Buhler and Wilsons have a long political history

With a new poll out showing that the Salt Lake City mayor's race is closing between two candidates — Salt Lake City Councilman Dave Buhler and Salt Lake County Councilwoman Jenny Wilson — the pair, who consider themselves friends, are once again playing out an odd-couple political relationship that has connected their two families for a quarter century.

It starts back in 1982, when a fresh-faced young kid, working as an aide for U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, took some time off to help run the senator's first re-election campaign.

Hatch's challenger was the then-popular Democratic Salt Lake City mayor, Ted Wilson, Jenny Wilson's father.

Ultimately, Buhler ended up as deputy campaign manager — the manager being another young politico named Mike Leavitt, who would later become a three-term governor and now is U.S. secretary of Health and Human Services.

Buhler helped Leavitt — who had drawn up a detailed campaign plan that took up a large three-ring binder — paint Hatch as the conservative GOP bulwark and color Wilson as a liberal Democrat out of step with most Utah voters.

Jenny Wilson worked on her father's U.S. Senate campaign, only to see him fall short of Hatch.

Flash forward to 1988.

Then-GOP Gov. Norm Bangerter had pushed through the largest tax hike in Utah's history in 1987 to help improve public and higher education. But a taxpayer protest jumped up. Bangerter soon found himself fighting for his political life.

Buhler was then working in Bangerter's gubernatorial office. He once again took a leave, this time to manage Bangerter's campaign.

Jenny Wilson, meanwhile, became her father's official campaign spokeswoman — her first real exposure to Utahns and the local media.

Ted Wilson, then head of the University of Utah's Hinckley Institute of Politics, started out the governor's race about 12 months from Election Day more than 30 percentage points ahead of Bangerter.

Bangerter's campaign faced a number of tough spots: For a short time, Bangerter was challenged within the Republican Party by Jon Huntsman Sr., whose son, Jon Huntsman Jr., would later be elected governor.

The elder Huntsman was a billionaire and could pour his own money into the race if he saw fit. Speaking candidly at the time, Buhler said — with his typical dry wit — "We were doing OK in fund raising, but it dried up instantly once Huntsman got in the race."

But John Huntsman Sr. dropped out after a month when perennial candidate Merrill Cook dropped out of the Republican Party and decided to run as an independent, throwing a wrench into the political mix.