Former Arizona Gov. Evan Mecham said Friday that the office of his yet-to-be published daily newspaper has been closed, the phone disconnected and employees laid off while he waits for needed financing for the paper.
Mecham said he hasn't paid rent in two months on the Glendale building housing operations for Arizona Newsday. A notice affixed to the premises says the office space has been closed by the landlord "pertaining to violation of lease by tenant.""We took everybody off the payroll and just shut everything down. Right now it's just myself and one other person working out of our homes," Mecham said.
"We haven't exactly wasted time," he said. "The delay has helped us in getting things done and better shape our plans than if we would have moved ahead on original course."
Mecham had said in June that he hoped the newspaper's first edition would roll off the presses in September. But he said Friday that financing from banks has yet to be arranged.
"Because of Murphy Law's it hasn't worked out in an optimum way," he said. "It (the financing) is 60 days later than expected, but we understand it's going to happen next week. A large amount of a cash is expected."
Mecham, a conservative Republican, in 1988 became the first governor in Arizona to be impeached. He subsequently was ousted from office after the state Senate found the former car dealer had obstructed justice during a probe of an alleged threat made by one aide to an another and that he lent public money to a car dealership he owned at the time.
Less than a year after he lost to now Gov. Fife Symington in the September 1990 Republican primary, Mecham announced in June that he was going to launch his own daily newspaper after years of battling with the news media.
The 67-year-old also is not new to the newspaper business, publishing the Evening American in Phoenix during the early 1960s. In 1965, the daily paper became a weekly before Mecham sold it in 1973.
Mecham said his financing in his latest venture is not "a matter of public record" and wouldn't identify his lenders or investors.
David Schmidt, Mecham's publicist, said, "He's very hush, hush on who the investors are. He won't even tell me."
Mecham already had purchased a printing press formerly owned by the Las Vegas Sun.
"We've spent quite a bit of money already, but we didn't have enough," Mecham said, alluding to the figure only as "hundreds of thousands of dollars."