This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
The director of an institute devoted to the study of politics, housed at a taxpayer-funded state university, hits on an idea to give more of those taxpayers a voice in their state's politics, and one of his big funders cries foul. Just another day in Utah politics.
The backstory of a $200,000 donation that led to the dispute between Kirk Jowers, director of the University of Utah's Hinckley Institute of Politics, and Peter Valcarce, a political operative and now disgruntled contributor, is enough to make us dizzy.
Suffice it to say that Valcarce is upset because some of the money he had wanted to be used for a scholarship fund named after Rep. Rob Bishop was briefly routed to another scholarship fund that Jowers had named after, well, himself.
This might be a clash of vanities of interest only to the Faculty Club. Except that some politically active folks who are suspicious of Jowers for other reasons have picked up the story and are using it to attack his credibility.
The issue is not the audit trail of donations, but another one of Jowers' projects, an initiative to change the way Utah's two major political parties choose the names they will place on general election ballots for state and federal office.
Jowers, working with former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt and others, envisions a method by which caucuses and conventions would no longer have so much power over who wins their party nominations. Their idea would allow any candidate who could round up enough signatures to be placed on a party's primary election ballot, with the nominee to be decided by a vote open to all party members across the state.
The idea, common in other states and which has long found favor in this corner, is to give a much larger percentage of the state's voters a voice in narrowing the field of candidates to be presented to the whole electorate. That's particularly important in a state where winning the Republican nomination is so often tantamount to being elected.
The status quo stands on the argument that only those determined enough to participate in our political version of a multilevel marketing strategy are worthy to pick party nominees. Those currently atop this political heap claim that a truly democratic process would be hijacked by big-monied interests who could sway foolish voters with shiny objects. Which is not only an argument against democracy itself, but also, when combined with our Legislature's recidivist gerrymandering, explains Utah's tragically low voter turnout.
Jowers might fairly be criticized for his vanity scholarship fund. But his larger view of reforming state politics should not suffer for that lapse.