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Headline RSS FeedKaye Ferry out as columnist at Vail Daily following Katz, Zemler piece on Boulder ties
July 12, 2008 —
Apparently it’s OK to call everyone on the Front Range riff-raff, but when you question the character of Vail Resorts CEO Rob Katz and Vail Town Manager Stan Zemler for spending too much time in Boulder, you’ve got to go.
Kaye Ferry, who stepped in it big-time in April when she made her now-infamous “Front Range riff-raff” comments to realvail.com in connection with Vail’s new Epic Pass, has now been axed as a columnist at the Vail Daily after suggesting Katz and Zemler don’t care enough about Vail because their primary residences are in Boulder.
“For the first time in this community’s history, the heads of the two largest organizations in town do not call Vail home,” Ferry wrote Tuesday . “In fact, Boulder seems to be the residence of choice in both cases.”
Michael Kurz, head of the Vail Valley Partnership chamber of commerce, for years the more mainstream rival of Ferry’s Vail-centric Vail Chamber and Business Association, wrote a blistering letter to the editor in Friday’s Vail Daily attacking Ferry’s column. Ferry resigned as head of that chamber in the wake of the realvail.com story in April.
“Unfounded criticism and emotional rants are counterproductive,” Kurz wrote. “After Ms. Ferry’s recent adventure in the press following her (alleged) bashing of Front Range visitors and the impact that had on the members of the Vail chamber she represented, you would think she’d know that.”
In an e-mail Friday, Vail Daily editor Alex Miller said Tuesday’s column wasn’t the only reason Ferry’s weekly column was being pulled: “True, Kaye will no longer be writing a column for the Daily. False that it was due solely to the column in question.”
Ferry also is the campaign manager for Republican state House candidate Ali Hasan of Beaver Creek, a potential conflict she was criticized for by Hasan’s Democratic opponent, Christine Scanlan of Dillon, in another realvail.com story.
My last blog detailing contributions to Democratic congressional candidate Jared Polis from the conservative Hasan family of Beaver Creek, in which Polis primary opponent Joan Fitz-Gerald called it a case of “strange bedfellows,” prompted a strong response from the Polis camp.
Polis campaign manager Robert Becker sent a flyer detailing contributions to Fitz-Gerald from several mining companies with questionable environmental and human rights records in both the United States and abroad. The flyer is entitled “Senator Joan Fitz-Gerald: The sweetheart of the oil, gas & mining industry is trying to green-wash her record!” It was paid for by the Friends of Jared Polis.
Becker said of the Newport Mining, Freeport McMoran and Anglogold Ashanti contributions to the former state Senate president totaling $6,400, “We find these donors to be disturbingly strange bedfellows.”
Meanwhile, Hasan, who did not contribute directly to Polis, clarified that his father Malik, who maxed out at $4,600 in contributions to Polis, as well Republican Senate candidate Bob Schaffer and presumptive GOP presidential nominee John McCain, is actually a “die-hard Democrat.”
“My mother [Seeme, who also maxed out to Polis] is a die-hard Republican,” Hasan said. “And both taught me, from a young age, to find unity between parties, not differences. I'm a very proud Republican, and my goal is to make my party more inclusive to all.”
Speaking of the inclusive nature of the local Republican Party, my guess is Ferry’s column will wind up either in the new Vail Mountaineer or for sure on EagleCountyTimes.com.
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