Ferry axed as Vail Daily columnist

Apparently it’s OK to call everyone on the Front Range riff-raff, but when you question the character of Vail Resorts CEO Rob Katz and Vail Town Manager Stan Zemler for spending too much time in Boulder, you’ve got to go.


Kaye Ferry, who stepped in it big-time in April when she made her now-infamous “Front Range riff-raff” comments to Colorado Independent in connection with Vail’s new Epic Pass, has now been axed as a columnist at the Vail Daily after suggesting Katz and Zemler don’t care enough about Vail because their primary residences are in Boulder.


“For the first time in this community’s history, the heads of the two largest organizations in town do not call Vail home,” Ferry wrote Tuesday. “In fact, Boulder seems to be the residence of choice in both cases.”


Michael Kurz, head of the Vail Valley Partnership chamber of commerce, for years a rival of Ferry’s Vail-centric Vail Chamber and Business Association, wrote a blistering letter to the editor in Friday’s Vail Daily attacking Ferry’s column. Ferry resigned as head of that chamber in the wake of the Colorado Independent story in April.


“Unfounded criticism and emotional rants are counterproductive,” Kurz wrote. “After Ms. Ferry’s recent adventure in the press following her (alleged) bashing of Front Range visitors and the impact that had on the members of the Vail chamber she represented, you would think she’d know that.”


In an e-mail Friday, Vail Daily editor Alex Miller said Tuesday’s column wasn’t the only reason Ferry’s weekly column was being pulled: “True, Kaye will no longer be writing a column for the Daily. False that it was due solely to the column in question.”


Ferry also is the campaign manager for Republican state House candidate Ali Hasan of Beaver Creek, a potential conflict she was criticized for by Hasan’s Democratic opponent, Christine Scanlan of Dillon, in another Colorado Independent story.

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