A utilitarian sky bridge above Main Street apparently has reinforced the mayor's backbone - something that cracked a few years ago when he sold out another block of the street to make a lawsuit go away.

But these could be the Last Days of Mayor Rocky.

With eight months left to burnish his legacy, he is standing up to the church of his youth with the conviction of Martin Luther. Taking on this role of architect and city designer-in-chief with the implacability of the faithful, he is determined to save his city from a future mayor who doesn't share his belief - even if it means running a write-in campaign in November.

At his wits' end, Rocky is soliciting for someone, anyone, to buy the air above the street - a ridiculous idea if it weren't so perversely creative. The San Francisco-based Trust for Public Land turned him down. Undiscouraged, he's still talking about a conservation easement.

And if that fails, and no one else stands up, he says he'll give up his plans for retirement and run for a third term. With such frontÂrunner mayoral candidates as conservative Dave Buhler and liberal Jenny Wilson wondering what the big bridge deal is - and Rocky's hand-picked successor Keith Christensen and legislator Ralph Becker hemming and hawing - the mayor might try for four more years.

This crusade has pitted him against the City Council, the politicians who would take his place, a powerful developer/church and more than two-thirds of Utahns who think a bridge isn't such a bad idea.

But this mayor doesn't care. Like the mall developer, Taubman Centers, and Property Reserve Inc., a development arm of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he believes his city's future hinges on this decision.

In his zeal, he has accused mayoral candidates and other city leaders of collapsing under the obvious weight of the state's dominant religion. "I can't imagine they would allow a sky bridge for any other developer," he said last month.

Never mind that they already did (six times alone in The Gateway mall). Rocky's attempt to shame the mayor's office hopefuls and the City Council into joining him rings hollow, considering his own history of caving under the very same pressure.

Five years ago, a three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver concluded the LDS Church's city-sanctioned clampdown on Main Street Plaza protest and sunbathing violated the First Amendment. Rocky was stuck with a contract he didn't sign: unconstitutional free speech rules agreed to by another council and former Mayor Deedee Corradini in exchange for a public right of way through the maze of fountains and flowers.

At the time, the mayor said giving up the easement would be a "betrayal." But two months later, after being eviscerated by LDS faithful who considered his hesitation over the First Amendment "anti-Mormon," Rocky sold his city's birthright for a 2-acre mess of an abandoned lot in Glendale and pledges for $5 million to build a community center.

Many city voters never looked at him the same way again. And Rocky knows it.

High-minded ideals like free speech and public access are not at risk in his new-found crusade. This one is about squishy theories of urban design and American consumer behavior. Nevertheless, as symbolic protests go, the stakes are high for Salt Lake City's mayor.

But he needs to drop his high-and-mighty claim that other politicians are giving up and giving in to South Temple. He just doesn't have the credentials for it.

walsh@sltrib.com