“You send me to Washington to represent you in the senate. But you do not send me there because you are interested in grave questions of national or international policy. When I come back to Arizona, you never ask me any questions about such policies; instead you ask me: “What about my pension?” or “What about that job for my son?” I am not in Washington as a statesman. I am there as a very well paid messenger boy doing your errands. My chief occupation is going around with a forked stick picking up little fragments of patronage for my constituents.”

— Henry Fountain Ashurst

Reported in Thomas C. Donnelly, Rocky Mountain Politics (1940), p. 283; reported as unverified in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989).
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Henry Fountain Ashurst10

United States Senator from Arizona 1874–1962

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Henry Fountain Ashurst10

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