The self-described "housewife from the boondocks" - who harangued politicians for more than a decade and became one of the most feared figures on Capitol Hill - is shutting down Utah Legislative Watch.

Geddes' watchdog group barked and booed over every bribe, ethics loophole and deregulation bill and, most recently, hounded politicians and policy-makers over nuclear waste.

The departure of "disillusioned" co-founders Charles Johnson and Marilyn Wells, who bolted for Canada last month in protest of the Iraq war, sealed the fate for the whistle-blowing Legislative Watch.

And Geddes' unceremonious exit closes an often-caustic, 12-year chapter of government criticism for the likable homemaker who first raised hell over a neighborhood gas station in the late 1980s.

While still keeping a skeptical eye on the Capitol gang - "I'll be doing some radio interviews from home," she said - the 58-year-old Geddes is focusing her attention on caring for her ill 73-year-old husband.

"It will be really difficult for me to sit home and read the paper," she said in an interview this week. "It's hard not to do anything."

Lawmakers may not share that frustration.

"She put her fingers down my throat and nearly pulled my tonsils out," recalled Rep. David Ure, R-Kamas, referring to a recent battle with Geddes over hazardous-waste storage.

In fact, Ure's controversial House Bill 320 - a complete rewrite of utility regulations that passed in 2000 and was repealed in 2001 - was the impetus for launching Legislative Watch, Geddes' latest lobbying venture.

Despite the thinly veiled animus, the rancher was quick to praise Geddes' passion. "I will not sit down with Claire for very long, but I still respect her," Ure said.

With Geddes gone, the League of Women Voters stands as the only unaffiliated, nonpartisan government watchdog group in Utah.

"It's a major void," said Anthony Musci, chairman of the Utah chapter of Common Cause, which no longer has a permanent staffer scrutinizing the Statehouse. "That means special interests curry only that much more favor."

House Speaker-elect Greg Curtis, R-Sandy, sounded circumspect about Geddes' shift to the sidelines.

"I haven't always agreed with her, but we always had a pretty candid relationship," he said. "Other watchdogs will step forward, but Claire had honed her message to be very effective."

Consider: When the now-defunct Salt Lake County Commission reversed its zoning restriction for a Rainbo Oil in Geddes' Cottonwood Heights neighborhood, she sprung into action. The stay-at-home mother mastered the law library then spearheaded a grass-roots lawsuit against the decision. The judge threw out the case, but the frenzy stirred by Geddes ultimately kept out the service station.

"That was my first anger," said the woman who acknowledges crying on many nights after suffering later political defeats.

After volunteering for Texas billionaire Ross Perot's failed 1992 campaign, she rose to Utah director of his United We Stand group the next year.

Geddes spent the next several years doggedly slogging through everything from telecommunications deregulation and government-subsidized redevelopment - "any tax issue that really hurt the public," she said - to junkets for politicians and Jazz tickets for lawmakers.

"She provided a great service to the public over the years," said former Salt Lake City Mayor Deedee Corradini, herself a Geddes target in the so-called "Giftgate" scandal.

Radio hosts and newspaper reporters quickly discovered a ready quote in Geddes, a self-taught activist who by the late 1990s - when United We Stand disbanded - was working without any funding.

Among her crusades: Geddes lashed into Lt. Gov. Olene Walker for taking a Costa Rica trip financed by big tobacco and fought Gov. Mike Leavitt on his states' rights initiative. "When you looked at it, it was really a lot of [Washington] lobbyists," she said. "It was not hatched locally."

She also attacked the $1 million consulting and retirement package awarded to Olympic boss Tom Welch, who resigned as Salt Lake Organizing Committee president after his no-contest plea to a domestic-violence charge.

Through the years, elected officials decried Geddes as an ill-informed pit bull more interested in delivering biting rebukes than understanding the nitty-gritty of laws and lawmaking. The complaints had little effect.

In 2000, she launched Utah Legislative Watch along with Johnson and Wells to help fight the elimination of the ratepayer-protecting Committee of Consumer Services.

Geddes blanketed the airwaves, bombarded party convention delegates and braved the cold to hand out fliers. The 2001 Legislature scrapped Ure's House Bill 320 - partially penned by Questar Gas. Co. - a moment Geddes calls "one of the biggest victories."

"When most public officials saw a message in their box from Claire, they got really worried," said Alan Dayton, Salt Lake County's acting mayor, who recalls feeling the "sting of her whip," both at Utah's Capitol and the County Government Center.

Nonetheless, Dayton calls Geddes a "completely reliable critic," which he concedes is "super-healthy."

Her activism became more personal in the 1990s after learning her father's 1968 lung cancer death probably was triggered by hauling uranium ore out of the Marysvale mine in south-central Utah in the 1950s.

"We were the victims of fallout," said Geddes, whose family had moved from Salt Lake City to Salina in 1951 and only recently won reparations from the federal government.

Geddes - who moved to Cottonwood Heights in the late 1960s - has tirelessly flogged Envirocare officials for attempts at importing high-level radioactive waste. She counts prohibition of the so-called Fernald waste from an Ohio Superfund site as another major victory.

Even Ure - who jokes about sending the gadfly two 4-by-6 Envirocare signs as retirement gifts - said he will miss his adversary.

"I still admire her for the things she's done," he said.

Dayton said it will be "sad" if Geddes' shoes are not properly filled - a sentiment shared by the citizen-activist, who fears her silence may be deafening.

"When I came in . . . I thought activism was in really bad shape," she said. "But it's probably much, much worse now. We need people to speak up."

djensen@sltrib.com

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Tribune reporter Thomas Burr contributed to this story.