This new blood often brings a clash of ideologies to an ultraconservative community where Kanab officials embraced a divisive natural-family resolution and, for a short time, a ban on bikinis at the city pool.
The race for Utah House District 73 reflects this blend of longtimers and newcomers - with three-term Republican Mike Noel, who moved to southern Utah 33 years ago, facing Democratic neophyte Ted Hallisey, a California transplant who landed in Kanab a decade ago.
"I'm running to give people the chance for a different choice," Hallisey said, adding that he had been unaffiliated, but joined the partisan fray at the request of state Democrats, who noted his stands on several issues lined up with theirs.
For example, Hallisey criticized the natural-family resolution - which touts workday dads and stay-at-home moms who raise a "quiver" of children - as a tenet that might offend folks and scare off tourists.
He argued against the short-lived bikini ban and opposed placing religious brochures in a visitor center. A Kanab pastor pushed for them, and eventually county officials overrode Hallisey.
Those positions - and other conflicts - may have cost him his job as Kane County's tourism czar. The three GOP commissioners fired him last week.
"One of the huge contrasts between the Republican leaders and myself," Hallisey said, "is that they keep looking at economic development as uranium mining and the building of nuclear power plants. I say that tourism itself is an excellent form of economic development that does not deplete your resources."
Conversely, Noel supports tapping natural resources on public lands wherever possible and maintains it can be done responsibly.
"When the radical environmentalist organizations try to shut that down," he said, "they're taking mineral royalties that belong to us and future generations."
As executive director of the Kane County Water Conservancy District, Noel helped acquire water shares for Rep. Aaron Tilton's Transition Power Development, a company that wants intending to build a nuclear power plant in Emery County.
Noel also argues traditional families are under attack and advocates protecting them through legislation.
"I thought the idea of the natural-family resolution was fine," he said, "but it could have been written differently."
Noel backs the Lake Powell pipeline; Hallisey bucks it, citing the $1 billion-plus price tag.
Kane County Commissioner Daniel Hulet, weary of seeing young people flee the region in search of higher-paying jobs, endorses Noel.
"We have one candidate who wants to utilize our natural resources to create jobs," Hulet said, "and one who thinks we can survive on a tourism-based economy with service-based jobs."
Tom Forsythe, a real estate appraiser who moved to Kanab from Los Angeles 12 years ago, sees it differently.
"People in the old guard want to pretend we have a resource-based economy. They aren't paying attention," Forsythe said. "We're in a global economy and industrial jobs no longer exist - except at a subsistence level."
To Forsythe, "a vote for Hallisey is a vote for the reality of the new economy, and a vote for Noel represents thinking that is, at the very least, outdated."
