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Ted Wilson surrounds himself with political flotsam in his office at the University of Utah's Hinckley Institute of Politics.
Tiny school portraits of his seven grandchildren are tucked into the metal frame at eye level. And bumper stickers -- a dated brown one from Scott Matheson's race for governor, Karen Shepherd's run for Congress, one of Randy Horiuchi's campaigns for Salt Lake County Commission, even a "Wilson for Senate" -- glint, shiny as new, around the edges.
"It's my dirty closet," he says.
The one thing that's missing from the collection is a poster, a sticker, a badge from Wilson's three campaigns as Salt Lake City's mayor.
"I don't have any more left," he says with a shrug.
Oh, well. No matter that he doesn't have a memento from his major political success. Wilson moved on a long time ago -- leaving office midterm in 1985 -- to a concrete tower of squat 1960s classrooms on the hill to teach. He doesn't regret the move.
Now, after 18 years of prodding young, sometimes apathetic, students to get involved, the 64-year-old Wilson is retiring from the job he loved more than politics. And despite years as one of the most prominent Democrats in the state, a media-darling, the guy whose endorsement you wanted, Wilson would rather be remembered for teaching than politicking.
"He was a great mayor. I don't think we've had as good a mayor as Ted since Ted left office," says Mike Hansen, an admittedly biased member of Wilson's "motorcycle gang."
"But he has personally touched more lives in meaningful ways as head of the Hinckley Institute of Politics. Hundreds of young people's lives each year are changed by Ted. There are very few people who can say that. Most politicians cannot say that."
Early beginnings: The prized older son of working-class parents, Wilson grew up learning about Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Great Depression. His mother was Mormon. His father wasn't. His mother operated a hospital switchboard. His father owned a tent and awning shop.
"The only time we dressed up was on Sundays -- to listen to the FDR Fireside Chats," Wilson says. "I was 14 before I realized 'Damn Republicans' was two words."
That same year, his father died of a heart attack, changing Wilson's life in ways he is just beginning to understand. Bob Wilson left $5,000 in debt that Eva was determined to pay off -- "We only have one good name," she told her two sons -- working two switchboard jobs to make ends meet.
Wilson graduated from Salt Lake City's South High School in 1957. He studied political science at the University of Utah, interrupted by a year in the Army National Guard and marriage to Kathy in 1963. When he graduated the next year, Wilson took a job teaching and running the ski program at the American School in Leysin, Switzerland.
On his return home, he was hired as a social studies and history teacher at Skyline High School in East Millcreek.
But politics was beckoning.
He's embarrassed to admit it now, but he first worked on the campaign of a Republican -- Sherman Lloyd's successful 1970 bid for Congress. Two years later, Wilson latched onto another, like-minded Democratic newcomer challenging Lloyd -- Wayne Owens -- and his fate as a perpetual political underdog as a liberal in conservative Utah was set. Owens won the election and lured him to Washington, D.C., with a job the next year. Two years later, the 35-year-old Wilson was running for Salt Lake City mayor.
Out of the starting gate: Wilson's first race, against Conrad Harrison, was a culture war of sorts, a sea change in Salt Lake City politics. He was a so-called Magleby Democrat before the Brigham Young University professor coined the phrase. Wilson's youth and environmental leanings were balanced by his religion -- Mormon -- and passel of kids. He challenged the conservative establishment candidate and won the top spot among five city commissioners.
"I think he's as good a man as the Democrats have put up," former Gov. Norm Bangerter says.
True to his roots and his love of the outdoors, Wilson criticized plans to build a power plant on the Kaiparowits Plateau outside Kanab in his first year in office. Southern Utahns burned him in effigy.
As one of five city commissioners, Wilson faced internal sniping and external criticism in his 10 years in office. The police union president accused him of shady deals with a developer; Wilson offered to take a lie detector test.
He backed a proposal to change the city form of government from a five-member commission to a mayor and seven-member council, earning him the enmity of two city commissioners. (The first attempt to change city government failed in 1978; voters approved the change two years later.)
Those political years formed his children. But Jenny Wilson, his 37-year-old daughter, is the only one to follow him into politics full time. Between annual rock-climbing trips to Grand Teton National Park, the five Wilson kids campaigned. She remembers vegetable trays in hotel rooms, crepe paper and never making it to the car after a movie because residents stopped her dad to talk. She left one long Post-It note message from an outraged city resident one night. "He said, 'Damn that President Carter,' " she wrote.
Just one of Wilson's children leans Republican. "It was a way of life for us," Jenny Wilson says.
In 1982, while still mayor, Wilson was Orrin Hatch's first challenger in his bid for the U.S. Senate. "He was the darling of the kooky right," Wilson says. "I scared the hell out of him."
Despite help raising funds from celebrities such as Robert Redford, Wilson lost the race with 42 percent of the vote.
Salt Lake City flooded the next year and Wilson, still mayor, donned his rubber boots to clear debris from a clogged storm drain. "It was the only time I got to be a general," he says. A photo of State Street awash hangs in his university office.
Two years later, worn out, Wilson retired from city politics to take over stewardship of the Hinckley Institute.
But after just three years, he was back in the political fray, challenging Bangerter's bid for a second term as governor. After raising taxes for education programs and paying millions for pumps to drain the Great Salt Lake, the governor was wounded. Wilson led by 44 percent a year before the election, 30 percent in May. But that lead dwindled. Merrill Cook's tax initiative lured voters from both sides. By the weekend before the election, the lead was gone.
"I never faulted the Wilson campaign," says Salt Lake City Councilman Dave Buhler, manager of the Bangerter's 1988 campaign. He figures Wilson played it safe to avoid offending moderates and independents; Bangerter had nothing to lose.
"Bangerter's feistiness came out. He was at his best," Buhler says. "When you're the underdog you take more chances. You could throw grenades and hope one of them hit."
Some believe Wilson sat on his lead. He acknowledges now he didn't slam the governor as he should have.
"I always liked Norm Bangerter. That was my Achilles heel," he says. "I couldn't attack him about the tax increase, because I would have done the same thing in the same circumstances.
"I brought the street fighter out in Norm. I was tiptoeing around. I campaigned poorly at the end. I lost my zip."
He also lost the race, by 2 percent of the vote. Both Wilson and Bangerter blame Cook for the closeness of the race.
Utah Democratic Party Chair Meghan Holbrook, who worked as Wilson's finance director that year, says it was a threshold moment for Utah Democrats.
"The governor is the most powerful official in Utah," she says. "He or she is the one who's responsible for everything from education to wilderness to streets. That's the person people see day after day.
"Ted is a very moderate, funny, kind, attractive Utahn. If he had been elected, the Republican majority never would have ascended like they have. We wouldn't see this absolute, Republican, right-wing Legislature that we see now."
His daughter, Jenny, was his press secretary for that 1988 race. She remembers being in tears along with other campaign workers on Election Night. The candidate was calm.
"In retrospect, I see it as a loss for the state," she says. "But the personal loss was less important. It was a perfect career move for him to step into that position at the Hinckley Institute. His life took a different course. And he was happy."
Some who know him insist a day doesn't go by that Wilson doesn't think about that race. "That one stung badly -- for a year," he acknowledges. "I thought about it every day -- for a year." But he insists he isn't haunted by the loss anymore.
Still, he remembers every little detail of the race -- the ringing earpiece during a televised debate, the heckling from Provo residents watching the Freedom Festival Parade on July 4, and then-LDS Church President Ezra Taft Benson's best wishes. But he doesn't second-guess.
"What if the South had won the Civil War?" he asks. "Those 'what ifs' don't matter."
Making his mark: Wilson returned to teaching. In 1990, he launched a class in practical politics, a course he still teaches with Buhler each election year.
"It was icy," Buhler says. "That first year was a little rough." Now, with trademark self-deprecating humor, Wilson introduces Buhler as the man who kept him from being governor.
Two-time congressional candidate Donald Dunn was one of Wilson's students, experiencing everything from Political Science 101 to a weeklong project on the Navajo Reservation with his mentor.
"He always had a personal anecdote or story that he could use to help you as a student understand what he was talking about," Dunn said. "He said we had to go do something with government. He wanted us to have some practical experience."
In nearly two decades at the Hinckley Institute, Wilson expanded the internship and scholarship programs to include 200 students each year. And he increased the number of speakers, broadcasting Hinckley debates on television and radio.
"He has transformed the Hinckley Institute of Politics into one of the liveliest, most interesting and active centers of student and public engagement on this campus," says Steven Ott, Social and Behavioral Science College dean, in a university news release.
And he has put his own distinct mark on the place, starting a program for students in Kotwara, India, four years ago. Students spend three weeks in India, studying, meeting with leaders, building a school and, finally, sightseeing.
Unable to stay away from politics entirely, Wilson dabbled. In 1997, he applied to replace a resigning city councilman. City Council members chose another. And a year later, he unsuccessfully challenged state Sen. Paula Julander in the Democratic Party Salt Lake County Convention.
At the same time, Wilson became a pundit, the pol journalists sought for a reasoned analysis of sometimes inexplicable Utah politics. He has advised those who followed him at City Hall -- from Palmer DePaulis to Rocky Anderson.
Some of his political alliances have raised eyebrows, including friendships with Horiuchi and former Salt Lake City Mayor Deedee Corradini. Their scandals in office have frustrated Wilson. But while his friendship with Horiuchi continues -- "He has sold out to developers too much," Wilson says, "but he's an immense humor, an immense man. I just like him." -- his relationship with Corradini is over.
Rumor has it she approached U. President Bernie Machen about leading the Hinckley Institute before Wilson had announced his retirement. He says his sense of betrayal is older than that. He and former Mayor Jake Garn filmed a commercial for Corradini in 1995 after the Bonneville Pacific bankruptcy scandal. After re-election, Corradini collected $200,000 from wealthy Utah businessmen to pay off her Bonneville Pacific-related debts. Wilson calls his endorsement "one of my greatest political mistakes."
"I put somebody back into office. And her ethical standards were not up to what they should have been," he says. "There's a point where personal gain and personal interest become inimical to your job. I don't have a lot of personal regard for her anymore."
A new venture: Another unorthodox relationship will take Wilson into retirement. For two years, he has written a tit-for-tat column for the Deseret Morning News with LaVarr Webb, former policy deputy to Gov. Mike Leavitt. Now, Webb and Wilson -- along with Bangerter, former Salt Lake County Commissioner Bart Barker, political consultant Carter Livingston and others -- are starting a consulting business, Exoro, a Latin term that means "prevail through persuasion."
Wilson has no time for partisans on both sides of the political aisle who protest the collaboration. On one level the partnership is practical -- he needs a paycheck. On another, Wilson says he has transcended political sniping.
"The party doesn't own my mind," he says. "You see less need for camps, for partisanship, as you get older."
His friends say he always has been that way, an energetic advocate of liberal values during a political fight, but always a gentleman. He inspired the same in his opponents.
"There were times I would have to remind Norm that Ted was the enemy," Buhler says. "I would think, 'Quit being such pals with the guy.' "
"It's the old school of politics," Dunn adds. "It's a civility we've been lacking. This is a pretty visible group. It's bipartisan. It's unique for Utah. It's like we've grown up."
Institute transformation: U. Political Science Department Chairman Ron Hrebenar will replace Wilson as interim director Friday. The institute Wilson leaves, Hrebenar says, rivals those at Harvard, the University of Akron and New York University.
"There's no doubt in my mind that, short of a couple of D.C.-based programs, we have the finest internship program in the country. They do what they do very well," he says.
With Wilson's retirement, the Hinckley Institute will undergo a transformation to focus on practical and applied politics. By next year, the institute could offer advanced degrees in campaigning, marketing and polling. Meantime, the university will begin to search nationally and internationally for Wilson's permanent replacement.
Never say never: Wilson plans to ride his motorcycle, climb and play with his grandkids. He won't rule out politics -- "I'll never say I won't. I'll never say I will. I'm always a liar on those things," he says.
After 30 years in the public eye, he's ready for relative anonymity. It's already creeping up on him. Although he has changed little over the years -- except for a new graying beard -- the Salt Lake City residents who used to complain to him about chuckholes now mistake him for DePaulis. "People look at me and they're not sure where I fit in anymore."
He likes that just fine. "The political career is secondary to my political life," Wilson says. "I would like to be remembered as the teacher that did."
Thirty years of politics
* 1972: Ted Wilson, 32, works on Wayne Owens' first congressional campaign.
* 1973: Owens lures Wilson to Washington, D.C., with a job as his administrative assistant.
* 1975: Wilson challenges and beats incumbent Salt Lake City Mayor Conrad Harrison, becoming the city's youngest mayor.
* 1978: The first election to change Salt Lake City's form of government from a five-member commission to a mayor with a seven-member council -- an idea Wilson backed -- fails.
* 1979: Wilson trounces challenger Doug Bowers with 68 percent of the vote to win a second term as mayor.
* 1980: Salt Lake City residents decide to change the form of government.
* 1982: Wilson and Orrin Hatch face each other in a contest for one of Utah's Senate seats. Hatch wins with 58 percent of the vote.
* 1983: Running for a third term, Wilson manages springtime floods by sandbagging State Street and diverting the water out of town. He also defeats Sterling Webber with 70 percent of the vote.
* 1985: The three-term mayor leaves office two years early to direct the University of Utah's Hinckley Institute of Politics.
* 1988: His self-imposed break from campaigning ends when Wilson takes on incumbent Gov. Norm Bangerter. Wilson's 40-point lead dwindles and he loses by 2 percent.
* 1997: Wilson applies for an open position on the Salt Lake City Council. Council members choose another applicant.
* 1998: He unsuccessfully challenges Paula Julander for the Avenues neighborhood's nomination for a state Senate race.
* 2003: Wilson, 64, retires from the Hinckley Institute of Politics.
Steve Griffin/The Salt Lake Tribune