Missteps, Miscues of Arizona Politics

Odd bedfellows have been bountiful in Arizona politics since 1881 and the Gunfight at the OK Corral.

When it was all over but the burying, Tombstone Town Marshall Virgil Earp, brother of Wyatt, was fired. City elders believed his shootout was motivated more by personal revenge than by good law enforcement.

Subsequent years have produced numerous echoes:

* Shortly after the Arizona Territory became the 48th state in 1912, Gov. George Hunt lost reelection by 30 votes. He refused to give up the job, persuaded the state’s new Supreme Court to overturn the election and remained in office.

* In 1986, Republican Evan Mecham, a Pontiac dealer consistently defeated in almost 30 years of statewide balloting, finally was elected governor. Thanks to a low voter turnout and a three-way contest that split Democratic voters, Arizona’s answer to Harold Stassen won a state of 3.6 million people with only 343,913 votes.

More incredibly, that translates to 15% of registered voters--and only 12.5% of those eligible to vote.

On inauguration, Mecham announced that he would cancel Martin Luther King Day as a state holiday and place the issue on the ballot. Widely interpreted as the work of a racist governor, the move resulted in the National Football League removing the 1993 Super Bowl from Arizona. More than 150 conventions eventually canceled Arizona bookings, and the state lost an estimated $160 million.

Mecham’s grim classics fed network talk-show hosts for months:

He joked about the shape of Japanese eyes, said the state should not employ gays, told a meeting of Jews that they should be happy living in a Christian nation, and wondered aloud if the Pope spoke English or should the state provide an Italian interpreter for his visit?

In 1988, Mecham was impeached for diverting inaugural ball donations into a loan for his sinking auto dealership.

* Last year, seven of Arizona’s 90 legislators were indicted for bribery. Six pleaded guilty. The seventh, Carolyn Walker, was expelled from the state Senate and will stand trial next month.

* Then came the Keating Five, a group of federal lawmakers with personal connections to savings and loan swindler Charles Keating. Arizona senators Dennis DeConcini and John McCain were investigated for influence-peddling, but no charges were filed. Noted one state politician: “We can now claim 40% of the Keating Five were from Arizona.”

* In December, the federal Resolution Trust Corp. filed a $140-million lawsuit against Gov. J. Fife Symington III and other former directors of a collapsed Phoenix savings and loan. Symington has called the charges a “witch hunt.” But the suit stands.

Critics still smirk at Symington’s campaign claim that it was time the state was run like a business. Since then, Symington’s business fortunes have plunged with the state’s banking and real estate industries.

Even reporting on the governor’s business troubles can be hazardous to a career. John Dougherty, a reporter for the Mesa Tribune, wrote several stories about Symington’s savings and loan tangles. The governor’s lawyer and Washington campaign consultant complained to executives at the paper, and Dougherty was transferred to the environmental beat.

* New Times, a tough, irreverent and award-winning Phoenix weekly, recently alleged that Symington had been involved in an extramarital romance. The newspaper published a 1989 letter from the woman, Annette Alvarez, that said: “My Dear Fife . . . I am slowly going under by allowing this heightened intimacy to continue.”

Whether it continued is unknown. What is known is that Alvarez has only one semester of college and no experience in international trade. Yet Symington appointed her the state’s $60,000-a-year executive assistant for international relations.

Symington has denied any intimacy with Alvarez. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, he defended his support of Alvarez despite the gossip: “She is here to stay and she is terrific and that ‘New Times’ stuff is total baloney and we realize that we’re just going to have to put up with it.”

David Bodney, New Times editor, says there has been no gubernatorial request to retract the story, nor has Symington threatened a libel suit.

The only change, he notes, is with the governor’s wife, who seems to be spending more time at her husband’s side during public appearances: “I like to think that we brought the governor and his wife a little closer together.”