VICTIMS' RITES

HOW TWO BLUNT SPEAKERS LIKE CANDICE NAGEL AND JIM HARTDEGEN GOT SUCKED INTO THE AZSCAM WHIRLPOOL

Comments (0) By Deborah Laake Wednesday, Apr 3 1991

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He thinks that the citizens of Arizona should peer hard at his example. He is widely regarded at the legislature as an honest man, even after he has acknowledged his violation of campaign contribution laws. He says he has cultivated that regard since early in his life, when he knew he would attempt to enter politics. "I've never done anything I was ashamed of," he says. "I never had any big passion to smoke marijuana, but I knew I wanted to get into politics, so I never did even smoke. I wanted to have a clear conscience.

"I think it is kind of scary, the power the state has to ruin someone's life like this. If it can happen to me, it can happen to anybody."

Since it has happened, he's grateful that he can live with himself. Considering the way greedier colleagues have gone down, he knows it's a luxury. He says, "If I was on film taking money like that, I would leave town in the middle of the night."

Hartdegen was characterized by others as a rare blade of honesty that was wielded in public and that cut to the bone.

"You can't say the kinds of things she said and continue to have respect," Representative Stan Barnes says of Nagel.

"I thought I was a Christian until I went down there and they redefined the word," says Nagel.

"The people who know me know my vocabulary and outrageousness, and those are the only people I care about loving me," says Nagel.

If Hartdegen has held onto the life he has built for his family, he has lost the one he built for himself.

"I wish they had flashed money at me because then I would have smelled a rat.