Word: symington
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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PHOENIX: For six years Fife Symington has managed to battle on ? and even win reelection as Arizona's governor ? in the face of 21 counts of fraud relating to his real estate empire. For the last two months, he's even managed to balance the dual responsibilities of governor and defendent in a federal trial. Now, with the luck of the devil, he will survive in the statehouse for at least a few more days. U.S. District Judge Roger Strand added an alternate juror today, forcing the Republican Governor's trial to start all over again. The new juror replaces...
...Times's Westword kept dogged watch over the start-up problems at the Denver International Airport last year, while the dailies, the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News, were less critical. And the Phoenix New Times beat that city's dailies on the corruption scandals of Governor Fife Symington...
Last week's federal indictment repeats many of the allegations made earlier by the pension funds' lawyer, Michael Manning, that there were "wild swings" in Symington's declarations of net worth, depending on whether he was trying to procure a loan or escape repaying it. At one point in 1991, according to the indictment, Symington listed his net worth at $4 million for one lender; six weeks later, he told another lender he was $4.1 million in debt. Symington's lawyer, John Dowd, calls these "unintended errors and omissions.'' To confuse the issue, Symington's wife Ann Olin Pritzlaff Symington...
Manning suggested that Symington ran for office because he was going broke. A novel promissory note signed in 1992 between Symington and Phoenix lender Jerome Hirsch drastically scaled down the money owed if Symington were to be President when the loan came due. The indictment's count of attempted extortion charges that in trying to soften repayment terms on the $10 million union loan, Symington as Governor threatened to cancel a lucrative Arizona State University lease...
Arizonans, beaten down by the Evan Mecham and S&L king Charles Keating scandals, may have little patience for leaving Symington in office--even though in a way it seems their prayers were answered. Says Jerry Colangelo, a principal owner of the Phoenix Suns: "No one can argue that the state [isn't] in the best financial shape it has been for years...