St. George • If you give him your vote in November, Jimmie Hughes will lend you an ear. That’s the mayoral hopeful’s promise if he is successful in unseating incumbent Mayor Michele Randall.
If elected, Hughes, who has served on the City Council since 2012, vows to listen to residents rather than lecture them, like he says the incumbent is prone to do.
“Listening is my number one priority,” Hughes said. “Some people say listening to the public is a formality.”
A familiar refrain in his campaign, Hughes’ emphasis on listening equates to a shot across the bow at Randall over her short-lived decision in May 2023 to ax the public comment portion of public meetings in hopes of combating incivility. After taking heat from some council members and city residents, she later reinstated the public comment, with some modifications.
Hughes said his leadership style also favors transparency, and argues his opponent and other council members prefer some matters to be decided out of the public’s eyes and ears. Transparency begins at the top, he added.
Still, as his track record indicates, Hughes’ run to oust the mayor might not be easy. After all, he has battled and lost to Randall for the top job twice before. In January 2021, Hughes’ mayoral hopes were dashed when the City Council picked Randall over him to serve the remainder of the unexpired term of Mayor Jon Pike, who left to take a state job as head of the Utah Insurance Department. In the November general election that year, Hughes came up short again, losing by 2,100 votes.
Still, Hughes is optimistic he’ll finish first in November.
Home on the range
(Jimmie Hughes) St. George mayoral candidate Jimmie Hughes.
A mortician by trade, Hughes owns Hughes Mortuary as well as an 840-acre ranch on the Arizona Strip. When he’s not doing council chores, he said he is campaigning, overseeing his business or tending to the 100 head of cattle at his ranch.
Hughes and his wife, Tawny, have five children. What little downtime they have, the candidate said, is devoted to family time like boating on Lake Powell and attending the St. George Dixie Lions Round-up Rodeo each fall.
Hughes’ father died two months before he was born while working on the Virgin River Gorge Highway project. He said his father was driving a dump truck when he struck an obstacle or overhang and veered off the road.
“He was thrown out of the truck and got pinned underneath,” Hughes said. “He made it to the hospital and survived just long enough for my mother to say goodbye.”
As a result, he said, his mother was left with nine children and another (Jimmie) on the way. When he was 5 years old, Jimmie said his mother got married again, and the family lived in St. George and divided their time between his stepfather’s home and working the ranch he owned on the Arizona strip.
“That’s where I got my work ethic,” Hughes said. “My stepfather was a guy who … worked every day. Everything was about work.”
Water and affordable housing issues
Hughes maintains that work ethic will help him tackle St. George’s toughest problems. If elected, Hughes said he would use the seat he would have on the Washington County Water Conservancy District Board of Directors to weigh in on water issues in the drought-parched region.
Rather than curtail growth to save water, Hughes supports building more reservoirs to store more water. He also favors more aggressive messaging to help residents better understand the need to conserve.
However, the challenger is not a fan of the district’s Water Efficient Landscape Program, which has resulted in cities in the county replacing roughly three million square feet of grass with drought-friendly landscaping. He said ripping out too much grass risks raising the heat index.
Moreover, Hughes added, it irks some residents.
“Some citizens ask why they should give up their grass lawn just so 10 more people can move here,” he said. “I’m not saying that we don’t want the growth, but it shouldn’t be on the backs of people who say having [a grass lawn] is their lifestyle.”
As for affordable housing, Hughes calls it a supply and demand issue that the city has limited control over. He noted the city has boosted that supply by loosening restrictions on accessory dwelling units in residential areas and has approved areas for high-density housing projects, most recently a 199-room apartment complex that will be built on five acres at Tech Ridge.
Hughes adamantly opposes raising property taxes, which he said will make housing even more unaffordable. He also pushes back on building too many high-rise apartments, saying they will make downtown traffic arteries look more like caves than streets. Ideally, he would like to see a good mix of single-family homes and higher-density housing.
“At some point, young people will want to have a family and a home with a yard,” he said. “Not everything has to be high-rise apartments.”
Hughes is critical of the $800,000 the city spent to put a median and bike lanes on University Avenue by Utah Tech University, saying it has narrowed the street, clogged traffic and nixed some sorely needed parking spaces. Hughes opposed the $1.45 million venture, 60% of which was funded with a state grant. In March, Randall cast the tie-breaking vote to approve the project, which was recently completed.
St. George has an estimated 110,000 residents, and Hughes said those numbers are expected to swell to 300,000 when the city is fully built out. As he looks to the future, Hughes said he wants to preserve the unity and ability to work together that have traditionally made St. George a great place to live.
To that end, if he wins in November, Hughes said he is all ears.