Salt Lake County Council member David Alvord posted a politically charged screed to Facebook Wednesday, claiming the “left” won’t be happy until, among other things, “we each have light brown skin, exactly alike” and “until we are all bi-sexual and in non-committed relationships.”
He went on to say the left’s goal was to reach a point where “there are no males, no females ... we have no children, and simply have new humans arrive in labs and immediately put into a school for collectivism and indoctrination.”
Alvord, a Republican elected to represent District 2 in November, took down his post shortly after The Salt Lake Tribune contacted him for comment.
“I think I could have been more diplomatic,” he said in a text message. “What I wanted to challenge is to really consider the endgame of the far left. What mission is accomplished?”
(Screen capture via Facebook)
Alvord, former mayor of South Jordan, said he changed the post’s visibility so only friends can see it, not the public.
Since taking office in January, Alvord has mostly limited his political posts on social media to criticizing national politicians, the U.S. Capitol insurrection and the county’s ZAP tax.
At his swearing in, Alvord called on Democratic members to to “stay open-minded and flexible” while working with Republican members of the council, who now hold a veto-proof supermajority.
“I’m not sure what would rouse him enough to post a post like this. What message is he trying to send?” said Jim Bradley, a Democrat and the longest-serving member of the County Council. “What audience is he talking to?”
In his Facebook post, Alvord continued that the left “won’t be happy until no one smiles more than another.” But Bradley said Alvord is the one who shuns smiles at County Council meetings.
“So far he’s just been a sourpuss. He hasn’t contributed a heck of a lot,” Bradley said. “I don’t even know him. It’s hard to say if this is something typical of him or if he feels the County Council is a forum and microphone to say these things.”
Alvord wrote in the Facebook post, which was publicly visible for about three hours before he changed the status, that the left “won’t ever be happy” and that it’s best to “tune them out.”
“Not to say they haven’t done some good things in the past, but this equity movement if taken to its logical conclusion will ruin life for everyone,” Alvord’s post concluded.
Alvord told The Tribune that County Mayor Jenny Wilson, a Democrat, and his County Council colleagues across the aisle “have been awesome,” when asked if he thought the post would affect his ability to work with them.
“The point of my post was to say that I see no easy end to the culture war,” Alvord told The Tribune. “It’s very unclear to us on the right to think that the left will ever be satisfied.”
He cited news from last month where tweets allegedly showed a Coca-Cola diversity training encouraging employees to “try to be less white.” He also noted Disney’s firing of actress Gina Carano over her controversial social media posts that compared Republicans to Jews during the Holocaust. Alvord said Carano’s message was that there “shouldn’t be thought police,” which ”The Mandalorian” star compared to Nazis, and that she “didn’t say anything anti-Semitic.”
“And I don’t think biological males should compete against biological females in sports,” Alvord texted, apparently alluding to recent efforts to ban transgender girls from competitive sports. “It’s probably actually dangerous. Someone could get killed. Another way of saying it is that I think the left is going too far.”
Spencer Cox, Utah’s Republican governor, has said that he does not support state lawmakers’ recent proposal to block transgender youth from participating in school sports. The bill, HB302, stalled in a Senate committee after passing the House and appears unlikely to pass in the current legislative session, which ends Friday.
“I’m also very concerned about this idea that we have to have equality of outcome, or in other words equity,” Alvord texted. “I think we all agree that a quality of opportunity and equal protection under the law is sacrosanct.”
Wilson has made equitable policies a priority as county mayor. She recently appointed a diversity officer and works with the county’s Council on Diversity Affairs developing an action plan to address systemic bias and institutional racism.
The mayor declined to comment on Alvord’s post.
Late Wednesday night, Alvord added a new public post to his Facebook page clarifying his comments.
“The ‘left’ I named in a previous post isn’t any particular person, or even Democrats,” he wrote. “The left I refer to is Cancel Culture who is being too aggressive and who cancels Parler, Gina Carano, conservative books on Amazon, Girls sports, and today Dr. [Seuss].”
Alvord removed that post, too, after he received several critical comments Thursday.
(Screen capture via Facebook)
Editor’s note, 9:30 a.m., Thursday, March 4: This story has been updated to reflect that Mayor Jenny Wilson recently filled the position of diversity officer, she didn’t create the position.
2:30 p.m., Thursday, March 4: This story has been updated to note that Alvord removed another Facebook post.
