Anderson touted his advocacy in a 20-minute speech Friday that praised by name dozens of city employees and department heads, including each member of his mayoral staff, for their work. Staff members who have left while at odds with Anderson did not garner mentions in his speech; for instance, the mayor specifically mentioned Thronson, who has been his communication director for six months, but none of his eight other communication directors, several of whom held the position longer.

Anderson started the speech by listing what he wanted to change about Salt Lake City when he first decided to run for office and then went through the work that he and other employees did to resolve those issues.

"When I first ran for mayor, I considered myself simply a resident, a citizen, a community activist with passionate concerns about what was happening in our city, our state, our nation and our world," Anderson said. "That's how I still view myself."

Among the things that he mentioned were increasing the number of minority and female appointees to city boards and commissions, establishing the YouthCity after-school program for children, implementing changes to make the city's daily operations friendlier to the environment, preserving open space throughout the city and specifically on the east side of Library Square, negotiating an abandonment by Union Pacific of train tracks that ran through a west-side neighborhood, promoting the annual jazz festival and creating his own drug-education programs.

Anderson inherited a bitter battle over the Main Street Plaza and whether to allow free speech on the block that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints now owns. In the end, Anderson compromised and gave the city's free speech easement to the church to allow it to regulate speech, dress and activity on the parcel in exchange for land to build the Sorenson Unity Center.

He also gained notoriety by protesting President Bush and the war in Iraq last August. He has pledged to participate in protests when Bush visits again this August.

More recently, Anderson ordered the city to offer health benefits to domestic partners of city employees. The council passed an ordinance extending the benefits to all adult designees of city employees, a category that included long-term roommates, adult siblings and parents, as well as domestic partners. Anderson castigated the council for not specifically making the order about domestic partners and vetoed the ordinance, but council members unanimously overrode the veto and ultimately maintained that their plan gave insurance options to more people.

Varied reactions

Reactions to Anderson's announcement from other officials within local government were largely positive.

"I've come to respect his passion and commitment to Salt Lake City and its issues," said Police Chief Chris Burbank, who had been under public scrutiny recently during the kidnapping case of 5-year-old Destiny Norton. "His support has just been fantastic."