Molonai Hola may not win the race for mayor of Salt Lake City. Not only is he the youngest of the three candidates, the last to enter the campaign and the one with the smallest war chest, but both Mayor Ross "Rocky" Anderson and Frank Pignanelli, a onetime Utah House minority leader, are infinitely better connected politically. Molonai, a businessman, has never held public office or even tried.
But whatever happens in this fall's elections, his mayoral candidacy has the potential to do considerable ground-breaking in removing stereotypes in the capital city's increasingly diverse population.
I found this out personally when I bumped into Molonai on Main Street recently and rather cavalierly suggested that his candidacy had a certain novelty about it — he could become the city's first football-playing Polynesian mayor.
I remembered Molonai as a football player at the University of Utah, where he was used as both halfback and linebacker by Jim Fassel through the 1988 season.
Our short conversation led to an invitation to his office on the city's south side, where a couple of days later the 37-year-old filled in the 15-year gap between his last football game and the present.
He went on to become student body president of the University of Utah in 1989 — continuing a precedent that began at both Granite Park Junior High and Granite High School in suburban Salt Lake City, where he was also president of both those student bodies — as well as president of the Latter-day Saint Student Association at the university.
After getting a bachelor's degree from the U. in economics, he received an MBA (master of business administration) from Arizona State University, followed by an MIM (master of international management) from the Thunderbird Institute in Phoenix and, finally, he was accepted into the OPM (owner president management) program at Harvard University, which, if all goes well, will result in yet another plaque for the wall after one more year of study.
During, between and coinciding with all this schooling, Molonai started his company, ICON, that specializes in construction and the awarding of government contracts. He oversees up to 125 employees.
From behind his desk in the CEO's office that has no windows, Molonai told me matter-of-factly, "If my business had been more settled, I would have run for mayor four years ago."
I bring this up not to suggest that Molonai Hola is more qualified than anyone else running for mayor, or that it takes a lengthy list of educational degrees to qualify. Anderson and Pignanelli are lawyers with impressive credentials and experiences of their own.
I bring this up because I had already pigeon-holed Molonai Hola as a football-playing Polynesian before I learned his story.
I profiled him.
And while my profile was partially true — he is, after all, a football-playing Polynesian — it fell well short of the mark.
As I was leaving his office, Molonai told me a story from when he was 10 years old — four years after his family had moved to Salt Lake's west side from their native Tonga — and he was walking down 600 South after scrounging candy at Trolley Square with a bunch of friends. The boys were throwing their wrappers on the ground and Molonai was hustling to pick them up.
"They asked me what I was doing and I said, 'Cleaning up your mess,' " he remembers. "Then I told them, 'I'm going to be mayor of this city some day.' "
That was well before he ever decided he also wanted to be a football player.
Lee Benson's column runs Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Please send e-mail to benson@desnews.com.