YURI DOWNING (Tribune file photo)

  
   The East Valley’s most notorious wannabe politician and fugitive felon might have run to the ends of North America to escape the law. But he was captured last week only a few miles from his childhood home.
   Yuri Downing, a graduate of the Arizona State University law school and one-time candidate for the state Senate, was arrested Friday at a Tucson car wash after three years of dodging jail time and taunting authorities about his whereabouts.
   In 2002*, Downing campaigned to represent Tempe and south Scottsdale in the Senate. He teamed up with two friends who ran as House candidates and the trio qualified for more than $100,000 in state campaign funding. After losing that election, Downing was accused by the Citizens Clean Election Commission and the state Attorney General’s office of being the ringleader of a scheme to defraud taxpayers with a fake campaign while spending the money to buy liquor and food, to rent expensive vehicles and office space, and for other personal uses.
   Downing fiercely denied any wrongdoing for months, but then pleaded guilty in December 2004 to a felony count of perjury. In exchange, the Attorney General’s office agreed to a sentence of probation (which meant no time in state prison), but asked the judge to require Downing to spend four months in county jail.
   Apparently struggling with a drug addiction and unable to face the prospects of jail, Downing twice violated the conditions of his bond and disappeared from sight in March 2005. In July of that year, I profiled Downing’s troubled life.
   Later in 2005, I reported that Downing cost his parents $18,000, as they had borrowed against their Tucson house to bond him out of jail. The court had postponed taking the bond cash out of respect to Downing’s father, then-state Rep. Ted Downing, D-Tucson.
   At the time, speculation around the county courthouse was that Downing had fled to Costa Rico or Mexico. He speaks Spanish and had told Phoenix police he could blend in easily south of the border.
   But court documents filed over the past three years hint that Downing mostly flitted across the Southwest, staying in the shadows and taking advantage of the fact he was a relatively low-priority fugitive. Still, the attorney general’s office continued to hunt for him.
   Andrea Esquer, press secretary for Attorney General Terry Goddard said today she couldn’t discuss how that office’s investigators finally found Downing. Esquer said the original sentence was revoked and Downing now faces up to three years in prison on the perjury conviction. And now he’s likely to be charged with escape from custody as well.
Downing was being held today in the Pima County jail, but will be brought to Maricopa County to face justice. Not surprisingly, he’s being held without bond.

*This date has been corrected from the original post.

Posted in: Arizona government • Courts • Election issues |

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