Jan Brewer Biography Quotes 2 Report mistakes

Early Life and Education

Janice Kay Drinkwine, known publicly as Jan Brewer, was born on September 26, 1944, in Hollywood, California. Raised in a family that valued hard work and civic responsibility, she moved to Arizona as a young adult and made the Phoenix area her long-term home. She studied radiography at Glendale Community College and worked as a radiologic technologist, an experience that grounded her in the day-to-day realities of health care settings. She married John Brewer, a small-business owner, and together they built a family life in Arizona, laying the community roots that would later shape her public service.

Entry into Public Service

Brewer entered elective politics in the 1980s, winning a seat in the Arizona House of Representatives in 1982. Her early legislative work reflected an interest in pragmatic governance, with attention to budgeting, health services, and regulatory issues that affected families and small businesses. In 1986 she was elected to the Arizona Senate, where she served through the mid-1990s. Colleagues often described her as direct and unafraid of tough votes, traits that would become hallmarks of her later leadership.

Maricopa County Leadership

After her time in the Legislature, Brewer turned to county government, winning a seat on the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors in 1996. She took office in 1997 during a period of fiscal strain and institutional scrutiny. Working alongside other county officials, she emphasized balanced budgets, debt reduction, and management reforms designed to stabilize county finances and restore public confidence. The hands-on experience of steering Arizona's most populous county through budget challenges sharpened her reputation as a fix-it executive.

Secretary of State of Arizona

In 2002 Brewer was elected Arizona Secretary of State, the state's chief elections officer, and was re-elected in 2006. She oversaw implementation of federal Help America Vote Act requirements, modernization of voter rolls, and election administration reforms. The Secretary of State is first in the line of succession to the governorship, a constitutional provision that would soon place her at the center of national debates.

Governor of Arizona

Brewer became Arizona's governor in January 2009 when Governor Janet Napolitano joined the administration of President Barack Obama as Secretary of Homeland Security. Brewer inherited a severe revenue shortfall brought on by the Great Recession. She called special legislative sessions and championed a temporary one-cent sales tax increase (Proposition 100), arguing with business leaders and local officials that the measure was necessary to stabilize education and core services. Voters approved the measure in 2010, a political win that showed her willingness to seek statewide consensus in a crisis.

In 2010 Brewer signed Senate Bill 1070, a strict immigration enforcement law sponsored by state Senator Russell Pearce. The law drew national attention, spurred protests, and led to a major legal confrontation. The U.S. Department of Justice, under Attorney General Eric Holder, sued Arizona, culminating in the 2012 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Arizona v. United States, which struck down several provisions while allowing the status-check provision to stand. Brewer's defense of the law, her arguments about border security, and her high-profile exchanges with national figures, including a widely photographed tarmac encounter with President Obama, made her one of the most visible governors in the country.

As the economy began to recover, Brewer pursued an agenda mixing fiscal restraint with selective institutional changes. She backed the creation of the Arizona Commerce Authority to recalibrate the state's economic development strategy. In 2013 she pushed to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, framing it as a fiscally conservative way to leverage federal dollars, reduce uncompensated care, and stabilize hospitals. The move angered many in her own party but passed with support from Democrats and a bloc of Republican legislators in both chambers, a coalition she personally assembled through sustained negotiations.

Brewer also exercised the veto pen in consequential ways. In 2014 she vetoed SB 1062, a measure billed by supporters as protecting religious liberty but criticized by many business leaders and civil rights advocates as permitting discrimination. Her decision, citing potential economic harm and the state's reputation, underscored her pragmatic streak. Throughout her tenure she worked with and sometimes against influential Arizona Republicans, from legislative leaders to national figures such as Senators John McCain and Jon Kyl, navigating a party landscape that was often divided on immigration, health care, and fiscal strategy.

Public Image and Leadership Style

Brewer cultivated an image as a plainspoken, no-nonsense executive. Supporters praised her for steadiness during the budget crisis, for standing firm on border security, and for breaking with ideological orthodoxy when she believed a policy would benefit Arizona's finances and institutions. Critics faulted the breadth and tone of SB 1070 and argued that the law damaged the state's national standing. Even so, her leadership style, decisive, sometimes confrontational, and intensely focused on governing outcomes, kept her at the center of Arizona's political discourse for the better part of a decade.

Later Career and Influence

Term limits constrained her options after one full term following her succession to the office, and in January 2015 she was succeeded as governor by Doug Ducey. Brewer remained active in public debates and political endorsements, and she continued to be a sought-after voice on immigration, federalism, and state budgeting. She also published a memoir, Scorpions for Breakfast, offering her perspective on the policy battles and political crosscurrents that defined her governorship.

Personal Life

Throughout her career, Brewer anchored her public commitments in a family life built with her husband, John Brewer, and their children. She has long identified with the concerns of small-business owners, health-care workers, and families navigating state systems, perspectives shaped by her own work experience and by years spent in local communities around Phoenix and Glendale. Those personal ties, along with enduring relationships with allies and adversaries alike, from Janet Napolitano and Russell Pearce within Arizona to Barack Obama and Eric Holder on the national stage, frame a political life defined by controversy, compromise, and consequential decision-making in a period of economic shock and intense policy conflict.