Wayne Owens has been a fixture in Utah politics for 20 years, ever since he burst on the scene as a young man walking more than 700 miles across the old 2nd Congressional District in 1972 to defeat a Republican incumbent.
Owens, 55, is one of the best-known politicians in the state. Besides his 1972 race in the 2nd District (which back then covered half the state), he ran for the U.S. Senate in 1974 and for governor in 1984. For the past six years, since 1986, he has represented the redrawn 2nd District, which today takes in most of Salt Lake County.Now he's after a U.S. Senate seat again, leaving the relative safety of Salt Lake County voters to try a statewide election once more.
Owens' life has had many ups and downs, victories and defeats. Two defining episodes - one very personal, one more political - were the death of his mother and the friendship, and death, of Robert Kennedy.
Owens was a recently returned missionary from France in 1961, driving his mother, father and future wife on an outing from the Kennecott Mine overlook when their small car was struck head-on by a drunken driver in a truck. Owens, his now-wife, Marlene, and his father were seriously injured. His mother was killed. "It was Mother's Day weekend. It took a long time, physically and emotionally, to recover," Owens recalls.
Six years later, serving as then-Sen. Frank Moss' Utah coordinator, Owens was "lent" to Robert Kennedy and his family as the Kennedy clan rafted on the Colorado river.
"For 10 days Bobby and I were together, talking about all kinds of things. It was amazing for me." After the 1968 New Hampshire primary, where Democratic President Lyndon Johnson was almost defeated by Eugene McCarthy, Kennedy decided to get into the presidential race. Owens had been invited to join Kennedy's U.S. Senate staff, but after getting in the race Kennedy asked Owens to coordinate several Western states, which he gladly did.
When Kennedy was assassinated that June after winning the California primary, Owens' political life was cut adrift. A friend and mentor was gone. Ultimately, Owens got back in the Democratic political swim, figuring that was the best way to heal again.
Owens says he can't really say why, as a child growing up in a Republican family in conservative Panguitch, Utah, he became a Democrat.
"My father lost his farm in the Great Depression and never really recovered financially. I was born at home. We had no bathroom until I was a sophomore in high school. We had a tap installed in the kitchen at some point, but the pipe froze every winter. We just had the outhouse in back."
Searching for work during World War II, Owens' father moved the family for three years to Long Beach, Calif., where he labored in the shipyards. The family returned to Panguitch when Owens was 8.
"Considering what we went through in those years, you'd think we'd have been Democrats. But I was the only one." Young Owens delivered newspapers and liked what he read about Harry Truman. He remembers in 1948 writing with chalk on a sidewalk "Vote for Harry Truman." In 1952, at the age of 15, Owens was the Garfield County chairman for Democrat U.S. Senate candidate Walt Granger. He traveled the county, pushing Granger's candidacy over GOP Sen. Arthur Watkins to anyone who'd listen.
"Walt lost the race, but he carried Garfield County. Unfortunately, I couldn't do as well for Adlai Stevenson, who was swamped by Gen. Eisenhower."
Owens worked his way through high school as a dishwasher and cook at the Bryce Canyon Cafe. He ran for various offices in school, serving as class president his senior year.
Owens missed the Korean War - too young - and the Vietnam War - where he took a student deferment until he was married and had a child. He has no military record.
In 1955, Owens left home to attend the University of Utah. In 1957 he went on a three-year mission to France for the LDS Church. "I was released from the mission the day John F. Kennedy was elected president. I walked down the Champs Elysee in Paris to watch the election results on a TV."
After his mission, Owens returned to the U., taking some time off to recover from injuries suffered in the auto accident that killed his mother. He'd met Marlene Wessel on his mission, where she was also an LDS missionary. And they married in August 1961.
Before and after his mission, Owens worked as a cook - later, assistant manager - for Pete Harmon in his North Temple Ken-tucky Fried Chicken restaurant. After being accepted in 1961 to the U.'s law school, Owens worked as a night watchman in the Beehive House - watching a little, studying law a lot of the night.
While in law school, Owens worked on Calvin Rampton's 1962 U.S. Senate campaign. Rampton lost a primary fight to Democratic U.S. Rep. David King, and Owens then went to work on King's campaign. King lost to Republican Wallace F. Bennett - whose campaign was being run by his youngest son, Robert. It would not be the last time Bob Bennett and Owens faced each other in a political race. Bob Bennett is Owens' Republican opponent in the U.S. Senate race.
As he was finishing up law school, Owens was hired by Moss to be his part-time office manager in Salt Lake. When he graduated and passed the bar, Owens stayed with Moss part time and did some law work part time for the firm of Nielsen and Mock. It was as a part-time aide to Moss that Owens started setting up river trips for the Kennedy family. After several years of doing the leg work, in 1967 Owens "kind of invited myself along." It was 10 days that would change his life, he recalls now.
After Bobby Kennedy's assassination, Owens was at loose ends, greatly troubled. He'd gotten to know Ted Kennedy along the 1968 campaign trail. And when Ted was elected Senate majority whip in January 1969, he asked Owens to come back to Washington, D.C., and be in charge of the whip's office. For two years, Owens helped run the Democratic floor of the U.S. Senate.
What he had learned of the Senate during his years with Moss were re-enforced as Kennedy's aide. While Owens would serve twice in the House, it was the Senate where Owens really wanted to be - a lifelong yearning that saw him give up a relatively safe House seat twice to run for the Senate.
Owens knew in 1971 that he couldn't run for office back home in Utah and remain Kennedy's whip. So he left Kennedy's staff and went to work again for Moss, coming back to Utah in the spring of 1972 to walk the then-large, politically diverse 2nd Congressional District. "I walked 711 miles in eight weeks. I visited 69 communities and all 11 counties in the district. When I started, a poll showed no one knew me. When I finished, 60 percent of district residents recognized my name." Owens went on that fall to defeat incumbent Republican Sherm Lloyd.
Back in Washington again, this time as a member of the U.S. House, not an aide, Owens was assigned to the House Judiciary Committee and fell into the one of the greatest political scandals in the nation's history - Watergate.
After just two years in the House, Owens decided to run for the seat being vacated by Sen. Wallace Bennett. In his way stood Salt Lake Mayor Jake Garn, a Republican. The 1974 race was a tough one, with Owens leading from the start. But some campaign missteps by Owens, and an aggressive Garn, led to Owens' defeat.
Soon, Owens was called by LDS Church leaders to be a mission president in Montreal, Canada. After those three years, Owens returned to Utah and set up a private law practice, dabbling in California real estate. "I made a lot of money quickly and lost a lot." A development project went bad, and Owens and a number of other investor/
developers were sued. But Owens prevailed, his law practice turning to victims of uranium mining and 1950s open-air nuclear testing.
The political bug bit Owens again in 1984, when he ran for governor. Democrats had held the governorship for 20 years. Under-funded and facing a strong Republican tide, Owens lost to Gov. Norm Bangerter. But within weeks, Owens had examined the election returns in Salt Lake County - home of the newly-drawn 2nd District.
"Norm beat me in the district, but not by much," recalls Owens. "I knew I had a shot." He ran for the U.S. House in 1986, won, and has won re-election by ever-increasing margins in 1988 and 1990.
Editor's note: The Deseret News is reprinting profiles of candidates who were involved in primary elections as part of its general election coverage. Here is a look at Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Wayne Owens' life. Yesterday a profile of Republican Bob Bennett ran in the newspaper.