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Show We can thank election year for decision the editor's column By MARC HADDOCK jj "It must be an election year," my old friend Grumble said to me over our daily Dr. Pepper. Of course it's an election year, I told him. That's why all the politicians are running around acting presidential - or however it is the candidates act. "I don't mean national elections," Grumble said. "Anyway, those guys have been at it so long you can't tell which year is election year. It seems like Gary Hart has been getting in and out of the race since forever. "I mean local elections. It takes a little longer for our local elected officials to start acting like politicians. But once they start, you can't tell them from the real thing." I don't know, I said. I thought they always seemed to be on the ball. I "I'm not talking about 'on the j ball,' " Grumble said. "I'm talking about on the bandwagon." ! I'm not sure I follow you. "Didn't you follow this prison i thing? After all, you are supposed to be a newspaperman." ! You mean the proposal to use prisoners from the Utah State Prison to run the Utah State ; Training School laundry. Sure, I i folio wed it a 11 the way. through . j And I thought our local politicians j did a really good job of seeing that the scheme didn't get off the ground. "Oh, they all came out against the proposal in the end. But didn't it seem odd to you that no one really taking credit for everything right now, except property taxes and the Great Salt Lake pumping project. Have you seen the polls lately? As things stand, the governor couldn't get elected mayor of Cedar Fort --and --and nobody even ran for that in the last election." Okay, smart alec. So who gets the credit? "Who knows? In one story it was the mayor, in another it was a state representative. It could have been anybody. But you know something?" Apparently not. What? "Not one of those people spoke out against the thing until the night of the public hearing - the day before Bangerter decided to put the proposal on the back burner." Now that I think about it, you're right. There was a lot of talk, but these folks were pretty quiet when everybody else was getting all stirred up. "And once they noticed a lot of other people were stirred up?" They all pretty much fell in line, I guess. So it was the people who were getting stirred up who made the difference? 'You catch on pretty slow for a person who is supposed to have his lingers on the pulse of the community. com-munity. After all, wasn't it your editorial last week that said public hearings didn't seem to make any difference?" Yes, but that was before the wind shifted on this thing. When I wrote that, a lot of people felt like the opposition to the proposal wasn't getting anywhere. Then all of a sudden Wednesday night, people who hadn't even expressed ex-pressed an interest in the thing were getting into the picture - politicians of all sorts lined up to take a stand where no one had stood before. Who could've known it would go like that? "Make all the excuses you want, but you were wrong, again. Orville Gunther and Jack Wise and all those folks who spoke up from the first were the ones who convinced the politicians that this thing could translate into votes. "Public sentiment matters. At least it does when an elected official's of-ficial's job is on the line. It was the election-year syndrome that killed this proposal." So will it come up again? "That's what you're supposed to tell us, O Mighty Scribe. But I think it will be quite a while before anyone resurrects this vampire. It looked good from the money end, but there's a lot more at stake here than money. Important things, like votes." It's fun to watch when the system works, isn't it. "You'd better believe it," Grumble said, draining the last of his Dr. Pepper. said much until last week's public hearing?" No. But that's the way these things work, isn't it. "Sure, it is. That way all those politicians can see which way the public is going to go, then they can stand up and say it was their idea all along." That's pretty harsh, isn't it? "Maybe. But tell me. who got the thing killed in the end?" Well, the way I remember it the Governor got the credit for that in one of our fine daily newspapers. "Sure he did. But the governor is |