Leavitt steps in — then up

It's a long way from garbage collector to governor. It's a long way from KP duty to CEO status, from party planner to Republican Party leader.

Mike Leavitt has come a long way from his first foray into business hauling trash out of the national forest. Leavitt, the No. 2 most influential person in Utah according to a Deseret News survey, has learned a lot about influence and power since those days 30 years ago when he applied for a federal garbage dumping contract in the Dixie National Forest and got it.

Even back then at age 21, he had the knack for management. It was his first real job after his mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and business was good for his fledgling garbage service.

He saw an ad in the paper, took out a loan from a local bank, bought a truck big enough to haul trash and won the bid for the job. But dead skunks and rotting deer in trash cans can be downright unpleasant. Leavitt says one day, head down in a stinking garbage can, he lightheartedly recounts the moment he decided he was "management material."

The oldest of Dixie and Anne Leavitt's six boys, Leavitt hired his younger brother and some friends to do the grunt work, and he went to work at a desk in his first executive role.

This is how Leavitt has come to his spot as Utah's popular third-term governor.

This is how the 50-year-old Republican governor has earned a spot as Utah's most influential person by voice of Utahns polled recently by Dan Jones and Associates.

Leavitt himself views his position with a cold eye.

"There's little question that my personal prominence on your list is a function of the office that I hold. The kind of influence that I have right now is temporary," Leavitt said in an interview concerning the newspaper's Power Players project.

He believes he has leveled his power stick fairly and to the benefit of all Utahns.

In the mid-1990s, new Sen. Al Mansell, R-Sandy, snuck through a restructuring of impact fees on new homes and businesses, an action that sent cities and towns into a dither. On their urging, Leavitt vetoed that bill but takes credit for bringing parties back together later to solve the problem.

"But that was one of those cases where you actually have to exercise a formal piece of influence or power and then bring it back and try to solve the problem."

In 1994-95 it became clear to him the state needed to tackle the dilemma of sprawl and growth. And that there were at least three major issues that needed to be focused: transportation, water and open space.

He systematically worked with the Legislature, media and communities for answers. "Through the course of several months there was enough attention paid to that issue that it created a momentum for something to actually happen."

Comments