Claudia Walters

Today, we have a classic, if subtle, example of an elected official using government resources to tout their qualifications to serve in a higher office.

The city of Mesa sent out a news release Thursday titled, “Vice Mayor participates in White House conference call.” The statement says Mesa Vice Mayor Claudia Walters participated in a telephone conference with unnamed White House officials to talk about a speech by President Bush earlier Thursday. Bush had announced a deal with several national mortgage lenders to slow the subprime loan crisis by delaying or avoiding interest rate hikes for an estimated 1.2 million homeowners.

The Mesa press release says Walter was on this conference call because of her role as “vice chair of the community & economic development committee for the National League of Cities.” Got that?

Various presidential advisers and cabinet staff members collectively called the White House make conference calls all the time to groups of public and private officials around the country. In a few cases, the call are important, such as when Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff gets on the phone with his 50 state counterparts to talk about potential terrorist threats and grant funding.

But most of time, these calls are basically part of a PR blitz to promote the latest presidential initiative, or to offer damage control for some scandal. That certainly seems to be case here, as the conference call accomplished nothing more than to give Walters a chance to provide a canned quote about stabilizing a difficult situation and bringing needed relief to
Mesa and elsewhere.

Mesa’s statement doesn’t mention that Walters is campaigning to be the next mayor of
Mesa against two formidable opponents in former council member Rex Griswold and homebuilder Scott Smith. But Walters would love for everyone to assume from the news release that she’s a person with important connections, all the way to the White House, which would be very useful if she gets the mayor’s job.

The use of the city’s time and money to write and distribute this dubious news release is legal, but it’s not prudent. And it’s a bad precedent during an election campaign that’s critical to the future of
Mesa.

Posted in: Mesa |

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