PROVO — Don Jarvis has announced he will run for election this year for a seat in House District 63 as a conservative Democrat.
The Monday announcement, held at Wasatch Elementary School in Provo, followed the news that current Rep. Stephen D. Clark, a Republican, has been called to serve as a mission president for the LDS Church in St. Louis, Mo., and will not be running for re-election this year. Jarvis, who has lived in Provo for more than 40 years, is a former mission president in the Moscow, Russia mission.
This will be Jarvis' second time running for this position. He won 36 percent of the vote in 2008, but lost to Clark.
Jarvis said he will focus his campaign on the "Three E's" — economy, education and ethics.
Jarvis discussed the correlation between the economy and the environment, sharing that the brown haze that settles in during the winter often causes business people investigating Utah to change their minds. Jarvis also noted the negative effect on people's health that poor air quality can have.
"A very simple, immediate thing would be to make more compressed natural gas filling stations available up and down the Wasatch front," Jarvis said. "It's a very simple, doable, cost-effective plan."
Jarvis said these stations would benefit many different aspects of life in Utah, like providing jobs to build the stations. Additionally, compressed natural gas costs less than half of what gasoline costs.
A day after announcing his run for governor, Peter Corroon came into the heart of his opponent's base to repeat his message.
Corroon, the Democratic Salt Lake County mayor, made his pitch in the crisp morning air to three dozen supporters in front of the Provo City Library. It was a tenth of the turnout he got Tuesday, albeit in the county that hasn't elected a Democrat in more than a decade and is the home of Gov. Gary Herbert.
He downplayed his party both in his speech and in a separate interview afterward with the Daily Herald.
"I'm running as Peter Corroon," said the 45-year-old. "I'll stand up for what I think is right."
It's a similar tone that U.S. Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, strikes in his speeches -- fiscal responsibility combined with environmental protection, green energy and nary a word about political affiliation. Matheson has endorsed Corroon in his bid to unseat Herbert.
Corroon says that Utah can be completely energy independent in 10 years by tapping solar, wind, geothermal and biomass sources as well as traditional energy solutions like coal, petroleum and natural gas.
LDS Church affirms it is not aligned with any particular political ideology or movement; its moral values may be expressed in a number of parties and ideologies.
Views with concern the politics of fear and rhetorical extremism that render civil discussion impossible.
Hopes for kinder and more reasoned exchanges among fellow Americans.
SALT LAKE CITY -- The political world is astir. Economies are faltering. Public trust is waning. Individuals feel vulnerable. And social cohesion wears thin. Meanwhile, stories of rage and agitation fill our airwaves, streets and town halls. Where are the voices of balance and moderation in these extreme times? During a recent address given in an interfaith setting, Church President Thomas S. Monson declared: "When a spirit of goodwill prompts our thinking and when united effort goes to work on a common problem, the results can be most gratifying." Further, former Church President Gordon B. Hinckley once said that living "together in communities with respect and concern one for another" is "the hallmark of civilization." That hallmark is under increasing threat.
So many of the habits and conventions of modern culture — ubiquitous media, anonymous and unsourced online participation, politicization of the routine, fractured community and family life — undermine the virtues and manners that make peaceful coexistence in a pluralist society possible. The fabric of civil society tears when stretched thin by its extremities. Civility, then, becomes the measure of our collective and individual character as citizens of a democracy.
A healthy democracy maintains equilibrium through diverse means, including a patchwork of competing interests and an effective system of governmental checks. Nevertheless, this order ultimately relies on the integrity of the people. Speaking at general conference, a semiannual worldwide gathering of the Church, Elder D. Todd Christofferson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles asserted: "In the end, it is only an internal moral compass in each individual that can effectively deal with the root causes as well as the symptoms of societal decay." Likewise, Presiding Bishop H. David Burton emphasized that the virtues of fidelity, charity, generosity, humility and responsibility "form the foundation of a Christian life and are the outward manifestation of the inner man." Thus, moral virtues blend into civic virtues. The seriousness of our common challenges calls for an equally serious engagement with reasonable ideas and solutions. What we need is rigorous debate, not rancorous altercations.
Civility is not only a matter of discourse. It is primarily a mode of engagement. The technological interconnectedness of society has made isolation impossible. Of all the institutions in the modern world, religion has had perhaps the greatest difficulty adjusting to the reality of give and take with the public. Today, and throughout its history, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints continuously encounters the legitimate interests of various stakeholders in its interaction with the public. Rather than exempting itself from the rules of law and civility, the Church has sought the path of cooperative engagement and avoided the perils of acrimonious confrontation.
Utahns are preparing two initiatives for the 2010 ballot. Both can improve freedom and democracy in our state, but in order to pass, they will require a lot of signatures and then votes.
Before explaining these two projects, we should note that the term "democracy" is used lately with considerable looseness. Even the most shameless dictators now claim that their countries are democracies. Russia's Putin, Venezuela's Chavez and Iran's Ahmadinejad come to mind. They were once elected democratically but then gradually reduced their opponents' freedoms to the point that the term "democracy" is now questionable at best.
Ethical behavior is absolutely crucial to democracy, and unfairness towards opponents can destroy it. How? Quiet changes in election practices, minor conflicts of interest, some financial advantage in campaigns and secret use of political muscle on opponents. Little by little, the freedom to choose leaders is crushed.
None of our Utah legislators are in the same league as Putin, Chavez or Ahmadinejad, but some of those strong-men's tactics seem distressingly familiar.
Quiet changes in election practices? The Wall Street Journal called our legislators' 1991 gerrymandering of Utah election districts one of the worst and most blatant power grabs by one political party in history.
Conflicts of interest? At least one current, influential senator is a registered lobbyist for one of Utah's most powerful interest groups.
Financial advantage in campaigns? Over 81 percent of campaign finance for Utah legislators comes from corporations and special interests -- not voters -- and objective observers regularly give Utah failing grades for its loose campaign finance laws.
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.
