from: http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0427phil27.html

Gordon jockeying to be Phoenix mayor

Phil Gordon

Tom Zoellner
The Arizona Republic
Apr. 27, 2003 12:00 AM

Phil Gordon has played such a skillful hand of political poker that his coronation as the mayor of Phoenix seems all but assured to many, five months before a vote is cast.

Through a combination of money, powerful friends, obsessive work habits and some bluffing, he has outmaneuvered or intimidated away nearly every challenger.

His only declared opponent is a clear underdog: Randy Pullen, a venture capitalist who never has held elected office and lost decisively in a 1999 mayor's race against Skip Rimsza.

Pullen, a Republican, is running a race that emphasizes his fiscal conservatism and tries to contrast that with council votes by Gordon, a Democrat whom he characterizes as "tax and spend."

Phil Gordon

Age: 52.

Education: Central High School; University of Arizona, BA; Arizona State University College of Law, JD.

Profession: Former lawyer; lobbyist; head of Landiscor aerial photography company; record store owner.

Family: Wife, Christa, four children.

Key issues: City-sponsored charter high schools, strengthening neighborhoods, creating jobs.

It's a decidedly uphill battle.

As a Phoenix councilman, Gordon has been known as the guy with the fattest Rolodex in town and the one to call to solve a problem, no matter how insignificant.

As a candidate for mayor, he has seemed to have it wired from the start.

He coaxed a top consulting firm, Cantelme, Kaasa and Associates, from potential rival Peggy Bilsten, raised nearly a third of $1 million in small increments and secured the quiet patronage of the city's most powerful lobbying force, the Phoenix Firefighters Association.

As Gordon starts a mayoral campaign that could be nothing more than a formality after the inside elbowing is over, he must confront a perception that he has tried to be too many things to too many people on his climb to the Mayor's Office: a friend to too many overlapping constituencies.

He has cast himself all at once as an ally of developers and as a historic preservationist; a conservative crime fighter and a fixture of the state Democratic apparatus.

Poll on 'insider'

A poll commissioned by Bilsten asked if the respondent would vote for a candidate "who is considered a political insider known for cutting deals on both sides of a question."

Gordon's penchant for trying to please too many people, his critics say, is what led him to the embarrassing place of having to make dual endorsements in last November's race for a Senate seat for south Phoenix.

He originally had promised his support to Bill Brotherton, but when Earl Wilcox entered the race, Gordon did not want to alienate Wilcox and his influential wife, Maricopa County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox.

So he endorsed both.

His omnipresent affability also is evident in his personal life. His first wife, Debbie, is a frequent baby-sitter for Jake, the 3-year-old child he shares with second wife, Christa Severns.

"Very rarely do you see him on the losing side of a City Council vote," said Chuck Coughlin, who heads the political consulting group HighGround but is not working for any candidate in the mayor's race.

"He is a master of diplomacy, but being a leader and being a diplomat are two different things," he said. "He picks and chooses his fights very carefully, but leaders aren't always able to do that."

Connie Wilhelm, director of the Home Builders Association of Central Arizona, has a similar opinion.

"He attempts not to get into crossfire positions, but it's going to be a lot harder to stay out of the crossfire as mayor," she said.

Will he be able to choose between old alliances as mayor of Phoenix? Gordon says he has no doubt of his ability to say "no" when necessary, even to friends.

"I listen and seek input before making decisions," he said. "I'm proud of my ability to reach different groups. It's the sign of a good statesman. As mayor, you have to make difficult decisions, and I can make them."

Fix-it man

Gordon is not a linear conversationalist. He speaks in a rambling kind of hypertext, in which an ordinary question about a particular apartment building launches a 10-minute discourse, laden with footnotes, parenthetical asides and irrelevant anecdotes, about who owned the building 30 years ago, the property-tax structure back then, the conversations he had with the police chief last week, the people who live there now and Jake's day care tuition, before he finally arrives at the point.

Despite this, he was known as one of the best political fix-it men in City Hall, a reputation he earned in the mid-'90s as Rimsza's chief of staff.

His classic problem-solving method is to telephone nearly everybody he can think of who might have an interest in the issue and discover what common ground there is to be staked.

The worst outcome, he often says, is if someone feels as though he or she has been ignored or railroaded.

"His style is to bring everyone together, put them all in a room and work out a win-win relationship for everybody," said Greg Stanton, a fellow council member and supporter.

"He works very hard to make sure that people accomplish at least a portion of what they wanted."

That brokering talent was on full display four years ago when, as a new council member, he tried to jump-start a failed redevelopment project in Sunnyslope.

The city had targeted the blighted southeastern corner of Central and Dunlap avenues for a shopping center since the late 1970s, but some landowners were reluctant to sell.

With the help of Ron Gawlitta, chairman of the Sunnyslope Village Alliance, Gordon set up a series of meetings among top city officials, the landowners and the developer, A&C Properties.

He also encouraged Eddie Basha, Arizona supermarket magnate, to put Food City on the site and shepherded the $1.3 million buyout project through the council.

Today, the corner has a new shopping center. Gordon had scored another victory by consensus.

"Phil has strategically placed himself where he needs to be on every issue," Gawlitta said.

He squared off with Gordon in a 1998 council race, but, like most would-be enemies, considers him a friend today.

Gordon already is a semilegend in his old north-central district for knowing nearly everybody with a stake to hold or an ax to grind with the city. His list of personal contacts contains more than 5,000 telephone numbers.

In a sprawling city whose character largely has been shaped by disconnection, transience and endless newcomers, Gordon has used a political method more at home in small towns or older Eastern cities, one reliant on the power of community and neighborhoods.

Power from networks

"Phil understands better than anybody that your real power comes from your networks outside City Hall, not inside," Stanton said.

Gordon got to know many of them through an obsessive focus on picayune issues.

Barking dogs, late trash pickup, speeders on side streets: All were handled as priority matters. And favors to key constituents, particularly those with large networks of their own, also were dispensed liberally.

"I once was putting on a banquet where I had an empty table, so I called Phil. By that night, he found enough people to fill it," said Alison Rapping, well-connected president of the Make A Difference service organization. "He's pretty amazing."

Energy man

At 52, Gordon has a boyish face and the energy and enthusiasm of a teenager.

Most of his days begin at 4 a.m. with a jog around his neighborhood and the first of what adds up to a half-dozen cups of coffee a day.

He arrived in Phoenix in a classic migratory pattern: a climate-minded young family moving from the Midwest.

He was born in Chicago on April 18, 1951, the grandson of a Lithuanian pushcart salesman and tailor. Gordon's father, a traveling electronics salesman, came to Phoenix for health reasons when Phil was 9 years old.

One of his first jobs was flipping burgers at Wallace and Ladmo Drive-In near Seventh Street and Rose Lane, one in a string of restaurants named for the Phoenix children's show hosts. Gordon graduated from Central High School and the University of Arizona and briefly taught history before getting a law degree from Arizona State University in 1978.

As a young development attorney, he discovered the pressure points between two key Phoenix constituencies that often go to war with one another: developers and neighborhood preservationists.

Gordon had a job that made him a friend to both. He was the frontman for a French investment partnership that bought and restored abandoned buildings in the Roosevelt neighborhood near downtown.

After winning a City Council seat in 1998, he dived into his fat Rolodex and began raising money in donations capped by law at $360.

The war chest was ostensibly for his re-election against a poorly organized opponent, but other ends were in store. That $250,000 bankroll provided the base of his financial support for a mayor's run and scared off challengers.

With the help of the term-limited incumbent Mayor Rimsza, Bilsten put on a December fund-raiser to test the level of her support among Republicans for a possible challenge to Gordon.

The haul did not meet expectations, and Bilsten backed out of a run after her ally from the Democratic side, Gov. Janet Napolitano, sent signals that her support would be limited because of the party conflict.

Even with his carefully crafted advantage in the Sept. 9 contest, Gordon says he still plans to work as hard as he ever has in his life to get elected. He is calling in all of his chips.

"This campaign is amazing," he said. "For me to see this working like a machine, all these people I've known over the years."

Reach the reporter at tom.zoellner@arizonarepublic.com and (602) 444-2474.

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