Here’s a Fountain Hills travesty. The Times reports that Merita Kraya received a “Retailer of the Year Award” from the Arizona Retailers Association. Merita was nominated by her buddy, State Representative John Kavanagh, who was so righteously indignant when she became the only restaurateur in the whole county to be charged after repeated flagrant disregard of the state governor’s former prohibition of on-premises dining.
If this was a football play, it would be called thusly: Merita yells to Kavanagh and tosses him the ball. Kavanagh kicks it over the goal line. The Fountain Hills Times, up in the press box, then duly reports to us of the great honor bestowed upon our notable scofflaw.
Except that it was not earned. Instead, it was a blatant setup by hoodwinking re-election seeker Kavanagh to reward, whitewash and publicly rehabilitate a disgraced political ally. For many reasons, including these shenanigans, he deserves to be replaced in the current election by Eric Kurland. The Times was somewhat involuntarily complicit in calling attention to this travesty, in that it is obliged to report what happens without offering an editorial opinion about how such an occurrence came to pass.
The popular image that, in Fountain Hills, “all the brothers are valiant and all the sisters virtuous” was never less accurate than in the real story behind this so-called “award.”
