The incumbent mayor captured all but a few precincts of Utah’s capital, but those areas face some of the city’s most nagging problems.
(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) Mayor Erin Mendenhall walks out to speak at an election watch party in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023. She carried 130 of 141 precincts in her blowout victory.
Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall’s reelection triumph could reasonably be described as a shellacking.
On her way to securing a 24-percentage-point victory over former two-term Mayor Rocky Anderson, Mendenhall captured 129 of 140 precincts in Utah’s capital where voters cast ballots, maintaining a tight grip on almost every area from the eastern benches to the Jordan River and beyond.
“It’s humbling,” Mendenhall said, adding that those results send a clear message about the city’s direction.
But the nine, mostly west-side, precincts she lost (two ended in a tie) face some of the city’s weightiest issues. Voters along North Temple in the Fairpark neighborhood, across Interstate 15 in Guadalupe and south of downtown in Ballpark picked Anderson to return to City Hall.
(Christopher Cherrington | The Salt Lake Tribune)
Mendenhall, who was sworn in to her second term Tuesday, notes that eight of those nine precincts were decided by fewer than 20 votes and six of them came down to fewer than 10 votes.
But her setbacks in those areas aren’t surprising, the mayor said. In fact, she conceded, they make sense.
“That area along North Temple, in Fairpark and Guadalupe,” she said, “they have some significant, legitimate concerns that we have been working to address but obviously need more investment and more progress.”
Those concerns, she said, included the potential consequences of a proposal to expand I-15 (Mendenhall has said she wouldn’t fight the plan in court), homelessness (Anderson made the issue a focal point of his campaign), and the changing character of neighborhoods (Ballpark faces being ballparkless in a year).
The progress those neighborhoods need, she said, is exactly what her administration is working to achieve.
(Chris Samuels | The Salt Lake Tribune) Former Mayor Rocky Anderson views early returns at an election night party in Salt Lake City, Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023. Anderson carried only nine precincts, mostly on the west side.
One area that handed Anderson a resounding win was the precinct north of North Temple that includes the state fairgrounds, Constitution Park and Cottonwood Park. There, the citywide tally virtually flipped, with Anderson racking up 56% of the vote to Mendenhall’s roughly 33%.
“There’s a lot of frustration over here,” Fairpark Community Council Chair Nigel Swaby said, “given the crime that is still taking place, even now.”
Swaby said Anderson’s message resonated in a community that endures frequent drug deals and a cycle of illegal homeless camps cropping up and then being pushed out.
Still, the community council leader said, Mendenhall has invested in his part of town.
“I can’t think of another mayor that’s done as much for the west side in terms of funding and planning and those sorts of things,” he said. “But there’s a delayed sense of gratification, delayed success, and I think that’s what we’re seeing right now.”
Sometimes, University of Utah political science professor Matthew Burbank said, Salt Lake City elections show a stark divide between the east and west sides. This time, though, Mendenhall’s support largely held across the city.
Burbank said the mayor benefited from incumbency, a particularly important advantage in local elections because voters typically don’t use party politics (the mayoral race is officially nonpartisan) to decide which candidate to support.
“You’re seen in that office. You have the chance to be seen around the city in a variety of groups, in a variety of settings, by people as the mayor,” he said, “So it’s very easy for people to say, ‘Yep, looks like the mayor’s doing fine. I’ll just vote for that person again.’”
(Chris Samuels | The Salt Lake Tribune) Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall embraces campaign staff after speaking with reporters at City Hall about her reelection, Monday, Nov. 27, 2023.
Mendenhall said she didn’t expect to beat her opponents (advocate Michael Valentine also ran) so resoundingly. She credits not only what she has called “a rejection of the politics of fear” but also a strategic campaign, how voters feel about the city’s direction, and her focus on representing all areas as factors that helped her run up the score.
“I’ve tried to govern this city for everyone, for the whole city,” she said. “I’ve tried to be a very present and accessible representative for the whole city, and we campaigned for the whole city, and the precinct-level data shows that that’s been effective.”
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