This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Gov. Gary Herbert's campaign left a U-Haul trailer on the street in front of the Salt Palace on Friday night that contained all of his campaign signs and other materials for Saturday's Utah Republican Convention.
When the campaign workers showed up early Saturday to place the governor's campaign hoopla around the convention hall, they found that someone had put Super Glue in the lock, so they couldn't get it open. They scurried around at 6 a.m. looking for a store to buy metal cutters to slice off the lock. Salt Palace maintenance crews finally found some cutters and the lock was removed.
But by the time the workers hauled their stuff into the hall, the prime spots had been taken by other candidates. They had to settle for lower-profile areas to place the signs.
Accusations of dirty tricks were aimed at the campaign of Jonathan Johnson, the governor's chief rival for the GOP nomination. Johnson workers denied any involvement, adding that it was stupid to leave the U-Haul on the street overnight in the first place.
Here are some other behind-the-scenes stories from Saturday's Republican and Democratic state conventions, both held at the Salt Palace.
• The Utah delegation will have an all-in-the-family element at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in July, since former state GOP Chairman Thomas Wright and his sister, Anne-Marie Lampropoulos, were elected unopposed to be the state's Republican national committeeman and committeewoman.
Some cried foul since the incumbents in those spots, Bruce Hough and Enid Greene Mickelsen, both decided against running for re-election without giving prior notice of their decision before the filing deadline — when Wright and Lampropoulos stepped in.
Wright told me he called Hough the last day and asked if he were running, because he didn't want to go against the incumbent. When Hough said no, Wright filed. Others, he said, could have and should have made the same query.
That didn't work out well, though. Dee got fewer than the 40 percent delegate vote needed to qualify for a primary in the county convention. Bell was eliminated at his state convention caucus by challenger Kelly Miles.
• On the Democratic side, party boss Peter Corroon spent most of the morning arguing with Bernie Sanders supporters, who wanted to offer a bylaw rule that if superdelegates voted at the national convention for someone other than the top vote-getter in the Utah caucuses, they would lose their status on the state executive committee.
Sanders handily won the Utah caucuses.
Corroon maintained the motion was out of order. But continued arguments with the Sanders folks while candidates were giving speeches kept him from getting a soft drink or a breakfast banana from a nearby concession stand.
• Republican national delegate candidate Bill Reagan may have had a home-court edge over his opponents.
As delegates drove into downtown Salt Lake City from Davis, Weber and other northern Utah counties, they saw a large billboard with Reagan's face urging them to vote for him for national delegate.
The billboard is the property of Reagan Outdoor Advertising, owned by Bill Reagan.
• I had written last week that the signature-gathering firm Gather had agreed to pay for the electronic voting devices at the GOP gathering, but after my column ran, party Chairman James Evans decided not to accept the contribution from the firm that helped facilitate paths to the primary ballot for candidates.
So my column cost the state GOP $8,000.
Sorry.
• While the Secret Service has forbidden firearms at the largely pro-gun National Republican Convention, Evans told me he would be packing his permitted concealed weapon at Saturday's state gathering and suspected many delegates would be doing likewise.
When I asked Corroon about the Democrats, he said the question never came up and he had no idea if his delegates would be packing. "But I'm sure we'll be well protected by the Republicans if anything comes up."