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Show OREM MAYOR NO. 14 DELANCE w. squire In Utah the politics of municipal government are most interesting. Many years ago, most Utah cities employed the convention system for nominating candidates to town boards and city councils: not die kinds of conventions used in the counties of Utah, in which advocates of the national political parties gather together and nominate their candidates. Rather, local parties, not associated with the national political parties, would convene and nominate their candidates to compete in their municipal elections. Thus, in the Town of Orem, the Citizens Party and the Peoples Party, from the very beginning, would field candidates for elective offices every two years, without bringing up or involving national issues or national political leaders in the process. That method seemed to work very well for municipalities. It did create some interesting political dissonance, however, in that, one year, it would pit Republicans and Democrats against each other, during partisan political campaigns in Utah County, while, the next year, harnessing some of them together in the municipal campaigns of the Orem Citizens and Orem Peoples parties. All of that political confusion ended in Orem quite a few years ago, when the local political party system was abolished in favor of the current method of having each aspirant for office file his candidacy with the City Recorder, and then winnowing the field through primary elections. Adoption of the system of having candidates file, individually, for office has enabled some people run for office who might never have been nominated in a local party convention. It has also enabled less-prominent people to use the electioneering process to enhance their community profiles and gain supporters of their candidacies. In the State of Utah every county and municipality is legally required to contract with an independent auditing firm to conduct a financial audit of its affairs, each year. Typically, a firm of Certified Public Accountants is employed to conduct such audits. One such C.P.A., whose firm had audited Orem . - i 1982 - 1985 City's finances for many years, decided it was time for him to run for Mayor of Orem, when it was discovered that there had been a one million dollar error made in Orem City's bookkeeping, during the previous year, which had adversely affected the current year's budget. DeLANCE W. SQUIRE As the time for the 1981 biennial Orem City municipal elections approached, the incumbent Mayor of Orem, James E. Mangum realized that he would soon be completing 10 years of service as Mayor. He had served the first two years of his first term as Mayor from 1966 through 1967, when he resigned following a heart attack. A decade later, Mangum's health had improved, and he was elected to two consecutive terms as Mayor Page 62 |