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In an episode illustrative of the high emotions in the Ogden mayor's race, members of Mayor Matthew Godfrey's family left plants from his father's funeral on the doorstep of anti-Godfrey activist Dorothy Littrell last week.

Littrell said a woman she employed to clean at a home she owns in North Ogden found the plants in a wicker basket by the door the morning after William V. Godfrey's funeral on Oct. 3. A note from Jason Godfrey, the mayor's brother, said their mother, Jeanne Godfrey, wanted her to have them.

Jason Godfrey said Wednesday the family considered the plants an "olive branch."

Littrell's lawsuit to remove Matthew Godfrey from the ballot was filed in 2nd District Court two days after his father died and two days before the funeral. "Our intent as a family was just to express that we don't harbor any bad feelings for Mrs. Littrell," Jason Godfrey said Wednesday.

The mayor said he did not know his brother left the plants and note at Littrell's home, but if he did, "He was doing it out of Christian love and fellowship.

"He was just trying to make her a happier person."

Littrell didn't take it that way. She could not be reached for comment Wednesday, but in an e-mail earlier in the week, she said North Ogden police have agreed to keep an eye on her home for her.

"The message that I get, as a friend has told me, is that it says 'We know where to find you. Drop Dead!' " she said in the e-mail.

- Kristen Moulton

OGDEN - An Oct. 23 hearing has been set in the lawsuit brought by an Ogden activist who wants Mayor Matthew Godfrey's name - and possibly the name of every other municipal candidate - scratched from the Nov. 6 ballot.

Godfrey, who is seeking a third term, failed to comply with a municipal code requiring him to register his personal campaign committee and file financial reports for that committee, the lawsuit brought in 2nd District Court by Dorothy Littrell and more than four dozen other residents alleges.

The lawsuit targets Godfrey, but the accompanying request for an injunction and extraordinary writ affects Godfrey's challenger, Susan Van Hooser, as well as the six candidates for City Council.

In their motion for immediate action, Littrell and the other plaintiffs ask Judge Parley Baldwin to require the city recorder and city attorney to pull from the ballot the names of all candidates who are violating the city code.

All eight candidates filed financial disclosure forms by an Aug. 31 deadline, but they raised money and reported donations and expenditures in their own names rather than in the names of personal campaign committees.

The city's code requires that all money go through personal campaign committees, that those committees be registered with the city recorder and that financial disclosures be filed in the names of the committees.

The code does not require a candidate to disclose a campaign committee's name, but that he or she file a signed statement verifying that a committee has been appointed and listing its members.

Godfrey said he's not worried about being bounced from the ballot.

" I guess they are proposing we have a ballot with no names on it in November. I'm not sure how that serves the public's best interest," he said.

His challenger, Van Hooser, has asked the plaintiffs to drop the lawsuit.

"Even if there has been a violation, it is a mere technicality that comes nowhere near being cause to disqualify a candidate," Van Hooser said in a statement.