Utahns like Bush; S.L. split on Rocky

Utahns really like the job President Bush is doing, a new Deseret News/KSL-TV poll shows.

And Salt Lake residents have strong feelings about Mayor Rocky Anderson, pollster Dan Jones & Associates found in a survey conducted last week for the newspaper and TV station.

Most Democratic non-LDS city residents like the job he's doing but most Republican members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints don't, Jones found.

Deseret News graphicDeseret News/KSL-TV pollRequires Adobe Acrobat.

Every year or so, the newspaper and TV station ask Utahns about their elected leaders. For statewide offices, like governor, attorney general and U.S. Senate, we ask all Utahns in the poll sample. Within the boundaries of other elected officials — such as U.S. House and mayors in Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County, we ask only residents who get to decide those elections.

In the new survey of 10 elected officeholders, the results on Anderson, who began his second year in office in January, are the most striking.

Anderson's office is officially nonpartisan. But he's a recognized Democrat who ran as such in 1996 for Congress. As mayor, he's defended a number of moderate-to-liberal causes — standing up for the environment and opposing the Legacy Highway, issuing an executive order banning discrimination against gays in City Hall hiring and chiding legislators over conservative state liquor laws he believes will make Utah look foolish during the 2002 Winter Olympics.

While 54 percent of city residents approve of the job Anderson is doing as mayor, 42 percent disapprove. Only 5 percent didn't have an opinion on Anderson.

That's a very low "don't know" number, nearing the undecided people who have no opinion of such high-profile leaders as Bush, GOP Gov. Mike Leavitt and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah.

By comparison, 49 percent of Utahns had no opinion on the job newly installed Attorney General Mark Shurtleff is doing; 34 percent of Salt Lake County residents had no opinion on the job their new mayor, Nancy Workman, is doing.

So Anderson's strong personality and actions have gotten people's attention — either they like what he's doing or they don't.

Jones found that 70 percent of city residents who said they are Republicans disapprove of the job Anderson is doing. But a huge 90 percent of Democrats approve of Anderson. The political independents are split on Anderson — 52 percent like the job the mayor is doing, 40 percent disapprove.