By Ronald Sampson
Photo Credit: Arizona Digital Free Press
Tom Durham wants you to believe he’s Scottsdale’s champion against overdevelopment. He’ll file ethics complaints. He’ll grandstand at council meetings. He’ll position himself as the people’s warrior fighting against the dark forces of unchecked growth.
But let’s talk about what Tom Durham won’t tell you.
Durham just filed an ethics complaint against Councilwoman Kathy Littlefield over her votes on the massive Axon development, a project that would bring 1,200 residential units, five five-story buildings, and a 435-key hotel to North Scottsdale. Durham claims she has a conflict of interest because her husband opposes the project. Meanwhile, the city attorney has weighed in several times saying that there is no conflict here, but that doesn’t matter to Tom.
Here’s what makes this rich: Durham himself supported this controversial development, but even worse so, he supported it during its original gargantuan proposal of nearly 2,000 apartments. While positioning himself as anti-growth, he backed one of the most divisive, large-scale projects to hit Scottsdale in years. The same project that generated nearly 27,000 petition signatures in opposition. The same project that spawned two lawsuits against the city. He alleges that Bob Littlefield is being paid for his efforts, but based on reliable sources there is no truth to that, and instead Durham is opening himself up to a potential lawsuit.
Worse yet, it was one of the worst kept secrets in the city that he was the most apartment-friendly vote on city council. This is a big reason why he is no longer on city council; he was dramatically out of tune with the larger electorate. And even then, his lobbying for unfettered apartment overgrowth continues.
When it served his political purposes, Tom Durham was happy to vote for massive development. Shoot, he may have been their biggest cheerleader. But now he’s filing complaints against those who oppose it? The hypocrisy is breathtaking.
This is how Durham operates: talk tough about overdevelopment, vote for controversial projects, then turn around and attack others for their alleged conflicts of interest. It’s political theater at its most cynical.
Durham has made a career out of self-righteous posturing while doing exactly what he accuses others of doing. He’s the quintessential political hypocrite: saying one thing, doing another, and hoping voters won’t connect the dots.
Scottsdale deserves better than this kind of duplicitous behavior. When Tom Durham talks about ethics, remember: he’s lecturing from a very glass house. Maybe he should be the one who should be the subject of an ethics investigation.