Having a Republican as the lieutenant governor running mate to a Democratic gubernatorial candidate poses some unusual and unintended challenges.
Jim Judd, president of the Utah AFL-CIO has had to calm concerns of some of his members over Democrat Peter Corroon's choice of Rep. Sheryl Allen, R-Bountiful, because of her positions on recent issues before the Legislature.
But Judd says he has been able to show his members that Allen, a 16-year veteran of the House with a reputation as a moderate, has been with organized labor and its working-families agenda roughly 80 percent of the time.
But Allen voted for a controversial resolution to amend the state constitution to make it more difficult for unions to organize in the work place, which made some union members question Corroon's commitment to organized labor, a key constituent for Democrats.
Here's the rub:
Judd points out that Allen was the last of seven Republican holdouts against the resolution to switch to a yes vote. And it came nearly two weeks before the end of the 2009 legislative session when Allen, and other Republican holdouts, still had bills pending before the Legislature.
Hate to say it, but games sometimes are played at the Legislature where bills important to certain lawmakers might be in jeopardy if they don't play along with what leadership wants. (Can you say "vouchers"?)
Some also wondered about Allen's absence during a vote on changing the state's retirement system, which labor opposed. But she didn't purposely walk away from the vote, as was assumed. She had to leave the House floor the day of the vote because she represented the Utah International Trade Commission at a luncheon meeting with the Romanian ambassador at the Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce.
She expected the vote would come after the luncheon, but it was earlier than expected.
Meanwhile, Allen still attends the Republican caucus during interim committee meeting sessions and has been treated cordially, even though she now bats for the other team. She leaves the caucus when members begin discussing election strategies.
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Careful what you boast » Ethan Millard of KSL Radio's "The Nightside Project," recently opined on his Facebook page that if lobbyists can't do their jobs without wining and dining and plying legislators with gifts, they should find another profession.
That elicited a response from Paul Mero, president of the conservative Sutherland Institute. "Sorry dude, we can't," he wrote, going on about the institute's mission statement that directs it to push for good legislation through education, and not through traditional lobbying schemes like gift-giving and campaign donations.
But another poster called Mero out, noting Sutherland hires high-powered lobbyists Chris Kyler and Michael Ostermiller to do their wining and dining for them. As lobbyists for the Utah Association of Realtors, they are among the leaders in gift-giving and campaign donations.
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Practicality over principle? » U.S. Senate candidate Mike Lee represented 1-800 Contacts at the Utah Legislature last year, pushing a bill that would have prevented companies from posting advertisements on Internet search engines like Google that would automatically pop up when an Internet user typed in a certain search word, like 1-800 Contacts.
So guess what you get when you look up U.S. Rep. Jim Matheson's name on Google to find his campaign Web site? You get an advertisement for Mike Lee for U.S. Senate.
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Congrats » Just have to brag here for a second. My former column partner, JoAnn Jacobsen-Wells, has been voted by the students as Brighton High School's "Teacher of the Year."
