Rarely has Salt Lake City been subjected to such a tawdry, ill-considered case of post-election sour grapes as the hatchet job that appeared in the Nov. 19 Salt Lake Tribune (“Salt Lake City mayoral election and whiteness").
Despite the fact that Erin Mendenhall defeated Luz Escamilla by a whopping 16 percentage points, the five authors have concluded that Mendenhall’s victory can only be explained by pervasive racism among the Salt Lake City electorate. If they are going to smear the entire city with that sort of allegation, they had better be able to back it up. They can’t.
The basis for the authors’ attack seems to be that in “[their] minds, there is no question that state Sen. Luz Escamilla was the most qualified, experienced candidate.”
The authors are, of course, entitled to their opinion, but there are plenty of non-racist reasons that Salt Lake City voters might have reached the opposite conclusion.
Erin Mendenhall has extensive experience and a record of extraordinary effectiveness at the municipal level. Luz Escamilla doesn’t. Erin’s professional background is in environmental activism, with a focus on improving air quality along the Wasatch Front. Luz’s professional background is in banking.
But even if these factors favored Escamilla, qualifications and experience aren’t the only factors that voters consider at the ballot box. On the stump, Erin is dynamic, self-deprecating, funny and totally engaging. Her message — which focused on her plans to improve air quality and attract high tech jobs, the need to focus on the west side and her record of effectiveness on the City Council — was totally compelling.
Although it may be a bitter pill for Escamilla supporters to swallow, I believe many voters found Escamilla to be a bit uninspiring and underwhelming. At debates and candidate forums, Mendenhall simply dominated.
Perhaps most aggravating is the authors’ argument that implicit racism prevented Salt Lake City voters “from standing with west side residents and others who are most impacted by environmental injustice.” This is an astonishing claim, given that Erin’s campaign placed substantial focus on environmental justice for west side residents and ensuring that the east side of Salt Lake takes its fair share of responsibility for resolving social challenges like low-income housing and homelessness.
As Robert Gehrke reported in his typically excellent election post-mortem (“Here’s what a deep dive into the vote counts tells us about Mendenhall’s decisive victory in Salt Lake City,” Nov. 6), Mendenhall trailed Escamilla among west side voters by a mere 674 votes after the ballots were counted on election night. Nine of the 11 precincts where Mendenhall gained the most ground on Escamilla between the primary and general elections were on the west side. This, despite the fact that Escamilla lives in Rose Park and has represented the area in the state Legislature for more than a decade.
These aspects of the election results may be the most telling indications that the authors’ claims of racial bias are, in this case, totally off base.
Luz Escamilla was a good candidate. She surpassed several strong candidates in the primary and ran a solid race. But Erin Mendenhall is an extraordinary candidate who ran a juggernaut of a campaign. Besmirching her overwhelming victory with claims of racism are unfair, unbecoming, and factually baseless. Our new mayor-elect — and Salt Lake City voters — deserve better.
Paul Svendsen
Paul Svendsen is a real estate agent who lives in Salt Lake City.
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