Schools in Tucson and throughout the state lost a longtime advocate last week when Tucson native Sam Polito died July 3. He was 80.
Since the early 1980s, Polito lobbied the state Legislature on behalf of students in Tucson and across the state. He also played an instrumental role in the desegregation process at the Tucson Unified School District, the implementation of the Head Start program and the creation of Joint Technical Education Districts across Arizona.
“Generations have benefited, whether they knew it or not, from his advocacy,” said TUSD governing board member Adelita Grijalva. “He really was an institution.”
In addition to bringing much-needed funding to schools, Polito also stopped bills that would have unfairly cut funding to schools from getting out of committee, she said. “A lot of really bad things didn’t happen” due to Polito’s efforts.
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The Metropolitan Education Commission presented Polito with a lifetime achievement award in May.
His friends and family remember him for his warm personality, cooking, and off-color jokes.
“He was pretty much friends with everybody,” said Linda Polito, his wife of 41 years and co-worker at Polito Associates, the government relations firm Sam Polito founded in 1989.
“One of the things he was proudest of in life was the people he mentored,” she said.
One of those mentees was Jesse Rodriguez, who worked at TUSD from 1984 to 1999 and is now the chief information officer for Pima County. Rodriguez met Polito in 1984 and the two “sort of adopted each other,” he said.
“There’s just no one like him. There was not a person he didn’t find some way of connecting with,” Rodriguez said, adding: “He was truly genuine about it.”
Andrew Polito, one of Polito’s six children, remembered his father teaching him to respect people according to how they lived and treated others.
“Throughout his life my Dad always had friends from every social class and walk of life, and he treated them all as equals, especially when holding people up as role models for me,” Andrew Polito said in an email.
Polito’s nephew Steve Montiel remembered Polito as the family historian, a skilled teller of stories and jokes, and a “great cook.”
“He had a wide network of friends and all of them at one time or another got to eat the good food he cooked,” he said, recalling the chile con carne, tamales, albondigas and other Mexican dishes Polito learned from his mother, a native of Mexico.
U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva, who met Polito while serving on the TUSD governing board in the 1970s, attended one of the gatherings Polito hosted while lobbying at the state Legislature.
“He was the ultimate host,” Grijalva said, remembering Polito’s insistence that everyone eat as much as they could.
“I think he took me there just to irritate the conservatives,” Grijalva quipped.
On a serious note, Grijalva said Polito was “underappreciated” for all he did for students while advocating for them at the state Legislature.
“He influenced those policies and he did it in a way where he didn’t seek credit,” Grijalva said.
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