My View on the 2023 Salt Lake City Mayoral Race
For a bit of background, I spent 15 years working in the halls of Salt Lake City Government. I was part of the SLCtv team, working on unified communications across all departments within the city. I worked closely with the mayor’s office and the council office. It was my job to make sure that if residents of Salt Lake City were upset about something, at least they were upset with the correct information.
For almost two years, I was the producer and host of Capital City News, the news show produced by and about Salt Lake City Government.
I left that job after 15 years to pursue my career as a full time novelist. My job was rewarding and I loved it, but I love being a full time creative more.
I wanted to weigh in on the current mayoral race, though, from a place of first hand experience.
Unequivocally, there is no better candidate in the race than Mayor Erin Mendenhall.
There are a number of reasons I think she’s the ideal candidate running. The first is her temperament. I can tell you that city employees still tell stories about Rocky Anderson being one of those stereotypical nightmare bosses who yells at employees and stamps his feet at the slightest provocation. Even almost 20 years after his tenure ended, there’s still a trauma in the halls of the City and County Building from his administration. I’ve never heard Erin Mendenhall raise her voice and she treated every employee in the city with dignity and respect, understanding their expertise and allowing them to express their ideas and make the city a better place through their work.
She’s also never specifically undone the plans of a predecessor out of spite. In talking to folks in the planning department in the course of my former job — and to former Mayor Deedee Corradini herself — there was a pervasive sentiment that there were excellent plans in the works during the transition to the Anderson administration that were specifically undone for no reason other than Deedee Corradini had advocated for it. Whether it was improvements for Trax and better downtown circulation or housing plans that would have mitigated some of our crisis today, there was no idea too good to axe if it had come from the previous administration. That sort of petty attitude and sexism has no place in city hall, we need to work together to ensure the best ideas — even if they’re ones that we disagree with because of who proposed them — get implemented. And that’s the spirit with which I’ve seen Mayor Mendenhall work, firsthand.
Another reason is the fact that city politics require a tremendous amount of delicate diplomacy. After 15 years at the city, I got frustrated with constituents on the outside getting mad that the city didn’t take more robust control over issues, not realizing the internal issues that might make their pie-in-the-sky solutions absolute impossibilities. Our current housing crisis is not a result of city policy, it’s a result of state policy. And every time the city enacts legislation that the state doesn’t like, the state will create sweeping laws that will halt the progress the city works to make or undo it entirely. You think the city doesn’t want to institute things like rent control? Blame the state for taking tools like that off the table, not the mayor or city council for not just “making it happen.”
But the Mendenhall administration has proven that they can work with stakeholders and legislators in state government to ensure that the city’s agenda is protected without being unjustly reversed by the Republican supermajority. Does anyone really trust someone like Rocky Anderson to work well with others, especially Republican lawmakers? Not if they’re being honest.
I would prefer we didn’t have a Republican supermajority in our state legislature as well, but that’s the unfortunate reality we live in. At the end of his second term, Rocky Anderson spent more time as mayor traveling the country antagonizing Republicans than he did running our city. I don’t disagree with the need to antagonize those Republicans, I was proud that Rocky Anderson was doing that and I felt represented by it. But that doesn’t exactly qualify him to build or maintain the bridges Salt Lake City needs to cross in today’s divisive political climate in order to solve the problems the city needs to solve.
Mayor Mendenhall has the political acumen and temperament to navigate those divisive waters and get those Republicans in the legislature to act in the best interests of the city on issues ranging from affordable housing and protection of the watershed to updated liquor laws and homelessness. And she’s done exactly that over her years in office.
While we’re at it, let’s talk about homelessness.
This is an issue that every mayor has grappled with over the last two decades and Mayor Mendehnall is no exception. It’s always been this bad, because for so long we were the only city actively doing anything to help the situation for our unhoused residents. Too frequently on social media, I see Mayor Mendenhall getting blamed for things that are not in her control (camp abatements, for example, are the purview of the County Health Department and not a function of city government). But I never see in those same complaints the fact that the Mendenhall administration has put in place an advance team of social workers and network of resource providers that goes into those camps prior to abatements, working to connect all of those individuals to shelters and resources. They work to mitigate any of the negative effects of those county abatements before they happen.
As far as homeless resource infrastructure, the city doesn’t have unlimited funds. A mayor has to keep the entire city functioning, not just spend all the money on the cause of the day. We need roads and libraries and waste management and parks and on and on and on. We need those partnerships with other cities, the county, and the state to create a holistic approach to solving homelessness — something that is ultimately an issue the Federal government should be solving from the top down, but our hyper-partisan congressional delegation has no interest in doing so.
Mayor Mendenhall — along with her Homeless Policy Director former-City Councilmember Andrew Johnston — are the right people for that job at the city level. I’ve seen them in action, I’ve seen them at the table and advocating for the best interests of the city and its unsheltered residents and getting their political opponents to agree to our needs. They’re working as fast as anyone possibly can on this issue.
The wheels of government turn painfully slow. Trust me. And no matter what other candidates might tell you, they simply cannot solve the problem faster or with a wave of their hand, unless their solution is simply sweeping it under the rug or ignoring it. It’s so hard not to get into arguments on the internet every day with people who talk about this from a place of confidence, but a supreme lack of knowledge or expertise on the ins and outs of the actual situation. Some will say they have compelling expertise, but they really don’t. I believe Mayor Mendenhall’s opponents in this race are some of those folks who just don’t understand what it takes, and if they do, they’re not telling you the truth about the size of the job and the relationships needed.
I spent 15 years working across three administrations. I’ve seen what works and what doesn’t work. And I’m here to tell you that what Mayor Mendenhall is doing works.
That’s why I’m supporting Mayor Mendenhall in her bid for reelection. There is literally no one else in the race who can capably do the job.
