S.L. County Demos to pick new leaders

Salt Lake County Democrats will have an additional bit of interest during their annual convention today.

Along with selecting their new leaders, at least some of the delegates will be choosing a new state representative to replace new Sen. Brent Goodfellow, D-Salt Lake, in House District 29. Larry Wehrli, Richard Summers, Janice Fisher and Christin Jacketta have announced their candidacy for the seat.

Goodfellow replaced former Sen. Ron Allen after 21 years in the House, where he also served as minority leader during the 2003 and 2004 sessions. He was elected to fill the Senate seat March 19, defeating four other challengers.

Allen resigned his seat to become a member of the Public Service Commission. Along with the other Senate Democrats, he supported Goodfellow to replace him.

"I've always had an eye towards the Senate, so I'm excited to be going," Goodfellow said. "I think the Senate will be more my style: trying to solve problems, trying to get along and work with the other side of the aisle."

Goodfellow is not endorsing any of the four candidates, although he said they are all "competent and capable." Instead, he is urging them to prove they can work hard, since whoever wins will have to run a full campaign in 2006 to retain the seat.

Along with the legislative race — an atypical occurrence for an odd-year convention — the greatest political drama may actually take place in the halls outside the main auditorium, where the candidates for state party chair will be trying to secure delegates, county party chairwoman Nichole Adams said. While the county party chair is more focused on the "nuts and bolts" of politics, the race for the state party chair is more of a contest of ideologies and will include heavy "pre-politicking" at the county level.

Three candidates have filed for the county chair position, including current state party treasurer Lisa Allcott, current county second vice chairman Charles Kimball, and Megan Risbon, a member of the Utah Young Democrats executive committee.

A big part of the reason for that pre-politicking is the number of county delegates, many of whom are also state delegates, who will be at the convention, Adams said. This year, 1,187 of the possible 1,209 delegate slots will be filled, almost double the number of delegate slots filled when she was elected as the county chairwoman in 2000.

"The days of just showing up at the precinct caucus meeting and becoming a delegate are over," she said.

The schedule for the Salt Lake County Democratic Convention, which will be held at Highland High School:

• 8 a.m.: Caucus meetings.

• 8:30 a.m.: District 29 election.

• 9 a.m.: Convention opening, with welcoming remarks by Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah. County officials will also be speaking, and the keynote address will be given by Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon. Leadership elections will follow the speeches.

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E-mail: jloftin@desnews.com