Perhaps this race was never in the cards for Frank Pignanelli to win. Or maybe if your opponent plays the "religious" card in multidenominational Salt Lake City, no one can defeat him.
Those were just a few of the conclusions reached in the Monday-morning quarterbacking analysis by Salt Lake mayoral candidate Pignanelli's top advisers a couple of days after the former Democratic legislator lost to Mayor Rocky Anderson, 54-46 percent.
Around the table were Pignanelli; his wife, D'Arcy Dixon Pignanelli; his campaign manager, Dallis Nordstrom; and campaign chairman Dave Jones, who himself was knocked out of Salt Lake mayoral primaries in 1991 and 1999 by small margins.
"I hate to bring it up," said Pignanelli, but it looks like there "is a dynamic at work" in major Salt Lake City races: If a well-financed opponent plays to certain groups in a Salt Lake election, an underfinanced challenger may not have a real shot at unseating him.
If the incumbent is a "religious bigot," throws in Nordstrom.
Is that what happened in this race?
"I don't know," said Pignanelli. "That comment at the Hinckley Institute" . . . Anderson said in an exchange in the University of Utah program that some City Council members couldn't have voted to allow the Nordstrom department store to move to The Gateway project from Crossroads Mall, recently purchased by the LDS Church, because they are active Mormons. The comment "was maybe made to solidify his base" of non-Mormon, liberal voters, the Pignanelli observers said.
"We tried very hard to run a race where people wanted to vote for something, vote for me. We didn't want to give reasons for people to vote against (Anderson), although some probably did," said Pignanelli.
Fallout ahead?
The Pignanelli group said that while the 2003 mayor's race between two loyal Democrats likely won't see intra-party scars or rifts running into the 2004 general elections, in which the Democratic Party hopes to win the governorship with Scott Matheson Jr. and hold on to Rep. Jim Matheson's 2nd Congressional District. Anderson could become Public Enemy No. 1 in Republican eyes next year.
"The Democratic Party's own polling shows Anderson is the poster boy for the party, seen as its leader," said Nordstrom. "And I think (Anderson) could really hurt the party" in the 2004 elections, especially if he's involved in high-profile, disruptive issues next year.
But Jones disagrees, adding that Anderson has a "brief window" in which he can change his public persona, work to bring various groups together after a period of deep divisiveness in Salt Lake City. "He can be a healing factor, and not part of next (political) year at all. Can he change his public personality? We'll see," said Jones.
"If we had had a few more weeks" before the final election, "and more money, you would have seen a different result. Frank would be mayor," said Jones. "(Anderson) outspent us by $400,000, but only won by 8 percentage points."
But don't similar campaigns in 1999 and 2003 show a new template in city elections? Show yourself as willing and able to take on the LDS Church and the Republican Party monolith in Utah, and you win the Salt Lake mayor's seat, it appears, even if it creates rifts in the city's citizenry?
"I don't think so," said Jones. "At least, I hope not."
But hard feelings did show up in the race. Said Pignanelli: "As I left my voting place (Tuesday), a gay man came up to me and said the most horrible things to me, with my wife and kids standing nearby." Anderson won the endorsement of various gay and lesbian groups, while Pignanelli as a legislator got the first hate crimes bills passed through the Legislature.
Exit polls for 1999 and 2003 conducted by pollster Dan Jones (no relation to Dave Jones) for KSL-TV show the same thing: Anderson did very well among non-Mormons and Democrats, poorly among GOP Mormons. Had the latter group been more inclined to vote, it might, in fact, have turned the tide in Pignanelli's favor. In the 2003 election, Anderson got 60 percent of the independent vote, which in the city usually consists of more liberal, Democratic-leaning voters than outside the city, said Dan Jones. There was a clear religious/political split in the voting, both in 1999 and 2003, the pollster said.
Life afterward
Sporting a two-day growth of beard and mussed hair, Pignanelli admitted he'd been moping around his house for two days after his defeat. He said he made a conscious decision early in the race not to run a negative campaign against Anderson, "Even though I got a lot of pressure, a lot of pressure, to do that."
In fact, said Pignanelli, his first political consulting/public relations firm, The Summit Group, quit his campaign because he wouldn't lay into Anderson. "They wanted me to just pound him day after day."
"But I wanted to run a campaign about bringing people together. It would have been disingenuous to beat up on him all the time."
Speaking bluntly, Pignanelli added, looking at Jones and Nordstrom: "And we all have to work in this town." Meaning if he lost the race, Anderson and his supporters could make life pretty miserable for an attorney/lobbyist such as Pignanelli and his top supporters.
"A race against Rocky Anderson is not for the faint of heart," said Pignanelli. After Pignanelli's first campaign finance report came out, showing he had out-raised Anderson and compiled an impressive $100,000, "Anderson started calling some of our donors, not only asking for money himself but" clearly sending the signal "there could be retribution."
Anderson has denied he'd either sought money from nor threatened Pignanelli's contributors and supporters.
Walking the line
Pignanelli had to walk a fine line. If he tried to appeal too strongly to LDS and Republican voters, then he could lose some of his support among Democrats and non-Mor- mons.
Dan Jones' exit poll shows Pignanelli got just 23 percent of the Democratic vote, even though he is a Democrat and one-time minority leader in the Utah House.
"We always knew we wouldn't get most of the Democrats," said Pignanelli.
Said Dave Jones, "We were counting on 25 percent, and we got close to that. And if we had gone harder after the GOP vote — we had shot some TV footage of (former GOP U.S. senator) Jake Garn, but didn't have the time or money to run the ads — we could have lost some of that 25 percent." Garn served as Salt Lake mayor himself before moving on to Congress.
Dave Hansen, a Republican strategist, said Pignanelli "didn't do what he needed to do. But I'm not sure how he could get more Republican/Mormon votes — which he needed. After all, he's a Democrat" and not LDS. Pignanelli only needed to change the votes of one in 25 voters to swing the election. "It always amazes to me how close elections are." Pignanelli "could have won this," he said.
"Maybe he could have tried to solidify that Republican Mormon vote by direct mail, if he'd had the money. You'd do that under the radar, so you it wouldn't cost you Democratic votes," said Hansen.
Pignanelli, a practicing Catholic, got only 23 percent of the Catholic vote. Anderson, who belongs to no organized religion, got 77 percent. What's with that?
"I know the Catholic community pretty well" in Salt Lake City, said Pignanelli. "The way to get the Catholic vote is to beat up on Mormons." And for many reasons he wouldn't do that, he added.
Campaign questions
Any clear mistakes? "I knocked on a lot of doors. I've thought maybe my time would have been better spent elsewhere."
What was the effect of not running radio or TV spots before the Oct. 7 primary, in which Anderson beat him by 15 percentage points? "It was a risk" not running the ads. "Dave (Jones) thought we should have."
Said Dave Jones: "Coming out that far behind Rocky hurt our fund raising." If the late-campaign newspaper polls, one of which showed Pignanelli only 2 percentage points behind Anderson, another showing Pignanelli 1 point ahead, had come out a week earlier, instead of just three days before Election Day, "I think we may have won this race," said Dave Jones. "You should have seen all the people who had been ducking us for months" on fund-raising calls "coming in with money. We could have run more TV, maybe made the difference."
Will Pignanelli run for public office again? "You never say never. Four years ago I would have laughed at you if you'd said I would run this year. Who knows what I'll be doing in four years? But I'm closing down my campaign account, going back to work as an attorney and lobbyist."
E-mail: bbjr@desnews.com