Inside Tucson Business columnist Steve Emerine, 73, a longtime political figure and newspaper man, died in the early morning hours of Feb. 13 of medical complications from surgery. His last column appeared in the Feb. 2 issue, the same week he had gone in for an operation to have stents put in to help the blood flow in his arteries.

His anticipated quick recovery was not in the offing as he subsequently needed additional surgeries from which he didn’t recover.

Emerine moved to Arizona in 1960 going to work as a reporter for what is now the Tucson Citizen. He also taught journalism at the University of Arizona in the mid-1960s. In 1967, Emerine and the Citizen’s business editor, Ted Turpin, bought the Green Valley News for $13,000, according to his Jan. 26 column in which he wrote about the impending demise of the Citizen. In 1971, Emerine and Turpin bought the Nogales International for $40,000 but later that year Emerine sold out his interests in both newspapers.  

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Emerine was active in Democratic Party politics and was appointed by the Board of Supervisors in 1973 to be Pima County Assessor and in 1976 won election to the office serving until 1980 when he left to go back in newspapering as a columnist and an editor at the Arizona Daily Star. In 1994, he started Steve Emerine Strategic Public Relations, which specialized in crisis management and helping businesses wade through the maze of government bureaucracy. In June 2005 he began writing the weekly column for Inside Tucson Business.

State Sen. Jonathan Paton, R-Tucson, said Emerine had “an encyclopedic mind” and was among the few people in Southern Arizona who followed and understood the political process.

“We have a very transient community,” Paton said. “There are not a lot of people who remember what happened in the old days to give us some sort of understanding of what will happen tomorrow.”

Born in Scottsbluff, Neb., Emerine graduated from the University of Idaho. He came to Tucson after a tour in the U.S. Air Force. Besides his newspaper and political career, Emerine enjoyed jazz and was a past president of the Tucson Jazz Society.

Emerine is survived by his wife, Claudine; his two children, Keely Emerine Mix of Moscow, Idaho, and Edward Emerine of Tucson; and three grandchildren, Lauren, of Tucson, and Anthony and Jonah, of Moscow, Idaho. He is also survived by his first wife, Carolyn. Funeral services were held Feb. 18.