In general, the anti-war and anti-Bush crowd is more vocal than those who support the war and the president, so would be more likely to write, Webb said. Also, quite often a brash move like Anderson's protest would catch the attention of liberal bloggers who would rally their troops to e-mail their support to Anderson, Webb said.

"I wouldn't be surprised if a little bit of that happened," Webb said. "If he didn't get on some blog and that caused more people to e-mail him."

Of course, the e-mails weren't all roses.

Some said they lived outside Salt Lake City and would never buy in the city again. Others said Anderson had embarrassed the city and the state. Still others said they had once voted for Anderson but now vowed to never vote for him again.

Many were just plain rude, and a few wished bodily harm on the mayor.

"You are pathetic," Mike Conway wrote. "Your pseudo- intellectual bull is disgusting and not a reflection of your constituents. . . . Do your damn job and I don't mean putting orange flags on the corners."

One Vietnam vet called Anderson a traitor.

"You disgrace the men and women who have died for this county and defend it now," wrote Vietnam soldier Paul Strand of LaGrange, Ky.

At the VFW convention this week many veterans shrugged off the mayor's efforts and said they would have no problem returning to Salt Lake City in the future.

Last year the VFW convention was in Cincinnati during the heated presidential campaign between Bush and Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry. Then, they saw huge protests, much greater than the 1,000 or so that attended Salt Lake City's protest at Pioneer Park on Monday.

"If we quit coming to every city where there was a protest pretty soon we wouldn't have any cities left," said Joe Lundy, a veteran of the Korean War.

Some veterans, however, said they were a bit irked that they were dumping hundreds of thousands of dollars into the local economy only to be protested. They also didn't buy the idea that protesters weren't protesting the veterans but instead were just protesting Bush.

"He's protesting our boss, so he's protesting us," Vietnam veteran Charles Shoemaker said.

Anderson was traveling to Chicago Wednesday and was not available to comment.

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E-mail: bsnyder@desnews.com