PROVO — Steve Clark, R-Provo says he will announce Monday that's he's running for mayor of Provo in the November election.
Clark was re-elected last year to the House of Representatives seat he has held since 2001. He plans to make the announcement at Provo's Kiwanis Park at noon. If he wins, he said, he will resign from the House. Republican delegates would then appoint a successor to finish out his term.
Clark's announcement has raised the ire of Utah County Democratic Party Chairman Richard Davis, who said Clark should have told the voters last November that he was considering a run for the mayor's seat.
"I doubt this was a sudden decision. Instead of the voters deciding, the Republican Party gets to make that decision (to replace Clark if his bid is successful)," he said.
Resigning mid-term has become a pattern among Republicans, because then the party, not the voters, get to choose the replacement, he said.
"We're tired of this kind of approach and we're calling them on it," he said.
Davis said he would like to see a change in the law requiring a special election to replace elected leaders who leave office before finishing their terms.
"Then the Republicans would think twice about it," he said.
While the Republican-dominated Utah Legislature fiercely defends its constitutional right and expertise in the once-a-decade task of redrawing voter districts, former U.S. Congressman Jim Hansen begs to differ.
"I don't know anybody who screws up more when it comes to reapportionment," said Hansen, a former state House Speaker and Utah's longest-serving U.S. House member when he stepped down following the last redistricting.
He applauded the initiative effort that Fair Boundaries Coalition recently launched to put the formation of an independent redistricting commission on the Utah ballot in 2010.
"When the petitions come out, I'll be the first to sign," said the former 11-term congressman from Farmington. The bounds set in 2001 were especially horrible, Hansen added.
"They were trying to get [Democratic Congressman] Jim Matheson," Hansen said. "That's the voters' job, not the place of the Legislature."
When Hansen retired from Congress that year, the 1st District boundaries had been redrawn to sweep in half of the Democratic stronghold of Salt Lake City. Still, Republican Rob Bishop handily won the seat and Matheson managed, though barely, to retain his seat despite a radical redrawing of his 2nd District boundaries.
While Hansen complimented state lawmakers as "one of the best groups of men and women around," he questioned their ability to reshape districts without partisan or personal bias.
To be about the business of winning was the vow of Utah County Democrats at their county convention on Saturday.
Democrats made significant fundraising gains in Utah Valley in 2008 and garnered thousands of new votes compared to other years, but they failed to actually win a single seat. Building on those gains was the theme on Saturday.
"We have to celebrate our gains," said state party chair Wayne Holland. "We have made two consecutive gains in two election cycles."
Utah County Democrats raised $80,000 in 2008, compared to $7,000 in 2006, said Richard Davis, county party chair.
"The Republicans, however, raised $150,000," he said. "We were outspent two-to-one. We have a lot of ground to cover."
In 2006, there were fewer than 100 donors to the party. In 2008, that number jumped to more than 1,300, he said.
Now, local Dems must build on the momentum by recruiting and training candidates, raising money and volunteering to help candidates, Davis said.
"Please volunteer," he said. "We really need your help."
SALT LAKE CITY - With six state senators and 13 representatives who are all Republican, it may seem like being a Democrat is Utah as an uphill battle. But after the Democratic party got 33 percent of the vote last legislative election, their members may find a small glimmer of hope for the party's future. This week's Democratic convention was hosted a week after the Republican convention. This year the meeting may have met bit of a somber note after Bill Orton, one of Utah's few Democrat state representatives, was killed in an accident. FOX 13's Max Roth has the story.
Utah County Democrats pledged to follow the path to electoral victory blazed by Bill Orton in 1990. Speakers at the party's convention Saturday said Orton demonstrated that voters in this Republican bastion will vote for Democrats. Orton, who represented Utah's 3rd Congressional District for six years in the 1990s, was killed in an ATV accident April 18.
"Bill left a legacy for us," Richard Davis, county Democratic chairman, told the 150 people gathered at Orem Junior High School. "He proved a Democrat could win here, but not just any Democrat."
He said the best way to honor Orton's legacy is to encourage good people to run as Democrats and to represent the will of the people.
U.S. Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, echoed that sentiment.
"When you want to win in Utah as a Democrat, you have to work hard and listen to people," said Matheson, who survived a Republican attempt to gerrymander him out of office.
Matheson said Utah's Republican officials have demonstrated how far out of step they are with the people by voting against regulating tobacco and supporting nuclear weapons testing in Nevada.
Davis said the party has worked to recruit good candidates, as well as build grass-roots support.
Among candidates who ran in 2008 were Ken Peay, a retired Utah Highway Patrol officer, former Alpine School Superintendent Steven Baugh and Nebo school board member Debbie Swenson.
So far, party leaders say, that strategy is reaping dividends. While Democrats were unable to win any seats in the 2008 election, the party made significant gains. Three legislative candidates had 40 percent or more of the vote in their races, and Democrats combined received 40,781 votes, compared with 8,577 votes in the 2006 election.
U.S. Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, will address the Utah County Democratic Party at its organizing convention May 2.
Party chairman Richard Davis said Matheson has been invited to speak for the second consecutive year for one main reason: "He has figured out [how] to win."
Davis said between 200 and 250 people turned out for last year's convention. While he doesn't expect the same numbers in an off year, he said it should be a productive meeting that will continue building momentum for the Democratic cause in a heavily Republican county.
"Last year, he talked about how we were moving along well. He was very impressed with how much progress we'd made," Davis said. "I'm hoping what comes out of it is that people are energized to go on and work for the party. These tend to be the activists that show up and go out and work for candidates."
This year's convention will take place at Orem Junior High School. Registration begins at 8:30 a.m., with house district meetings at 9 and the general meeting at 10.
County executive officers, including the chair, vice chair, secretary and treasurer, are also up for election. Davis has submitted notice that he intends to run for re-election.
PROVO--Richard Davis is not going to take what he sees as Republican disenfranchisement anymore.
Davis, Utah County Democratic chairman, is taking Rep. Stephen Clark, a Republican, to task for not telling voters that when he ran against Democrat Don Jarvis in the 2008 House race, he was thinking about a run for Provo mayor this year.
Clark should have, at least, told voters that there was a chance he wasn't planning to serve a full term, said Davis, who wants the state representative to apologize to voters.
If Clark were to become mayor, then Republican delegates would choose his successor in the House -- a move Davis said disenfranchises voters.
"He deprived them of the information that voters need to cast an intelligent ballot," Davis said.
Clark told The Salt Lake Tribune in December that he was considering a run for mayor, a statement he recently repeated to a Provo newspaper.
Clark acknowledged that he had thought about running against Mayor Lewis Billings before November's election, but there's a simple reason he didn't tell voters he was looking at a city post: He hadn't decided to do it yet.
"I'd been thinking about it all along, but I didn't commit to it," Clark said.
Davis said Clark's move appears to be a tactic to guarantee that the legislative seat remains firmly in GOP hands. He said Clark isn't the first to do something like that.
In 2006, then-Rep. Jeff Alexander, R-Provo, stepped down shortly after the election to join the Governor's Office of Economic Development.
Chris Herrod was selected by then-state GOP Chairwoman Enid Greene after delegates deadlocked between Herrod and John Curtis.
Curtis, owner of Action Target, also is running for mayor this November.
UVU presidential prospect withdraws, surprised by partisanship
A candidate for the top job at Utah Valley University has pulled his name from consideration, saying it was inappropriate for a member of the state board of regents to ask him to apologize for his wife's political campaign of last November.
Ned Hill is a former dean of Brigham Young University's Marriott School of Business and a finance professor who is currently on sabbatical. His wife, Claralyn, ran unsuccessfully as a Democrat for a seat in the state House of Representatives last year. Hill told the Daily Herald that a board member asked him to meet privately with local Republican lawmakers -- including Chris Herrod, his wife's former opponent for House District 62 -- to apologize for implications his wife had made that their offices needed ethical reform.
Hill said Claralyn, who lost the election 40-60 to Herrod, did not argue that any particular politician was unethical and does not owe anyone an apology. He said he also thought it was inappropriate that the request came before other parts of the hiring process, such as a formal interview, had been initiated.
"I felt like people were saying, 'Well, now you have to be the right political person,' " he said. "I am a Republican, but because my wife ran against them, I had to apologize for my wife running for office."
Claralyn Hill said she's been a lifelong Republican and only changed parties about two years ago in an attempt to try to "rebuild a two-party system" in Utah County. She said she ran on a platform of ethics reform in general, and was surprised when some incumbent politicians apparently took her words personally.
"We knew that there would be repercussions for running as Democrats," she said. "I was surprised that this happened, but I wasn't surprised that something happened."
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