Scottsdale political notebook: Borowsky ad features dad who had beef with city

A new campaign commercial advocating for the election of City Council candidate Lisa Borowsky prominently features not the candidate herself but her father, Eric Borowsky. Sure, Lisa joins her father at the end with a "Thanks, Dad," but Eric does most of the talking about his daughter.

"I don't really know what the reasoning was, it wasn't my idea," Lisa Borowsky said. "I think it came out fantastic."

Borowsky said her father was apprehensive, but it "came out cute."

Borowsky, who has loaned more than $40,000 to her campaign, is running a second commercial that features herself with the same desert backdrop.

Eric Borowsky, who owns Arizona Snowbowl, became involved in local politics after the City Council voted in regulations on his son's strip club, Skin Cabaret. Those were repealed by the voters. While that referendum was ongoing in 2006, he opposed the city's attempt to increase its spending limitation, which was passed by the voters.

DONORS NOT PICKY

A number of company representatives hedged their bets on the Scottsdale mayor and City Council races, according to the latest campaign finance filings. The reports show that the mayor and majority of council candidates were successful in raising money from the same donors.

For example, Fry Investments representatives gave donations to both mayoral candidates and four of the six council candidates - $1,200 to Mary Manross and $1,560 each to Jim Lane, Borowsky, Betty Drake, Ron McCullagh and Suzanne Klapp.

Representatives of ZMC Hotels, which owns The Inn at Pima and other chain hotels in Scottsdale, gave $500 each to Manross, Lane, Drake and McCullagh.

Employees of the Pederson group, a real estate development group, gave $200 to Manross, $700 to Klapp and $1,200 to Drake. For Drake, that included a personal $500 donation from CEO and former Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Jim Pederson.

Scottsdale Healthcare employees also spread the donations around to four candidates - $100 to Manross, $200 to Lane, $250 to Klapp and $200 to McCullagh.

Fiesta Bowl representatives are clearly picking their favorite - Manross. She collected $2,930.

Both Manross and Lane are nearing $100,000 in funds, although Lane lent his campaign $32,000 of that amount. Lane had $12,566 left to spend, while Manross had $14,062. On the council side, Borowsky has the most left to spend with $23,104, thanks to her large self-donation. Drake, Klapp and McCullagh all raised between $35,000 and $37,110, while Tom Giller and Nan Nesvig were around $10,000. Drake had about $10,000, while the other four were under $2,000.

McCULLAGH BACK FROM CHINA

McCullagh took time away from the campaign trail this month to travel with members of the Scottsdale Area Chamber of Commerce to China.

The chamber endorsed McCullagh and he was featured in a contested mailer, which led McCullagh's critics to speculate that the chamber was paying his way on the trip.

But McCullagh said neither the city nor the chamber paid for him, his wife and grandchild to travel to Beijing, Shanghai and other cities. He did.

While gone, McCullagh - who was the leading council candidate vote-getter in the Sept. 2 primary - missed two council meetings and a candidate forum.

40% OF EARLY BALLOTS RETURNED

More than 40 percent of voters who were mailed early ballots had them returned by Friday, according to the most recent data available on the Scottsdale City Clerk's Web site.

Maricopa County Elections Department had received 31,562 early ballots. As of Monday, 75,426 had been mailed.

Early ballots must be received by Election Day.