Digging up dirt ain't cheap. Just ask Republican Lori Oien. The failed City Council candidate tried to use public funds to pay for a private investigator she hired for her November bid, but had to pay the money out of pocket since it was not considered a direct campaign expense, according to campaign finance reports.
Oien, who lost to Democrat Rodney Glassman in last month's election, spent $230 on a P.I. to investigate an issue she says ended up never surfacing in the council race.
Oien filed the bill as a campaign expense, but City Clerk Kathy Detrick says she rejected the request.
"I did not believe that the public funds should be expended for that type of expense," Detrick said.
Oien says she was trying to be open about her use of the investigator and that she had no problem when it was rejected as a campaign expense.
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Detrick said that while Oien's was the only campaign in this year's race to file such an expense, it was not a first.
"It's not really out of ordinary," she said. "People do things like that, and I've never allowed them to be paid with public matching funds."
Exactly what the private investigator investigated remains, well, private. But Oien says his work was not related to the Glassman family's California fertilizer business, which she made an issue in the campaign. "I paid for it, and I guess if you want to know you're going to have to pay for it," Oien told Notebook.
Strike one
Often criticized for a lack of substance, GOP presidential candidate Fred Thompson responded Thursday in Phoenix to a question on what he thought about the television writers strike by saying, "You can see my material has gone downhill."
Janet's big day
Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano turned 50 Thursday, but much of the celebration had already taken place over the summer.
Napolitano shared her birthday with several close friends in Italy in August.
At a press conference Wednesday, the governor joked that she was calling for "the official end of birthday season."
When Napolitano was sworn into office in 2003 at age 45, she was the youngest Arizona governor since Bruce Babbitt, who was 39 when he become governor in 1978. She was just two months younger than Fife Symington, also 45 when he was sworn in.
Voter defense
Project Vote Smart is holding a forum on Tuesday titled "Don't Blink or You'll Miss 'Em — the 2008 Presidential Primaries."
Tickets are $20 and can be purchased by calling the University of Arizona political science department at 621-7600.
The event starts at 4 p.m. and promises to help voters defend themselves against the "rhetoric and spin" of the campaign season.
