Ousted Governor Is Cooking Up a New Life

The man who was once the most powerful politician in Arizona now spends his time cleaning, chopping and pounding food for $8.50 an hour.

Former Arizona Gov. Fife Symington, whose political world crumbled around him when he was forced from office two years after his conviction on bank and wire-fraud charges, has chosen to reinvent himself as a wannabe chef--and he loves it.

“It doesn’t bother me at all,” the 54-year-old Republican said of the orders being barked at him as he toiled at Franco’s Trattoria, an upscale Tuscan restaurant in Scottsdale.

“I have no problem with authority. I’m here to listen and follow commands. Most of all, I’m here to learn, and that’s what I’m planning to do,” he said in an interview.

He said he has put the lengthy federal investigation that led to his conviction--it was later thrown out by an appeals court on the grounds that a 76-year-old woman had been wrongly dismissed from the jury--to the back of his mind.

In August, federal prosecutors in Los Angeles asked the appeals court to reconsider its ruling. It is not known when the judges will decide. If the appeal fails, prosecutors said they have not yet decided whether to retry the former governor on charges stemming from his days as a high-flying Phoenix-area developer in the mid-1980s and early ‘90s.

These days, Symington is focused on his apprenticeship under the tutelage of chef Franco Fazzouli, an industry veteran who has owned restaurants in Arizona and New York. He will spend 420 hours at the 107-seat restaurant learning the basics and more of cooking, something he calls his “secret passion.”

There is seafood salad to assemble, tomato basil sauce to prepare, scaloppine to pound flat and tiramisu to be made. Symington said the culinary skills he has learned are something that no one can take away from him--even if he is retried, convicted and sent to prison.

“I don’t worry about it,” he said, referring to any future prosecution. “I’ve gone on with my life, and no one can do anything more to hurt me. That’s how I feel now.”

His apprenticeship, following more than a year of formal training at the Scottsdale Culinary Institute, a well-known school for budding chefs, has not been easy for the man who admits to spending little time cooking previously.

Symington said he failed a basic kitchen math test and had to retake it. He has also heard all the culinary jokes--about cooking the books, an unkind reference to errors he made on his financial statements during his developer days, or his being a flash in the pan. He shrugs off those lines and is quick to dismiss the naysayers.

“Everybody has to make a living,” he said, leaning across a table at the restaurant. “People who have a problem with me being here need to get a life. I really feel sorry for them.”

But Symington’s troubles have followed him into the kitchen. He admits they cost him a chance to apprentice in another restaurant whose owner balked because he did not “enjoy the thought of having significant publicity,” Symington said.

Fazzouli, 57, said he did not have to think twice about his new employee, who has eaten at his restaurants for roughly the last decade. “I don’t care about controversy,” he said. “Who hasn’t made a mistake in their life? You find me one. Are people going to crucify him for the rest of his life? Everyone deserves a second chance.”

Fazzouli said his new kitchen helper shows the willingness it takes to succeed as a chef, but it is still too early to know whether he has the required talent.

Symington seems to be banking on his new career. For one thing, he said he has no interest in returning to the political arena. Those days are past.

Symington’s close friends say he no longer talks much about politics and seems at peace with his new life.

He muses about writing a book one day, but not about his trials and tribulations. He is more interested in writing the great American novel, one based on a scenario he knows a bit about. “It would be a rip-roaring political novel about a governor from a Wild West state who did something good,” he said, adding that he already has a snappy finish in mind.

“It would end happily, of course. Maybe in the kitchen.”