Love or hate Rocky, the mayor's got guts

Salt Lake Mayor Rocky Anderson angered a few people, pleased some others, when he publicly called for protests against President Bush this week.

Anderson got some national press. The networks I watched all had stories on the Salt Lake protests, along with their coverage of the president addressing the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention.

It's hard to tell with Anderson whether he planned his protest-leading role or not.

He wrote an e-mail to about a dozen people a week ago calling for a "major demonstration" against Bush. And eventually that e-mail was leaked to the news media. I heard it first on KCPW radio.

When I first talked to Anderson about it, he seemed taken aback: Why would anyone complain that he advocated free speech? Wouldn't any thinking person oppose an administration that had done so much "harm to U.S. cities"?

But for a mayor to call for protests when a president visits a national convention in the mayor's own city — well, if that is not a first across the nation, it is certainly an oddity.

I give Anderson this: The guy has guts.

He walked into the veterans convention and gave a greeting speech as if nothing had happened.

A few in the audience booed him. But he got some applause, too. And when he called for more help for veterans during his short address, he again got applause.

It was not unnoticed that the vets gave GOP Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. a standing ovation and more applause than Anderson. And the veteran leaders gave Huntsman a U.S. flag. Anderson didn't get one of those. Maybe the vets worried Anderson would burn it later in protest.

Anderson's call for anti-Bush protests showed, once again, that he is one of the most vocal and controversial politicians in Utah.

That may not be saying much by national standards, where some pretty strange stuff happens in city politics. In Chicago, for example, the GOP leaders have put a bounty on the head of Democratic Mayor Richard Daley, a cash reward to anyone who testifies and gets a corruption conviction against the mayor.

No one is putting a bounty on Anderson, who hasn't said yet if he'll seek a third term in 2007.

But supposedly some GOP legislators are considering placing term limits on local elected officials, aimed at stopping a Rocky III campaign.

That, of course, would be a new low for GOP lawmakers, who like to talk about local control while trying to control locals.

And it would be a new height of hypocrisy, too, since legislators repealed their own term limits several years ago before any of them were forced out of office.