Candidate Spotlight

Don Jarvis

Don Jarvis is an experienced educator, administrator, and community activist.  

He is active in community and church.  A member and a director of the Provo Rotary Club, he also volunteers as a supervisor for Provo School District’s adult English as a second language program.  His family has supported the Provo Food & Shelter Coalition for over twenty years.  He has served three missions for his church, one as mission president, and has filled many church assignments, from bishop to home teacher.

He participates in local politics.  This year, together with former Utah Republican Senator Karl Snow, Don headed Utah County signature gathering for the non-partisan ethics reform initiative.  In 2009 he was executive director of the Utah County Democratic Party, in 2008 he ran for the legislature, and in 2007 was chair of the Research Committee for the County Party.  In the 1970s, he served as Wasatch Neighborhood Chair.

Daily Herald, October 11, 2010
Richard Davis

LOCAL OPINION

There's a popular line: Politicians are like diapers. Both need to be changed frequently, and for the same reason.

An election is an opportunity for voters to change politicians. And the one coming up on Nov. 2 is no different. In fact, in Utah County it's time for voters to take matters into our own hands and show politicians who is really in charge.

All over the country, this year voters are saying they want change. And here in Utah County it is certainly time for change. The same old party and legislators have been governing Utah County politics for far too long.

Voters are probably not aware how long some of these legislators have been in office. Did you know Margaret Dayton has been there since 1996 and Becky Lockhart since 1998? (Bill Clinton was president when they were elected.) John Dougall has been there for eight years and Craig Frank has been a legislator since 2003. Worst of all, Howard Stephenson has been at the capitol since 1993. He was elected when George H.W. Bush was still president!

When legislators serve for too long, they have the potential to become arrogant. They take their positions for granted. They assume that they deserve all the special attention they get from lobbyists, state agency officials, and the media. They often forget they serve the people.

Unfortunately, many Utah County Republican legislators have become just that way. They are out of touch with their constituents.

Candidate Spotlight

Mark Peterson

Mark Peterson is an educator, an enthusiastic community servant, and an energetic triathlete.

As an educator, Mark's career began in Korea where he taught university classes while serving as the director of the Fulbright Program there. After relocating to Provo he began a sidelight of teacher-training and has led numerous seminars throughout the U.S. and Korea. He has taught Korean language and literature in the Asian and Near Eastern Languages Department at Brigham Young University for 26 years.
 
Mark has always been active in community and church service. He has been a neighborhood chair and vice chair, a long-time member of the board of The Center for Women and Children in Crisis, a member of the Provo bicycle advisory board and an active member on numerous boards and committees for the teaching of Korean. In church service, he has been a missionary and mission president in Korea, a bishop (twice) and now a Sunday School teacher. In the category of national service, Mark has served in the Utah National Guard and has been awarded a Fulbright grant for study in Korea. Later, he became the director of the Fulbright exchange program in Seoul for six years.

Deseret News, October 7, 2010
Hal Miller

Last year, Utahns for Ethical Government (UEG) launched an initiative to pass real ethics reform in the Utah Legislature. The initiative would have ended gifts for legislators, created a citizens' ethics commission with real teeth, and given citizens a role in legislative ethics investigations.

Republican legislators quickly criticized the initiative as unnecessary. Republican Party leaders panned the initiative. Sen. John Valentine complained that the intent of the initiative "is to punish legislators." However, party leaders became worried when polls showed that the overwhelming majority of voters favored the initiative.

In response, the Republican-dominated Legislature passed a bill, claiming it to be serious ethics reform. Their bill, however, was the equivalent of the "fox guarding the hen house." The same legislators who opposed the initiative didn't complain about their own version of ethics reform. Perhaps it was because the new law avoided punishing legislators while at the same time giving them a pass on ethics reform.

The new law passed by the Republican-dominated Legislature isn't real ethics reform. It is only a sham.

Candidate Spotlight

Linnea Barney

Linnea Smith Barney was born in Snowflake, Arizona and was delivered by her grandmother, a midwife. She grew up mostly in Arizona and Colorado and first came to Utah to be a BYU student. She met Ralph Barney there, and they were married shortly after she graduated in Nursing. As a young couple with small children they lived in Iowa, Hawaii, and Missouri. After Ralph finished his PhD they returned to Utah in 1971 and have lived in their home on Main Street in Orem since then. Their seven children have all graduated from Orem high schools.
 
In 1980-81 they took their four youngest children to the Fiji Islands, where Ralph was a Fulbright professor at the University of the South Pacific in Suva, There they learned to appreciate the public schools and the medical care in the US. Again in 1987-88 they took their three youngest children to Beijing, China, this time sent as an exchange expert in editing English language publications for the Ministry of Culture's Foreign Languages Press. Linnea taught English and the History of Western Civilization to students in the Ministry of Culture Institute, young adults who were preparing for jobs in tourism. In China they learned to appreciate the schools and the medical care of both the Fiji Islands and the US.