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Salt Lake City's Rotary Club may have witnessed history Tuesday, according to its president-elect, Floyd Hatch, when only one of two Utah attorney general candidates invited to a debate showed up to the scheduled luncheon.
Incumbent Sean Reyes missed the debate because he was out of town, his aides said. Club officials say they extended the invitation in June to the Republican nominee and his Democratic rival, Charles Stormont.
Hatch, who also is the events coordinator for Rotary International's Club 24, told members that in his 30 years with the club, this marked the first time that a candidate who was invited to one of its debates declined the offer.
Hatch, who said the club decided to go ahead with the scheduled debate despite Reyes' absence, also issued a gentle warning to Republican congressional candidate Mia Love, whose camp has been waffling over an invitation to debate her Democratic opponent, Doug Owens, at a future Rotary luncheon.
He said he knows several club members are friends of Love, and he hopes they extend the message that if a candidate fails to show, the show will go on.
Negotiations leading up to the A.G. debate became interesting. According to emails among members, they received calls from the Reyes camp expressing concern that the event would occur without the GOP candidate. A reporter was erroneously told last week by Lee Rech, Reyes' campaign spokesman, that the debate had been canceled.
Rech told me Tuesday that it was her error and hers alone. She said she had been out of town and mistakenly had the impression that the meeting had been scrapped.
Missy Larsen, spokeswoman for the attorney general's office, said she was unaware of most of the negotiations, since they were between the club and the campaign. But when there seemed to be consternation among some Rotarians, she called one of the club leaders to find out more.
"There was never any pressure [from the Reyes camp]," she said, "to stop the meeting from taking place."
Club leaders allowed Reyes to send a four-minute video, which was played to the members. The video triggered a few chuckles when behind him was a football with a Brigham Young University logo on one side and a football with a University of Utah logo on the other, flanked by the American flag.
"He covered all the bases," one member quipped.
Stormont gave his four-minute presentation and then took questions. During one of his answers, the audio of Reyes' presentation kicked in again and began to drown out the Democrat's comments until the Rotarians figured out how to shut it off.
Even in absentia, the Republican seemed to have the louder voice.
Selective prosecution? • Thirteen protesters who blocked a committee hearing room during the 2014 legislative session to pressure lawmakers to hear an anti-discrimination bill are being charged — more than six months after the fact.
The Capitol Hill 13, as they are known, were arrested by Utah Highway Patrol officers. They were protesting the Legislature's decision to forgo any action on bills that would protect gays and lesbians from housing and employment discrimination.
They were taken to the Salt Lake County jail, where they were strip-searched and held for several hours. They were warned to show up for an arraignment two weeks later or be subject to arrest. But when they showed, the prosecution wasn't ready to file charges.
Then, nothing.
Until now.
Attorneys for the Capitol Hill 13 were informed Tuesday that Salt Lake City prosecutor Padma Veeru-Collings will announce Wednesday that each protester will be charged with misdemeanors for "disturbing the Legislature or an official meeting."
Political prosecution, you think?
Nothing has happened to the protesters, led by San Juan County Commissioner Phil Lyman, who last May illegally drove all-terrain vehicles into Recapture Canyon, an eco-sensitive area rich in archaeological sites closed to motorized vehicles by the Bureau of Land Management.
Enforcement, it seems, is determined by which laws are being protested and who is doing the protesting.