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August 4, 2000/3 Av 5760, Vol. 52, No.47
Moving on
After four years as Scottsdale's mayor, Campana ready to enjoy life out of spotlight
TAMI BICKLEY
Associate Editor
Former Scottsdale Mayor Sam Kathryn Campana speaks at Temple Beth Israel in June about her mayoral tenure and trips to Israel.
Photo by Mark Gluckman |
Sam Kathryn Campana secured her place in history in 1996, when she became Scottsdale's first female mayor.
But some people couldn't get past her name.
"People would call my office and say (to her assistant), 'I know the mayor, I worked with him on his campaign. Put me through to him right now,' " Campana told Jewish News during a recent interview.
Anyone who has worked with Sam Kathryn Campana knows that she is not just a woman with a man's name, but a strong and powerful female figure who pushed for women to work in various positions during her tenure; tirelessly fought for her beliefs; supported the local Jewish community; and raised three children as a single mother.
The former mayor - she opted not to seek re-election, and former city councilwoman Mary Manross now serves in the position - reflects on her four years as mayor as productive and gratifying. She most cherishes "the opportunity to interact with people so closely."
Every political position she took was the right thing to do at the time, she says. She has no regrets.
"I don't know whether it's a flaw or an asset, but things just sort of roll off me and I don't remember bad things," she says.
Most bad things.
Although her reign as mayor had a promising start, an "infamous incident" - one she remembers well - was a bump in the road.
"Obviously calling 911 for directions ... I'm internationally renowned for that," she says with a smile. "All I can do now (is laugh about it). It turned into a learning opportunity for me. And it reminds people that (anyone) can do dumb things."
Once she had put the notoriety of fiasco behind her, Campana was on her way, working into the early morning hours and attending meeting after meeting.
What she misses most, since stepping down in May, isn't the high-profile matters like development issues in rapidly growing Scottsdale.
Rather, she enjoyed "helping people with an immigration problem," and visiting nearly every school in Scottsdale to talk to students, read to them and listen to their recommendations for city planning.
Most memorable, she recalls, was her trip to Israel in 1998 during which she met Mayor Ehud Olmert of Jerusalem.
Campana led a delegation of seven U.S. mayors for the 18th annual Jerusalem Conference of Mayors. The event, sponsored by the American Jewish Congress, also included some 50 mayors from around the world.
They met with Olmert, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former President Ezer Weizman.
Campana had traveled to Israel once before, with a 1990 interfaith mission of the Jewish Federation of Greater Phoenix.
On her return eight years later, she found that the country's political and aesthetic landscapes had changed dramatically.
"There wasn't that feeling of danger (that there was in 1990). It was very sophisticated and much more developed," she says.
Campana was stunned by what she observed of Olmert's life as Jerusalem's elected leader.
"Mayor Olmert was constantly being covered by international news agencies. There was a lot of opportunity to make a wrong move," she says. "We had such a wide variety of mayors on that trip, and we all agreed that Mayor Olmert had the toughest mayor's job in the world."
Campana says that no matter how much nearly every move she made may have been scrutinized, nothing could compare to the adversity Olmert faced.
"(In Israel), it's getting up every day and knowing that (you are surrounded by Arab nations) that don't want you there, that don't want you to exist," she explains. "Where else are those same kinds of tensions?"
Although Campana gained insight into the politics and conviction of Jewish residents of Israel, she hadn't anticipated that her Israeli experiences would lead her to align herself with an important project of the Valley Jewish community - the erection of the Jewish Community Campus scheduled for completion at Scottsdale Road and Sweetwater Ave. by spring 2002.
"I know that going to Israel helped (me decide to support the campus) enormously," she says. "I understand why this is important to people in the Jewish community."
Before the final Scottsdale City Council vote on the campus was held in April, Campana was invited to meet with Bill Levine, who donated an undisclosed sum toward the project.
She declined.
"I didn't want to put the (final decision) in jeopardy in any way or have that be politicized," says Campana, who feared opponents would assume she favored the proposed campus because she knew the donor.
Once the council had approved the campus project, Campana sat down with Levine.
"I was impressed by not just the gift, but by the spirit of the gift and what that is going to mean to the community as a whole, not just the Jewish community."
Growing up, Campana had limited contact with Jews and minorities.
"I lived in a little town in Idaho with 10 churches in it, and five of them were probably Mormon," she says. "There was (little) diversity. There were (maybe a few) Jewish families, no African Americans, and Hispanic farm workers would come through (only) in the summer. It was very different than life is right now."
Born Kathryn Houston, Campana was raised in a religiously observant Catholic home by her parents, Harold and Francis Houston. Her father was a mail carrier and her mother was a school librarian.
One of Campana's three brothers, Paul Houston, now serves as vice superintendent of the Gilbert Unified School District in Southeast Maricopa County.
As a child, Campana was nicknamed "Sam" because she was a tomboy who loved playing sports. When she ran for mayor, she used "Kathryn" as her middle name because, she says, "I thought it was important that people know that I am a woman."
Campana left Idaho in 1966 to study education at Carroll College in Montana, a Catholic college that like her hometown failed to provide her with the opportunity to experience racial diversity, she says.
Then in July 1969, Campana and a girlfriend, both single and out of college, put their belongings in a car and drove to Arizona. The trek took three days, and when the young women arrived, they stayed in a hotel to escape the 120-degree heat.
Campana had planned to teach in a parochial school, but instead went to work as a restaurant hostess. The following March, she married Richard Campana. (The couple has since divorced). She has three children, daughters Cassidy and Katie, 28 and 26 respectively, and son Richie, 18.
In 1974, Campana graduated with honors from Scottsdale Community College. A year later, she became a founding member of the Scottsdale Arts Center Association.
She took the position of executive director of Arizonans for Cultural Development in 1983, working with business leaders, educators, artists and politicians to influence the economic and social development of arts in Arizona.
In 1988, she was honored as Arts Advocate of the Year, and in 1992, she was awarded a fellowship at the national Endowment of the Arts in Washington, D.C.
Despite her passion for the arts, Campana is not an artist herself, nor was she exposed to arts as a child.
"I tell people that I'm part of the food chain, though, because I am a consumer," she jokes.
She credits the arts for introducing her to cultural diversity.
"(In the arts), there is appreciation for every lifestyle," she says. "How much better we'd be served if we could all understand and be exposed to as many different ways of thinking and ways of living that we could."
When she moved to Scottsdale some 30 years ago, the city prided itself on being nearly all white, Campana says. She is thrilled that Scottsdale now is about 10 percent non-white.
Before her mayoral tenure, Campana served on the Scottsdale City Council from 1986-94. In 1990 she completed a senior executive program for state and local officials at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
Campana now hopes to work in the private sector, but she is not ready to disclose details. She also plans to work as a volunteer in the arts.
Now that she's not running from meeting to meeting, she is spending more time with her family. She recently returned from a family cruise to Alaska, which she says was her first non-work related vacation in nearly five years.
She also traveled to Chicago, where she headed straight to Marshall Field's department store to stock up on her favorite candy, Frango Mints.
And now, after years of eating on the run with little time to exercise, Campana swims and jogs daily and marvels at the fact that she now has time to get into the kitchen.
"I hadn't cooked in five years," she says. "My kids are worried."
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