Neither rain nor O.J. could keep a decent number of voters from turning out Tuesday for 68 primary municipal races, but Salt Lake Mayor Deedee Corradini thinks the Simpson murder trial may have pushed her into a surprising second-place finish.
Attorney Rich McKeown, a political unknown just two months ago, shocked Corradini by nipping her in the Salt Lake contest. Gone is Republican Steve Harmsen, who ran a strong campaign but finished third.The mayor now faces McKeown in the Nov. 7 municipal election. Unofficial results show McKeown with 37 percent of the vote, Corradini with 32 percent and Harmsen with 26 percent. The rest of the votes went to five other also-rans.
In Ogden, Mayor Glenn Mecham finished first in a four-way primary. He faces City Council Chairwoman Bonnie McDonald in the final election.
Voter turnout was light to medium throughout many cities and towns.
Corradini has been deluged with bad press in the past week over her association with Bonneville Pacific. She unsuccessfully fought in federal courts to keep her tax returns private.
"Considering the nonstop barrage we've had the last two weeks of negative campaigning, I feel good," the mayor said.
She also said the residents' attention was riveted on the Simpson saga. Tuesday, she walked some neighborhoods and "people were just glued to their TV sets" watching coverage of O.J. Simpson as he was acquitted of double murder charges.
The weather turned cold and rainy in the evening, perhaps keeping even more people from the Salt Lake polls.
Still, 22 percent of the registered voters turned out in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, not a bad number compared to some other municipal primaries of the past.
Harmsen was stunned by his loss. He and his supporters figured he would end up in the final election with Corradini. The race is officially nonpartisan. But since city voters adopted the mayor-council form of government in 1979, every mayoral final election has pitted a Democrat against a Republican.
Harmsen, who offered himself as the "mayor for the whole city," said Corradini wasn't the only candidate wounded by Bonneville Pacific stories over the weekend.
"It took a lot of Deedee supporters and transferred them over to McKeown," Harmsen said. McKeown won by about 1,000 votes. "That thousand people were people who were going to vote for Deedee on Friday night and decided to vote for someone else," Harmsen said.
But why did they swing to McKeown? Harmsen said he thinks Corradini defectors went to McKeown because they are both Demo-crats.
Harmsen, who appeared shell shocked late Tuesday night, said he thought his experience as a businessman and a former city commissioner would impress voters.
"I tried to focus on my specific issues and what I was going to do," Harmsen said. "The press chose to push the Bonneville thing. I don't think my experience and qualifications had enough time to gel because of Bonneville."
Harmsen said he has no regrets about how he conducted his campaign - or about the amount of money he personally spent on the race. Harmsen had spent $29,789 on the race through Sept. 18, according to financial disclosure statements he filed. All but $4,681 of that came from his own pocket.
Said Harmsen: "I feel I did everything that could have been done in the best manner it could be done. We accomplished one thing - she won't be mayor next year."
But Harmsen said he'll mull it over a day or so before deciding whether to back one of the candidates still in the race. He said his support is more likely to land in McKeown's court than Corradini's.
This will be the first Democrat vs. Democrat final election race in recent Salt Lake history. And Corradini must break primary precedence if she's to recoup and win in November. Since the change of Salt Lake government in 1979, every candidate who finished first in the mayoral primary went on to win in the November election.
"We've talked about nothing but Bonneville Pacific for two weeks," said Corradini after it was clear she'd finished second to McKeown. "Now we're going to talk issues. And records. And who can best govern this city - and it is not an easy job I can tell you."
McKeown said: "I know I've been accused of negative campaigning. But I didn't bring up this latest issue" of Corradini's tax returns, which were made public by a U.S. bankruptcy court on election eve. "All I've done is release my tax returns two months ago and talk about openness in government and public access. And I'm going to keep talking about openness in government because it's important."
Corradini said four years ago she got 29 percent of the primary vote, finishing in first place. "All I wanted to do was get more than 29 percent this year, and we did."
But, still, for an incumbent mayor who is popular in the polls and who has a war chest three times bigger than McKeown's, a second-place finish in a three-way primary has to be disappointing. Not since 1959 has an elected incumbent Salt Lake mayor finished second or lower in a primary election. Mayor Adiel F. Stewart finished third in the 1959 primary, with just 15 percent of the vote, and was eliminated.
Growth was an issue in many council races throughout the state - how to control and manage it.
But in St. George, which is one of the fastest-growing cities in the nation, limiting growth wasn't a popular issue. An initiative on November's ballot would seek to limit city growth to 3 percent a year, yet five of the six council candidates who advanced Tuesday are openly against the initiative.
Clearly, voters looked for new blood in eastern mountain towns that are fast becoming bedroom communities for the Wasatch Front.
In Park City, two incumbents running for re-election managed to qualify for the general election but finished back in the pack, well behind the most popular candidates.
Chuck Klingenstein, a Park Meadows resident who works professionally as a land-use consultant, dramatically outpaced the rest of the field, running on a platform that included a call for preserving some semblance of afford-able livability in the resort town.
Similarly, in Kamas a few miles to the east, Diane Walker, a homemaker and mother of eight, outdistanced eight other candidates after campaigning on an agenda that called for bringing order to that town's development boom and preventing it from becoming another Park City.
In neighboring Wasatch County, primary survivors in the 1,750-resident town of Midway - the other Utah municipality besides St. George with a controversial and unprecedented growth-limit initiative on the November ballot - included candidates from each camp.
Draper Councilmen Clair Huff and B. Jeff Rasmussen failed in their re-election bids, finishing seventh and eighth, respectively, as a field of nine candidates was narrowed to six. Four of the top five finishers in the Draper primary, including leading vote-getter Doug Bedke, are part of the "Stop the Madness" group, which advocates controlled growth and returning city government "back to the citizens."
Eight of 76 incumbents statewide were eliminated Tuesday.