I've known a lot of hard-core conservatives. Then I met Holly Richardson.
She's a Republican, BYU nursing grad, home-birth midwife and prolific blogger. She's for states' rights, against affirmative action, doesn't buy global warming and wants Washington, D.C., to cede federal lands to the states.
The 2010 Legislature, then, was good to her -- until the very end. She was there when House Speaker David Clark allowed Kevin Garn to confess his "mistake" with a 15-year-old girl a quarter of a century ago, then led the standing ovation for the teary-eyed man and his wife.
So Holly called out Garn and Clark on her Web site, http://hollyonthehill.wordpress.com, demanded that Clark resign and sent many of her conservative counterparts into a dither.
"People were offended by the piece," she says. " 'Why are you not forgiving? Why are you hammering people in your own party?'
"I've never been a protector of the little boys' network," Holly says. "In fact, I've been a boat-rocker for quite a while. What Garn did was wrong, and what Clark did was wrong. It put the Legislature in a bad position, and now, in a bad light nationally. 'Look at Utah! They're hugging a pedophile!' "
Clark, she says, "is not going to think very fondly of me."
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Holly Richardson didn't grow up in a particularly political household, and when she came of age, she says, "I couldn't make an informed vote most of the time." That changed in 2002, when she went to Capitol Hill to push legalization of home births. It took four sessions to get the bill passed, and Holly was hooked. She campaigned for U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz in 2008, and launched her blog last year -- logging, she says proudly, 400 posts since then.
This year, she's deputy campaign manager for Morgan Philpot, who'll be running against 2nd District Rep. Jim Matheson, a Democrat. And she still keeps up a bit of her midwifery.
All of this while she manages 21 children. She gave birth to four of them, and adopted the rest from eight counties, from Zambia to Guatemala. Three other adoptive children have died.
Fourteen still live at home in Pleasant Grove.
And how, I ask, does that work out? "I trained them coming up, so they do pretty well at helping out." The teenagers help with the cooking (not so much on the cleaning, she says). Her husband, Greg Richardson, is there at night to make sure their homework gets done.
The Richardsons co-teach a primary class in their LDS ward, although the past few months have seen Holly on the road a lot for Philpot's run in the sweeping 2nd Congressional District.
The last night of the Legislature, when Garn concluded his statements and Clark led a standing ovation? That was a rare "date night" with Greg, Holly laughs.
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This year's U.S. Census will bring next year's political redistricting, and as the past couple of decades have shown, the super-majority of Republicans in the Legislature will be sorely tempted to gerrymander new districts to their party's benefit.
Holly disapproves. "As an opinionated observer, I think they need to do a lot less gerrymandering and a lot more fair distribution. I think it's wrong -- whether you're protecting Republicans or Democrats, it's still wrong."
Utah's population density has changed considerably since 2001, meaning that some sitting lawmakers could well be displaced.
"There are times when people will be redistricted out of their district, but let's do it fairly," Holly says.
Then she drops a little bombshell, or maybe she's just having a little fun.
"I want to be the new 4th Congressional District congresswoman," Holly laughs, "so make sure it's fair to me!"
