Asked whether Fife ever paid back the money, Michael Manning, attorney for the pension funds, says: not exactly. As has been the case several times in his life, Fife's getting bailed out. In this case, the Arizona taxpayers he royally disappointed have lent a helping hand.
"We've made him open his kimono and show us that he didn't have any [personal] money hidden with his wife or a child," says Manning. Money to satisfy some of the debt was extracted from public coffers when the Mercado was sold to ASU, and the rest, Manning says, "will be recovered the day he inherits money from an elderly uncle in Long Island. We've [attached] the inheritance. It should all add up to in excess of $10 million."
René Milot
Sweet deal: former Governor turned pastry chef Fife
Protector of the realm: attorney John Dowd
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Asked if the word criminal can be used to describe a government official like Symington who's been convicted, had his conviction reversed on a technicality and been pardoned by a U.S. president, Manning stumbles. Then, he adds, "Fife Symington was found guilty of civil fraud by [bankruptcy] Judge Nielsen."
Help us out here, John Dowd. Though your client definitely isn't a criminal before the "bar of justice" (as you lawyers like to say), haven't his sins been egregious enough that making an issue of a legal technicality is just a tad transparent? While you're attempting to spin a revisionist history re your client, he's capitalizing on his bad-boy past. On a recent visit to the excellent Franco's (which, ironically, is beside the bar Nixon's), a member of the wait staff let on, "Almost everybody who comes in here asks about Mr. Symington. They want to see the guy who was on TV every day during the trial." (The menu description of his Governor's cake is: "Low tax, high taste." Better would be: "So rich you want to convict" or "There's nothing bankrupt about this baby.") So the question is, would ex-criminal, former criminal or criminal with an asterisk be a better description for Fife? Fife's lawyer's claim harks back to the declaration of that even more reprehensible big-shot Republican just before he resigned from office under extreme duress.
By the way, the Fife Machine seems to have trained the lapdog Republic well. In the previously mentioned takeout about his pastry-chefing, there was nary a mention of Fife's former felonious past. He was merely referred to as the "former governor of Arizona." Neither were Symington's legal troubles mentioned in the daily's big story recently on the Esplanade. Okay, at the end of the Republic's tongue-in-the-ear review of Franco's new spot the other day, Howie Seftel did mention Fife's presidential pardon for the purpose of getting in this line: "Happily, Symington's desserts don't need pardoning."
Come on, the near-miss ball-and-chainer's not only using his infamy to pull patrons into his and Franco's joint and students into his cooking school, he's trying to flour over his image for who knows what political or business reasons. Then, when somebody remembers that a jury of citizens who can never hope to be Fife's economic peers (his bankruptcy notwithstanding) declares him a criminal, he whines like a little girl in an apron. Would any of us even so much as walk across Seventh Street to eat a Bundt cake baked by Jane Hull -- no matter how delicious the rendering? As always, the silver-spoon son of Martha Frick Symington wants to have his torte and eat it, too.
