William C. Joyner

Joyner was born in 1880 in Newburg, Missouri. After graduating high school in Missouri, he received his bachelor's degree from the Missouri School of Mines.^[2] Joyner was a trainman by occupation, and was employed in that capacity when he moved to Tucson, Arizona from Missouri in 1920, and was a member of the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen. He also served two terms as a trustee on the University of Arizona Board of Regents and served as the Arizona state chairman for the Democrats.^[2] In 1929, he moved from Tucson to Phoenix and entered the real estate business.^[3] He was a veteran of the Spanish–American War, having fought in Cuba.^[2]

In 1926, he ran for and won one of the two seats from Pima County to the Arizona State Senate.^[2] In 1928, he decided not to run for re-election to the State Senate, instead attempting to gain the Democrat nomination for Arizona Secretary of State.^[4] While he won Pima County, he did not perform well in the rest of the state, and finished a distant third, with 9,100 votes, behind W. H. Linville (13,270 votes) and John Callaghan (17,769 votes), the eventual winner.^[5][6] He served as the state's game warden, and was responsible for the construction of the Hunt Bass Hatchery House.^[2]

In 1936, he attempted to run for the State Senate again, this time from Maricopa County, but finished a distant 5th out of 8 Democrat candidates in the primary.^[7][8] In 1940, he was supervisor in Maricopa and Yuma Counties for the United States census.^[9] In 1940, after the census, he moved to Waynesville, Missouri. He died on July 17, 1943, in a hospital in Waynesville.^[2]