Short answer:  No.

Longer answer:  No, but . . .

Two of the city’s most recognizable and influential women (Jenny Wilson and Nancy Saxton) suffered lopsided losses in their respective races.  Read on for what I hope is some serious analysis.

Wilson’s distant third in the September mayoral primary came about in the midst of a sense of gender based criticisms.  Certainly during the race, Wilson was subjected to a level of attention her male counterparts were not.  Typically, the press asked questions of her they would not and did not ask male candidates.

Nancy Saxton lost (a loss that I think surprised some folks) by a sizable margin to Luke Garrott.  Despite having had the endorsement of the Tribune, voters clearly preferred Garrott to Saxton.

I think some very specific problems with each campaign, however, were more decisive than gender issues.

Nancy Saxton’s bid for the mayor’s office came to an abrupt end.  She quickly retooled and launched a bid to keep her Council seat.  For the first weeks after the primary, Saxton seemed invisible.  Driving around her district, I saw precious few Nancy signs.  By contrast, on a regular basis you’d see new Luke signs, or fire trucks covered with Luke signs parked at strategic intersections.  Nancy was also hurt by her own track record on City Council – her experience seemed to have produced few measurable results and instead made her seem like a comfortable insider.  The Tribune’s sadly tepid endorsement, FWIW, probably hurt more than it helped Saxton.  (The Trib actually sucked at endorsements this year – their endorsement of Becker essentially said, “Salt Lake’s voters will elect him anyway so we like him.”)  Saxton ran an anemic campaign – making obligatory appearances and emphasizing her experience.  The reports I heard from people who attended campaign events reported that she sounded as if her heart wasn’t in the race.  Garrott, by contrast, was excited about the race, focused, determined to win.  In the end, that swayed voters.

Wilson’s primary loss, is more complicated but similar.  While Ralph Becker ran a GREAT campaign, she ran a merely good one.  Ralph Becker outworked, out-organized, and out campaigned Jenny.  The fact that practically every elected woman in the city publicly backed Becker couldn’t have helped Jenny Wilson (btw – Paula Julander is a master at honk and waves!)

While the Becker campaign seemed to be firing on all cylinders and seemed to be everywhere at once, the Wilson campaign was invisible.  In walking precincts almost every week (sometimes twice a week) for Ralph, I saw walkers for Jenny Wilson a grand total of once.  I never saw Wilson literature on houses when I visited them.  While the number of houses sporting Jenny Wilson for Mayor signs stayed constant or declined slightly, the number of houses with Becker signs seems to increase constantly, with it the excitement and dedication of the Becker volunteers.

At public events starting with the Arts Festival, you’d see Becker yellow t-shirts everywhere you looked – but few if any Wilson supporters.  This trend peaked at the Avenues Street Fair where it felt to me as if half the people there were wearing Becker yellow.  The contrast between the two campaign’s booths couldn’t have been more striking – the Wilson booth felt serene and calm while the Becker campaign’s booth was crackling with people and energy.

The Becker campaign was tightly run – everything in line, well planned and carried out.  Poll watching was tightly scheduled, well planned, precincts highly prioritized.  In the time my poll watching partner and I checked the polls, visited voters, checked again and visited again, we saw a lone poll watcher for Wilson and then never saw him again.

Wilson’s campaign never seemed to quite connect with voters.  Her support started in the low 20s and stayed there.    Ralph’s started in the low teens and began building.

On the beach, when a strong wave is coming in, you can feel the water shifting before you can see the wave.  That’s what happened here.  Those of us who were out, talking with voters felt the wave before it was visible.  When the poll came out showing Becker ahead, no one who worked on the campaign was surprised (thrilled and excited yes, but not actually all that surprised).  When Ralph went on to win the primary, in the light of  the polls, the surprise was the size of his win.  Wilson never budged from her early support, never got her supporters excited and talking to other people.  The Wilson campaign felt somewhat hands off.

The issue of sexism in that race cannot be ignored. 

I think Wilson’s campaign did more damage than good when they called the press conference in response to Rocky Anderson’s op-ed piece.  Rocky’s op-ed would largely have been ignored had Wilson not called more attention to it.  In doing so, she made the same mistake so many politicians make of talking from inside the box she’s criticizing, which reinforced the criticized rather than neutralized it.  A candidate as smart as Jenny Wilson should have simply said, “Well of course Rocky is entitled to his opinion.  Most working moms don’t have a choice about working and raising a family and as Mayor, I will support the creation of a system of affordable day care and after school programs to assist all working families in Salt Lake City. . .”  IOW, a perfect opportunity to show leadership, to demonstrate her commitment to key issues and progressive policies somehow came across as a little bit of a whiny “Rocky’s picking on me . . .”  Surprisingly for a candidate as smart as Jenny Wilson, she somehow missed what could have been a gimme. 

Wilson’s campaign literature seemed to endlessly repeat the same theme - “My dad was mayor.”  Inadvertantly, that theme reinforced the sexism present in the race – it communicated the message that Jenny Wilson wasn’t running on her own merit and was instead trying to run as a legacy candidate whose campaign was really a coronation rather than an honest to god I want to get elected campaign.

 In a final analysis, I think both Saxton and Wilson suffered from similar campaign misfires – namely that both otherwise good candidates ran campaigns that were overmatched by their opponents.

Both Nancy Saxton and Jenny Wilson suffered from something that is I think, intangible – a sense of being the wrong person at the wrong time.  Luke Garrott just feels like a better fit the 4th district than does Nancy Saxton, though at the time of her first race, she had that intangible right feel.  In almost every way, Ralph Becker has just felt like the right candidate at the right time for the Mayor’s office.  I feel confident that Ralph Becker is a strong advocate for women’s rights.

2007 has seen two strong female candidate defeated.  In both cases, those candidates were out campaigned by their opponents.  However, recruiting good female candidates is always going to be difficult in this state.  At a time when Utah’s politics are dominated by a cadre of good ole boy insiders, we need strong, outspoken women to run for office, to challenge the back slapping glad handing secret handshake approach to politics.  We need strong outspoken women who aren’t afraid to call bs when the press talks about their hair or their clothes and who also don’t get distracted by it.  It’s a big challenge and an unfair one, but for now, I don’t see other ways to fight the sexism in Utah politics.