Even though Randy Horiuchi survived the Republican tidal wave, the Salt Lake County Commission is in for a sea change.
With her upset victory over Commission Chairman Jim Bradley, Mary Callaghan becomes the first woman ever elected to the post.And with her Republican voice added to that of Commissioner Brent Overson - who was not up for election - control of the three-member commission reverts to the Grand Old Party.
That means Overson will likely become the new commission chair-man, and Horiuchi will have only as much authority as Over-son and Callaghan see fit to give him.
Combined with the Republican successes in every other county race but that of clerk, the party will effectively control every aspect of county government for the next four years.
Looking out across the Democratic wasteland at 2 a.m. Wednesday, a doleful Horiuchi said his own victory seemed somewhat hollow, especially in light of Bradley's defeat.
"Jim was a victim of the partisan freight train," Horiuchi said. "I think that's really unfortunate because so much of what we do is totally nonpartisan."
But for the seemingly ineffective candidacies of three minor-party candidates, Horiuchi himself might have been a victim as well. He won just under 50 percent of the vote compared to 46 percent for Republican challenger Gene Whitmore. The trio of independents siphoned off about 4 percent of the mostly "anti-Randy" vote, which might have been enough to give Whitmore the edge.
"Clearly, the involvement of the independents aided me, but my victory was made up of a lot of reasons," Horiuchi said, citing his record in office and a strong campaign.
Tapping into more than $200,000 in contributions, Horiuchi outspent his opponent by 10 to 1. He also started with almost universal name recognition, compared to Whitmore's almost total anonymity.
Even so, Whitmore nearly scored an upset. For a while Tuesday night, he was even projected to win the race. Those hopes faded with the actual vote count, but Whitmore ended the election night roller-coaster ride with no regrets. "I ran the kind of campaign I wanted to run," he said.
In what was clearly the more contentious of the two commission races, Callaghan assailed Bradley for what she characterized as government mismanagement and political featherbedding. Her criticism of his 1991 tax hike vote and his attempt to regulate the hiring practices of Salt Palace contractors seemed to do the most damage.
At the same time, she offered voters a plan to reduce the size of government and enhance citizen participation. Fifty-three percent of the voters - 118,078 to Bradley's 103,627 - accepted the offer.
Gender was never an issue. A business consultant, Callaghan attributed her win to a well-focused campaign and a pledge to do a better job than the incumbent.
Although he spent three times as much as Callaghan, about $170,000, Bradley said he was forced to spend most of the campaign "correcting her facts and defending myself against her at-tacks."
Bradley said his own message got lost in the process. "I am extremely proud of what I've accomplished in the past four years. I think we brought a lot of good to this community. Unfortunately, I don't believe the voters had a real opportunity to evaluate those accomplishments."
However, he also believes it was a particularly bad year to be a Democratic incumbent. "Even though being a county commissioner is not a partisan job, when you have that Democratic label under these circumstances, you start out at a disadvantage."
He also sensed a "real discontent" and even some "antagonism" among voters. According to Bradley, people seemed to want to believe that taxes were too high, that crime was running rampant and that government was being mismanaged even though the facts didn't support those conclusions.
"It was incumbent upon the incumbents to prove the voters wrong, and that became very difficult to do."