WHY U S WEST SUCKS, REASON NO. 1: We understand Tucson's phone company was rated the lowest in customer satisfaction among Baby Bells during a recent J.D. Powers & Assoc. survey. We can certainly understand that--our home phone went out last Tuesday, and our calls to the company's repair department (on a cellular phone) revealed they wouldn't be around to restore our service until, um, well, Sunday. "The storm knocked out a lot of phones in your area," was the operator's disinterested observation. What the hell is this? It's not like we're living out in the sticks here--we're talking Broadway and Alvernon. Furthermore, U S West is supposedly in the business of providing phone service. You'd think that would entail having enough repair people around to handle the effects of a storm in one of their most densely populated service areas. Or does it? Maybe their real business is returning big bucks to their shareholders. If this sorry-ass company were running an airline, it would be called ValuJet. In short, U S West sucks, and the state Corporation Commission needs to do its job and kick it the hell out of Arizona. Of course that'll never happen, so we must content ourselves with soliciting your experiences with this pathetic, piece-of-crap company. Send them--in 50 words or less--to Tucson Weekly, c/o The Skinny, P.O. Box 2429, Tucson, AZ 85702. BACKED BY THE KOLBE STAMP OF APPROVAL: We erred last week when we called GOP Congressman Jim Kolbe a resident of Santa Cruz County. He currently resides here in the greater Tucson area, in Pima County's District 1 and Legislative District 13. We suppose that would give him the right to make pre-primary endorsements on his home turf, as he did for the aborted candidacy of tire expert Ron St. John, who was seeking a House seat in 13, or Dave Turner, who's after the open state Senate seat of retiring Patti Noland. Kolbe was so hot to endorse St. John that he didn't even wait for him to file nominating petitions, thereby helping scare off potential opposition. Of course, St. John later realized he couldn't afford to give up his high-paying job as an aide to Pima County Supervisor Mike Boyd, so he dropped out of the race. Which kind of illustrates why pre-primary endorsements make for bad party politics. It's hard enough to find quality candidates for public office. It doesn't get easier when the heavy hitters start playing kingmaker. That's why the Kolbe endorsements still have some GOP voters fuming in other parts of Pima County, where Kolbe has also endorsed Steve Huffman in his race for a District 12 House seat and Vicki Cox-Golder, who is running for the Board of Supervisors in District 3. Four pre-primary shots is a bit much, Jimbo--particularly when we note that all four candidates have a common thread. They all hired Connect Consulting, the firm of former Kolbe aide Bunny Badertscher. In fact, the only Connect candidate not publicly connected to Kolbe this primary cycle was Supervisor Mike Boyd, and that could be for the same reason we didn't see Kolbe at the end of the Cox-Golder and Huffman campaigns, where those folks made a clear decision to disassociate from Kolbe. Wonder why? It seems local Republicans are past the point where a takeover by the Religious Right is a possibility. Instead, the real attempted takeover now comes from the Country Club weenies fronting for the Growth Lobby via Badertscher's consulting firm. SCHOTTEL SHOT: Republicans in District 12 received a late mailer from an outfit called, in very small print, The Arizona Human Rights Fund. The mailer was addressed to Republicans and asked them to "vote Republican" on September 10 by suppporting incumbent Freddy Hershberger and challenger Steve Huffman. The back of the piece carried quotes from the endorsement of both candidates by The Arizona Daily Star. The graphics were above average, even though they misspelled "representative" twice. Turns out the Arizona Human Rights Fund is a Phoenix-area gay organization, not a GOP group, acting as an independent committee trying to knock off state Rep. Dan Schottel. Forget their motives--this is sleazy campaigning. The Arizona Human Rights League was afraid to put on the table the real reason they disliked Schottel. MAJOR RETRACTION ACTION: One of the most popular courses at the Columbia School of Journalism is "The Skinny: Does It Ever Goof Up?" We'll save you the cost of tuition (not to mention the commuting costs) by telling you that the answer is: Only rarely. But such was the case with a recent item we had about American Airlines CEO Robert Crandall. An American Airlines employee told us (and we quoted him) that American used to have flights to Sioux Falls, South Dakota while Crandall's son was attending college in South Dakota. The employee also said the airline flew to one of the islands off Cape Cod because Crandall owned a summer home there. Trusting fools that we are, we ran it, never suspecting one of Crandall's employees would spread false rumors about him. Well, some of Crandall's top people got in touch with us and they were miffed. They pointed out Crandall's son never attended school in South Dakota and that Crandall never owned a house on Martha's Vineyard. They also had a problem with a sum of money which we claimed Crandall made one year. So we did some checking. Turns out American Airlines did fly to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, for a time. However, we have no way of knowing where Crandall's son went to school. Repeated calls to American Airlines went nowhere, with public information people claiming either they didn't know or that it was none of our business. For all we know, the kid could've gone to school in nearby Iowa, Minnesota or Nebraska (all a few miles from Sioux Falls), but then again, he could've gone to Wharton, like his dad. We also found out AA flew to Nantucket (not Martha's Vineyard). This, however, is not to claim Crandall owns any property there. Again, we just don't know, and we get the feeling he wouldn't tell us if we asked. We found out lots of other neat things about Mr. Crandall, including the fact that he almost jumped to rival United, but was wooed back with a gift of 355,000 shares of stock, worth tens of millions of dollars. This leads us to our final screw up. We said Crandall made $80 million, even though American Airlines was laying people off and suffering huge losses. Despite exhaustive efforts, we have been unable to confirm that figure. That number has been bandied about by American employees over the years, but a search of official records fails to confirm it. As a matter of fact, for years Crandall's base salary was only $600,000. But, as with most CEOs, Crandall owns huge chunks of company stock. Most years, his salary represents less than 10 percent of his total package. Back in the early '90s, when American and all the other major airlines were bleeding money due to the Gulf War and other economic factors, American did lay off workers. Ironically, this helped his company lose less money than some of its rivals, so its stock actually went up in value. In a roundabout way, Crandall did make more money after the layoffs. We jiggled around with the figures, but we never could get them to come out to $80 million. We messed up, and we're sorry. And we're not just sorry because they threatened to sue us back to the Stone Age. We're most sorry because we hate messing up.

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