Senator Barry Goldwater once said that “Arizona is 113,400 square miles of heaven that God cut out.”
On Arizona’s 114th birthday, it’s hard to imagine a better way to describe the place we call home.
Every February 14, Arizonans celebrate more than a date on the calendar. Arizona Statehood Day is a reminder of what makes this place different: a state built by pioneers, risk-takers, builders, and families who came here not just to live, but to create something freer, stronger, and full of possibility.
For 114 years, Arizona has been defined by its wide-open landscapes and even wider sense of opportunity. It’s a place where independence isn’t just part of our history—it’s part of our identity.
And today, Arizona continues to lead the nation in proving what freedom looks like when it’s protected, defended, and put into action.
Freedom in education
Arizona has become the national gold standard for school choice because families here have refused to accept a one-size-fits-all system that leaves too many children behind. That’s why the Goldwater Institute helped create Empowerment Scholarship Accounts—an innovative reform that puts parents in the driver’s seat of their children’s education.
This year, Arizona reached an extraordinary milestone: more than 100,000 students are now enrolled in the state’s universal ESA program.
The idea is simple: children deserve better than being trapped in schools that don’t work for them. ESAs empower families to choose the education that best fits their child’s needs, whether that means a charter school, private school, homeschool, or a customized learning path.
What began with just 100 students in 2011 has now grown into a program serving more than 100,000 Arizona children in 2026, inspiring dozens of states to follow Arizona’s lead.
Because in Arizona, it’s parents—not politicians or bureaucrats—who know what their children need to thrive.
Freedom to work
Arizona is also leading the way in ensuring that opportunity doesn’t come with unnecessary red tape attached.
For millions of Americans, getting a job requires more than skill—it requires a government-issued permission slip. Nearly one in four jobs nationwide requires an occupational license, and workers who move across state lines are often forced to repeat costly training or testing just to do the same work they’ve done for years.
That’s why Arizona enacted the Goldwater Institute’s universal recognition reform in 2019—what the Wall Street Journal dubbed “Arizona’s Licensing Liberation.”
Today, more than 10,000 professionals have been able to practice their profession in Arizona without having to jump through onerous government-imposed hurdles.
This landmark reform has sparked a national movement, with more than a dozen states adopting similar laws, helping skilled workers provide for their families and strengthening communities across the country.
Freedom in healthcare
Arizona’s commitment to opportunity also extends to something even more fundamental: the freedom to fight for your life.
Through Goldwater’s Right to Try reforms, patients facing rare or terminal illnesses have greater access to investigational treatments when no approved options remain—cutting through bureaucratic delays and giving families hope.
Stories like Maya Reinhardt’s, Diego Morris’s, and Elijah Stacy’s remind us what’s at stake: when time is limited, patients deserve the freedom to pursue every possible chance at life.
Right to Try is about dignity, compassion, and ensuring that medical innovation is matched by the legal freedom to access it.
The free state of Arizona
After 114 years, Arizona remains what Barry Goldwater so perfectly described: “113,400 square miles of heaven that God cut out”—filled with wide-open opportunity and the kind of freedom that still runs wild.
And the Goldwater Institute will always fight to keep it that way: defending the freedoms that make Arizona a place where families can thrive, people can work, patients can pursue hope, and all Arizonans can live freer, happier lives.
On this Statehood Day, we celebrate the promise of Arizona and recommit ourselves to keeping it a place where freedom is more than an ideal. It’s a reality.
Happy 114th birthday, Arizona!
