"It's more an ideological difference," said Christensen, chair of BYU's political science department. "He believes first and foremost that a person should be able to do with their property whatever they want. We believe that, too, until what that person does with his or her property affects others around them. I'm not confident that when a vacant piece of land comes up that borders on a residential neighborhood and the neighbors are jumping up and down because a developer wants to put in an apartment complex that Paul is going to look at that and say, that's not good for that neighborhood."

Clark, Christensen and Mark Peterson said challenging Warner has been difficult.

"Paul Warner's a great guy. Everybody likes Paul Warner," said Peterson, who is the head of the Korean section in BYU's department of Asian and Near Eastern languages. "But he votes wrong every time it comes to family issues. He says it has to do with limited government and that ideology. His ideology gets in the way of families in our neighborhoods."

Peterson said the group wants to keep the "Tree Streets" from turning into a mishmash of apartments. A growing number of apartments and the migration of families from Provo's east side to the west led to the closure of Joaquin Elementary School and the near-closure of Wasatch Elementary.

"We don't want Rock Canyon (Elementary) to die the way Wasatch nearly died and Joaquin did die," Peterson said.

Warner said he has voted to help families and stabilize neighborhoods.

"When I started eight years ago, people could rent the top and bottom of their homes. Now, I helped make sure you have to be a homeowner and live there to rent an apartment."

Warner worked for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for 40 years, the last eight at BYU, where he was a professor of church history and chaplain until he retired July 1.

The other candidates challenging Warner are BYU senior law librarian Dave Armond, retired businessman and U.S. Air Force veteran Kirt Oler and David Acheson, an international lawyer.

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E-mail: twalch@desnews.com