Foxley is a longtime political foe of Khosrow Semnani, the owner of Envirocare, a large hazardous waste landfill that handles low-level radioactive waste in west Tooele County. Stokes has for years been a paid lobbyist for Envirocare.

Foxley and others ran a citizen initiative petition two years ago aimed at, among other things, heavily taxing Envirocare's operations, with the new revenues dedicated for education. Semnani spent considerable sums fighting the initiative, which failed.

Karras is a financial consultant with a number of clients, including Semnani.

Stokes said a week ago a reporter for City Weekly asked Karras to explain the candidate's relationship with Semnani.

Stories on that consulting relationship appeared this week in City Weekly and the Salt Lake Tribune.

Stokes said after he heard that the City Weekly reporter had called Karras, "I was angry. It is common knowledge (in the political community) that Nolan is Khosrow's financial adviser. To pull this up now is wrong. That's what my call was about to Doug — you want to play like this, OK, we can too.

"I called Doug back and left a message apologizing right after I left the voice mail. Then Wednesday (of this week) I see him up at the Capitol during (the Legislature's) interim day, and we speak again. Then today he's taken my voice mail message and turned it over to the press."

Said Chaffetz: "If someone in my campaign had done this, I'd fire them in a heartbeat." Chaffetz said Huntsman Jr. and his staff are signing a campaign pledge to run a positive campaign and challenge Karras and his staff to do the same.

Steve Starks, Karras campaign manager, said Stokes has never worked for the campaign, never drawn a salary but he will stay on as a volunteer strategist. "This was a private conversation between two old friends, a plea not to let this turn into a negative campaign. And it's the Huntsmans who have chosen to make an issue of this."

Starks said he called Chaffetz Thursday and personally offered Karras' pledge to run a clean campaign "based on the issues."

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E-mail: bbjr@desnews.com