Election season begins

From first-time candidates to veterans of civic service, hundreds of people finalized their bids for public office Monday.

Many candidates have been planning their campaigns for months, as has Summer Pugh, who is running for Draper mayor against incumbent Darrell Smith.

Pugh, an outspoken community activist, had chaired a community council in Draper before the city abolished the councils earlier this year. Perhaps not surprisingly, community councils are at the top of Pugh's list of services she wants to see restored to Draper.

"They should be interested in what citizens have to say and want in their community," Pugh said of city officials. The councils are "one of the best places to get information out to the citizens and input back to the city."

Pugh faces a mayor at the end of his first term who thinks his family's 150-year history in the area gives him a unique and valuable perspective.

"My own heritage is important to me here," Smith said. "I feel like I have an obligation to them as well as the people who live here now and the people who are to come."

Just up the road in Sandy, incumbent mayor Tom Dolan faces a similar challenge from Gary Forbush. Forbush, one of two candidates who has filed to run against Dolan, is a member of Save Our Communities, the activist organization that is fighting to keep a Wal-Mart and Lowe's Home Improvement store out of a former gravel pit at 9400 South and 1000 East.

Forbush's run will likely highlight a voter referendum on a zoning change that would allow the Wal-Mart and Lowe's to be developed by the Boyer Co. But Dolan has said in the past that he supports the development that brings tax dollars to Sandy for what he says is a high quality of life.

Development is a big issue also in Murray, where a pro-business incumbent mayor, Dan Snarr, faces three opponents — Chad Bennion, Michael Romero and Dave Wilde. At least one of those three, Wilde, has voiced his disapproval with Snarr's unabashed chasing of commercial development, but Snarr said that development helps provide the high level of services to which Murray residents are accustomed.

In West Jordan, incumbent Mayor Bryan Holladay faces four challengers, including two former city council members who served under then-Mayor Donna Evans. Holladay ousted Evans in 2001, but her shadow may haunt this race.

Mayoral candidate David Newton was an Evans supporter, and Brian Pitts was an Evans opponent who accused the former mayor of intimidating city staff, getting drunk at a reception in Russia, and gambling in Wendover when she should have been at a council meeting. Newton, Evans and a third official were accused of making statements that damaged the professional reputation of the assistant city manager at the time.