Rocky, Pignanelli finish 1-2 in Salt Lake

Salt Lake City voters have not kicked out an incumbent mayor in more than 25 years — and the streak held Tuesday with Mayor Rocky Anderson advancing to the November final election.

Primary elections were held in cities and towns across the state, with the top two vote-getters in each contest keeping their political hopes alive until the Nov. 4 finals.

Anderson received 45 percent of the vote, unofficial results show, and will meet second-place finisher Frank Pignanelli, who got 30 percent of the vote, in what could be a contentious battle to lead the state's largest city the next four years.

Molonai Hola, the lone Republican in the non-partisan mayor's race, was eliminated. He finished third with 24 percent of the vote. Hola's exit means that for the third straight mayoral final two Democrats will face each other.

In Ogden, first-term Mayor Matthew Godfrey pushed aside eight challengers to make it into the final. He'll face Jesse Garcia, a current city councilman.

And in Holladay, one of the state's newest cities, voters picked Dennis Webb and Bob Neslen for the final vote. Holladay's first mayor, Dennis Larkin, was basically fired in August when city voters elected to change a new form of government, requiring a new mayor's race this fall.

Most other cities and towns had council races Tuesday as their mayors' terms were not up for another two years.

When it became clear to Pignanelli that he survived the primary, he said the final campaign "will be totally different" than the race so far. In part, that's because he's taken Anderson's best shot — a half a million dollar fund-raising campaign, Pignanelli said.

While he was glad to grab the second spot, pre-primary polls showed Pignanelli further ahead — and Hola further behind — than the actual results Tuesday.

Several weeks ago, Pignanelli told the Deseret Morning News that he didn't want to come out of Tuesday's primary 20 percentage points behind Anderson. With the mayor's money and name identification, it would be difficult to make up that kind of yardage.

But now he's facing a big hill to climb, ending up 15 percentage points behind Anderson. Putting the best face on it, Pignanelli said, "We're still within striking distance" of the mayor.