Salt Lake Tribune, November 2, 2008
Robert Gehrke

About 60,000 households in Utah County are getting a call from Mitt Romney, a Superman in Utah politics.

But the recorded phone message is being sent out by Democrats, who are using Romney's criticism of one-party rule to rustle up support for their scrappy slate of legislative candidates.

Utah Republican Party Chairman Stan Lockhart said he thinks it is unethical for Democrats, who have made ethical conduct a campaign issue this year, to invoke Romney's name.

“Its another last-minute, desperate attempt to pull these election tricks in an effort to deceive the public, and its wrong,” said Lockhart. “It's misleading, it's out of context, and it's without Mitt Romney's permission.”

But Utah County Democratic Party Chairman Richard Davis said the statements were made by a public figure, at public events and are available on the Internet and are "fair game."

“We felt like it was important that even Gov. Romney felt that there were problems with a lack of balance, in a one-party state,” Davis said. “This was what he said at one time, and we felt like it was important for people to understand that.”

A spokesman for Romney did not return a phone call or e-mail Saturday.

Romney, who ran the 2002 Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City, received 94 percent of the Republican vote in Utah County during the party's 2008 presidential primary, as well as 90 percent of the vote statewide.

The recorded phone message, which is narrated by former television news anchor Dick Nourse, introduces Romney talking about “the dangers of partisanship and one-party state.”

“I'm not convinced that a state would be better off with all Republicans. As a matter of fact, I've been in a state like that for the last three years. It's not a good thing,” Romney says.

At the end, Romney says, “I lived in a place that had a one-party state that was primarily Republican. I thought, 'Well, won't that be nice.' The answer is, 'No.' ”

“This year when you go to vote, look at the person, not the party,” the narrator concludes.

Davis said Romney's comments are significant, in light of a letter he sent to voters urging them to vote Republican.

“The reality is that Gov. Romney has said things that maybe a one-party state is not necessarily a desirable thing,” said Davis, who thinks Republicans are scared by the insurgent Democrats.

“I think they're worried and I think they should be,” Davis commented. “We have operated quite an efficient campaign to get our message out that our candidates are viable, that they're qualified, that they're even better than the people the Republicans have put up.”

Deseret News, November 1, 2008
Tad Walch

PROVO — No Utah County Democrat has won a seat in the state Legislature since 1994, but a conservative slate of candidates, flush with cash and Republican endorsements, hopes to end the 14-year losing streak on Tuesday.

A bold effort to reshape a weak local Democratic Party began 18 months ago, and the results heading into the election are noteworthy. Utah County Democratic candidates for the Legislature have raised more than $257,000. That's five times more than the party's legislative candidates managed in the last election cycle two years ago.

This year's slate has attracted more than 1,300 donors. Fewer than 100 donated money to Democrats in 2006.

The group of conservative, chiefly LDS, Democrats also has drawn endorsements from notable Republicans such as personal management guru Steven R. Covey, who a year ago hosted a major fundraiser at his northeast Provo home for Mitt Romney, the Pied Piper of Utah Republicans.

For more than a decade at least, most legislative seats in Utah Valley have gone to the winners at the county Republican convention or in a Republican primary.

Voters often haven't even had that much choice. For example, District 62 in northeast Provo has not had a primary race since at least 1960. That means that for nearly half a century, a few dozen delegates at a convention have decided who would represent the entire district in the Legislature.

Election night often has been reduced to a coronation. Two years ago, five Utah County Republicans earned 100 percent of the vote in their legislative districts because they ran unopposed. Two others faced only token opposition from a Constitutionalist and a Libertarian.

When the Democrats have offered opposition in recent years, they've regularly lost in landslides, largely because the electorate hasn't believed they represent the moral positions of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the area's dominant faith.

In May 2007, Brigham Young University professor and national election expert Richard Davis maneuvered liberal local Democrats to the side, angering some, and recruited Republicans in an effort to create a two-party system in the county.

Democrats have asked voters to consider candidates, not parties, on signs and billboards that read, "I think, therefore I will vote the person, not the party."

Deseret News, October 29, 2008
Richard Davis

Many parts of Utah County now look like a swing state in a presidential election. Campaign billboards and large signs can be seen all over the county. Thousands of yard signs adorn lawns and street corners.

What's going on here? Isn't this the county where Republican incumbents win year after year despite ethics accusations, their slavish attention to a small minority of extremists in the Eagle Forum, and votes contrary to their constituents' views on issues such as vouchers or additional support for public education?

Not quite. This year is different. Democratic candidates for various state legislative races are waging real battles. First, the candidates themselves are remarkable: They include a former university president, a former school superintendent, a former city council member, a current school board member, and other well qualified candidates. They've been aggressive fundraisers.

And their supporters aren't the usual suspects. Many Republicans are giving their endorsements to these Democratic candidates, including some former Republican legislative and party leaders.

Let me provide a preview of what will happen if voters choose these Democratic candidates in Utah County this year:

Voters get to decide elections. Too often, the decision of who becomes an elected official is made in a closed Republican primary or an even more restrictive Republican convention. However, if Democratic candidates win this year, then it will encourage other candidates to run in the future. Suddenly, election after election includes two viable candidates running in a general election and not just one.

Voters get better representation of their views. Utah County Democrats are more in the mainstream than their Republican incumbent opponents. Like most Utah County voters, Utah County Democrats are conservative on social issues like abortion and same-sex marriage. But also like most Utah County voters (and unlike the current incumbents), they are strong supporters of public education, don't want Utah County to lag behind the rest of the Wasatch Front on public transit and favor serious ethics reform for legislators and other government officials.

Voters get much needed reform within the Republican Party. As they've become increasingly secure electorally, many incumbents have become arrogant. They don't listen to their constituents. They rely on robocalls and e-mail blasts to communicate.

Salt Lake Tribune, October 27, 2008
Tribune Editorial

Sen. Curtis Bramble personifies what is wrong with one-party government. As majority leader of the Senate, Bramble has used his position to ham-handedly push through an unpopular voucher law and an omnibus education bill that the state must now defend in court.

Bramble's reputation for bullying, his propensity for back-door deals and his casual dismissal of a yearslong public demand for ethics reform are more than sufficient reason to remove him from the Utah Legislature. Voters in Senate District 16 have a chance to do that on Nov. 4.

As part of the all-powerful Republican legislative leadership, Bramble too often turns a deaf ear to the majority of Utahns and puts the arm on legislators who disagree with him.

The hugely unpopular voucher law, which Bramble sponsored, passed by a single vote and later was overturned by a citizen referendum. Bramble and others fought the referendum publicly and with backdoor maneuvering. Public opinion, he told The Tribune Editorial Board, is only one consideration when he's legislating. A rather unimportant consideration, it appears.

He gave the same consideration to his colleagues when he and other Republican leaders crafted Senate Bill 2, an omnibus education bill that included three individual pieces of legislation that had already been defeated in the House or Senate. The constitutionality of that bill is being challenged, and several legislators are among the plaintiffs.

RaDene Hatfield, Bramble's Democratic opponent, is running for the first time. She has a master of public policy degree, is a community volunteer and, while a student, was an intern for former Republican Sen. Jake Garn and research assistant at the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, Minneapolis.

She supports ethics reform, including a gift ban, limits on campaign donations and an independent ethics committee. Bramble downplays the importance of lobbyist gifts and says there is no way to set a clear and objective standard for conflicts of interest. So he does nothing about the ethical cesspool in the Legislature that has only grown under his watch.

Bramble takes credit for unprecedented education funding and a renewable-energy standard. But Utah teachers remain underpaid, and there is still no mandate for utility companies to develop renewable energy.

We believe Hatfield would bring openness, civility and accountability to the office and endorse her candidacy.

Salt Lake Tribune, October 26, 2008
Tribune Editorial

Utah's 3rd Congressional District hasn't been represented by a Democrat since the early 1990s and is the most Republican of the state's three districts. Right up there with the most conservative in the country, in fact.

The question that 3rd District voters will answer on Nov. 4 is whether they want to be represented in Congress by the radical right-wing idealogue Jason Chaffetz, who is at odds with much of his own party, or Bennion Spencer, a right-of-center Democrat and erstwhile Republican.

But setting aside any consideration of party labels,The Salt Lake Tribune editorial board believes Bennion Spencer would better represent Utah County and the rest of the district than would Chaffetz, who cites party reform, not the drafting and shaping of legislation, as his top priority.

Spencer sees the urgency for national reform of the nation's broken economic, financial, immigration and foreign policies. But for him, solving the energy crisis is paramount. He recognizes the threat to the planet from the burning of fossil fuels that is warming the planet. (Chaffetz calls global warming a farce.)

Spencer wants the federal government to expedite the development of an array of alternative sources of energy while continuing to drill for domestic oil and gas. He rightly believes nuclear power is too expensive and requires too much water, but we disagree with him that mining oil shale should be part of that carbon bridge to clean energy.

Daily Herald, October 17, 2008
Joe Pyrah

On Columbus Day, Bryan Thompson was in the county building with a dozen temporary workers processing new voter registrations.

Walking through the lobby, the county clerk spotted someone at the door -- locked for the holiday -- and opened it up out of pity. It was a woman coming to register to vote.
 
An hour (and a dozen new registrations later) he got the door locked again as the crowds finally thinned.

"No good deed goes unpunished," says Thompson.

If you haven't registered to vote, you're about out of time.

Monday at 5 p.m. is the deadline to do it in person at the county building. The mail-in deadline has long since passed.

The number of new voters is in the tens of thousands, Thompson said, including 4,600 registrations that came in from voter drives at Utah Valley University and Brigham Young University.

Most of UVU's 3,488 registrations came during the three weeks tables were set up around campus with life-size cutouts of the presidential candidates displayed, according to the university. Other tactics included dorm storming, handing out UVOTE T-shirts and bringing a live "Vote Goat" on campus.

The numbers put UVU on top of the state's universities for new voter registrations.

Thompson says that the new voters are roughly equal across the board, though he said he's seeing "quite a few Democrats." Utah County is often considered the most Republican county in the country. Nearly every elected partisan office in the county -- from county to federal positions -- is held by Republicans.

He said a fair number of people have come in wanting to switch parties, though he didn't immediately have numbers showing who was going where.

Salt Lake Tribune, September 30, 2008
Robert Gehrke

Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. criticized a proposal by Republican 3rd Congressional District candidate Jason Chaffetz to build tent cities to house undocumented immigrants, saying that "on its face it's an extreme idea."

As part of his immigration proposal, Chaffetz, who is Huntsman's former chief of staff, has advocated building prison camps to house those who are here illegally and commit crimes. He has said that his policy is based on a consensus stand by the Western Governors Association.

But Huntsman, who co-chaired the panel that crafted that policy, said it is "a fundamentally different approach." The WGA policy called for a regional detention facility for criminals who are here illegally.

"Nobody talked about a tent city with barbed wire fences around it," Huntsman said. Chaffetz said Monday that he added the part about the tent city.

"I think we agree on the need and the function for detention facilities if not the form," Chaffetz said.

The tent cities are only part of his plan, he said, which hinges on fixing legal immigration.

Those here illegally would be put on a guest worker status, but would have to return home and apply for visas to return to the United States. Those who do not return voluntarily could be detained in the prison camps and deported.

Huntsman said that, what many in the immigration debate lose sight of, is that "it is a human issue first and foremost," and immigrants are not being treated as human beings.

Deseret News, September 19, 2008
Lee Davidson

A grade of D-minus usually is not cause for celebration. But when Utah received that Wednesday in an annual report card on state campaign finance disclosure systems, it was the highest grade the state has ever achieved.

"A D-minus is poor, obviously. But I think we're at least moving in the right direction," said Joe Demma, chief of staff to Lt. Gov. Gary Herbert, whose office collects and distributes data from disclosure forms. He says a new, more user-friendly system for searching that data online should be ready early next year.

The grade is for more than just the performance by Herbert's office. It is also evaluates how much information Utah disclosure laws require. And all of that was blasted in the annual report card by the Campaign Disclosure Project, which is run by a coalition of good-government groups.

"Utah earned its first overall passing grade and ranked 40th (out of 50 states) in 2008," the report said. It was ahead of 10 states that received Fs, but 24 states managed to receive As or Bs — showing Utah that it can be done.

The report gave a sub-grade of D-minus to Utah's disclosure laws. That was up slightly from an F last year because of a law passed in 2007 that requires office holders to file disclosure reports annually instead of only in election years. They now must also itemize contributions of $50 or more.

But the report complains that "donor occupation and employer data are not reported," so it is difficult to see if employees of a given company or industry are banding together to help a particular candidate or cause.