Running Uphill: Recollections of a Congressman from Arizona
by James F. McNulty, Jim McNulty
Category: Biography & Autobiography

"In this memoir, former Arizona Congressman James F. McNulty Jr. takes the reader along on the emotional roller coaster of campaigning for office. With a candor rarely heard, he documents the exhausting, expensive, sometimes hilarious, and sometimes slanderous and bitter process, and he explores the motivations and foibles of politicians as he observes the enormous consequences of their successes and failures." "Jim McNulty has lived from one election to the next for most of his life. When he wasn't running for office himself, he was helping manage other Democratic candidates' campaigns. He ran successfully for the Arizona State Senate twice and was appointed once to complete the term of a Senator who died in office. He ran for Congress three times, including his victory over Republican Jim Kolbe in 1982 and his defeat by the same opponent in 1984, and he ran for the United States Senate in 1980." "The author leads the reader along a life's journey that began in the Irish neighborhoods of Boston and winds through Tucson, Bisbee, Phoenix, and Washington, D.C., and includes a visit to the Soviet Union in 1962. Throughout the book he examines political and legislative milestones that shaped modern Arizona such as the GI Bill, Rural Electrification, the Central Arizona Project, and the establishment of Land Grant Colleges. He details the emergence of a group of liberal "Young Turks" at the University of Arizona who would eventually seize control of the Arizona Democratic party. In 1960, under the leadership of Stewart Udall, they overthrew the conservative wing of the party and won the Arizona delegation to the Democratic National Convention for another Boston Irishman: John F. Kennedy. This was a turning point in Arizona political history and Jim McNulty was in the middle of it."--BOOK JACKET.