Rather than let the facts unfold in a courtroom -- "Who's going to believe the strip-club owner?" he asks -- Lowrie paid a fine and agreed to attend an anger-management class. "All of this was early-age, growing-up type stuff."
At the time of these disclosures, Mayor Rice was quoted as saying, "If this management group qualifies, I'd like to see the group that doesn't qualify."
Job security: For Peppermint, all the world's a mini stage.
Anthony Camera
Job security: For Peppermint, all the world's a mini stage.
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But Lowrie got the votes he needed, with Tea Party members in the majority. It was the beginning of a cozy -- if forced -- relationship.
In the early '80s, when Hal Lowrie managed Shotgun Willie's for a fifty-fifty profit split with Debbie Matthews, Hal negotiated with the landowner when the club's lease was to be renewed. According to court documents, Matthews believed that Hal was using the negotiations to usurp ownership of the club. Matthews sued Hal, alleging a conspiracy, but lost her case and settled out of court with the Lowries. Troy says Matthews agreed to pay the Lowrie family $20,000 per month to give up the managing contract and Hal's share of the profits. The payment is split three ways among Troy, his sister and their lawyer.
When Lowrie moved into Glendale, he met with Mike Dunafon, Debbie Matthews's boyfriend (she had divorced Mintz by then), and Lowrie agreed to forgive his third of the payment from Shotgun Willie's -- as long as the money was used as a monthly donation to Dunafon's Glendale Tea Party. From the outside, the agreement between Lowrie and Dunafon appeared as a form of extortion: Dunafon would make sure the Tea Party-controlled council granted Lowrie's licenses if Lowrie forgave Shotgun Willie's monthly payment.
Lowrie calls it a deal made between friends. "I knew the political climate of Glendale when I came here. I just wanted to help get behind their cause," he says. "And they knew I have a war chest."
When Glendale Police Chief Ken Burge learned of the arrangement, he approached Lowrie outside city hall one afternoon and asked Lowrie about the deal. Burge told Lowrie he needed to follow up on a rumor that Lowrie was a victim of extortion. Lowrie recalls the meeting this way: "I said, 'I don't feel like I'm being extorted.' He said, 'Well, then, you're not being extorted.'" Through a spokesperson, Burge tells Westword there was no need to follow the claim any further.
Lowrie's sweetheart relationship with the Tea Party went even further. Along with Matthews, Lowrie offered his employees an incentive to move into Glendale: The club owners would pay for it. Lowrie says he's paid the rental deposit for about ten to fifteen dancers who have moved into Glendale in the past year, but he scoffs at the suggestion that he was trying to stack Glendale's stripper population in order to influence elections. "All we ask is that they register to vote -- not how they vote. But we encourage them to get behind us." At the same time, he has never offered to pay rental fees for dancers in other cities where he has clubs, saying, "There's not many places like Glendale, where one vote truly makes a difference."
Last Tuesday, however, Lowrie's financial support of the Tea Party ended. In a mayoral election decided by just 41 votes, Joe Rice maintained victory while Tea Party candidate Mike Dunafon was defeated. Only one of the three Tea Party council candidates, Mike Barrett, won a seat (after tying for the final spot with another Tea Party member).
Lowrie now says he'll stop his monthly donation to the Tea Party and ask that Shotgun Willie's resume the full payment. "There's no reason for it now," he says. "I'd much rather have the money go to charity than the Tea Party. This is a chance to show Glendale that we're not only a good neighbor, but a charitable neighbor."
Here, sitting behind his walnut desk in his office, the same one his father used, Troy takes the third person, speaking as a law-enforcement official might when describing Troy Lowrie: "Troy's trying to do it right. He learned a lot from his father. He learned a lot from the law. He's not trying to push it. He makes enough money."
Find more online at www.westword.com.
