But not the mayor. His brief moment of self-reflection is over. Matthew Godfrey has moved on.
Despite squeaking past Councilwoman Susan Van Hooser by the closest margin in his political career - 449 votes - the 37-year-old mayor apparently plans to take his 51 percent of the vote and run with it like a mandate.
"I don't make decisions based on what percentage of people voted for me," he said last week in a news conference staged to preempt the City Council canvass. Good thing, since a mere 3 percent of the ballots cast gave him a third term.
"I make decisions based on what's best for the community," Godfrey said, with the bravado of a George W. Bush. "My philosophy is not going to change at all."
No conciliatory peace offering to the half of Ogden voters who wanted someone else. They're of no consequence to the mayor who resorted to voter intimidation on Election Eay. Onward and upward.
Godfrey's blinders about his own failings explain a lot about why he barely won, why Ogden is divided down the middle - geographically, psychologically, economically. There's west of Harrison and east of Harrison, to gondola or not to gondola, the Marshall White Center and the Salomon Center - divisions critics say Godfrey has reinforced with his single-minded, business-centric focus.
"The city is split more now than it ever has been before," says Jesse Garcia, Godfrey's nemesis on the City Council and a name on the mayor's hit list, which challenged the residency of 150 voters who showed up at Ogden polls.
Nothing highlights that schism more than a 40-year-old community center beloved by longtime residents and a new downtown extreme-sports center crammed with teenagers when school lets out.
Fern Heath lives a block from the Marshall White Center. Monday, Wednesday and Friday, she pays $1.50 for her water aerobics class. Every day, she serves lunch to other seniors. Tuesday, the 82-year-old retired homemaker watched as her friends made ceramic Christmas decorations.
Downstairs, nearly 70 toddlers with names like Fatima, Juan Diego and Syrria are eating lunch in the Headstart preschool. Soon, buses will drop off more than 100 tweens in the Boys and Girls Club after-school program.
A few years ago, Godfrey tried to privatize the community center. He only backed away after residents - including Heath - staged protests.
"It means a lot. Seniors don't think they would survive without it," Heath says. "We hope he don't come back with another plan."
Still, she apparently voted for the mayor. "Ogden is progressing," she shrugs.
For many residents, the Salomon Center is proof. A complex of shiny new restaurants, movie theaters, condos and an extreme sports center tower across Washington Boulevard from a low-rent tattoo shop, old saddle and tack store and independent clothing shops. A "flight" ticket at iFly, an indoor skydiving tunnel, costs $49. Riding the fake wave at Flowrider for an hour will set you back $30, plus $2 for a towel. Next door, the lunch line at Costa Vida snakes through the restaurant.
"Look what he's done," says Paulette Stewart, a Layton mother of three sipping a Capri Sun outside the Treehouse children's museum before election results were in Tuesday. "His focus was to clean up the reputation of Ogden. People need to not be afraid to come here. I can see the progress he's made."
No argument here. The demoralized, blighted city has changed for the better in the 14 years since I worked at the Ogden Standard-Examiner.
But the ways Godfrey has done it - cutting backroom deals, signing no-bid contracts, developing unusual partnerships with the Boyer Co. and menacing vocal critics - raise legitimate questions. The City Council had to force the mayor to publicize sales of city property. Now, as part of a campaign to redevelop the banks of the Ogden River, he seems to have hitched himself to a California developer who happens to be facing insurance fraud charges.
Godfrey would say the ends justify the means. This nail-biter election shows residents are second-guessing him. But with four more years in his pocket, the mayor can thumb his nose.
State legislator Neil Hansen plans to investigate Godfrey's election list to make sure no voter's constitutional rights were violated. But Hansen, who challenged the mayor in the primary and declined to endorse him, expects Godfrey to remain unchastened. "He won't change one bit."
walsh@sltrib.com
