St. George • As the November election nears, St. George Mayor Michele Randall says she is pleased with the progress the city is making. And that’s a big reason she’s confident in her reelection bid.
After all, she has history on her side. The incumbent has bested her opponent, Council member Jimmie Hughes, twice before — the first time in January 2021 when the City Council chose her over Hughes to replace Mayor Jon Pike, who left three years into his term to head the Utah Insurance Department. Then, in the general election that year, she beat Hughes at the ballot box.
Randall said the city is riding a wave of positive developments. In August, the city started construction on a $15 million airport control tower that will enhance safety at the St. George Regional Airport.
She is also upbeat about the new $45 million city hall and parking structure nearing completion on Main Street, as well as the new 27,000-square-foot fire department headquarters taking shape.
She also likes the direction the City Council is taking. After a few years of bickering over divisive culture war issues like drag shows, the mayor said, council members largely stick to more typical municipal issues.
She said the calmer atmosphere also extends to her relationship with Council member Michelle Tanner, with whom she was once frequently at odds.
“Michelle Tanner and I buried the hatchet, and not in each other’s backs, which was nice,” the mayor quipped.
Jokes aside, Randall argues that given the city’s momentum, it doesn’t make any sense for voters to switch political horses midstream by casting ballots for her opponent. She also wonders if Hughes, who owns a mortuary in town and runs a cattle ranch on the Arizona Strip, has time for the job.
Hughes insists that he has great staff members to mind the mortuary in his absence, and adds the cattle at his ranch require little supervision. Still, Randall is not convinced, countering that the part-time mayoral job requires full-time hours. She said she can’t envision Hughes duplicating or improving on her success.
“I just don’t think there is anything that I have done that Jimmy could do better,” she said.
Randall also takes issue with Hughes’ contention that she misses too many meetings for health and other reasons. The mayor said she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2019 and had to take chemotherapy pills for five years, which made her feel ill and weakened her immune system.
Since going off the medication a year ago, she said she feels great. Randall added that she has only asked Hughes, who is the mayor pro tem, to conduct three meetings this year — once for a death in the family, and the remainder when she was recuperating from surgery for a torn ligament.
Wolverines and penny candy
(Michele Randall) St. George Mayor Michele Randall holds the finish tape to the St. George Marathon.
Randall and her husband, Tony, have four children. In what little free time she has, the mayor said she and her husband enjoy spending time with their children and 11 grandchildren, relaxing at the family cabin in nearby Pinto or watching college football and rooting for Utah teams and the Michigan Wolverines.
Born in Las Vegas, Randall lived in Nevada and Arizona before moving with her parents and siblings to St. George as a 7th grader. She said the contrast between the junior high schools she attended in Casa Grande, Arizona and St. George was vast.
“It was a rough school,” she said about the Arizona school. “The first week of my seventh grade, police were there every day because of problems with gangs.”
St. George was much safer and more conducive to raising a family, she said. One of the mayor’s fondest memories was visiting her grandparents and frequenting the Market Basket, a small store across from the St. George Temple, where she would buy 10 pieces of penny candy one at a time to avoid the 1-cent tax that would be levied if she bought them all at once.
“That’s where I learned about taxes,” she said. “The cashiers were so patient with me.”
After graduating from Dixie High School, she attended then-Dixie Junior College before marrying her husband, settling down and raising a family as a stay-at-home mother. Her first foray into elected office came in 2013 when she ran for the City Council and won.
Rough and tumble as public service can be, Randall said she has enjoyed the ride since becoming mayor, especially working with talented staff, talking to children and meeting people who have overcome long odds to achieve success.
She has no intention of releasing her grip on the mayoral reins or handing the job over to someone else. If reelected, she said she will continue to tackle the city’s growth-related challenges and preserve St. George’s status as a safe and enviable place to live.
Water is one of her top concerns. She is gratified by the progress that has been made. Unlike her challenger, Randall supports the Water Efficient Landscape Program, the Washington County Water Conservation District initiative that pays county residents to replace their grass with drought-friendly landscaping.
A member of the water district’s board of directors, Randall is immersed in the district’s plans to invest $1 billion to construct more water reuse reservoirs and related infrastructure. She is bullish about two new reuse reservoirs coming on tap soon — Chief Toquer and Graveyard Wash reservoirs — that will enable the district to better weather droughts.
“Nothing makes you sicker than watching water being treated at a reuse facility, and seeing [workers] have to send that water down to Lake Mead because we don’t have anywhere to capture it,” she said.
Randall said she also wants to continue the effort to make smart water meters available to every St. George household. Another item of unfinished business for Randall is to continue the effort to secure $90 million for the airport expansion and find funds to construct underpasses at 400 East and 900 South to reduce congestion and connect neighborhoods now separated by Interstate 15.
Initially approved by the $87.6 million the Biden administration awarded for the two underpasses, the project stalled when the current administration axed the money in August, a casualty of President Trump’s massive “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” that was passed the previous month.
She also wants to steer major road projects through to completion, including the George Washington Boulevard Bridge project that will connect River Road with Dixie Drive, and to continue the city’s forward momentum on affordable housing.
Whatever the challenge, Randall asserts, she is capable and up to the task.
“If I weren’t,” she said, “I would not be running.”