Popular deli chain owner Sam Granato will run for Sen. Bob Bennett's seat in 2010.
Granato, who owns several Granato's delis throughout the Salt Lake Valley, also is chairman of the Utah Liquor Control Commission. He confirmed to me Thursday that he is in the race for sure as a Democrat, and he has secured early support from several Democratic insiders and officials. He will make the formal announcement June 1.
Granato is known as one of the nondrinkers on the Liquor Control Commission, which makes his optimism about running for the Senate in Utah as a Democrat even more impressive.
Meanwhile, Attorney General Mark Shurtleff told me Thursday he has made the decision personally to challenge Bennett for the Republican nomination, but he has given his wife one more week to talk him out of it.
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Republicans and
Democrats » Republicans, particularly those in Utah County, have gone out of their way to bestow honors on the likes of Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck and Jack Thompson, the disbarred Florida attorney who has a habit of sending unsolicited e-mails to government officials containing racy images of strippers to show the dangers that video games pose to our children.
Democrats, when they converge to pay tribute, seem to be more pragmatic about it. They praise bar owners.
Dozens of Democrats (some might be surprised there are that many) convened at the Alta Club on Tuesday evening to honor Kent and Jannette Knowley, long-time owners of the Port O' Call, a popular downtown private club that was forced to close recently to make way for federal courthouse expansion.
The Knowleys over the years have offered their club for Democratic fundraisers and other party events and were thanked at the Alta Club by Democratic legislators, county officials and party leaders for their help in getting many of those folks elected.
Salt Lake County Council Chairman and Democratic National Committee member Joe Hatch joked at the Knowley tribute that he always described the dueling factions of the party as the "Port O' Call Democrats" and the "Alta Club Democrats" as sort of a bourgeois/proletarian divide, he being a proud Port O' Call Democrat.
"Now here we are celebrating the Port O' Call at the Alta Club," he lamented.
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People are good » Kerry Steadman was running the Salt Lake Marathon earlier this month when, at mile 18 around 3300 South on 500 East, he noticed a man with two young sons standing in his yard encouraging the runners as they went by.
"I need a Diet Coke," Steadman joked as he ran past the yard, and they all laughed.
When Steadman finished the race at The Gateway, someone tapped him on the shoulder. It was the father he had joked with at mile 18, who handed him a Diet Coke.
"I've been trying to catch you for the last several miles to give you this," he said. Then he walked away before a stunned Steadman could get his name.
