Joe Hatch: S.L. County Council chairman got hooked on politics as a child

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Long before he could vote -- indeed before he even could drive -- Joe Hatch caught the political itch.

He still remembers listening to the historic debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon as a grade-schooler and hearing his mother wonder aloud why more people weren't doing the same. By age 11, the future Salt Lake County councilman had plunged into the world of campaigning as a leafleteer for Iowa Democratic Gov. Harold Hughes' re-election bid.

Truly, politics ran in Hatch's DNA.

The son of a nuclear physicist, he begged his parents to let him watch news coverage of Kennedy's assassination at the neighbor's house (his family didn't have a television). He pored over county-by-county election results in the Republican runoff between presidential contenders Nelson Rockefeller and Barry Goldwater. He warned his folks as a young high-schooler in Logan that he might get busted marching against the Vietnam War (he didn't). And he joined the 1972 campaign of Democratic presidential hopeful George McGovern before his 19th birthday.

Decades later, Hatch's political handiwork is found in campaigns ranging from Ted Kennedy's challenge to Democratic President Jimmy Carter in 1980 to Barack Obama's successful rise to the Oval Office in 2008 -- with the backing of a Salt Lake County majority.

"He revels in the political world and political life," Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker says. Hatch "spends as much time thinking about politics as anybody I know."

The first-year chairman of the County Council has proven himself a potent player in county politics, shepherding the new Democratic majority toward left-leaning reforms, including the extension of health benefits to same-sex partners of county employees, the creation of an independent redistricting commission and the strengthening of an ordinance that requires the mayor to meet with labor unions.

He also has drawn criticism from GOP colleagues such as Councilman David Wilde, who accused Hatch of political retaliation last month for ousting him from the Salt Lake Valley Board of Health because of Wilde's statements -- unpopular with Democrats --- against a bill that allows doctors to prescribe medication for the unnamed partners of patients with sexually transmitted diseases.

Hatch even tangled this week with a fellow Democrat, Peter Corroon, when the county mayor vetoed a Hatch-backed $5 million property-tax hike.

"He is a force to be reckoned with," says Thomas Wright, chairman of the Salt Lake County Republican Party. "He is extremely tenacious. He has an agenda, and he pursues it aggressively."

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A born debater » Hatch was born into a politically astute but not uncommonly active home. His parents aligned with the more moderate Rockefeller wing of the Republican Party, a faction calling for economic growth through entrepreneurship and favoring more liberal social programs such as welfare and civil rights.

Both later became Democrats.

His childhood followed the career path of his nuclear-physicist father, who ventured from the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Long Island, N.Y., to a U.S. Navy stint in Heidelberg, Germany. Hatch's family then returned to the United States, settling in Ames, Iowa, and eventually Logan.

Hatch didn't share his father's love of science. Neither did he follow after his dad in keeping his opinions to himself.

Whether it was arguing about eating spinach at the dinner table or about getting rid of those ratty Levis with holes in the knees (razzing that continues to this day from his mother), Hatch emerged as a skilled debater at an early age.

"It didn't matter what side I took," his mother, Ann Hatch, recalls, "he would take the other side and often win."

Hatch went on to graduate from Minnesota's Carleton College, where his study of modern Europe and its wrangling with class warfare and workers' rights evolved into a passion for organized labor.

He earned a law degree and a master of business administration from the University of Utah -- a background that ultimately led him into private practice as a labor attorney.

"He was an intriguing young man," says retired U. law professor John Flynn, who characterized the five B-plus grades he awarded Hatch as high marks for students under his tutelage. "He was always up to date on what was going on politically and socially."

Little has changed.

"If you need an inside scoop about some political thing, Hatch is your best bet," says his former law school colleague Gerald Suniville, now an attorney with the Salt Lake City firm VanCott, Bagley, Cornwall & McCarthy.

Hatch is no nonpartisan observer. He's a liberal lion for Utah's minority -- an unflinching, pull-no-punches politician who, in the mid-1990s, served as chairman of the Salt Lake County Democratic Party. Soon after, he won a seat on the County Council, where he served as the de facto minority leader until this year, when Democrats seized the majority and named him chairman.

Hatch has proven adept at getting his way, according to critics and supporters alike.

"I have a lot of respect for Joe Hatch," says former Republican Councilman Mark Crockett, who frequently clashes with the chairman ideologically. "I don't always agree with him, but I think he is very smart, diligent and effective for his causes."

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Majority report » At a coffee shop in downtown Salt Lake City, Hatch runs his finger down a paper titled "Continuing the Promises of Reform and Hope in Salt Lake County." He circulated the document to Democrats before last November's election gave them control of the executive and legislative branches in Utah's most-populous county.

Establish an independent redistricting commission. Check. Open the majority's caucus meetings to the public. Check. Create a Unified Police Department. Check. Provide domestic-partner benefits. Check.

"That is pretty good," Hatch says. "That is really good. Elections matter."

Yet Hatch also has taken his dings in recent weeks, most notably with the ouster of Wilde from the health board -- a move some Republicans criticized as a punitive power play orchestrated by the council's Democratic chairman.

Hatch concedes that Wilde's political advocacy against the Democrat-backed HB17 -- known as the expedited partner-therapy bill -- had something to do with the councilman's dismissal. But Hatch insists Wilde wouldn't have lost his seat if he hadn't served more than his two allotted terms. (Hatch was nominated to the health board in Wilde's place.)

Wilde says his removal reflects the sometimes "iron-fisted" leadership Hatch has employed during his first six months at the helm, both to punish foes and keep fellow partisans in line.

"Joe has the ability to say to his fellow Democrats, 'This is the way it is going to be, and you vote with me,' " Wilde says. Because of that party-line cohesion, the councilman adds, "he is moving forward his agenda more effectively than any Republican chairman has."

Hatch hasn't strong-armed or bullied his colleagues, counters Democratic Councilman Randy Horiuchi. Rather, he says, the council's five Dems are "naturally cohesive."

Hatch occasionally has plodded a prickly political path, even within his own party. Frustrated with Salt Lake City's opposition to the county's township-preservation bill, he publicly labeled Becker a "butthead" -- an outburst that ultimately prompted a reconciliation dinner between city and county leaders.

And he sparred with Corroon over the mayor's opposition to a $5.3 million tax hike.

"You're wrong on that, mayor," he retorted when Corroon suggested that deeper 2009 cuts weren't necessary.

The mayor describes Hatch as a consummate political strategist who would make a good chess player. (Hatch competed in several high-school tournaments, but rates his skill level as simply OK.)

"Sometimes he thrives on controversy," Corroon says. "But, at the end of the day, his goal is to do the right thing for the citizens."

Stepping out of a downtown coffee shop, Hatch confesses that he hates his job as chairman. Why? It's too stifling. He says leading a major opposition party -- and causing a little political ruckus -- is much more fun.

But he's satisfied with the first six months of Democratic rule.

"We are delivering what we promised."

And he's in his element: at the center of politics.

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