First he shakes the hand of a guy in a three-piece business suit. Then he hugs a laughing fellow wearing a beret and long, silver earrings.
Rocky Anderson is the new mayor of Salt Lake City, and a look around at the mix of people at his victory party Tuesday night showed his was not your ordinary local campaign. Anderson promises it won't be your ordinary city administration, either. He pledges to be diverse and inclusive."It was a vote for change," Anderson, 48, said as he was hugged and jostled by joyous supporters. And it was a resounding vote. Anderson, an attorney with no elective experience, pounded city administrator Stuart Reid, 60 percent to 40 percent, in a race that saw only 37 percent of registered voters turn out.
Tuesday's 1999 municipal elections will provide changes throughout Utah's 223 cities and towns as Ogden elected its youngest mayor ever, a mother and son duo upset incumbents in Provo and Orem and a woman will be serving on Cedar City's Council for the first time in two decades.
While Anderson's win wasn't the biggest margin of victory since Salt Lake City changed its form of government in 1979, it was larger than expected after Anderson and Reid, both Democrats, came out of the Oct. 5 primary to face each other in the officially nonpartisan election.
Deseret News/KSL-TV pollster Dan Jones conducted exit polls Tuesday for the TV station. The survey showed that among all the Democrats who voted, Anderson got 85 percent of them. Among all the Republicans who voted, Reid got 77 percent of them. Since there are about the same number of Democrats and Republicans in the city, Anderson clearly didn't get the GOP vote, while Reid did. "But the Republicans stayed home (didn't vote), and that really hurt Reid. Only 28 percent of Republicans voted Tuesday, while 42 percent of Democrats did. And Anderson got most of the independent vote," Jones said.
More strikingly, 72 percent of Mormon voters cast ballots for Reid, while Anderson received huge majorities of Catholics, Protestants and members of other non-LDS religions.
Does Anderson feel that he needs to reach out to the city Mormons and Republicans?
"As people get to know me better they'll realize that that doesn't make any difference at all," Anderson said. "All of our fundamental values are shared. And I think there will be a real opening up in the community in terms of acceptance and understanding of different people."
The first item on Anderson's agenda: Call a meeting with Gov. Mike Leavitt, legislative leaders and Salt Lake Organizing Committee president Mitt Romney to "solve" the Olympic debt concerns facing the city. "I will do that immediately," Anderson promised, well before he's sworn in in January.
For Reid, it was clearly a disappointing night following a tough final election campaign. The results from the first precincts were just coming in when Reid entered a Hotel Monaco second-story suite and conceded the race at 9:30 p.m.
"I didn't want the volunteers and everyone else to hang around all night," he said.
Reid, who had run campaign ads attacking Anderson in the waning days of the campaign, was gracious in defeat.
"Let me say this about Mr. Anderson: I want everyone in this community to support him," Reid said. "He ran a very smart campaign, (and) I'll do anything I can to help him in his transition." During his campaign, Reid was on leave from his job as the city's director of community and economic development.
"There are a number of things we probably would have done differently . . .," he said of his campaign. "But I don't think that would have changed the outcome of the race."
Reid's membership in the LDS Church also became an object of discussion, with opponents accusing Reid of playing up the "Mormon Card" to get elected (he denied it).
This is the fourth time in a row a non-Mormon has won over a Mormon in the Salt Lake mayoral race.
"I would like to think that's not the issue (for voters)," Reid said. "It could be, but I don't want to overemphasize that."
Reid said he thought the differences between him and Anderson were described well during the campaign. Others, including retiring Mayor Deedee Corradini, disagreed.
"I'm disappointed in the whole campaign," said Corradini, a Reid--backer. "I think the issues were obfuscated. It was not what I would call an issue-oriented campaign at all, on both sides. I wanted to see the candidates talking about their vision for the city, and I didn't see that."
Corradini supported Reid's candidacy, and to a large extent Reid was running as an incumbent. Anderson spent much of the campaign attacking Corradini's policies on development and crime, among other things, opposing the Gateway rehabilitation west of downtown and vowing to fire Police Chief Ruben Ortega.
Anderson particularly criticized the Boyer Co.'s large mixed-use development west of the Union Pacific Depot.
Anderson said Tuesday night that he wants to sit down with Boyer and the City Council to "ensure that no huge retail project is built outside of the central business district" before the district is revitalized. What exactly that means for Gateway and the Boyer Co. is yet to be seen.
Two of the three open Salt Lake City Council races were relatively close with the winners decided by fewer than 200 votes. In District 2, small-business owner Van Turner beat Hispanic activist Robert "Archie" Archuleta, and in District 4, bed-and-breakfast owner Nancy Saxton beat attorney Linda Lepreau.
In District 6, former state senator David Buhler beat banker Mark Garfield by a larger margin.
In other results:
Matt Godfrey, a 29-year-old political newcomer, became Ogden's youngest mayor as he defeated former city manager and county commissioner Bob Hunter by nearly 800 votes.
A mother and son duo upset incumbents in Provo and Orem, while a longtime critic of Provo's city government nearly ousted a two-term incumbent.
Melanie McCoard nearly upset Provo City Council chairman Mark Hathaway, losing by only 3 percentage points. Barbara Sandstrom, a 67-year-old homemaker, unseated incumbent Councilman David Rail by a 52 to 48 percent margin, while her son Stephen, a former Orem city councilman, edged out incumbent Dave Palfreyman for the third and final available seat on Orem's City Council. Businessman Jerry Washburn won Orem's two-year mayoral seat, handily defeating former City Councilman Jim Evans by more than 5,000 votes. The two-year post was created when former Mayor Joe Nelson died last summer.
In the yet-to-be-created city of Holladay-Cottonwood, the mayor will be community activist Liane Stillman, the primary proponent of a controversial "transition committee," who beat attorney and businessman V.L. Kesler by a wide margin.
It was not a good night for council incumbents in Park City. Chuck Klingenstein and Hugh Daniels not only were swept from office, they held the last two spots in the field of six candidates. Fred Jones, Candace Erickson and Peg Bodell grabbed the three seats.
Pro-growth candidates won four of the open seats on the South Jordan City Council. Russell Sanderson overwhelmingly beat Drew Chamberlain. Chamberlain and Janalee Tobias, founders of the grassroots group Save Open Space, campaigned for change and managed growth. Voters, however, chose Shelly Wilburn, Andy Burton and incumbent Richard Warne for the seats with four-year terms.
A 47 percent turnout in Draper saw voters roundly reject an initiative that would have limited beer and alcohol licenses for restaurants and taverns in the city.
In Riverton about 68 percent of the voters said they would rather have the county, not city, provide firefighting services.