Don't Forget About The Upcoming Primary Elections!

It seems that at this point of an election year people, even junkies like myself loose interest in the races for office being run; especially at the local level. Here in Salt Lake County we have two very important races being run on the republican side: The senate race between Tim Bridgewater and Mike Lee and the Salt Lake County Counsel race between Richard Snelgrove and Winston Wilkinson. I believe that the candidates are very different on the issues for both races, despite the fact that all candidates are relatively very far right conservatives.

3 Pieces of News That Will Interest Any Utahn

1. Recent political activity, especially here in Utah, has been making national attention. Lot of questions have been flying around the internet about the recent convention failure of Bob Bennett to win his party's nomination. Questions like "Are the tea-partiers this strong?" and "The convention system in Utah disenfranchises regular voters. Why does Utah still use it?" I've already given my answer here. Here is an excerpt from one of the more popular articles on the subject published in USAToday.com:

Utah Political Memes

Today has been a big day for Utah politics, no matter which way you lean, if you lean at all. The State Delegates decided to oust Sen. Bob Bennett from office, and sent Tim Bridgewater and Mike Lee into a primary to take place on June 22nd. But of course, if you're reading this you most likely know the convention results. What I want to address are a couple of political memes that I've been seeing crop up in most discussions about politics here in Utah.

Salt Lake County Republican Nominating Convention

In my own normal fashion, it has taken a couple of days to gather my thoughts on the subject. No doubt many of you who found my post dug up all the stuff Deseret News and the SL Trib and were disappointed by the lack of thorough reporting. As a county delegate who attended, I can report on at least those portions I was part of.

Utah State Elections- 2010; County Counsel At Large Race

As I've mentioned in one of my recent posts, I'm now a County Delegate for the Republican party in Salt Lake County, Utah. My job is to help select who will go on the ballot against the Democratic counterparts in the general election. To do this, all of the county delegates will meet in convention and vote. Whoever gets 60% of the vote will move to the general election in November, while those races that are closer than a 60-40 split go to a primary before the general election.

Now that thats out of the way, I can get down to what information I have for you today. First off, I will be covering the elections in the state of Utah all the way to the end, but from a slightly different angle, that of a delegate. Even though there are those who could attend certain meetings to see candidates with me, many will not have face to face contact with any candidate running for office regardless, let alone even know who is who. My goal here is to shed some light on the county-wide elections for the most part, all the way to November. I will also be covering state-wide elections so far as I can gather reliable information from those that I know are State Delegates, in order to try to paint a better picture of the candidates in those races.

In this last week, I've been somewhat busy, and so have neglected to post. Fear not. This post is not "shot from the hip" as it were. In between my personal and professional responsibilities, I've been devoting much of my time to researching and meeting with various candidates for county-wide and offices.

I would like to share some positive experiences with you from the past week or so.

The County Counsel At Large seat B is up for grabs. I've had the opportunity to have face to face conversations with Richard Snelgrove and Winston Wilkinson. Both are admirable and upstanding gentlemen.

Wilkinson has beat himself a very difficult campaign path. He has set up between twenty and thirty small-scale meetings with county delegates in various parts of the county. This is a large effort for a constituency relatively small at this point because it's only county delegates he is campaigning to at this point. These meetings take place as more of a discussion than a meeting with a speaker. Wilkinson has given the delegates a chance to share ideas with him, have frank discussion about possible solutions to problems and so forth. More to the point though, Wilkinson has shown a record of listening to all sides of a problem, something of an asset in a county counsel seat. I had a great time at his meeting, and enjoyed getting to know him.

Richard Snelgrove is also working hard at gaining votes. Snelgrove has gone in a somewhat opposite direction with his campaign, though equally difficult to handle. In one of his meetings that I attended, he gathered as many delegates as he could together at a movie theater, where The Blind Side was shown for us. That was a great treat. Most who attended had the chance to speak with Snelgrove personaly. In the theater, Snelgrove spoke and answered questions. And all around enjoyable experience. It is also noteworthy to state that he funded this event out of his own pocket.

I'm going to say, however, that at this point, I am favoring Wilkinson. I liked the chance to have a smaller group and more face to face discussion. I am glad to say that more of my questions were answered better, and more clearly by Wilkinson than Snelgrove(I asked the same questions). The question that I asked was,"To use an example as a preface, look at all the construction and road work in the county. Much is done by the cities themselves, many county projects are in progress, and even more state road work has lots of road torn up. They all have their own planning and building schedule, and coordination between them all seems non existent. This is only one symptom of the same problem, and that is intergovernmental communication. What do you plan to do to reign it all in?" A long winded and tough question. Snelgrove had his campaign points, and stuck to them. Meme's like "fiscal responsibility" and "trimming the fat" followed by "I don't know yet, but I'll look into it" satisfied me. They were very honest answers. However, Wilkinson gave me something better to work with. He said that he has actually met with a majority of mayors in the valley to discuss the importance of a strong working relationship, including meetings and reports to and with one another. He then said that it was a crucial responsibility of the county counsel to have those relationships with the cities. I thought that was far and away a better answer.

I have another meeting tomorrow, this time with all of the Republican candidates running for county-wide office. I'll get a post up tomorrow night, but not this long winded, I hope.