Saturday, October 16, 2004

Poor Nancy, poorer Sherie

Today was female politiican victimization day at the Deseret Morning News. First, we got a sob story of an interview with ex-SL County Mayor Nancy "I'm not a crook" Workman (R), where she talks about her sleepless nights and high stress that's now gone because she quit the race. "The stress was more than I ever imagined," Workman told reporter Alan Edwards. "My nerves were shot. It was affecting my family, everybody around me ... It just built up." Yet her family was "furious" that she dropped out of the race, even the nitwit daughter that ultimately caused the scandal. What dumb and unsupportive family.

Why the interview? Well she spent most of the time talking about how unnevered she was and about her visit to the doctor:

"He said, 'What in the world are you doing? You're extremely stressed, your blood pressure is up. Why have you not called me before?' " Workman said.

In fact, Workman said, the physician had thought about contacting her himself several times, to the point of picking up the phone to call her.


Well what do you know, it all goes to establishing that she really was sick and that her removal from the ballot (and Ivory's replacing her) is all on the up-and-up. Funny how the Deseret News couldn't bother to find the doctor. [Carroon by the way is setting up Republicans for Carroon to try to get back the momentum]

Meanwhile, in the local section of the paper (Nancy got the front page, top fold), SL County Clerk Sherie Swenson (D) got sympathitic treatment from the paper as well. Talking about the deluge of voters registering or reregistring (sorry Sherie, I moved)the same Alan Edwards noted: "The clerk has brought in numerous temporary employees to help with the situation. Her regular employees and aides are working overtime. She herself is, shall we say, just a bit busy. At the end of the day Thursday, she realized that between one thing and another, all she had had to eat was a protein shake and a candy fireball." On top of that Edwards notes, Swensen has that whole Ivory controversy to deal with. UT democratic party chair Donald Dunn came by, not to give her a hug, but a letter warning her that if she went ahead and put Ivory's name on the ballot, the party would sue. Wisely, Swensen has left it up to ccunty lawyers to decide if Workman's excuse is valid and Ivory can go in her spot. But those lawyers have kept her waiting.

Either way, voter turnout is going to be huge: "In the past four days, the county clerk's office has received more than 34,000 mail-in voter registration forms. Hundreds more people have come to the office personally to register." For a state with almost no competitive races, that is a sign of higher turnout this year in general.

One of those competive races is the governor's race. I got a call from Scott Matheson last night, and no we didn't talk shop sadly. But he did give me some advice about Law School, which is a good thing since he is the dean. Of course, in reality he was just trying to talk to my Dad, who is advisinig him and his brother Jim.

Jim, by the way, had a nasty debate with his nasty opponent, John Swallow. The Congressman and the ex-state Rep. traded barbs on Jim's votes and Jim's support of John Kerry. Matheson had a good answer for the Kerry question, pointing out that Kerry has pledged to stop nuclear testing and dumping in Nevada (in an attempt to win that state's 5 electoral votes), while Bush wants to build new "bunker buster" nukes which Jim fears will be tested in Nevada and end up hurting Utahns too. Jim was also out explaining his change on partial-birth abortions, his votes for Bush's tax cuts (but against making them perminant), and so on. He pointed out that, according to the National Journal, he is the 16th most conservative Democrat in the House of Representatives right now.

Amazingly, it was Matheson, not Swallow who was attacking Bush's two attempts at swing voters: No Child Left Behind and the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit under Medicare. This just goes to show how much of a loser those two bills were for Bush if even his own Rubber Stamp boy, who uses his mug in campaign ads) doesn't like them. Unfortunately for Swallow, this debate will air at 8AM on Sunday on Channel 4 (local ABC affiliate), which means almost none of his kind of people- AKA church going Mormons- will see it. Personally, I am going to TiVo it and sleep in.

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