- Image courtesy of Shutterstock
- This isn’t a member of Ducey’s family, but it’s an amusing image.
The Phoenix New Times has a story by Stephen Lemons and Lance Williams about Doug Ducey’s family, making a case that he’s left in his past a family with deep connections to organized crime in Ohio:
But the all-American image Ducey projects, one which helped him win the primary and may help him win the general election, belies a family tree that includes two generations of his mother’s family’s involvement in organized crime.
That said, New Times and The Center for Investigative Reporting discovered no evidence that Ducey ever profited from the activities of his involved maternal relatives — or that the GOP candidate engaged in any criminal activity.
According to newspaper accounts and public records from various court and congressional hearings, four of Ducey’s relatives in an Italian-American family called Scott (anglicized from Scotti) were involved in illegal gambling in Ohio.
Family members ran after-hours gambling clubs and participated in bookmaking, numbers-running, extortion, loan-sharking, and other lucrative illicit activities from the 1920s through the 1980s.
The candidate’s maternal grandfather, William Scott (a.k.a. Bill Scotti), was a convicted bookmaker who partnered with members of the Detroit mob.
His son Billy Scott, Ducey’s uncle, was a high-profile sports bookmaker in Toledo who did time in federal prison in Arizona before fleeing to the Caribbean island of Antigua, where he became an online gambling kingpin.
Uncle Billy returned to the United States in 2012 to plead guilty in federal court to international money laundering and illegal Internet wagering.
Ducey’s great uncle Tony Paul Scott (a.k.a. Neufio Scott), his grandfather’s brother, was among Toledo’s “most legendary racketeers” and one of the “elders of the loosely knit Toledo crime family,” according to the Toledo Blade, the city’s daily newspaper.
During his long life, Tony Paul was arrested numerous times, incarcerated for illegal gambling and highway robbery, and eventually stripped of his U.S. citizenship, though he was allowed to remain in this country until his death in 1993.
These sins of the state treasurer’s fascinating bloodline have remained unknown to the general public. Until now.
The catch is since there’s basically zero provable connection ethically or financially between Ducey and some of his unsavory relatives, is this a thing we should care about? This story does cast a different light on his All-American/apple pie backstory, but doesn’t really say much about his ability to run the state (although we’ve said plenty about that otherwise).
However, if Fred Duval’s $20 DMV mistake is going to be an issue, then I suppose everything’s fair game.
This article appears in Oct 9-15, 2014.
Grasping. At. Straws.
It’s all BS. It is always a lie if it is about a democrat but if it is about any other party it is suppose to be truth. I don’t think so. NO POLITICIAN IS A SAINT so get off of it trying to paint the democrats as such.
Was it onthe same page with the ties that Duval has with terrorists?
When will adults return to journalism and politics?
NEVER!
These kinds of things are only important if you are a Republican. Otherwise it is a resume enhancer.
Everybody probably has some criminal in their long family tree. I had a great uncle who smuggled liquor from Canada to Michigan during prohibition. What Arizona SHOULD care about is Ducey’s fawning to the Koch Brothers, and him being in the pocket of the Goldwater Institute and the Arizona Center for the Taliban, aka, Cathie Herrod’s band of lunatics. Arizona should care about his voodoo economics and his fake, successful business acumen he claims. Arizona should care about more restrictions on women’s decision making and obsession with immigration. There is plenty to oppose Ducey on. His criminal relatives are not among them.
Ducey told people for years as Treasurer, he was somehow involved in budget preparation. He also said that in the year Arizona schools took a huge hit, the legislature sold the Capitol, the legislature was sweeping lottery money, local government HURF funds, and Heritage funds, while giving away more and more revenue via tax credits, “he” and his pals in the legislature balanced the budget without raising taxes and with no gimmicks. I know, I was at a Republican lunch when he said it. I raised my hand and asked if selling the Capitol was a “gimmick “?
The Kennedy Patriarch was a roaring 20’s boot leger! They say look behind every great fortune and one can find a crime! I doubt it matters much to die hard republicans if this fellow was a mobster himself if he says the things they like, often say republicans would vote for Satan himself if he let them keep the only thing they truly love their money and not pay any taxes!:-)
If for no other reason that the Phx. New Times is against Ducey, will I vote for him. You people call yourselves journalists but really are nothing but a bunch of liberal zealots and idealogues.
His relatives don’t matter at all. It’s his proposed policies that continue paternalism that are the issue, no birth control, no reproductive rights, He’s Cathi Herrod and the Center for AZ (bad) Policy’s new front man.
And schools? Ducey still wants to fight the court decision that the state should man up and pay up the money that’s owed. Listen folks, AZ is in bad shape right now and it’s because the state has been run by ideologues who didn’t figure out their policies were not good for you, me or the state’s reputation. Vote for Tucson native Fred Duval.
Voters should be concern about LIES being told about this guy. Do you want to elect a politician to office that spreads LIES and mis information. Is this guy honest and can he be trusted. I don’t think so. Elect the Democrats who don’t spread LIES and run ads on TV that are mis information.
Come on people it’s time to admit your ignorance. WMD were found in Iraq. You were lied to. Obama said you can keep your doctor. You were lied to. Benghazi was a protest over a video? You were lied to….Obama promised that under his leadership we would return to a position of trust in the world?
What a lie! He has accelerated our failings.
Qualified to destroy…Unqualified to lead.
We can’t make progress until you get honest with yourselves. Believing lies is harming everybody’s America.
Voters want to know whom they’re voting for. What isn’t said becomes relevant when we see a pattern of extreme avoidance of both candor and accountability – not once or twice, but all the time.
When someone who is hardly an “open book” campaigns on a platform of family values and American ideals, it’s worth noting concordance of values professed vs. expressed. Faced with glaring inconsistencies, those who have a right to know and a need to know should ask why.
The fact that an independent reporter did all this work and was unable to find evidence that could be used in a prosecution, if one should occur, in no way diminishes the importance of his findings. It might be worth asking why any reporter would seek to denigrate the efforts of another reporter who, without the benefit of resources, is trying to do the job that a more established news organization should have done.
We are talking about a would-be Governor of Arizona. Not a parking lot attendant or TV repairman. And people who have far less responsibility at work are subjected to far greater standards in hiring. Do we ask candidates to subject to a background check? Drug test? Why or why not? They are shaping our world and should be subjected to the same scrutiny as everyone else.
Does it matter whom a person associates with? Apparently, Doug Ducey thinks so:
“Well, as Ducey said at that Koch summit, ‘You’re known by the company you keep.'”
– Laurie Roberts, AZ Republic, Oct 6, 2014
– http://www.azcentral.com/story/laurieroberts/2014/10/06/doug-ducey-courts-koch-brothers-dark-money-network/16670625/
As John McCain said, “integrity matters”.
Let’s see. He sold franchises to investors who routinely found funding through SBA loans. These franchises had almost a 30% failure rate. But there was no downside risk for Ducey, he actually was able to sell these same franchises to others. Lather rinse repeat. It doesn’t seem to bother him that his riches came essentially from our tax dollars. He has 13 moving violations. Any idea how much he pays for auto insurance? How is that fiscally responsible? He’s wasteful, and his repeated moving violations show how little regard he has for the law. Sure everyone gets a few tickets, but 13 in a short time? He is a menace behind the wheel and really shouldn’t even be on the road! He sells himself as some kind of business magnate while in reality he’s a swindler without a conscience. That comes from his upbringing. You can put a suit and tie on a dog, but he’s still a dog.
I don’t care about Doug Ducey at all. I didn’t vote for him, either.
Seems racist, just because he is part italian he is mobbed up? This wouldnt fly if he was black and had a crip cousin.
With that said, this actually makes him much more interesting. Not in a garner of a vote sort of way, but still cooler.
Its troubling, especially when you consider that he’s supported by Kochbrothers money. And they usually don’t give without strings attached. Koch brothers have a toxic agenda that includes all the things Doug Ducey is promoting: privatization of schools and government (which really just shifts dollars upward to CEO’s) no taxes….which will harm AZ even more. Look at Kansas no tax governor Brownback. His policies have ruined Kansas. Its time for a change in AZ we’re in so much trouble financially already, more of same will only make it worse.