If you want to agitate Mayor Rocky Anderson, simply repeat claims that his office is a hostile environment.
He fumes when portrayed as a tyrant who works his staffers into the ground. But when those allegations resurfaced recently, Anderson contained his frustration. And he invited a reporter to spend an entire mayoral day with him, with the warning to "make sure you get a lot of sleep" prior to the appointed day.
"You should have just shown up unannounced," said Karen Denton, a special-projects aide in the mayor's office. Instead, "he's on his best behavior."
Anderson was on good behavior Tuesday, as he strode from speeches to meetings with everyone from Olympic sponsors to homeless veterans to Boy Scouts. He revels in his job, switching on a blinding smile for countless snapshots with constituents and joking about wearing a banner for his next photo shoot with Miss Utah. But several times between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m., the mayor revealed what he's really about. More accurately, he paraded it.
As he approaches the halfway point in his term, Anderson's goals are no secret. What will surprise some is their genesis.
When he a young boy, "my mother had me pray for those who were disadvantaged," Anderson said. He didn't recite such prayers by rote — "I really internalized them."
Is this the same Rocky Anderson we've been reading about for the past three years? He says yes. "I grew up LDS in Logan . . . the ethical precepts I learned, I've used as guidelines," though he no longer considers himself a member of any particular church.
"I remember seeing a film" in a religious-education class about a homeless man who was treated brutally. "It turned out to be Jesus."
That film made a big impression on the pre-teen Anderson; many years later the Dalai Lama would remind him of the same message. In the car coming from the airport before his May appearance in Salt Lake City, the Buddhist monk and the mayor talked about the Golden Rule, and about "what gives value and meaning to life is compassion, and caring for others," Anderson remembered. The Dalai Lama also spoke of how he spent his youth isolated from people different from him, so he thought "his way was the only right way."
"Then (the Dalai Lama) got out into the world — and he giggled when he said this — and he realized that there's a lot of wisdom in every religion," Anderson said.
The mayor recalls his 20-minute conversation with the exiled Tibetan leader as ardently as he quotes LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley's July 24 speech about how church members must not assume a holier-than-thou attitude.
"I was thrilled," Anderson said. "Saying it isn't enough. But saying it is necessary."
There seems to be no limit to the mayor's appetite for philosophical discussions; he has a degree in philosophy from the University of Utah. But what about those "disadvantaged" people his mother urged him to remember?
To Anderson, they range from the homeless to the whole of Salt Lake City. So he eagerly agreed to speak at the opening Tuesday of Valor House, a new housing complex for homeless veterans. The morning also included a passionate pitch for Olympic sponsors to support the city's downtown festival during the 2002 Winter Games. Speaking to a full Salt Palace ballroom, the mayor said, "You will have a great time in Salt Lake City. We have so much to offer in terms of a vibrant night life . . . cultural heritage and great diversity." And "Strength through diversity" is the motto Anderson ordered engraved in the mayor's official Olympic pin.
Also among the disadvantaged, as Anderson sees it: locally owned businesses. He all but forbids people to go to chain bookstores — "They don't need your money" — and urges them to instead shop at Sam Weller's. And shop there often, he says, recommending books on everything from nuclear waste to Islam to "The Idiot's Guide to Catholicism."
At one point, as he floored his car toward his sixth appearance of the day, Anderson did grow quite annoyed. He jabbed the buttons on his cell phone, placing increasingly disgusted calls to his assistant, Christy Cordwell.
"These directions are terrible," he said twice. "Terrible . . . impossible." But soon after a calm response from Cordwell, he pulled into the new SkyWest hangar's parking lot. Fifteen minutes late for his speech at the hangar's grand opening, he ran across the lot, then remembered his manners and held the door open for his two female companions. After an apology from the SkyWest official who'd provided the directions, Anderson murmured, "it was probably my fault."
Back at the office at the end of her work day, Cordwell, a grandmother in a tie-dyed T-shirt, said she was warned about going to work for the mayor who'd already lost a series of staffers. But as she nears her first anniversary in Anderson's office, she says she can take it just fine.
"It's just my background, my experience," said Cordwell, who previously was personal assistant to millionaire philanthropist James Sorenson.
When things get tense, "there's Slinky therapy," she added, as a co-worker picked up the Slinky on Cordwell's desk. A sense of humor helps too. "If (handling the Slinky) doesn't work," she added with a sunny smile, "you can always wrap it around his neck."
E-MAIL: durbani@desnews.com