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Posted: 2:33 PM- Whether you consider him a courageous voice in the wilderness or a mayoral Mad Hatter, Salt Lake City's Rocky Anderson spent the year 2000 frazzling nerves, jolting conventional thinking and cutting political and cultural swaths through city boundaries and traditional comfort zones. Love him or loathe him, during his initial year as mayor of the state's first city, Anderson cogently forced Utah to confront itself on assiduously avoided issues: antiquated liquor laws, Olympic symbolism, racial and sexual equality, the economically disadvantaged, religious domination, urban sprawl and corporate manipulation.

He served jarring notice that his city, on the verge of welcoming planet Earth, is a cultural stew. In a state that often takes itself too seriously and where it is a tenet to make one's mark without making a corresponding fuss, Anderson worked to convince us that having fun is legal and healthy.

To be sure, Anderson's first-year road was, well, quite Rocky. His first order of business sent a police chief packing; later, he ticked off street cops with his defense of an aide who had been cited for an infraction. He forbade city employees from accepting free lunches or gifts. Staff came and left under a driven micromanager; reports of closed-door tantrums persist. The sacrosanct DARE program was axed. By executive fiat, discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation was banned. And he popped off about decriminalizing marijuana.

No issue seemed too minute: serendipitous pedestrian flags, wandering grocery carts, more tables for sidewalk dining . . .

Or too daunting: a better Olympics deal for venue cities, beer around the Medals Plaza, ordering Legacy Highway planners out of his back yard, chaining a major department store to its downtown location, helping lead a charge for a sales-tax increase to expand public transit . . .

Or too unthinkable: telling a mall developer to take a hike and campaigning for sensible liquor laws.

For the most part, Anderson knew when it made sense to ease off. He quickly figured out, for example, the LDS Church's Main Street Plaza and the 2002 Winter Olympics are not going away. To continue to fight some things only enhances the divisiveness.

As mayor of Utah's largest and most diverse city, the mercurial Anderson emerged as a popular spokesman for all Utahns who perceive themselves disenfranchised.

He cast light on lines of division few will talk about publicly. Speaking up for minorities -- be they racial, cultural, economic or religious -- has long been on his front burner.

Perhaps most crucially, Anderson is helping Utahns to recognize the fastest growing and most malignant divide of all: Mormon vs. non-Mormon. It is a deteriorating situation sorely in need of reasoned dialogue and 21st-century sensitivity -- from everyone.

Whether Rocky Anderson can move beyond the role of symbolic champion to a bridger of diversity gaps and a filler of cultural and political potholes remains to be seen, but his impact in 2000 earns him Salt Lake Tribune recognition as Utahn of the Year.