It's Time Fife Symington Paid For His Dishonesty. By Jeff Smith SIX YEARS AGO J. Fife Symington III was telling the voters of Arizona he intended to bring the skills that had made him a rich real estate developer to bear on the task of governing the State of Arizona. Professional politicians, he said, were truthless hacks who couldn't meet a budget or a deadline, who never generated jobs or positive cash-flow, who only knew how to tax fiercely and spend foolishly and then lie about the results. Politicians, like his opponent Terry Goddard, Symington said, couldn't cut it in the real world. He could cut it, Fife said, and he put up his track record as a developer, and his personal and professional financial statements, as collateral on this note. The voters, ever-mistrustful of career politicians, and particularly so in this era of political gridlock and partisanship over public service, bought what Fife Symington was selling. Four years later, despite signs the foundations of the man's business empire (on which he added a second-story political career) were crumbling into quicksand, Arizona elected him again. Ironically, over an honestly successful businessman with a proven record of constructive political service. Eddie Basha was all the wonderful things Fife Symington had claimed to be, both times he ran for governor: a successful businessman with altruistic motives toward public service. Fife Symington, by contrast, was none of these. He is, however, most of what he damned in career politicians: He is truthless, unable to meet his financial obligations, good for nothing much beyond misappropriating other people's money and squandering it and lying about the results...unable to cut it in the real world. He is, however, truthful about one thing: He brought the same skills to the governor's office that he used in his bizarre career as a high-rolling businessman: dishonesty, amorality and an egocentrism that is damn near Napoleonic. Last week's news and transcripts from the Governor's depositions in Bankruptcy court provide us a Kodak moment that should cure the short memory that is the curse of the American electorate in an era of attention spans measured in minutes. We won't soon forget Fife Symington's explanation of how he doubled his claimed assets, and halved his stated liabilities, based his affirmed net worth on best-scenario estimates 10 to 25 years into the future...and then blamed the whole sorry spectacle on the people he lied to, because they accepted his fiction and didn't cross-examine him. And what is his explanation for this? Essentially, that this is the way "sophisticated" people do business. Ah. So that's how they do it. They lie. They cheat. And if the people they cheat--like the union pension funds that lent Symington $10 million for a real estate development, on the strength of his signed statement that he was worth $11.9 million, and that he and his even wealthier wife would guarantee the note should the project fail--don't know they're being lied to from the jump, tough shit. The victim bears responsibility for being fleeced, in Symington's refracted view of the financial world. The victim should have been more "sophisticated." Well it's all there in black and white--not just news reports, which for all their intended objectivity are subject to human error and viewed with some skepticism by those sympathetic to the Symingtons, but in verbatim transcripts of Symington's sworn testimony. What do you think would happen to you, if, say, you filled out an application for a mortgage, and it asked you to total your assets and debts. You've got two grand in a savings account, but you owe 25 thou' on your mobile home. Then there's the '76 Bonneville station wagon in the driveway. Checking your passbook, you see that the last monthly interest puts your savings balance at $2,008.49. You round that off to, oh, $6,500. The 25K you owe for the trailer is another matter. You have no intention of ever paying it off. In fact the thing is coming apart at the seams--carpet full of holes, wood-tone wallboard the same, cooler leaks, roof leaks, market value has depreciated to less that a third of what you still owe. You'll make next month's payment and then let the loan company repossess it....So you list the debt at five hundred bucks. And the Pontiac wagon. Well hell, in 25 years it could be a classic car, probably worth a couple hundred grand. You lick the end of your pencil, tot it all up and zowie! We're talking big rock and roller here. Multiply all your little white lies by a factor of 100 and you could be just like Gov. Symington. But here in the real world, to quote a country song, you get caught at this kind of fraud and you lose your shirt, your ass, the old homestead and quite possibly your freedom for a stretch. In the world of Fife Symington, however, it's too late to keep him from enjoying the unearned fruits of wealth and other people's labor. It's too late to keep him from enjoying the ego-bloating prestige and perks of two terms as Arizona's chief executive. Fife even entertained fantasies of being the nation's president by the year 2000. He even had a signed agreement to get a few more hundreds of thousands of his debts written-off, once he got elected president. It's too late to undo most of the dishonest, deceitful, destructive things Fife Symington has done, without so much as a twinge of conscience; or the ignorant and stupid things Arizona's voters have done to unwittingly aid and abet him. But it's not too late to lock him up for it. Rubber room or steel bars, it makes no never-mind to me.

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