Salt Lake City voters returned two incumbents to the City Council and gave the remaining seat to a 70-year-old retired grocer who has never held public office.
In unofficial results of Tuesday's balloting, District 6 Councilwoman Roselyn Kirk and District 4 Councilman Alan Hardman were re-elected. Paul Hutchison won the District 2 seat.Kirk won by the widest margin in her race against Stephen Hemingway, who lost his job as a production manager for a printing company after tipping off federal agents to an alleged counterfeiting scheme by his boss.
"I feel very good about it," Kirk said of garnering 75 percent of the vote in her eastside district. "After seven years, it's an affirmation that I'm doing what the people want."
Kirk, a 57-year-old associate professor of communications at Salt Lake Community College, said she sought another term so she could follow through with the goals she set as chairwoman of the city's Redevelopment Agency.
Hemingway, 36, and now a real estate agent, expressed concern during the campaign that the city's Redevelopment Agency was unfairly competing with the private sector.
Hardman, the other incumbent on the ballot, had a much tougher race. The 41-year-old associate of an architectural firm held his Central City district seat with 57 percent of the votes cast, a 538-vote lead over his opponent, a member of the Socialist Workers Party.
"It was a little difficult," Hardman said of running against Nancy Boyasko, a 34-year-old refinery worker who attracted national attention as perhaps the only Socialist Workers Party candidate ever to emerge from a contested city council primary in Utah.
Hardman said his campaign emphasized city issues such as historic preservation while his opponent focused on the broader social and political goals of her party, including workers rights and legalizing abortion.
"I tried to deal with the issues that I felt were affecting the city," Hardman said, calling Boyasko's showing surprising. He suggested she may have benefited from the success of another woman candidate on the ballot, Salt Lake City Mayor-elect Deedee Corradini.
Voters on Salt Lake City's westside chose Hutchison over 28-year-old architectural firm vice-president Ted Milner to replace outgoing Councilman Wayne Horrocks, who plans to run for the state Senate next year.
"I have shown a very dedicated interest in our community," Hutchison said, crediting his defeat to Horrocks in the last election with getting him involved in city affairs.
Although Milner said he heard many times during the campaign that he was too young to serve on the City Council, Hutchison said he did not believe age was a factor.
"I kind of thought my age was against me," he said. A retired grocer, Hutchison has spent time painting out gang graffiti as the chairman of the West Salt Lake Community Council.