Gordon's critics also bring up the lucrative contract his wife's firm won earlier this year. While Gordon was still working for Mayor Rimsza, the Phoenix Chamber of Commerce, which receives half of its funding from the city, awarded a hefty consulting contract to Grossfeld/Severns Inc. to orchestrate the transit tax initiative which was defeated in the September 9 election. Gordon's wife, Christa Severns, is the firm's executive vice president.
But Councilman Craig Tribken, whose seat Gordon is attempting to win, says complaints about that contract are misplaced. He says Grossfeld/Severns was clearly the best candidate for the job, and Severns' connection with Gordon had no influence over the decision. "That's just people trying to throw shit. Where's the beef?" Tribken says.
"Phil's extraordinarily experienced. He's used to working on central city issues, not just defending one neighborhood. All Posey's ever done is defend her own neighborhood. Who wouldn't do that?" Tribken asks. Recovering from a heart attack, Tribken says that before announcing he wouldn't run for office again, he asked Gordon to consider running for the seat.
Gordon's also the choice of Mayor Rimsza, of course, as well as nearly all of the other councilmembers, except for Sal DiCiccio and Frances Emma Barwood, who refuse to endorse either candidate. Barwood is not seeking reelection; DiCiccio won another term on September 9.
Gordon's popularity with the people already on the council lends credence to criticisms that the election of Gordon will mean business as usual at city hall. After all, wasn't Gordon, as Rimsza's chief of staff, in on the Sumitomo Sitix silicon-wafer-plant skullduggery? Documents suggest that by the spring of 1995, Mayor Rimsza clearly knew that the city would be going to remarkable lengths to accommodate Sumitomo's accelerated construction schedule months before the public was told who those efforts would benefit--told too late, that is, for the public to mount a protest.
Gordon's answer: Despite his earlier accounting that he became chief of staff in 1994, he claims that the entire Sumitomo affair occurred under the previous chief. He had nothing to do with it, he says.
"Clearly, in hindsight," he allows, "a more open process should have been followed."
If Posey Moore Nash is unwilling to criticize her opponent before a crowd, in private she's more disposed to take a shot or two.
"I think there are some basic differences between us. I'm not a paid lobbyist. I'm not a paid developer. I've never taken a $46,000 loan from a man named Anton Rimsza," she says.
"He likes to say he's going to hit the ground running. But I think his bags are so loaded, how can he run at all?"
Nash knows that she has an uphill battle, however. She has to hope that all of the voters who had chosen candidates knocked out of the general election come to her in the run-off. One circumstance which could work in her favor: The run-off should produce a much lower turnout than the general election, which also featured the transit tax. That could mean that Poseyland--an area with a higher number of older, affluent Republicans whose turnout is usually better--could grow in importance. On the other hand, many of those who voted in the September 9 general election were motivated by a desire to defeat the transit tax. Those voters were more conservative.
Win or lose, however, Nash says she's enjoyed the campaign. But she has a strange way of expressing it.
"I go to a lot of funerals. I've often wondered: Would anyone come to my funeral? I have been so honored in this campaign, they don't have to come to my funeral. I have won no matter what."
Phil Gordon, however, hopes that on Tuesday he'll put her immediate political aspirations six feet under.
