Graham disbands political group

Former Democratic Attorney General Jan Graham is stopping her public interest group, she said Wednesday.

Instead of publicly battling Utah's conservative right wing — still a worthy cause, she said — it's now a time to heal from the terrorist attacks and come together as a country and state. The group may be started up again later, she said.

A year ago Graham announced she was forming the Beagle Forum, a humorous play on words for her group, which was supposed to oppose the Utah Eagle Forum and other conservative politically active groups.

In an e-mail to the Deseret News, Graham said she had since renamed her group the Mainstream Voice, and that over last spring and summer she and some supporters had met numerous times organizing, settling on a mission statement and planning campaigns aimed at getting "moderate and mainstream Utahns" active politically. She had planned to begin her public campaign during the 2002 Legislature, lobbying and fighting for causes she believes in.

"We envisioned a Mainstream Voice to have a profound effect on public policy, notably in child protection, public health education and the struggles of working families," she said.

"That all changed Sept. 11" when suicide terrorists attacked in New York and Washington, D.C., she said.

She said when she started her group she specifically wanted to oppose conservatives' opposition to broad-ranging teen anti-smoking campaigns — to be funded with Utah's share of the tobacco lawsuit settlement that Graham brought — and the effort by some conservatives, including the Eagle Forum, to make it more difficult for state social workers to protect and/or remove children from abusive homes.

But those good efforts will wait for another day, Graham said in disbanding her political group.

"Like many others, I believe there will come a time when these efforts can be instrumental in making dramatic and positive changes; but that time is not now," she wrote.

Legislative Republicans and other conservatives never worried too much about Graham's political activities, they told the Deseret News when Graham founded the Beagle Forum. Graham left office with around $80,000 in her campaign account, which by law can be used for anything. She said she now has about $70,000 in the account, but never envisioned using much of it on the Beagle Forum. Her group planned to start a political action committee in January and had a five-year plan for fund raising, she said. None of that will happen now, she added.

In a sociological study of power in Utah conducted by the newspaper last spring, Graham was named as one of the state's top 10 power players. She left office in January, but clearly some of those surveyed for the project thought she still had influence. Interviewed at the time, Graham said the Beagle Forum would be one way she kept her hand in public issues in the state. Now that has stopped, at least temporarily, she said Thursday.

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E-mail: bbjr@desnews.com