Utah Demo began political life early

In stark contrast to many of today's politicians, the new Democratic Party chairman is not much of a sound-bite guy.

To best understand Wayne Holland, time will be needed. He speaks methodically, testing his words carefully, and often contemplates a question beyond a few beats before responding.

Not that he is a man of few words — one question about his personal history sparks a half-hour answer that ranges from street ball to assassina- tions to the Founding Fathers — or politically naive. Instead, he is an articulate speaker who has worked on political campaigns for more than three decades.

His political beliefs were shaped by growing up in Magna in a family of "Roosevelt New Deal Democrats," with a father who was devoted to the labor unions and politically active. As a child, he joined his father for candidate honk-and-waves or helping the families of striking workers.

The mold was firmly set by the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and especially Robert Kennedy — an event Holland remembers distinctly even though he was only 10 when it happened. It was his idolization of the younger Kennedy that led a high school-aged Holland to work with the 1974 congressional campaign of Wayne Owens, who had been a close associate of Robert.

"At a young age, those assassinations really kind of rocked my world," Holland said. "It burst my bubble about the future of this country, that the people talking about a better America were gunned down."

Those events impacted him enough to have kept Holland, 47, involved in politics for more than 30 years, although primarily in behind-the-scenes roles as campaign managers and labor representative. It was only earlier this year, after working in battleground states during the 2004 election and noticing many similarities with the so-called "deep red" Utah, that he decided to pursue the state party chairmanship.

"Utah is really not that different than many of those states," he said. "There are similar cultural policies and beliefs about government throughout the West."

What surprises him about Utah, however, is that so many people continue to support the increasingly right-wing Republican platform, since many of those policies are being pushed by the same kind of people "who yell and scream about the LDS Church being a cult." Most recently, he points to the possible introduction of the "intelligent design" debate into next year's legislative session as an example of a major issue pushed by the evangelical Christians who often dispute the Christianity of Mormonism.