It feels strange to refer to Ed Moore simply as “Moore” in the second reference.

He was always bigger than that to me. He also doesn't seem to resemble his full name, Edwin. Do not fit. He was always “Ed Moore.” He was an important figure in defining Tucson area politics for a while. He was always in his head and always up to something.

Mr. Moore passed away last week at the age of 88. He was battling Parkinson's disease. But Ed Moore was bigger than life for a while.

He is Tucson's last great political figure. This is a term that is overused to excuse a truly harmful complaint. Ed Moore was a toxic person, but he was strangely calm about it and didn't mean it personally.

Obituary: Former Pima County Supervisor Ed Moore dies at age 88

It occurs to me that many people don't remember one of the great dramas in Tucson's political history. Ed Moore was the central figure. Moore was part of my formation as a local journalist who took his name with a vengeance 31 years ago.

For the uninitiated, Mr. Moore was elected to the Board of Supervisors in 1984 as a Democrat. He became a Republican in the 1980s and he began siding with developers in the growth wars of the 1990s. He then clashed with the business community when he opposed the Central Arizona Project's direct water supply. Presto! he was independent.

But there was more to Ed than transformation. There was his holy expedition. His multi-million dollar campaign to end his career against professional civil servants in Pima County.

Decades before anyone heard of the Deep State, there was Big Ed Moore's ride.

big ed rising

My first job out of college was at the Globe, where I was introduced to a small town newspaper. What I wanted was to be a reporter in a big city. If you're looking for a big city, Tucson will suffice. I was living vicariously through one of my friends, Rhonda Bodfield, who is a county beat reporter for the Tucson Citizen. This was during the Peak Ed era.

I regularly got skinnies at Big Ed. Rhonda, being Rhonda, simply explained what he had done, leaving her friends puzzled over who he was.

But I've seen enough, and I was like a lot of people back then.

After gaining enough experience in local government and knowing what he was talking about, Moore realized that he was more than just a black hat. He's a contrarian, and as I've said before, every board or council needs a contrarian. They keep staff honest and make the rest of the governing body think.

Just don't put the blame on anyone.

Unchecked contrarianism leads to resentment and paranoia towards those who get in the way, and Moore developed it in abundance. Then he had the opportunity to act on it.

In 1993, two Republicans, Paul Marsh and Mike Boyd, joined Moore as county commissioners. The two men agreed to make Moore chairman and let him make decisions for a while. He went to work immediately. Let's call it a journey of revenge. It's called a politics of terror. Whatever it is, it started on the first day the new board took over.

Moore couldn't directly fire Speth County officials he didn't like, so he enlisted two new colleagues to his side and fired County Manager Enrique Serna. They replaced him with Manoj Vyas, who immediately fired six shots at Moore's target.

Prefectural officials responded quickly. They were in full rebellion for a while.

Executive of seven fired employees successfully wins multi-million dollar award filed a dollar lawsuit against the county over their termination. No, it didn't go particularly well.

Vyas then began to reorganize the county into “superdepartments”, which took a great deal of time and money, although nothing really happened.

Mr. Moore also took the nifty little ploy of holding a “caucus.” Boyd, Marsh, and Moore met behind closed doors to discuss their plans for the topic.

wait a minute. Isn't that a violation of the Light Meeting Openness Act? No, this is a serious violation of the Open Meetings Act. Moore said that to Honey Badger. He wouldn't budge until the judge told him he had to stop.

No, Big Ed's way was not the way to run a railroad. Don't just start with a decapitation attack. It is much better to go slowly at first and faster later. Arrange the pieces. Choose a battlefield. Make changes he one at a time.

This went beyond Moore's advocacy of unchecked development and urban sprawl. He never encountered a major rezoning he didn't like. This unchecked growth created a backlash that led to the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan, which coincided with serious shortcomings in housing construction that Tucson is still dealing with today. I'm not blaming Moore or Enviros for rising housing costs. What I am saying is that behind today's problems there is a history that we often forget.

This is one reason why History should be retitled “How We Got Here.”

Eventually, Mr. Boyd lost patience with Mr. Moore's shenanigans and began voting for the board's Democrats, Raul Grijalva and Dan Ekstrom. Emil Franzi, another local legend of the time, suggested in Inside Tucson Business: The business world was the driving force behind Boyd, but that didn't matter.

I honor Franzi's memory with that attribution.

Boyd and the Democratic Party decided to oust Mr. Vyas, reduce the county administrator's role to county administrator, and hire someone who would work with humility and obedience. Charles Henry Huckelberry. Hahaha. Mr. Huckelberry has proven to be a master of the inside game and will supersize the role of county administrator.

Boyd later told me on the record that he came to regret giving power to Moore. It was a mistake, but one he definitely made.

not eating homework

Now let's talk about Big Ed. One of Moore's big goals was Kino his community hospital. There was a time when Arizona counties operated their own hospitals. He wanted to be ejected from that match, but faced serious backlash.

At first he suggested closing it down completely. He then agreed to consider other options. His basic argument was that the county had failed to properly run the hospital, but had been trying for years.

Eventually, the county came to realize that it could not run the hospital and needed help from the private sector.Providing hospital care to the poor has proven to be a difficult undertaking It is beyond the prefecture's capacity.Even people like Dr. Richard Carmona, who later became the U.S. Surgeon General after failing to save the county's health care system. That's a completely different story.

Keno was basically privatized. In 2005, the county turned it over to university doctors. It has since been swallowed up by the banner amoeba.

That's the thing about Big Ed Moore. I'm going to leave this quote to its proper owner, Garry Duffy, longtime county reporter for the Citizen and Green Valley News: “Ed wasn't always wrong.”

He just did things in a confusing way.

An unlikely gentleman

When I returned to Tucson in 1998, about a year after he left office, people around Pima County government somehow didn't hate him, despite the turmoil. I was shocked that I could say his name out loud in polite company.

These people were not incapable of hating each other. At one point, Sharon Bronson hated Raul Grijalva, Raul Grijalva hated Ray Carroll, Raul Grijalva hated Bronson, and everyone hated Huckelberry at various points.

But Moore? No, “Yeah, he's a good egg.”

what? I think to myself. Ed Moore? That Ed Moore? Ed Moore, who previously represented District 3 on the board. Ed Moore was a gentleman, you tell me. I heard about it from Raul Grijalva, who served on the board with me. Dan Ekstrom, Sharon Bronson, and Mike Boyd said the same thing.

Here's an example I like.

Chris Linbelis was the reporter's boss at the Arizona Daily Star. He was the last of his kind to get a source drunk in a bar and file a copy containing a drunk quote that the source did not remember making but could not deny. Lynberis worked in Bronson's office and was a real troublemaker.

As a journalist, Linberis sank his canines into Moore and wouldn't let go.

He used to prepare this big part about Moore and just slam it from row to row. His last interview, of course, was with Moore himself. There, the two conversed as adversaries for a while, and Linberis returned to Starr's offices to write the story.

He realizes that he left a note in the office of the target of what is essentially a hit, which is a nightmare for reporters.

So Lynberis calls Moore at home. Moore doesn't live nearby. He lived in North Hollywood near Sandario and West Hollywood Boulevard. he's there Moore then got the message and drove downtown to deliver a note so he could denounce Lynberis in the next day's paper.

Lymberis later told me the story, smiling and paying homage to Moore.

I imagine something similar happening with Dan Ekstrom. “Oh, that notebook? I think Ramon threw it away. Yeah, Chris, we cleaned it out after you left. We thought it was old.” That was his way of saying, “What if?” If you're stupid enough to leave a notebook in my office, I'm smart enough to make sure it disappears. You can't say I declined to comment, can you?”

I'm sure Steve Christie would do it. He has no choice but to agree to buy a car from his backyard.

Another boss' staff once told me about a conflict with Moore. Moore reportedly became furious with Big Boss and started punching him. Moore was well over six feet tall. Stuff was barely under 5 feet tall, but he soon found himself in some sort of suplex that Moore put him in, essentially muttering, “We're not going to do this.” .

It wasn't a recorded conversation, but it wasn't off either. That's why I don't use his name.

The staff didn't tell the story that Moore was a violent asshole. It was more like, “I deserved it. He could have killed me, but he didn't.” That same staff often referred to Moore as his rival.

What is the relationship between this reporter…

My relationship with Moore has been enriching for me in a strange way.

Every once in a while, the phone would ring and I'd hear “Hey, Blake, Ed Moore” on the receiver. He dragged out his name into multiple syllables. He would give me a drop in the story, and while doing so, it sounded oddly like he was stuffing a mailman into a wood chipper. There was this mechanical grinding sound.

I broke my journalistic oath and didn't ask many questions about what the caller was doing. However, the substance turned out to be golden in color.

A good source will provide reporters with information that hits the mark 1 in 3 of the time.

A good source will give you a story half the time.

Moore has 1,000 at-bats. No one has ever reached 1,000 at-bats feeding into the press, but Moore did it. They were good stories, not for my edification, but something the public had a right to know. He had no intention of running again and was just trying to let people know.

Author's Note: I'm about to curse Gannett for losing the Tucson Civic Archives, because I can't remember any of the specific stories he told me. They weren't earth-shaking. They were page 1. I distinctly remember those busy days when I would listen to “Have Break Ed Moore” and think, “Really? He already has three storylines and now he's going to have to deal with this.”

That was the point. When Ed called, the byline followed.

Often we chatted for a while and he was totally normal. He never spoke ill of anyone and always had a valid point. In the interest of full disclosure, he will also be sure to say that he informed me because I was “the only reporter covering this county who received the information.” That wasn't the case. I suffered from the Trumpian disease of melting a little when I was praised.

He knew his way around the county. He knew policy. He knew people. He knew where the pressure points were and we remained in close contact over the following years. So he aroused some respect.

age

Moore's story is a warning against treating every problem like a side of beef, when your only tool is a butcher knife.

But there was more to this man than the headlines and confusion he created. There's a real humanity to him, which is what made his performance go so much smoother than it needed to be.

It's also what makes him a character rather than a caricature.

No, Big Ed Moore wasn't always wrong. He let his self-righteousness and perhaps some pettiness get away from him.

He was definitely a man of the era to which he now belongs.