- Groucho Marx

You might call old Groucho's take on life a bit cynical, except for when it's true. Take one more day in the life of Nancy Workman, for instance. The embattled Salt Lake County mayor made her first appearance in 3rd District Court on Monday on two felony charges for misusing public funds. As she has been throughout this whole mess, Workman was in fine fettle - working overtime as the queen of entitlement. Pushing the edges, pressing the system.

Workman's attorney tried to waive all other preliminary hearings and fast-track her case to trial. But on the same day, that pain-in-the-backside David Yocom showed up again, acting all officious and announcing his decision to appoint a special prosecutor in the case. This will only further delay a trial.

D.A. Yocom says the move was necessary to deflect Workman's continued claims of partisanship in the prosecution of her alleged diversion of county Health Department funds to the South Valley Boys and Girls Club, which helped her daughter, the club's chief financial officer. The jabs at Yocom are now showing up - just more denial du jour - in Workman's recent ad blitz. "It's just politics," says a brusque motorist.

Workman foreshadowed her plans for this attempt at a judicial three-minute mile last weekend before the county's Republican Central Committee. She showed up, not like earlier this month in T-shirt and jeans smeared with horse snot, but in a business suit. With just a sliver of contrition for causing the GOP stress, she told the party powerful she absolutely must get to trial before Election Day.

Really, just who do the rest of us think we are? And don't these little legal people in big black robes know who she is? As for all those accused thugs, kidnappers and drunken drivers cooling their heels in the county jail, some of whom have waited months for their day in court, well so? They're getting three squares a day. What's another month or two?

Nancy Workman has places to go, surely a few more buildings to stamp her name on within our wallowing county government. She has a pricey lawyer, not some public defender in a rumpled suit who barely knows his client's name. She hired Greg Skordas, Democratic candidate for attorney general, largely because he once worked under Yocom, and has the inside poop on the way the system works.

Translation: Surely the guy knows how to schmooze judges and how to wheedle a quick court date on the docket when he needs one.

The hubris of it all would be laughable if it weren't so chilling. Somewhere in this process, you have to hope someone is handing the mayor a clue, giving her a sign. That someone is telling her the system is supposed to work equally for all, and that there are actually times when political connections and election outcomes count for less than zero.

Somewhere along her journey, hope that our mayor on paid leave is learning something of the un-Groucho approach to honesty and fair play. That is, the real deal. Maybe, too, that someone will introduce her to another lady of genuine standing and lofty position: Blind Justice.

hmullen@slrib.com