From Deseret News archives:
County mayor slips in poll
Have scandals eroded support for Workman?
Workman announced Wednesday that she'll try to get it from Utah Republican Party Executive Director Chris Bleak, who will leave his post to head up her struggling re-election effort.
According to the new poll by Dan Jones & Associates, the mayor's support has dropped by 9 percentage points in just two months, although she still leads Democratic challenger Peter Corroon and independent candidate Merrill Cook.
The mayor is plagued by a county attorney investigation into any Workman-approved tax dollars going to help her daughter manage a local Boys and Girls Club. The mayor is also dogged by a county-vehicle-use scandal that led to the resignations of an elected county official and two of Workman's top aides.
Those controversies have apparently hurt her support among all registered voters, as Workman has dropped from 40 percent support in a May poll to 31 percent support, while Corroon has 27 percent and Cook 12 percent in the poll. Among those who told Jones they are "very interested" in the mayor's race, Workman and Corroon are in a statistical tie at 30 percent and 29 percent, while Cook is steady at 11 percent.
The new survey also shows that Cook, who for a second time has left the Republican Party to challenge a GOP incumbent, is hurting Workman among Republicans and independents.
Among other candidates, Green Party nominee Diana Lee Hirshi gets 3 percent while other third-party candidates pick up less than 1 percent each. A full quarter of all voters are still undecided, Jones found.
During a Wednesday news conference to announce Bleak's transition to the Workman campaign, Utah Republican Party Chairman Joe Cannon said that he was comfortable losing a "valuable asset" because of the "importance of this race." He also made it clear that the party remains strongly committed to Workman and expects that a successful campaign for her will help the other hotly contested congressional, legislative and local races in the county.
"We think this is important as a party to stand up for Mayor Workman," Cannon said. "Her running the kind of campaign I think she will run will help all of the other candidates in Salt Lake County."
The move by Bleak in not unusual, Cannon said, because he has had three different people leave the position in four years for other political posts. He stopped short of saying that Bleak was going to the campaign because of Workman's problems.
