There is a very peculiar thing about Fife Symington's education at Harvard, and it is that he felt persecuted there.
He is not a conspiracy theorist in other ways, not the sort of arch-conservative Republican who is likely to try to hire a private investigator to look over the shoulders of public employees because he suspects that fraud and corruption are lurking within state government. He is a moderate businessman who would not outlaw all abortions if it were up to him, and who would like Martin Luther King Jr. to have his own holiday.
It has been pointed out often since the September 11 primary that there are more similarities between his politics and Goddard's than either one is comfortable with, and no one would ever accuse the bland, smiling Goddard of seeing a communist around the next corner.
Nonetheless, Symington felt persecuted at Harvard.
He graduated a year ahead of Goddard, before the real rioting started. The violence he remembers at Cambridge was the day in '67 when Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara came to speak and was mobbed by a crowd of students who hated the war. Other than that preview of things to come, the political world Symington knew in college was mainly one where the prevailing liberal view was the civilized kind held by Kennedy Democrats, and where the rumble of discontent with the presence of ROTC on campus was beginning to be heard among the students who would radicalize later, after Symington had gone.
His was nearly the same Harvard that Goddard and his cronies remember as a place with diverse political views, where it was neither unusual to be an activist nor not to be one. His own longtime friends from Harvard remember the campus much the same way.
But for Symington, it was something more menacing. "It was nothing like I was expecting," he says of the campus where he began college in '64. "I was expecting to find this tranquil educational institution that was just fascinating in its diversity. . . . I got there, and it was Barry Goldwater's presidential campaign. I was a fervent Goldwater supporter, and I was lucky to get out of there with my life." He characterizes the campus as a place of "liberal tyranny" where conservative political opinions like his own were not easily tolerated.
"I just did not feel at home. I was in ROTC. We used to carry our uniforms across campus in a brown bag. We could not be seen with our uniforms.
"I felt really overwhelmed at Harvard."
These vivid memories are disturbing if they reveal that Symington can feel threatened by opinions unlike his own. It is a possibility that may have shown up again in the way that he and his campaign staff handled New Times during the primary campaign when it was their perception that the coverage coming out of this newspaper wasn't favorable.
When New Times reporter Darrin Hostetler arrived to interview Symington for his article on the Republican gubernatorial race, he was only about fifteen minutes into the hour that had been promised him when Symington reached over and flipped off Hostetler's recorder. Hostetler says Symington didn't want to answer on the record a question about the financial health of his two premier projects in Phoenix, the Esplanade and Mercado, on the basis that he wanted to keep his business and political interests separate. Symington was visibly upset by the question, Hostetler says. Within a few minutes of the time that Hostetler had started his recorder up again and turned his questions in a new direction, Symington cut the interview short, saying without warning that he had another appointment. He remembered it suddenly, despite the fact that the interview with Hostetler had been scheduled weeks in advance.
(Symington's press aide, Annette Alvarez, claims that Symington never turned off Hostetler's recorder. She also claims that Hostetler was informed when he arrived that, because of scheduling conflicts, the interview time would be shortened.)
It was remarkably thin-skinned behavior for a politico. Symington did not seem to have figured out that a political campaign is not a party to which the press must wait to be invited, and at which it must behave very nicely. He reacted, as he reacted more than twenty years ago on a campus that did not always agree with him, with fear and petulance.
But this desire for control is certainly not the complete picture of Symington's style and values.
One of the surprising things about him is that, for all the steadiness and devotion to duty that his friends say were bred into him by his old Maryland family, he is not always predictable. He is a decorated Republican war hero, for instance, who just hated the war.
He got his orders to enter the air force before he left college, but he volunteered for Vietnam. He says he did it for the experience. "I was in the service to learn about the military and broaden myself," he says. "If there is a war on, that is what being in the service is all about." A friend from Harvard, Terry Considine, remembers that, for Symington, "Going to war was not a burden, nor was he giddy with excitement." Whatever the level of satisfaction he was feeling about it when he left, it soon wore thin. Within a few months, Symington began to believe that America shouldn't be involved in Vietnam. He couldn't see that our troops were making any sort of progress: "Every time we would move out of an area, it seemed like the bad guys would move back in. I came to the conclusion that the Vietnamese were not really willing to fight for their own, and I just didn't feel that we should be doing it either, because what would happen when we left?"
"I realized that we were wasting many, many lives," he says. "Fife Symington got a hell of an education. I can see why a lot came back from the war just totally disillusioned and wanting to bail out of the system."
He can see it, but he didn't do it.
It is hard to imagine Symington separated from the system, in fact, which is to say, separated from the traditional values that he learned as the only son in a staunchly Republican and very influential family. "I think I just had a very firm grounding in my values in terms of being involved in my community and being involved politically with my dad." (Symington's father was three times an unsuccessful Republican candidate for the U.S. Congress.) And it is these qualities of stability and, yes, noblesse oblige, that his friends return to repeatedly when describing him.
"Some people get involved in politics because they think it will be a fulfillment of their lives and that they will be a star," says Considine, a state legislator in Colorado who is one of Symington's closest friends. "Fife was never caught up in that. He had a clear-eyed view about politics even in college. He looked at it as serious work that ought to be done. He got very clear instructions in his life about duty to one's family and community, and he grew up knowing there were certain obligations."
He has taken these instructions very seriously indeed. At least, he has shown himself willing to meet his obligations in the business world in a way that some observers consider to be remarkable among developers.
He seems to be regarded in the construction industry as someone who doesn't engage in bid-peddling and the other unethical practices that often crop up in his line of work. The Kitchell Construction Company worked as the general contractor on the Mercado--its first project with Symington--and the impression the Kitchell staff took away was very favorable. Says Sandy Werthman, the director of marketing and development for Kitchell, "We do not even know how to do money under the table because Sam [Kitchell] is Mr. Ethical, a liberal-arts kind of CEO. Symington is a really straightforward business person. We would not be able to do business with him if he wasn't, because there are people with whom we cannot do business."
Say Rick Mills, the secretary-treasurer of the local chapter of the carpenters' union, which has dealt with Symington on the Esplanade and the Mercado, "It is unusual among developers for someone to be so honorable." Mills even equivocates about the upcoming election in a way that is plainly amazing for a union officer, when the union officer is talking about a Republican, and that causes you to wonder if the lines between the parties in Arizona are truly tumbling down. He says, "I will probably go with Terry Goddard, because of his philosophies. But I think they are the two best-qualified people who ran for governor."
The perception of Symington in this community is apparently that he is a standup guy. What has not been perceived about him yet, perhaps, is the degree of his personal paranoia, a factor that could be a wild card in office.
Here is how far it may go. When interviewed, Mills at the carpenters union spewed a version of a story about Symington in business that was more than completely positive; it was practically adulatory. It suggested that Symington had agreed to hire union labor to build the Esplanade in exchange for the union's political support for the project. And that, upon being unable to convince his Esplanade financiers to foot the union's high bill for labor, Symington had paid the difference out of his own pocket rather than break his original commitment. This is a story that, if it's true, makes Symington look not like a standup guy, but like a prince.
Mills isn't completely sure about the story, though, so a call is placed to Symington's office for confirmation. When the situation is described to press aide Annette Alvarez, her voice takes on an inexplicable edge. She agrees a little sharply to phone New Times back before the day is over, and she does.
She leaves a rambling and defensive message on a phone machine, and the message makes clear for the first time that the Symington camp has not been able to discern that the story--the one about Symington going out of his way to keep a promise--was one that could only have helped his campaign. They have not been able to discern that there was absolutely nothing hostile in the request to know whether it was true.
The unions did support the Esplanade, as they support all major construction projects, Alvarez says. The labor on the Esplanade was put out for bid, as is also customary, and the result was that a combination of union and non-union labor was utilized. Symington has always been supportive of an open-door policy. Her message concludes with a stinging denial that, under the circumstances, just sounds goofy. She says of Mills' attempt to congratulate Symington, "The accusations are totally unfounded."
"I was a fervent Goldwater supporter, and I was lucky to get out of Harvard with my life."
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"I was in ROTC. We used to carry our uniforms across campus in a brown bag.
