Councilman Guy Phillips has often surprised the Scottsdale electorate with plucky campaigns. His re-election campaign this year is no exception.
Scottsdale restaurants, in particular, have been devastated financially by the pandemic. They lost the months most critical to their annual survival.
But even when allowed by Governor Doug Ducey to re-open on May 11th, a combination of strict rules and a nervous marketplace makes success far from certain.
Enter Phillips. Over a series of days he organized a series of meet and greets with voters, including buying many of them meals at the local restaurant he was campaigning at.
The restaurants included Saigon Bowl, Brunch Cafe, Capriotti’s, Cien Agaves Tacos and Tequilla and Detroit Coney Grill.
In the year of the Covid Campaign, Phillips’ approach was not only smart but helpful to small business patriots doing everything possible to help themselves, and the city.
Speaking of restaurants David Ortega keeps congratulating himself for helping Detroit Coney Grill overcome city obstacles to displaying its typical orange colors as part of a new store in a shopping center at Indian Bend and Hayden that apparently restricted them. While we agree with Planning Director Randy Grant’s ultimate decision to approve the restaurant’s request, especially in these times when businesses can use all the help it can get, we are again surprised by Ortega’s mendacity. Although we shouldn’t be by now.
On one hand he congratulates himself for purportedly fighting the city on behalf of an enterprising restaurant yet he also led the recent fight to allow a privately funded mural of the late John McCain on Marshall Way in Old Town Scottsdale.
Orange awnings good. Attractive art of American hero bad. Because that makes sense. Well, it does when you know that Ortega was acting in the latter instance as a landlord lobbyist who apparently didn’t like the mural next to one of his properties.
A landlord lobbyist for Mayor. That doesn’t make sense either.