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T he Utah Republican Party pulled out all the stops to slime a candidate in Draper's nonpartisan City Council races, and guess what happened?

She was the highest vote-getter, according to the latest unofficial returns, among six candidates in the Republican-dominated city, which is home to Utah House Speaker Greg Hughes and state Sen. Howard Stephenson.

Michele Weeks, Stephenson's Democratic rival for the Senate in 2014, found herself the target of countless attacks on social media — including the Facebook page of incumbent Councilman Bill Colbert, who lost Tuesday. She also was slammed in emails sent to Draper residents and in two mailers, one from an anonymous source that was stuffed into 3,000 mailboxes without going through the Postal Service and another mailed by the Utah GOP and signed by its chairman, James Evans.

Weeks was also the subject of the conservative "Red Meat Radio" program, which airs Saturday mornings with Stephenson as co-host.

The attacks centered on her husband, Kenneth Weeks, who was involved in a New York firm called Dynamic American in the 1990s that was targeted by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

He was sentenced to 20 months in federal prison and ordered to pay restitution.

That was before he and Michele were married. The case against him began before they even met. The Evans mailer tried to tie Michele Weeks to the case, but she only put her name on an account shared with him later and was never a target of the investigation.

And that was 20 years ago.

Draper residents could vote for three of the six candidates with the top three winning council seats.

Weeks led the pack, according to Tuesday night's tally, followed by incumbents Alan Summerhays and Marsha Vawdrey.

A pattern? • It seems that every time Evans tries a last-minute attack on a candidate, that candidate wins.

When he was Salt Lake County Republican chairman in 2006, Evans distributed a heavily edited training video in which Democratic county sheriff hopeful Jim Winder seemed to be advocating police brutality.

Actually, Winder was role-playing to show the class of cop recruits how not to act.

Winder beat four-term incumbent Republican Aaron Kennard by 28 percentage points.

Evans also tossed late jabs in 2008 against Democrat Jani Iwamoto when she ran for the Salt Lake County Council.

She prevailed and now is a state senator from Holladay.

In 2014, Evans also targeted Salt Lake County Council candidate Jenny Wilson.

She won.

When former Murray Mayor Dan Snarr ran for re-election against Republican County Councilman David Wilde in the nonpartisan city race, Evans sent letters urging voters to choose Wilde because he was a good Republican and Snarr was a Democrat.

Snarr emerged.

Too little, (way) too late? • Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker's campaign sent a mailer to registered Republicans in the waning days of his re-election push, arguing that he is the Democrat more acceptable to Republicans.

The mailer featured former Republican U.S. Sen. Jake Garn and Republican Salt Lake County Councilman Richard Snelgrove.

It said that it's hard being a Republican in Salt Lake City, but Republicans can make their votes count by picking Becker.

It sure is hard being a Republican in left-leaning Salt Lake City.

The flier arrived in the mail Wednesday, the day after the election.