Gov. Doug Ducey/Wikipedia
Opinion: Gov. Doug Ducey and the Republican Governors Association he heads no doubt decided to catch a wave when they reportedly met at the Arizona Biltmore.
By Phil Boas | Arizona Republic
Gov. Doug Ducey, who heads the Republican Governors Association, reportedly met at The Biltmore to strategize how to defeat Trump-backed candidates.
The Arizona Biltmore has a reputation for refined elegance with just a whiff of intrigue. In the early 1930s that came with a particular kind of service. For gentlemen on the guest registry there was the hidden staircase that led to a private door that opened to a “secret room.”
There they puffed away and read the stock ticker while imbibing forbidden pleasures of the distilled kind. It was the Age of Prohibition, and such was the Biltmore’s attention to detail that the hotel provided a complimentary lookout on the rooftop with spotlight.
If the hotel’s beam caught the furtive movements of cops on a liquor raid, hotel staff would “shine the spotlight down onto the stained-glass roof of the mystery room” alerting guests inside “they needed to return to their rooms,” according to the resort’s own history.
Now, nearly a century later, The Washington Post on Sunday reported that the Arizona Biltmore is once again a place of intrigue.
Ducey helped bring intrigue back to The Biltmore
This time the gentlemen and women were members of the Republican Governors Association, who were quietly hatching a scheme there in mid-November that many in their party might find offensive.
Their plan was to knock out the handpicked candidates of Donald Trump in the approaching GOP primaries, The Post reported.
Among the strategists was Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, a man with a tortured relationship with Trump.
Ducey has been at times Trump’s supporter and at times his target. In 2020 he was Trump’s tormentor, famously certifying Joe Biden’s Arizona victory while leaving the president hanging on the phone, his ringtone “Hail to the Chief” playing weakly in the background.
Trump has never forgiven Ducey for that.
