Tonight, while minding my own business, my cell phone rang and I was nabbed by a political pollster. Aaack! My fraud antennae went on high alert expecting to be scammed. I’m a grudging respondent, ready to hang up instantly. This poll was focused on the primary election in the 2nd Congressional District. As was disclosed at the end, the Becky Edwards campaign had sponsored the poll.
This poll was different from any others to which I’ve ever responded, because it included characterizations of the three candidates’ backgrounds and experience that were actually neutral and, in each instance, extremely complimentary; there were no aspersions thrown around, as with a different genre of candidate polls.
The questions in the next section of the poll were about issues of varying importance, mainly (as I interpreted them) to Republican primary voters, although not exclusively. Each began with a summary of Becky Edwards’s legislative record or position, and then an invitation to weigh in whether that would make me more or less likely to vote for her — or whether it would make no difference. For me, the “whether it would make no difference option” was the most important, because whatever the issue, I fully trust Becky to make the best decision.
In answering, I indicated that a couple of the issues were “very important” to me, but to most of the questions my response was, “It would make no difference,” and I said that expecting that at some point there might be an open-ended question such as “If you don’t care about any of THIS stuff, what IS the #1 issue that will influence your vote?” If that was asked, I missed it.
If your mailbox is anything like mine, you are bombarded every single day with campaign letters that tell me the sky is falling because someone is coming for my guns, or the Democrats are weaponizing the Department of Justice, or the Bidens are a crime family, or we have a sissified and woke military or I need to send someone money ASAP to rein in entitlement spending. I have learned beyond question that no political party has a monopoly on virtue. And compromise is not an obscene four-letter word.
I’m a single-issue voter these days, and that issue is a candidate’s character and temperament. Because the Edwards poll didn’t get to the question I was hoping to hear, here’s my answer. All of the candidates in this race are good people, but Becky is uniquely good. She’s the only one whose character has been tested for 10 years in the fiery crucible of elective legislative politics.
It’s one thing to talk about what ought to be done about this or that, but it’s something else entirely to build a winning network of relationships with legislators from all over the place whose life experiences, philosophies and perceptions are in contrast or even conflict with yours.
Becky’s legislative success came from being a bridge-builder within her caucus and across the aisle. It came from being straight and as good as her word. It came from knowing what she was talking about, and it came from being likeable as the dickens — to everyone.
There’s not a mean bone in Becky’s body. Before she was an Edwards, she was a Price. Her class officer campaign slogan was “Becky Price is Nice.” It’s been a fact and trademark ever since. An effective legislator has to play well with others; you can’t call people names and demean them, and then ever broker support for a bill. And it’s not too much to ask and expect that a “people’s representative” actually live in the district he wants to represent. It’s hard to say, “I’m one of you, even though I’ve always lived somewhere else.” Park City is almost another planet.
Politicians can rationalize a vote this way or that based on all kinds of trade-offs, but sometimes, the stakes for the voters and the country are so enormous that a legislator of character has to summon her deep reserves of wisdom, integrity and self-confidence to vote to do the right and necessary thing. Only Becky Edwards has already proven that she can still be herself, with integrity intact, for all the rough and tumble of elected office.
david irvine
David Irvine is a lawyer and a former four-term Republican legislator from Bountiful.