By Adam Gaub, Managing Editor, Maricopa Monitor
Just days after the announcement that Pinal County manager Fritz Behring was hired by the City of Scottsdale (effective July 1), the political maneuvering kicked into high gear.
Sources within the County tell the Monitor that already, two local candidates – Democratic Superior Court judge and former county attorney Robert Carter Olson and Republican clerk of the court Chad Roche – have been sniffing out support from the county board of supervisors to become Behring’s successor.
Neither man has been a county manager before and the Pinal County Board of Supervisors should rule both men out on that basis alone, let alone over concerns that both would have formed alliances in their time spent as public servants in Pinal County and would likely have a more difficult time showing the independence from elected officials that the manager’s job requires.
