Former Republican Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, a longtime lawmaker who helped steer the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and played a major role in shaping the West’s water policies, has died at 84.
Kyl died from complications related to a neurological disease, his family said in a statement. He stepped away from public life in December 2025 after announcing that he had been diagnosed with dementia.
His congressional career spanned nearly three decades: eight years in the House, 18 in the Senate and an additional four-month partial term filling the vacancy created by the death of Sen. John McCain. Kyl entered politics during Ronald Reagan’s presidency and concluded his career during President Trump’s first term, witnessing a sweeping transformation within the Republican Party.
“If you saw him on the plane, he was sitting in the aisle, in coach, and he was reading,” former Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey said. “And he was reading potential bills or Senate business.”
During his final full Senate term, Kyl’s Republican colleagues elected him minority whip. He left elected office in 2013 and became a lobbyist, but returned briefly to Congress in 2018 when Ducey appointed him to complete the term left open by McCain’s death.
President Trump praised the appointment at the time, saying he looked forward to working with “the extraordinary senator.” Kyl served for fewer than four months before returning to the lobbying firm Covington & Burling.
“At the federal level, and I regret to say that this is the case, but probably a lot of my better achievements were in preventing bad things from happening (rather) than forcing good things to happen,” Kyl said during a 2012 conversation with former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.
Born April 25, 1942, in Oakland, Nebraska, Kyl grew up in a rural farming district in Iowa represented in the U.S. House by his father. He left Iowa at 18 to attend the University of Arizona, where he met his wife, Caryll, and later earned a law degree.
Before winning election to the House in 1987, beginning a run of four terms, Kyl helped shape Arizona’s 1980 groundwater code while working as a lawyer for a major water utility. The pioneering law established a regulatory system for managing groundwater in the drought-prone state, with a focus on population centers such as Phoenix and Tucson.
In 2004, Kyl authored legislation creating one of the country’s largest tribal water rights settlements. After decades of negotiations, the agreement gave the Gila River Indian Community enough water to fill nearly 313,500 Olympic-size swimming pools each year. In a 2012 Senate floor speech, Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who later became majority leader, called Kyl’s work ethic “legendary” and said he had worked largely behind the scenes for 15 years to advance the settlement.
“It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, but I was in a position to be the catalyst,” Kyl told the Phoenix New Times in 2006. “There wasn’t anybody else who could do that water deal. And it had to be done.”
Arizona State University’s Kyl Center for Water Policy bears his name. Sarah Porter, the center’s director, said Kyl gave generously of his time and was an effective member of Arizona’s congressional delegation who approached water policy pragmatically.
“He’s always sort of cared about the public good and been able to think about, ‘What will this mean for the generations to come?’” Porter said. She added that Kyl remained “quite a dynamo” until recent years, even as his wife faced health problems.
Ducey called Kyl a “giant” in the Senate, describing him as serious, engaging, forthright and thoughtful. In Ducey’s view, Kyl’s most significant contributions included holding the Republican caucus together in opposition to Obamacare and maintaining strong support for Israel.
Kyl also supported legislation authorizing a fence hundreds of miles long along the U.S.-Mexico border. Later, he joined Democrats in backing a measure that would have created a path to citizenship and temporary guest-worker status for people living in the United States without authorization. The proposal failed.
After becoming a lobbyist, Kyl helped guide the Senate confirmation of Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh. When he returned to Congress in 2018, Kyl was widely known as Kavanaugh’s chief Sherpa—an informal term for the person who guides a nominee through the Senate’s political terrain.
In a statement announcing his dementia diagnosis, Kyl reflected on Ronald Reagan’s words when the former president disclosed his own Alzheimer’s diagnosis and said he was beginning a journey that would ultimately lead to the end of his life.
Kyl said he shared Reagan’s confidence in Arizona and the nation’s future. Despite his diagnosis, he added, he was a “very fortunate man.”
