3 candidates round out 9

Three candidates in the Salt Lake City mayoral race together have the support of less than 1 percent of the city's voters, according to a recent poll. Even the most well-known of them rings no bell for 82 percent of the city's populace.

But be that as it may, Rainer Huck, Quinn Cady McDonough and Robert Muscheck hope you'll vote for them to be Salt Lake City's next mayor Sept. 11.

The three candidates round out the crowded nine-person field. They offer a variety of experiences — and perhaps a little quirkiness — to the race. Two of them — Huck and McDonough — first announced their plans to run just this month, while some of the leading candidates have been in the race since last summer.

None of the three has sought public office before, and two have declined to speak to the Deseret Morning News in person or by telephone. What little is known about them has been gleaned from letters to the editor, from the Web and, in Muscheck's case, from his court record.

Rainer Huck

Huck has spent the last 20 years advocating for increased access to public lands for off-road vehicle recreationists. He presents himself as the "un-Rocky," in contrast to Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson, and is vehemently opposed to environmental regulation and a large government.

Huck, 61, is also the only long-shot candidate who agreed to an interview with the Deseret Morning News.

He moved to Salt Lake City at age 3 with his family, immigrants fleeing post-war Germany to live among fellow members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He has lived in the city all his life, and he isn't pleased about some of the changes he has seen.

"One of my big concerns is the growth of government and how it becomes more pervasive and controlling," he says. He worries that Salt Lake City government is focused on "special-interest goodies to the people who help elect the officials."

Chief among the special interests he decries is the environmental lobby, though he also sees the gay community, social-welfare advocates and other minority groups as too influential.

He criticizes Anderson's international prominence in the fight against global warming.

"We've got so many more useful ways that we can spend our money and our attention than on something like global warming, which isn't a crisis and which humans can't do anything about no matter what," Huck says.

Huck, who has made a living as a real-estate investor and landlord, characterizes his political philosophy as conservative in the traditional, small-government sense.