Jenny Wilson says progressives stands fine fit for Salt Lake

Salt Lake County councilwoman and longtime Democrat Jenny Wilson says her "progressive" political stands are a fine fit for the Salt Lake City mayor's office that she seeks.

How better to show that than her choice of campaign headquarters? Her campaign office on 400 South is housed in an old bar — the long bar, complete with stools, is still there. The office is located between a tattoo parlor and a haircutting salon where the stylists wear bikinis.

Wilson's political training came early. As the oldest daughter of former Salt Lake City Mayor Ted Wilson, she remembers traveling at age 12 in the mid-1970s to a National Conference of Mayors conference in Wisconsin, where she met then-President Jimmy Carter.

She spent a lot of time in her father's City Hall office — and Ted Wilson was a popular mayor, serving from 1976 to 1985. She attended a number of mayoral functions. "My mom, who is an artist, would just decline to go and told Dad, 'Just take Jenny.' And so he did."

Wilson says she's been around politics all of her life, only taking out a bit of time during her college years. She worked on her father's two statewide races — in 1982 against GOP U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch and in 1988 against GOP Gov. Norm Bangerter. She was a cable TV lobbyist in Washington, D.C., and chief of staff for former Democratic U.S. House member Bill Orton in the early 1990s.

She was a top manager in volunteer organizing for the 2002 Olympics, and she had great respect for Salt Lake Olympic Committee boss Mitt Romney's work. "I'm disappointed in Mitt now, switching all his positions" as he runs for the GOP presidential nomination, she says.

She worked for Utah Children, a nonprofit child-advocacy group, before winning her part-time countywide council seat six years ago.

Wilson is now the only woman in the mayor's race — fellow Democrats Meg Holbrook and Nancy Saxton dropped out. Early polls show Wilson leads the other candidates in the race, although some attribute that lead to the good Wilson name in city politics, not to Wilson herself.

A Dan Jones & Associates poll this month of 400 Salt Lake City residents who said they were likely to vote showed her in first place among the mayoral candidates, with 23 percent of those surveyed supporting her.

The mayor's race is officially nonpartisan — political parties have no formal role in nominating candidates. But Wilson runs "proudly" as a Democrat. "It is part of me, who I am," she says.

The word "Democrat" is on her signs and Web site and will be on other advertising as the mayor's race rushes to the Sept. 11 primary, which will whittle the field down to two candidates for the November general election.