The Daily Agenda: Local politicians just want to be recognized
No, sir, nobody knows who you are … Financial disclosure laws remain weak ... And the answer is not to stop voting.
Before we get into how Chandler City Councilman OD Harris intimidated and bullied staff at a local restaurant, let’s talk about his awful memory.
Prior to filing a public records request for emails between the city and a local hotel restaurant, we simply asked Harris whether anything weird had happened to him at a restaurant recently, as we had heard through the rumor mill. We asked in six different ways, in fact.
“Definitely nothing about that sounds remotely true. I don't know anything about what you're even talking about to be honest with you,” he said. “... And the city has not received any letters, OK?”
There was, of course, a letter. And it’s pretty damning.
On the evening of Aug. 9, Harris and a friend sat down for Taco Tuesday at the the 1912 Lounge at Crowne Plaza San Marcos Golf Resort, where they were asked for a credit card or a room number to start a tab, as is the company’s policy.
The altercation started when Harris noted that he was wearing an embroidered City of Chandler shirt and said he therefore didn’t need to put down a card to start a tab, the food and beverage manager wrote in a detailed email she sent to her boss, which he forwarded to Mayor Kevin Hartke.
“Mr. Harris continued to explain to me the importance of his shirt, why it is impossible and illegal to replicate, and that as long as he's wearing it, he should be treated like an esteemed member of the city council,” she wrote.
Harris’ friend said they felt profiled because they were the only Black people in the restaurant and the only ones asked to put down a card to start a tab. (The manager wrote they were not the only Black people in the room, which she said could be verified by the video cameras, and that the credit card policy was applied uniformly to all customers.)
In the email, the manager ticked off a long bullet-point list of what Harris said. Here’s a sample:
As a City Councilman, he has the right to enter the hotel any time he wants, go wherever he wants, and inspect the entire hotel. …He has influence and can tell people about his experience at the hotel, thus making or breaking our hotel business.
After a very long conversation, Mr. Harris asked for all of his food to be remade, as it was now cold. … Finally, Mr. Harris requested that his entire meal be comped. Which I accommodated.
Mr. Harris stated … he had an issue with the Front Desk, and then he proceeded to say ‘and now that front desk agent is no longer employed here.’ To be blunt, I did feel that he was implying a threat to my job and trying to intimidate me.
It wasn’t his first run-in with staff. Less than a year ago, the manager wrote, Harris had a spat with the front desk after they asked for an ID and credit card when he and his wife were checking into a room.
“Again, he expected the Front Desk to know who he was, stating ‘Do you know who I am?’ He had also made comments telling the Front Desk to ‘Google him’ and that will be a sufficient form of ID. He also gave the Front Desk his Business Card and told them that that should be good enough for them,” she wrote.
The day after the hotel bar fiasco, Scott Garrett, the vice president of operations for Lester Hospitality, the hotel’s parent company, called Harris, emails show. The next week, they had lunch and a pleasant conversation where they cleared the air.
The entire situation seems pretty memorable, we told Harris when we called him back after getting the records. Harris said he had no comment beyond that he had a “personal issue” with the hotel, and that he worked it out with upper management. He hung up quickly.
His insistence that it’s a “personal issue” is important — it affects the release of public records.
The day after we first spoke to Harris and more than two weeks after his meeting with upper hotel management, Garrett sent the city an email saying he had a press release ready to go explaining it was all a big misunderstanding.
We filed another records request to see if the two had coordinated that press release after we started asking questions. The city said there was nothing on Harris’ city-owned email or cell phone. Arizona law is clear that any public business done on a personal phone is still subject to public records laws, so we asked the city to search his personal phone. Harris wouldn’t turn it over and claimed there was no “city business” on his phone, the city attorney’s office told us.
If you’re using your city position to get special treatment, that’s public business.
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We’re sure he’ll face stiff penalties: Attorney general candidate Abe Hamadeh left out lots of stuff on his financial disclosure statement, the Phoenix New Times’ Elias Weiss reports. Although candidates must attest the document is correct under the penalty of perjury, lots of people lie and nobody is ever punished.
State vs. Tucson, round one million: Attorney General Mark Brnovich sued the City of Tucson over its COVID-19 vaccine requirements, the AG’s office announced yesterday. The suit uses civil rights protections as its basis, arguing that the city policy effectively discriminated against employees “based on religion or disability.” (We wrote about how the city handled waivers for religious or medical exemptions last year.)
You mean it was just a photo op?!: The shipping containers Gov. Doug Ducey stacked up along gaps in the U.S.-Mexico border fence aren’t doing too much to stop migrants, the Associated Press reports. A “fairly typical” number of migrants are still entering the Yuma sector daily, and migrants are simply going around barriers to find open spots in the fencing.
Speaking of Ducey: The governor is now in Taiwan on a five-day trade mission to the country and to South Korea, where he’ll learn more about semiconductor manufacturing, a growing industry in Arizona.
Give the public their records: In her fight to keep her phone records secret from the Jan. 6 committee, AZGOP Chair Kelli Ward is arguing that the entire state Republican Party could be compromised if her phone is turned over, Capitol Media Services’ Howie Fischer reports. The committee wants the records as part of its probe into the fake electors scheme. Separately in public records court cases, the Arizona Supreme Court is set to release an opinion at 10 a.m. today over whether the Arizona Senate and President Karen Fann have to turn over a set of audit-related records.
Just like the good old days: The Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission is considering wading into a U.S. Supreme Court case testing the waters for the “independent state legislature theory” — which argues only legislatures, not courts or commissions, have the right to draw political maps. The commission could decide whether to intervene when it meets again today, Axios’ Jeremy Duda writes.
Finally, some common ground: If there’s one position that unites almost all political candidates in Arizona, it’s that the sweetheart water deal the state gave to a Saudi Arabian company farming alfalfa in northwest Arizona and sending it back to the Middle East is bad policy. Gubernatorial candidates Kari Lake and Katie Hobbs have criticized it, as have attorney general candidates Kris Mayes and Abe Hamadeh, the Republic’s Rob O’Dell writes.
Is this a walk back or a double down?: Following up on his tweet (and subsequent national headlines about said tweet) about how the economy sucks because the Federal Reserve is more diverse than ever, U.S. Senate hopeful Blake Masters posted a video yesterday saying he doesn’t care if the Fed is full of “Black lesbians,” but he’s tired of Democrats’ “diversity obsession” and “affirmative action regime.” He called Vice President Kamala Harris “so incompetent she can’t even get a sentence out.”
Speaking of Blake Masters: Masters isn’t the only Republican altering his website or position on abortion. Other Republicans are moving away from saying they would outlaw abortion access entirely now that the issue has become a major motivator for Democratic and independent voters, Politico reports.
Because 2020 never ended: The latest craze is re-litigating Fox News’ decision to call the 2020 election in Arizona for President Joe Biden much earlier than other media organizations and whether that call was sound, in part because the topic is part of a couple new books coming out soon, the Washington Post’s Philip Bump writes. The call, though premature, turned out to be correct.
Worse than terrible: Westwood High School in Mesa, which started the school year missing a few math teachers, factors into a New York Times story on the nationwide teacher shortage. The Times found that salaries and location played a role in whether a school was short on teachers. Arizona school leaders said the problem seems worse now than ever, and that they get frustrated seeing nearby states recruit from Arizona because of low pay here.
So many stories at school boards: Mesa Public Schools’ guidelines for transgender students — which include allow trans students to use a chosen name and pronouns, and to use facilities corresponding with their gender identity — have entered into statewide politics and local activism, the Mesa Tribune’s Scott Schumaker reports.
Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer shared a message he received from a voter who wants to be removed from the voting rolls because they believe the 2020 election was stolen.
It’s sad and a definite self-own, but after two years of Richer and every other election official in Arizona spending absurd amounts of time trying to debunk conspiracies to people who refuse to listen to facts, it’s hard to feel a lot of empathy here.
Thanks for pointing our the lack of integrity of those running for election. Keep it up.
I believe the water pumping is happening in northwest Arizona..."Arizona, it’s that the sweetheart water deal the state gave to a Saudi Arabian company farming alfalfa in northeast Arizona."