Michael Clara, a Latino on Salt Lake City's west side, loses patience with those who grumble about the scarcity of ethnic minorities in elected office.

"The blame is always on the white Republican Mormons," says Clara, a planner for Utah Transit Authority.

But, he says, the fault lies elsewhere. "It's the fault of the people who don't want to throw their hat in the ring."

Clara has room to talk.

A Mormon Democrat who has lost both of his campaigns for public office, Clara considers talk of racial and religious prejudice "childish."

Clara lost his first bid, for a seat on the Salt Lake City Council by more than 300 votes in 2003.

Last fall, he lost the race for a Salt Lake City School Board seat by a single vote to Alama Uluave.

Clara, who came to Utah from Texas to visit in the early 1990s and fell in love with the state, says Salt Lake City's west side is diverse enough that people don't divide along religious or ethnic lines.

"Our community forms around our politics, not around our identities," he says.

The main issues for west-siders, he says, revolve around geographic marginalization.

"We don't have the pull that other people have in other parts of the city," he says.

A case in point, he says, was UTA's response to complaints by east-siders of squeaky TRAX train wheels. The agency installed special lubricating devices to ease the noise.

But west-siders continue to live with the noise of freight trains near 900 South - even after the city intervened.

Clara also notes a disparity in public reaction to crime. Killings on the west side go practically unnoticed, he says, but when one occurs in central or east Salt Lake City, the public clamor is deafening.

"That sends a message to a lot of people in my neighborhood - 'Oh, that's expected.' If it happens on the east side, that's intolerable."

- Kristen Moulton