,000 votes.